Sassy Radish

I was introduced to bread pudding at an embarrassingly late age. The concept of bread pudding isn’t known in Russia and save for Victorian English novels, I was unaware that this comfort food staple of England was such a delicious treat. Now, the first time I ever had anything that bore the name “pudding” was at my high-school boyfriend’s house, whose mother carried the old English tradition of making fig pudding for Christmas dinner.

Never one to why from trying a new dish, I requested, ignoring my boyfriend’s father’s warning, a bowlful of fig pudding with some extra clotted cream.

The cream I consumed in a matter of seconds – give me fattening dairy products and I’m a happy girl. But with the actual fig pudding, erm, well, there I had a bit of trouble. I tried, afraid to offend the matron of the house, to shove spoonfuls of it in my mouth, but that caused a bit of a gag reflex. My next strategy was to try to eat little bits and swallow them whole without so much as letting the thick fig concoction hit my tastebuds. That made the procession move about as quickly as a turtle race. And then, oh Lord, then, I was informed, perhaps in an attempt to induce vomit, that fig pudding, according to the tradition, uses suett. At that point, my 17 year-old heart and palate, could take no more (though now the concept of suett isn’t nearly as frightening). I apologized profusely, offered to do dishes and various clean up, but firmly and politely declared that fig pudding was just not for me. As it turns out, even though the pudding was made every year, it was never actually consumed by anyone. Except for the unsuspecting dolts like me.

So you can understand why I would try to avoid pudding at all costs from that point on. My only point of reference regarding pudding was less than enthusiastic.

That is until one afternoon, while wandering around Nolita I stopped at Cafe Gitane, tempted to try what they called a brioche chocolate pudding. Since I liked both, the brioche AND the chocolate, it seeemed like an awfully swell thought. The order was placed. And I was all trepidation. What, by some strange thought, if the whole process of pudding-making made the brioche and the chocolate both vile on the palate?

But when the dish arrived and I put a tentative spoonful of it in my mouth, I melted into a blissful smile, eyes closed. This was pudding I could not only live with, but crave.

And so a few years later, when I came upon a recipe for Pumpkin Souffle Bread Pudding, concoted by none other than Charlie Phan of the famed Slanted Door in San Francisco (only one of my favorite restaurants), I had to give it a try.

Last Thanksgiving, I made a small batch to test on guests – and it was gone in minutes. This year, I tripled the proportions only to see the same result, and several requests for recipes.

And yesterday, while at Whole Foods, picking up a turkey for our Thankgiving Redux meal (because we like turkey leftovers and there were none from 2 weeks ago), the boyfriend requested the bread pudding as well. And so, when a dish is this popular and is so good, how can you not make it over and over and over? Especially when it’s so easy? And especially when you get pudding, souffle AND pumpkin into the same dish!

Continue reading pumpkin bread pudding souffle.

It wasn’t enough, you see, for me to marry apples and pears in perfect union at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I wanted more apples – apples raw and uncooked – to accompany our holiday meal. And when someone suggested the Waldorf salad, I yawned, been there done that. It’s a great and fabulous salad, but we’ve all had it before and it was time to do something slightly different.

For me, the regimented and anal-retentive Thanksgiving menu planning commences sometime in August. I start looking at various recipes, thinking about what to keep and what to toss, and what new recipes to introduce.

And I must admit to enjoying the “coming together” of things rather than the prer work that comes with cooking. All that chopping sometimes can get so monotonous, so I was grateful to have some lovely people around who pitched in and chopped, diced, sliced, separated eggs, mixed, blended and tasted. Without them, I would have been more frenetic and stressed out.

The good part about this salad, found in Bon Apetit of last year, is that it’s deliriously easy to make. Even the chopping is easy. I made it last year and the celery apple combination was so good, people gobbled it up in minutes. The apples serve as a perfect side to the turkey and the stuffing – the fruit cuts through the thick protein and bread adding a bit of that tartness.

Continue reading apple celery salad with walnuts.

With every fall season and harvest time, I do a little dance for joy and promise myself that I’d go apple picking. Each time. I’ve not been apple picking in about ten years, but who’s counting. I wind up making grandiose plans, reciting Robert Frost, praising the idyll that is New England only to find myself making apple pies and other biblically-forbidden delights with store bought apples. Not the same thing, people, but when a girl wants to get her apple groove on, there’s just no stopping her.

When people ask me what my favorite fruit is, I say apple without so much as taking a breath. If it suddenly became illegal to consume apples, I’d be in violation in no time. I’ve always pitied Eve, though according to archaeologists and historians, the biblical fruit referred to as the apple is actually the persimmon, also yummy, but still. For the sake the argument here – the apple is the reigning symbol of sin.

And for this Thanksgiving, I decided to kick it up a notch. Let apples make new friends with their produce neighbors – pears. With a bit of sugar and cinnamon, those two, I thought, would make fantastic friends. And so it was. The apples and pears went into the fray together, mixed with sugar and cinnamon, lovingly sprinkled with lemon juice to prevent discoloration.

