Garlic Lemon Chicken

Tonight I'm doing garlic lemon chicken, with goose fat roasted potatoes and sauteed cabbage. Should be easy enough. Gives me an excuse to use up some of that cup of goose fat I accumulated, and the cabbage is like, 10 minutes tops to done. As for the chicken, we're quite low on garlic and I actually do not have any chicken broth at the moment, but I'll substitute white wine instead and it should be fine. This is what I get for shopping for garlic at Hyvee, where the bulbs have like 5 cloves in them, rather than Dillon's or Hen House, where the bulbs have reliably at least 15.

Thanksgiving 2007: Post-Game

Goose: Moist, but ultimately not really different from any other goose recipe. I did get a lot of goose fat out of it though which I will save for future uses.
Roast Veg: Cooked well but not interesting enough to be repeatable. Alex says it was fine but he would have preferred broccoli/cauliflower/red potato/etc.
Apples: Good but mushier than I would have liked.
Corn Gratin: Couldn't taste the cheese. Didn't like the onion rings. Otherwise good, if a bit rich.
Cranberry Sauce: Didn't gel up. Also tasted mostly like cherries and not so much like cranberries.
Carrots: Not soft enough. Glaze was not a glaze at all, more of a sauce, and as a result they were not as flavorful as I wanted.
Salad/bread: not put on table due to too much food.
Mashed Potatoes: standard mashed potatoes.

Alex's mom made sweet potato casserole, which I didn't try but Alex said it was very sweet, and also some sort of weird hybrid dessert that didn't work so well. The bottom half was a apple cake, with thinly sliced apples layered in it (is that a tatin? I'm not so good with dessert names), but then it had a layer of like marshmallowy whipped cream with chocolate shavings on top. I personally was not a fan of the two layers together, particularly the chocolate in conjunction with the apple.

My personal overall verdict is that nothing I had was BAD, but overall not worth the effort, especially when I'm fairly exhausted anyway due to travel and lack of sleep. This seems to be a recurring theme with my bigger dinners. Oh well. I won't be cooking for Christmas this year because we'll be out of town but maybe I'll do something special in mid-December sometime (not too close to Christmas).

Thanksgiving 2007: Mid-Day

Carrots: chopped. Veggies: roasted. (Will need to be reheated and then tossed with red onion and apple cider vinegar later.) Goose: in oven. (Goddamn do we need a roasting pan with a rack in it. Cause we don't have one, so all our roast birds have to stew in their own juices (that or we use the broiler pan but that's not really an option I like) and we have a rack that is too long for any of our roasting pans so we thought maybe we'd just stick it on top of the pan but that made the whole thing like way too tall and I DO need to cook other things at the same time as the goose so BLAH!!!)

Still to do: make apples, cook carrots, bake corn gratin, reheat veg. That's really it. And the corn gratin is completely made, it just has to be tossed in the oven. Man. Easy as pie.

Alex's mom is ALSO apparently bringing a dessert of some kind. Which sucks because she tends to make her chocolate things rather bitter, or like bitter with a layer of sugar flavor on top, which I don't like. She (and perhaps the whole Russian culture, I don't know) tend to like lesserly sweet desserts, and I don't, and I tend to not like her desserts. Blug.

While I appreciate that she wants to help, I would really REALLY prefer for her to just leave me alone and let me cook everything. She is pushy as shit sometimes.

Thanksgiving 2007: Night Before

Alex's parents are coming over for Thanksgiving tomorrow and I got some of my cooking out of the way tonight.

The menu is:

Roast Goose with Caramelized Apples
Roasted Autumn Vegetables
Spiced Carrots
Creamed Corn Gratin with Fried Onions
Cranberry Sauce with Cherries and Cloves
Mashed Potatoes
Italian bread
Cabernet sauvignon
Salad (from a bag, blah. Was going to do a bacon-endive-Stilton salad but decided against it at the last minute)

Also Alex's mom is bringing glazed sweet potatoes, which kind of sucks because I have sweet potatoes in my roasted veg and nobody told me about this until AFTER purchases had been made. Oh well.

So tonight I did the cranberry sauce (smelled spectacular), and made the topping and content of the corn gratin (but did not bake, also smelled spectacular). Tomorrow I do goose, apples, roasted veg, and carrots.

