Ninecooks

Thanksgiving weekend odds and ends (and a turkey meatloaf recipe)

A few quick items to get you through the holiday weekend, and one of my favorite recipes.

While Thursday may be for turkey, Friday is notoriously for shopping. In the way-back days, the Friday after Thanksgiving was the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season, and when we were in Boston, Cousin Martin and I would trek to Filene's basement, where he would shop and I would follow him around with armloads of his basement finds.

These days, the Christmas shopping season seems to begin in July, or at least before Halloween. But, still, for some of us, a bit of in-person or armchair shopping on this Thanksgiving weekend just feels right.

Discount on food and dishes from Spain

If you've been following the Gifts for Food Lovers series on The Perfect Pantry, you already know about the discount offer from one of my favorite food sources for all things Spanish.

The nice folks at La Tienda are offering a 10% discount on any product in their catalog or online store, now through December 31, 2008, to all readers of The Perfect Pantry. That's right, 10% off olive oil and sherry vinegar, lomo and chorizo, cheese, peppers, dishes, cookware, beans, smoked paprika, almonds, gift boxes and bomba rice. Anything!

To claim your discount, click on the link above, shop to your heart's content, then enter the code PERPAN08 in the Promo Code box on the checkout page. It's that easy.

The discount is good only until December 31, so plan ahead for Thanksgiving, a tapas New Year's Eve party, or holiday gift giving. And don't forget to stock your own pantry, too.

Discount on cookbooks

Jessica's Biscuit, based out of the New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton, Massachusetts, has one of the largest online inventories of cookbooks, anywhere. They're having a huge sale -- great cookbooks for 50% off! Start here.

TURKEY MEATLOAF WITH FIG GRAVY
My all-time favorite Thanksgiving recipe, if, like me, you don't want or need to make a large turkey. Adapted from a Franklin Café recipe reprinted in the Boston Globe, January 2006. Serves 6.

Vegetable oil or canola spray for the pan
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
2 lbs ground turkey
2 scallions, chopped
2 Tbsp hot sauce
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 egg
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
1 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup dried cranberries or cherries, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

Preheat oven to 400°F. Lightly spray a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan.

In a large skillet, heat the oil. When it is hot, cook the onion and salt over low heat, stirring often, for 8 minutes or until the onion softens. Let the mixture cool.

In a large bowl, combine the onion and all remaining ingredients. Mix lightly, until just combined, with your impeccably clean finger tips. Press mixture into the pan. Set it on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake for 55 minutes or until it reaches 165°F on a meat thermometer.

FIG GRAVY

1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cups apple cider
1 cup chicken stock
1 bay leaf
1/2 lb dried Turkish figs, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

In a large saucepan, heat the oil. Add onion and cover the pan. Cook for 8 minutes or until the onion softens. Remove the lid. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer 35-45 minutes or until the figs are very soft and the mixture has reduced by half.

Slice the meatloaf thickly and serve with the fig gravy.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Spicy turkey rolls
Turkey-green chile chili
Turkey-escarole soup
Chicken with prunes and almonds

Five flavors eggs

Around the corner —which is a mile and a half up the road — from the Ninecooks kitchen, a farmer puts this little cooler out every morning.

Locals know it's the goat cheese, not the eggs, that come in five flavors. Still, it makes me giggle every time I pass by.

A quarter mile up the road in the other direction, Carolyn LaPointe of Glocester Greens and Goats also makes goat cheese: creamy feta, herb-studded fromage blanc, and, soon, goats' milk cheddars.

When we moved here six years ago, there were plenty of farms nearby, but no homemade cheese anywhere. It's a good sign that there are now two farms making goat cheese — not just within hailing distance, but within walking distance of my kitchen.

I wonder...could we (should we?) build an entire group cooking menu around goat cheese?

La Pagaie-Planche

Wherever I go, whatever I do, whatever absolutely irresistibly beautiful cookware shop I discover on my wanderings, and whatever I buy that I didn't intend to buy but then think "wouldn't that be perfect in my kitchen?", I have the happiness and enjoyment of Ninecooks' cooking groups in the forefront of my mind.

And so it was on a recent visit to Montreal.

In the March 2006 Gourmet, a special issue all about Montreal, I'd read about Les Touilleurs at 152 Avenue Laurier West. When a family occasion brought us to the city last weekend, I packed my dog-eared copy of the magazine and, optimistically, my credit cards. Thanks to flawless navigating by my husband Ted, a native Montrealer, we found not only the shop, but also a parking space right in front – a good omen, if you believe in shopping karma. Les Touilleurs is lovely, all white walls, countertops and floors, but somehow not cold or intimidating, with friendly, bilingual staff. The selection of cookware combines the familiar (All-Clad, Emile Henry) with brands like Mauviel, less ubiquitous in American shops.

My prize acquisition, La Pagaie-Planche, is a large, long-handled slab of maple, designed by Quebec inventor and artist Tom Littledeer. In English, this multi-purpose tool is called The Wedge. More than a giant spatula, La Pagaie-Planche holds its own as a pizza cutter, casserole server, cutting board, omelet flipper, presentation surface, nut crusher, and cookie scooper-upper. How have I... oops, I mean the cooking groups... managed without this?

