02 January, 2007

Apres Holiday

16 lbs. of smoked prime rib

Green chile and chicken tamales.


Back to work my gentle readers. As you can see off to the side here we have two new ways to get updates: Notify email by Notify.com OR the RSS feed. I will probably faze out the Notify subscription list in favor of the RSS feed. Since Blogspot does not power its own RSS, the feed is run through another website called Feedburner. Everything seems to work good and it has not done anything evil to my computer. Get the feed. Also off to the side I have put up a new link to my flickr page. If you are really bored you can click over there to look at family and food photos.

As for updates, I resolve in this new year to put up at least one a week. We also have some new contributors: JL is to report on the food ways in Addis, and the Mustard Man from D’dorf is scheduled to chime in with lifestyle tips and food trips from the Continent.
But first I want to hear from you. How did you do on your the Holiday Meals? Leave comments detailing every morsel. I’ll go first.

Cheers.

3 comments:

mac said...

For Thanksgiving I smoked a turkey on the Bullet. We got the bird from a farm about an hour away. Did a 36 hour brine, Air dried for 12 smoked for about 4 hours. Most excellent. Around Christmas we made tamales. Specifically Green Chile Chicken Tamales from Rick Bayless’ Mexico One Plate at a Time. So good we made them twice. If you ever think you want to make Tamales, then think about making your own lard it’s really easy: melt pork fat in a low oven for a few hours then strain it. The hard part will be finding the pork fat. Whatever you do please do not buy the bricks of lard from the grocery. They have added hydrogenated fats and other nasty things.

Christmas dinner Smoked Prime Rib. The Best Recipe by Cook’s Illustrated, has a very good discussion about selecting Prime Rib. As for cooking it I smoked it on the bullet for about five hours.

New Years was a quiet affair with sausage for dinner. I made a Juniper sausage with a recipe made up by my man in the Oranges. I’ll post the recipe soon.

Anonymous said...

We had extra special guests direct from Iceland for New Years Eve. I had a tasty cassoulet ready for their arrival (duck confit courtesy of Dean & Deluca), plus Mark Bittman's no-knead bread and lots of cheese and olives. Despite the cassoulet and chamomile grappa, everyone was still awake at midnight.

I bought about a pound and a half of pure D'artagnan duck fat when I found it on sale at my local wine store last week. I just have to find some duck legs and I'll be making my own confit for the next cassoulet.

On New Years Day we roasted a beautiful Icelandic leg of lamb that our guests had brought straight from Reyjavik. Whole Foods was out of rosemary but our neighbor with a greenhouse saved the day by giving us a bunch. We studded the leg with lots of garlic and rubbed it with salt, olive oil and rosemary. So. Freakin'. Good.

mac said...

Okay we need some more comments. Don't be scared away by the entry from Foodies Anoymous (although cassoulet is high up on my to make list, I found a recipe for saucises de Toulouse), any meal high or low. Did anyone have a Christmas meal in a cabin without running water? Did anyone have Christmas at a Chinese resturant?