I must say, it's really relaxing and almost sort of cathartic to do night-before prep with no real time frame or need to hurry. Just kind of casually loping along, none of my frantic "OH GOD WHAT NEXT AHHHH" thing. And I completely lucked out and EVERYTHING I'm baking tomorrow cooks at 350. So roasted veg go in first, when they come out goose goes in, when I flip it I add a pan of apples, then I put the corn in on a lower level, and then I put the topping on the corn right about the time the goose gets done so I can move the corn up to a higher level, and also then I put the roast veg back in to reheat. Carrots are stovetop and cranberry sauce is in fridge already (hopefully becoming nice and gelatinous... I didn't put it in the fridge immediately because the glass bowl was so hot I was worried that a drastic temperature change would make the bowl shatter, and so I HOPE when I wake up tomorrow morning I will have a nice jellied bowl of delicious fragrant [well probably not anymore but oh well] cranberries).

And this gives me a bit of time to sleep in in the morning, because I have presently been awake for 20 solid hours and while I'm not SLEEPY (for now, and I have been quite sleepy earlier in the day), I'm pretty damn worn out.

It's really good to get shit done ahead of time though.

Seven Onion Soup

We are very broke (or were, until we sold off my old computer parts for $100), so I took my last $20 and went to Hen House (love) and got a variety of onions. Also last night Alex picked up a take-and-bake loaf of ciabatta at Hyvee so I'll bake that too when the soup gets done simmering.

Seven Onion Soup

4 tbsp unsalted butter
3 slices thick-cut bacon
1.5 cups sliced white onion
1.5 cups sliced yellow onion
1.5 cups sliced red onion
1 cup sliced shallot
1 cup sliced leek
1 cup sliced scallions (bottoms only)
Salt and pepper
1/2 tsp thyme
1 bay leaf
2 quarts chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
Chives and parmesan, for garnish

Slice up all your onions. Sob all over yourself. Melt butter over medium-high heat in large pot. Realize your large pot heated up in like 2 seconds, as butter melts rapidly the moment it touches the pot. Add bacon, saute for 7-10 minutes or until browned and crispy and fat has rendered. Remove bacon with slotted spoon, set aside. Add red onion, yellow onion, white onion, shallot, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and thyme. Stir until softened and beginning to caramelize, about 6-8 minutes. Add leek and scallion, cook 3-4 minutes. Add chicken stock, bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add cream, stir to combine and cook another 45 minutes. Puree (or don't; I won't be because Alex doesn't like pureed soups, and I just checked on it with 20 minutes of simmer until cream goes in and it's kind of pureeing itself anyway). Ladle into bowls and garnish with bacon, chives and parmesan.

Garlic Brussels Sprouts

I was one of the probable millions of kids in the US who grew up utterly convinced (without necessarily even having tried one! I know I didn't) that brussels sprouts were the DEVIL. I don't think I even knew what they looked like but I had read enough stories of kids being sent to bed without supper because they refused to eat the dreaded brussels sprouts that I was convinced that they were the most disgusting vegetable on the planet. I think this fear may have been instilled as well by my generation's parents, who were probably raised on boiled crappy sprouts with no seasoning, which I'm sure probably would be pretty gross.

Then a few months ago, on a whim, I bought a basket of sprouts at Dillon's, just to see if they were any good. If not, I'd never buy them again. I roasted them with garlic and was SURPRISED. They just tasted like cabbage! I like cabbage! What the hell. Since then I have also made them from frozen in butter sauce (also good).

Tonight I made chicken breasts in teriyaki sauce (Alex: not bad but the portions should have been smaller or flatter for better sauce-age; me: not bad but needed more spice and less sugar, which is funny because I actually ran out of sugar and wasn't able to put a full 1/2 cup in), as well as aromatic brown rice I had made previously (Alex: too dry, me: not done enough because for the life of me I cannot get the damn lid sealed tightly enough on the pot that the liquid doesn't evaporate before the rice is completely done, and also not enough garlic flavor because I screwed up and added my 2-clove pile instead of my 4-clove and had to toss more in near the end), and garlic brussels sprouts (Alex: no comment).

I made them from frozen, which some people say makes them disgusting. I also may have overcooked them; they were baby brussels sprouts so some of them were fairly tiny and quite soft to the bite. I don't really care though. So so good. And good for you too!

Garlic Brussels Sprouts

1 10-oz package frozen brussels sprouts
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp butter, divided
1 tsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup chicken broth

Heat olive oil and 1 tsp butter over medium heat. Add garlic, saute 2-3 minutes or until aromatic and golden. Add sprouts, toss to coat. Add broth, salt and pepper. Cover and simmer 13 minutes or until cooked through. Drain any remaining liquid; add remaining butter and toss until melted.