Holiday cooking

Although it was slow in coming, the cooking bug did hit me over the holidays. It came from a combination and needing to use what was in the fridge and also the desire to try to make some cheese, which, even though we are nearing the end of the holiday as I write this, I haven't done yet. I haven't made butter yet either, which should be something pretty non-time-intensive. The sloth sets in pretty easily over vacation.

Before Christmas, we did a run over to Star for some holiday stockups on meat, cheese, etc. One of the things we got there was this nice Berkshire pork rack. But look at the horrible job on the frenching. It's the worst we have every gotten from Star. It looks more like something you would get at the Dekalb Farmers Market. Well, I cleaned it up, which was good practice for me. It was still very delicious.

We had two bunch of carrots from the Yoder farm in the fridge: some orange and some white. I roasted them in the oven with some salt, pepper, and olive oil. You can see that they came out wonderfully. Such good flavor in local vegetables. I also dug out one of my serving dishes that I haven't used in forever with the little cat hanging on the side. Heh.

It looks so simple. I sauteed this spinach from Burge in the pork fat from the rack and some garlic. Spinach from Burge is really incredibly delicious. We bought bags of it two continuous weeks and then promptly forgot about them. These were from the 4th or the 11th of December. They kept up wonderfully until the 21st.

Sometimes it's really hard to decide what to make when you get home from work. On the 22nd, Josh defrosted some shrimp so after mulling it over, I decided to make my own version of salt and pepper shrimp. First, I peeled these luscious Sweet Savannah Shrimp Co shrimp and deveined them while leaving the shell on. Then I deep fried them for one minute and then sauteed them in a pan with salt, pepper, and some sichuan peppercorns. Voila! That is it! They were very tasty.

On the 23rd, I had a dream of making some pizza. We went to Pine Street Market and got some sausage. We bought mushrooms, mozzarella, basil. I bought yeast and put the dough together. And the dough just didn't rise. I killed the yeast again. And so instead of pizza, I put together this sausage and mushroom spaghetti dish. It was possibly even better and more satisfying than the pizza would have been. And far less time to prepare. Mmm, san marzanos. I doubt I will ever be able to make pizza.

Nothing brings in the holidays like a good sandwich. Rather time consuming, but worth it. A roast beef with caramelized onions, and Sweet Grass Dairy Crossroads Blue cheese. And housemade pickled okra and bread n butter pickles. Mmmm. This was a really huge sandwich. I rolled around on the couch after eating it.

For Christmas eve, I made a hearty cioppino. Clams, cod, shrimp, sea scallops, tomatoes. And with some toasty bread on the side. Quite tasty.

Christmas lunch was shrimp and grits. Well, I started it as a late lunch, and it ended up being served around 5.30, even though we were able to rally and have dinner (aged ribeye) around 8. I really enjoy shrimp and grits although I think the recipe that I make is a bit strong for others. The Anson Mills grits and Sweet Savannah Shrimp go well together.

Here is my loot from Christmas. As you can see, lots of tasty things to cook in the days to come. I have a stack of cookbooks on my nightstand waiting to be read already so I really need to hop to it so I can move these upstairs too! On top, you can see that I got a nice paella pan, sized well for two (26 cm) and some bomba rice.

Lastly, we brandied some cherries so that we can have manhattans and other drinks with cherries in them. They have to sit for three months... So I'll let you know how they turn out in April.