I had leftover fennel the other day from my fennel and orange salad. So I decided to pickle it to use as an afternoon snack at work. The fennel stems worked much better for this than the fennel bulb. Just enough crunch, but not too much. It was a good way to use stretch leftover fennel, especially a part I don't normally use.

The pickles did come out pretty tartly, so I brought in an apple to go with them. This was a nice combination; the pickles were hard to eat on their own, and the apple balanced it out nicely.
posted by Derrick at 11:40 PM

The last couple days of eating cheaply have all been about lunches. Monday I revisited my efforts at a stuffed portobello mushroom. I just have to face facts: people tell you to spread the "stuffing" on top of the mushroom because it's the only practical way to do it and have a manageable piece of food at the end. I tried cutting the cap in half to make two big circles, putting the filling in, and making a sandwich. But there are a number of problems with this:

• You try making a nice even cut on a portobello cap. The thing is round, after all, so it's impossible to get it firmly seated. Thus it's fairly easy to cut any direction except straight, leaving you with a sloped piece.
• A portobello has structural integrity, more or less, when in its natural state. It does not when it is cut in half the way I was attempting. Enough said.
• A portobello sandwich is a nice idea in theory, but in practice, with all the aforementioned problems, it comes out of the oven in such a way that you can't possibly cut it into nice strips for presentation.

So the verdict is...spread the stuffing on top the way everyone tells you.

I stuffed it, incidentally, with a caramelized red onion, the mushroom stem, and some leftover cheese (Fontina Val d'Aosta) from our potluck dinner party the other night. I served the massacred portobello sandwich on a bed of mixed greens, which I in turn dressed with a garlic and mustard vinaigrette.

Costs:
Portobello mushroom: $1.50
Greens: $1.00
Red onion: $.50
Garlic vinaigrette was just stuff in the pantry.
Total: $3.00

Tuesday's lunch was a major score, both in the reuse department and the flavor department. I've been thinking about dried figs recently, thanks to an article in art culinaire. Did I mention it's a ten-minute walk from BART to my work? This is what I think about as I walk up Potrero Hill.

Anyway, at that same group dinner, you may remember, we brought port to go with the dessert. But it didn't all get drunk, so I have a smidgeon of tawny port to play with as an ingredient. The idea of reconstituting figs in some of this was appealing. Ah, and then I remembered some leftover bacon in the fridge. Hmmm. And then the final piece clicked in. That massive amount of turkey I bought a month ago or so. It was in my freezer, just waiting to be used.

And that is how I came up with the idea of doing port and fig stuffed turkey breast. I reconstituted the figs in the port, as I thought (I should note I did this in the evening at home; the kitchen at work is well-equipped for last-minute food prep, but nothing more than that). Then I sautéed the bacon, letting it render a bunch of fat. I took the remainder of my turkey breast, which I had defrosted and brined, and butterflied it. Or approximately butterflied it. I added the bacon and some onion to the figs, and chopped the whole mixture up a bit. I spread some stuffing over the exposed interior, rolled up the breast, trussed it, and browned it in the leftover bacon fat. Then I roasted it for an hour and a half or so at 325°.

I didn't get to eat it until lunch today (I got home late; it got finished late), but I was quite happy with it. If I were serving it again, and at a dinner party, I'd pound out the breast a little to make it thinner; there was a high proportion of turkey to stuffing. I'd also do some sort of reduction with it. And it took me a while, but I finally figured out what wine I'd serve with it. The Ridge Nervo we drank the other night. Laced with dark fruit, with some smokiness from the oak, good solid tannins and a definite heaviness at 15.9% alcohol, it seems like it'd be a good choice. Fortunately, Ridge sent us a replacement for our corked bottle, so we've got some around. Hmmm.

But, alas, our barbaric society frowns on wine at lunch. Though with that wine's alcohol content, it's probably for the best. I did, however, come up with a nice presentation. I cooked some rice in the morning as I was getting ready, and scooped it out onto my plate. I laid the turkey breast on top, in the middle (insert microwave time here) and then surrounded the dish with apple slices. Of course the stuffed turkey breast makes a nice presentation on its own, a ring of turkey with a dark figgy filling.

So what did I have to buy? Not much.

Costs:
Figs: $3
Onion: $1
Apple: $1
Total cost: $5

Oh, hey. Thanks to Artsy Jewish Librarian in Striped Stockings at Backwash.com for recommending my site. She may be the first person to link to this blog and not my other one.
posted by Derrick at 9:33 PM

When Melissa was out with two of her girlfriends, they concocted a scheme. The three couples would get together for a sort of organized potluck, a dinner party in which each member would contribute a specific portion. They refined the idea a bit more, so each person had to bring some food to contribute, and each couple would bring a bottle of wine. This gave us a chance to see each other, and afforded a chance to stretch budgets a bit.

This turned out to be a big success. The hostess assigned people things if they didn't volunteer for something in particular, and we got to sit down to a nice meal we had all contributed to and enjoy each other's company over a few glasses of wine.

I was assigned a starchy side dish, and decided to make home-fried potatoes with vinegar-glazed parsnips, dressing the whole assembly with a fennel seed and cinnamon oil I made the night before. Melissa brought cheese for an after-dinner, pre-dessert dish, and the two of us brought a 10-year-old tawny port. This was primarily because we knew one of the other cooks was making a molten chocolate cake, and a recent issue of Wine Spectator suggested tawny port for gooey chocolate desserts. I should point out, however, that they clearly weren't pairing with Scharffen Berger: the port was good, but the chocolate dominated. I've had this problem when doing flavored truffles with Scharffen Berger, and I'm considering moving to Callebaut or Valhrona for my truffles.

Other dishes included a yummy Caesar salad, a great spinach/pine nut dish, and a roast chicken. Fantastic. Of course, it helped that every single person who came is food obsessed, and almost all of us really love to cook.

But as good as the food was, the whole evening was a nice reminder of the fact that food and wine are always better when shared with good friends. We caught up on each other's lives, and conversed about any number of topics.

On one mailing list I'm on with some friends, the subject of Supper Clubs recently came up, which are basically the same thing we did last night. We talked about how nice it is to make time to spend with your friends and family. Hopefully, our dinner party last night will start a tradition, and we'll have more fun evenings of communal cooking and talking to look forward to.
posted by Derrick at 2:20 PM