mardi (not so) gras

It’s snowing those thick, pretty snowflakes and I just don’t want to get the car out of the garage.  I’m going to try to make some kind of Mardi Gras supper, although the prospect of Lent (with sacrifice, penance, and soul-searching) is easier for me to grasp than the prospect of a rowdy bacchanal on Shrove Tuesday.  I’ll try to stick with the traditional NOLA recipes, but I don’t want to drive to the grocery store.  Neither do I want to make a pecan coffee cake (which is my interpretation of the King Cake recipe) complete with toy baby, especially not if the whole deal has to be covered with purple, green, and yellow frosting.  It’s creepy.

So–I settled on making jambalaya with the ingredients at hand.  I sautéed the Holy Trinity (onions, bell peppers, celery) with diced lean pork and garlic.  I made some Creole Seasoning, using Emeril’s recipe, and added two teaspoons of that.  Then, a can of stewed tomatoes.  I decided to brave the snowy walk to the neighborhood market for a Slim Jim, which I used instead of sausage.  So sue me.  It’s all in the crock pot now and later I’ll add shrimp and rice.  I’ll make corn bread.

And, by God, we’ll party.  In that snowy-night-at-home kind of way.  Laissez les bons temps rouler.  No fasting, self-examination, or sorrow until tomorrow.  I hope I can rise to the occasion.

Riffing on Scones

Let’s face it.  When three middle-aged women get together to rehearse piano trios on Monday mornings, they actually spend most of their “rehearsal” time sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and eating pastry.  With this particular piano trio, the kitchen table is mine–you have to rehearse at the pianist’s house because hers is the instrument that doesn’t travel.  Lately we’ve been on a scone kick.  Today’s is the fourth iteration on the basic formula.  This batch came out GREAT.  Mixed blessing:  the weather is so bad the other two cancelled, so I’m sitting here with a kitchen counter full of scones.

I’m interested in how certain food become stylish.  When did we move from muffins (muffin tops, mini-muffins, all the muffin galaxy) to scones?  I remember the move from doughnuts to muffins and the gradual degrading of the basic muffin concept into something that was huge, sugary, frosted, and just as fattening as the doughnut it sought to unseat.  I think the same thing is happening with scones.  The things I like about scones (light texture, freshness of simple flavors) are lost when you fill them with chocolate chips, three kinds of nuts, and top them with a creme fraiche glaze.

Here’s the basic recipe and a few variations.  I promise you can go from impulse to finished product in twenty-five minutes if you use a food processor and don’t have to run to the store for any ingredients.

SCONES

2 c. flour

1/4 c. sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/3 c. butter, cut into cubes

1/2-2/3 c. buttermilk (or regular milk with 1/2 tsp white vinegar)

1/2 c. raisins and/or chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 400F.  Lightly grease cookie sheet. Pulse dry ingredients and butter until crumbly (as for pastry).  Gradually pour milk through chute while pulsing mixture until it clings together in a loose ball.  Add raisins and/or walnuts, pulse to combine.  Remove dough from bowl and lightly knead it three or four times on a flat surface.  Move dough to the cookie sheet and pat into a disc about 8-9 inches in diameter.  Cut into wedges; separate wedges slightly to allow even browning.  Sprinkle the tops lightly with granulated sugar if you must.  Bake for 15-18 minutes.  Remove to rack.

Variations:

LEMON/POPPY SEED SCONES:  Substitute candied lemon peel (2-3 tbsp.) for raisins.  Omit nuts, add 2 tbsp. poppy seeds.  You might also use lemon juice rather than white vinegar in the milk.

MAPLE PECAN SCONES:  Substitute 1/4 c. pure maple syrup for sugar and pecans for walnuts; decrease milk to 1/2 cup or less as needed.

CRANBERRY SCONES:  Substitute orange juice for the milk.  Omit nuts; add 1/2 c. chopped cranberries instead of raisins.

Please don’t frost any of them.  Eat them warm with a cup of coffee or tea.  Then go practice your Mozart.

Turkey, Day 6 (and other holiday thoughts)

 

My mother’s method of Thanksgiving preparations can be analyzed several ways:  she used paper plates and pre-cooked turkey because she was practical OR she used paper plates and pre-cooked turkey because she was cold hearted, unsentimental, and couldn’t be bothered with the Real Thing.  For years, I nursed the latter point of view.  I wanted the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving:  turkey carved at the table, gleaming silverware, clink of glasses, shining smiles all ’round.  And, by God, that’s what I’ve done since the feast was mine to make–at least twenty-five of them or so over the last thirty years.

Now, on Day 6 of turkey, I’m moved to reassess.  There are still neat piles of china plates on the sideboard, waiting to be put back into the china closet.  There’s a basket of white linen napkins and a huge damask cloth that should be ironed before I put them away.  I have no idea what I’m going to do with the last blob of mashed potatoes since I’ve already made potato bread, potato pancakes, and heated them up in the microwave to “use up the gravy.”  And so on.  Somehow over the years I’ve managed to ignore the enormity of  the Thanksgiving I create, but this year it’s catching up with me.

I still love each gesture of the holiday:  the careful shopping;  the excessive, semi-competitive baking (this year I produced four pies, a dozen rolls, a loaf of bread, AND a cheesecake–what about YOU?);  fussing over the table setting and seating arrangements;  making the centerpiece;  ironing guest towels, touching up that huge pile of napkins;  unfurling the perfect white tablecloth.  I love to open the silver chest and see the gleaming knife handles, straight as soldiers above piles of spoons and forks.  I love choosing the wine, composing h’ors d’oeuvres plates, setting my grandmother’s butter knife on the Boda plate as I’ve done so many times before.  This year, for the first time, I felt the cumulative effect of these gestures and it felt like work.  I’m still exhausted.  How did I do all of this when I was working full time?

Well, for one thing, I was younger and busier.  Somehow, being busy makes even huge efforts seem all in a day’s work.  The more you have to do, the more you’re able to do–at least for a while.  I’ve been slowed down by age and circumstance.  Being slower means having more time to reflect.  Hmmmmm.  Maybe there are options.

My first impulse is to declare next Thanksgiving a Chinet-football-turkey pizza kind of event where I do nothing more strenuous than hang up the coats.  I imagine a rolicking time in a dirty house with huge plastic garbage bags at the curb the next afternoon.  Or I could become cold hearted and unsentimental, cook the turkey ahead of time in a foil pan, leave my china in the cupboard, and play a little Montivani in the background (thanks, Mom).  Or I could look at the whole business as greater than the sum of its parts, a production worth the toil, a beachhead against the erosion of civilized behavior.  I could just give thanks for the accumulation of memories, good and bad, garlanded all around that gleaming table.  I’m ambivalent.  But Christmas is right around the corner…

In the meantime, here’s my recipe for a turkey salad that I believe makes everything else about the leftovers worthwhile:

 Turkey Salad

4 cups chopped cooked turkey

1 cup chopped celery

1 cup toasted slivered almonds

1/2 cup chopped dried cherries

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. dried tarragon

1 1/2 cups mayonnaise

3 tbsp. white vinegar

3 tbsp. sugar

2-3 tbsp. milk or cream, to make desired consistency

Mix all ingredients and chill before serving.