Yes, I do it all for the cooking groups. After all, I could hardly expect Ninecooks' cooks to cook without a pagaie-planche, now, could I?

A good cook's secret weapons

So many condiments, so little time....or is it thyme?

For the next get-together of The #1 Cooking Group, I'm borrowing the game plan of Chef Diane Vatcher, who's coming to Ninecooks the week before to teach a class on grill techniques. Diane, a personal chef in Providence, and former head chef for a major catering company, believes that the secret to good grilling (or good cooking, for that matter) is to have a very good supply of homemade rubs, sauces, glazes, marinades – in other words, your own stash of secret weapons that you can make ahead and store in the fridge or pantry, so you can save time (or is it thyme?) when you want to get a great meal on your grill.

Diane will show the class how to create dry and fresh rubs, and we'll create our own signature rubs to take home. We'll also make BBQ sauces, glazes, and marinades both sweet and spicy. And all of this good seasoning will be put to the test, on chicken, veggies, steaks, ribs and fish.

It all sounds like so much fun that I thought "why not do it again?" with the #1s?

In Ninecooks cooking groups, everyone is responsible for bringing part of the food; that way, no one person gets stuck doing all of the shopping, and we are responsible to each other for making sure all of the groceries are on hand. I send out the individual shopping lists two weeks before we're going to cook together.

Yesterday I sent out the shopping list. Here it is:

"Bring something to grill."

That's it – the assignment! It will be fun to see what people bring, and we'll tailor our rubs and basting sauces accordingly. With a tweak-tweak here, and a tweak-tweak there, Diane says you can adjust any rub to match the characteristics of whatever you're cooking, whether mild-flavored fish or a bistro steak. (I'd better take good notes in Diane's class...)

Though there are many possible sources of the dry seasonings we'll need, there aren't many good ones within 10 miles of the Ninecooks kitchen, and with gas at $3.00 a gallon, I'm not sure that driving the nearly 20 miles each way to the Indian spice market makes much sense. I'm picky about the freshness of the spices in my kitchen, so my first stop will be Penzeys, one of my favorite online sources.

On my shopping list: cumin (whole seeds, and ground); cardamom; coriander; paprika, both the sweet Hungarian and the smoked Spanish; black pepper and whole peppercorns, and white peppercorns, too; fennel seed; rosemary; sesame seeds; chili powder and ancho chile; garlic powder; cayenne; allspice; turmeric; ground cloves; hot mustard.

And those are just the dry spices. Then come the condiments: mustards, molasses, honey, ketchup, lemons and limes, cilantro. The herb garden, finally showing signs of robust growth, can provide chives, thyme and mint.

My nose is excited just thinking about it!

Mushroom dreams

Not mushrooms. I know, and I can explain.

I had it all planned. Marcia, of the Wednesday Lunch Group, took me to Franklin Farms in North Franklin, Connecticut, a couple of weeks ago. We were scouting for a possible future field trip for our cooking group, and she thought this mega mushroom farm, not quite an hour from Ninecooks, would be perfect.

The northeast's largest grower of organic mushrooms, Franklin Farms is an environmentally responsible company that uses organic and recycled materials in a controlled indoor growing and harvesting process. They were the first commercial grower to introduce many varieties of specialty mushroom to the US market, including enoki, shiitake, cremini, and maitake (hen of the woods).

Marcia emailed ahead and received directions and the following: "When you come up the driveway, you'll see a guard shack, and our retail store is right there."

When we arrived, after a lovely toodle through the beautiful countryside, we realized that the guard shack actually is the retail store! It's large enough for exactly one large refrigerator, one cash register, one very nice man, and two customers.

Good things do come in small packages, however, and this is a very fine shack indeed. The prices are astonishingly low, perhaps a third of the price for the same mushrooms in our local grocery store. And, most important, the 'shrooms are fresh fresh fresh! We asked for recipe suggestions, and were each given a 15-page packet of information about the culture and qualities of each mushroom variety, along with recipes, "health" and medicinal uses, and assorted trivia.

SO, on the way home we decided to propose that our cooking group pile into the minivan and head for the Connecticut hills. When the group got together to cook last week, we told everyone about Franklin Farms. Before we could plan our next visit, however, tragedy struck – in the form of a phone call from a friend of Marcia's, who had learned that...gasp...Franklin Farms is closing their Connecticut operation and relocating to Pennsylvania.

We returned to that little guard shack today, though we knew we couldn't buy enough to save the farm (and the 380 people who will lose their jobs when Franklin Farms closes its Connecticut operation). We'll make one more trip in May, but for the cooking group, it's just too late.

Hence, the asparagus. Even as we mourn the loss of locally-produced organic mushrooms, we celebrate the impending arrival of asparagus season. We're already planning a visit to Falls Creek Farm, one of our favorite local asparagus producers, and we'll call to find out if we can bring the Wednesday Lunch Group to visit the farm's sorting room, where fresh-picked spears are sorted by size and packed by hand.