Good Real Food

I picked up a whole bunch of turkey necks at the farmer’s market today.  I plan to make stock.  Times past, I’ve just tossed the whole lot in a pot with a lot of water, some carrots, onions, celery, garlic, and maybe a bay leaf or two along with some salt and pepper and let the whole thing just barely simmer for hours and hours.  I could still do that, but my wife, now 5 months pregnant has been loudly dreaming of gravy and mashed potatoes in a way that makes me think that if I know what’s good for me I’ll dish some up for her.  OK, she doesn’t really put it in those terms, it is more like “the baby really wants mashed potatoes and gravy, etc.”

So, I’m faced with a decision here - do I roast the necks in a pan so as to create the drippings with which to make gravy, or is there some other gravy making tactic I can employ here?  I should point out that I’m a total gravy making novice here - my first time was at Thanksgiving, and I’ve made it twice since.  Oddly, with so little experience, I seem to have a knack for it.  At least, my wife and mother-in-law like my gravy, and they are apparently pretty tough gravy critics.

In any event, skipping the roasting would certainly save me some time, but the baby is asking for mashed potatoes and gravy. . .

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currently making sweet potato dal via this recipe from google.

Yesterday, made empanadillas from this recipe filled with leftover cabbage soup from my last post - they were delightful and disappeared much more quickly than the soup had, though with the amount of butter in the dough, it isn’t much surprise.  Unless I did my metric conversion wrong in which case - oh, nevermind.

And finally, my kid has chicken pox and I think that garam masala may be the Indian equivalent of ketchup in that it sneaks into many many dishes and makes everything it appears in taste better.  Maybe.

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I can’t really take credit for either of the items that graced our table this evening - a lovely rice and smothered cabbage soup via The Wednesday Chef (where do I know her from?) accompanied by squash fritters based on this recipe with light modifications courtesy of me. No pictures cause the camera has been acting up a bit, but it was a truly lovely supper. My wife was in the mood to cook, so she took charge of the soup while I tackled the squash and by some odd miracle, we finished up everything right on time as the small one was starting to get peckish - in both the hunger and mood senses of the word. Since we’re expecting another child, I added a few sausages to the menu to bump up the protein, but they could easily be left out for a really nice vegetarian meal that is just perfect for a winter Sunday supper.

Two notes on the recipes - we switched out the arborio rice in the soup for some already cooked left-over brown rice and vegetable broth for the beef stock, we also spiced up the squash fritters with cayenne and skipped the powdered sugar. The fritters were great. We felt that the soup was missing something, which C and I both agreed was a green flavor - likely solved by the addition of some chopped up parsley at the very end. In summer, basil or other fresh herbs would do nicely, maybe even arugula. The soup recipe is quite simple - though does take some time, and seems to be a good place from which to make multiple modifications.

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