And it was all glorious and good. And here’s where I confess that I cheated and used the Pillsbury crust found in the refrigirated section of your supermarket. I was running out of time, people, I am not lazy. I promise, it won’t ever happen again.

The upside was that the crust is actually tasty and no one knew the difference. The downside is that I have to go to bed each night knowing that I could’ve made the crust, but instead, I took the easy way out. Robert Frost would SO not be proud.

You see, I tell you everything here – my successes AND my shortcomings. And cutting corners on Thanksgiving day was one of them.

With three cheesecakes, mini cherry and pumpking pies (I didn’t make), and my apple pear pie wonder, we were all sufficiently desserted out. And probably on quite a sugar high by night’s end.

Continue reading apple pear pie.

Thanksgiving is yet another way for me to remember how good I have it when it comes to friends. I must’ve done something right in my past life because I am blessed with some amazing people in my life. For that, I will eternally be grateful. And I’m grateful to have the means to feed a large group (not without help) of these friends, all hungry for Thanksgiving meal.

Turkey’s never looked better. Or tasted better. When we carved it, the juices ran clear and flooded the pan. We tasted the breast meat, and our knees went weak. This was turkey to be reckoned with.

Thanksgiving this year went smoothly and without a hitch. There was turkey. There were three cheesecakes. There was the now traditional and requested porcini mushroom soup. The chestnut stuffing. The spicy baked acorn squash. The apple celery salad. Cranberry relish with lemon zest and Cointreau. Apple pear pie. Pumpkin Souffle Bread Pudding so delicious, it disappeared almost instantly with people clamoring for more. And more.

I didn’t have a single meltdown. I was cool and composed and even wore my cooking frock.

And in the end we fed 27 people, all of whom ate a good meal with some good friends. The turkey, dubbed as TheBeast weighed 26 pounds and there wasn’t a scrap of it left by night’s end.

This recipe is adapted from Alton Brown’s method of preparing a turkey. I have three golden rules of making sure that the turkey comes out right each and every time:

I’ve not posted much, I will admit, but those who know me will tell you that I live and die by Thanksgiving holiday. Not only is it my opportunity to flex my cooking skills, but it’s also a way to gather my friends together and feed them. Over the years, I’ve met an amazing number of amazing people. And while people say that your friends reflect who you are, I am truly humbled by the friends I have – generous, kind, sensitive people who are full of life and love.

As of last week, the Radish has found herself unemployed. Downsizing and restructuring have put her in the ranks of those laid off and while the lifestyle of leisure has its appeals, she is not one to sit idly.

With more time on my hands to plan, I was able to finalize our menu for this year. I am going to start composing entries for the recipes to publish them one by one once I have good pictures of the dishes. But for now, consider this an amuse-bouche, an preview of things to come.

2006 Thanksgiving Dinner Menu

I was in the mood for a nice, fruity salad a little while back. But I was growing tired of leaves in my salads – arugula, spinach, lettuce. Been there, done that.

I wanted a salad that focused on things other than the green leaves. I wanted it to have a bit more substance and fill to it. And I wanted a crisp bite without the overbearing taste.

Radish never turns down apples in her salad (well, maybe she does, but rarely) but at the same time, I didn’t want to recreate a Waldorf – no blue cheese to overtake the fruit. I liked the idea of nuts, but I wanted them to add some sweetness, so they would have to be candied.

The BF was ecstatic to finish a generous bowl saying that it made for a perfect complement to the baked rainbow trout I made. I was just excited to watching him devour the mix, realizing this was a keeper of a recipe.

Continue reading apple celery salad with candied pecans.

With Thanksgiving less than a month away, I though of pulling a few of the last year’s recipes to set the mood. This time is my favorite time of year, filled with great comfort foods: warm, full of spices, filling.

When the temperatures begin to drop, my craving for root vegetables grow. Roasted beets or turnips find their way into my meals. Having grown up in Russia, where plenty of root vegetables are consumed year-round, I never had to develop a taste for them. In fact, I never had to hear my mother say “Eat your vegetables!” to me – it was more like “Eat your meat!” In America, I learned, in school, that liking beets was a very uncool thing. It painted me as a borscht-belt immigrant with her weird foods. Chicken nuggets were in, root veggies were out!

Surprisingly, carrots were not as uncool as their other earthly cousins. Carrots, smothered with dip, were acceptable. My first encounter with a crudite left a sad impression as carrots sticks lay side by side with celery and tomatoes, all dried up and bent out of shape. The irony was that I hated cooked carrots.

As a little girl, I had to eat a lot of tzimmes, a traditional Jewish dish with cooked carrots, honey, raisins and cinnamon. It sounds good to me now, but back when I was a tiny, wee thing, I dreaded the dish like the plague. As I got older, I grew to love cooked carrots and even crave tzimmes now. But that recipe will be saved for another day. Perhaps when Passover hits and I need to contribute to the Jewish cooking ideas. The spiced, glazed carrots I made for Thanksgiving last year, my favorite holiday, were a hit with everyone at the table. Even the self-proclaimed vegetable haters.

Not only did they taste good, but they looked quite pretty with their green tops decorating the platter!

Continue reading spiced glazed carrots.