Thanks!

To all that came by last night – I had a great time spending Thanksgiving with you! Thank you for taking the time to indulge another evening of experimental cooking, which seems to have gone well.

Special thanks go out to Geraldine, Servane, and Karishma for extra hands cooking and cleaning – it was very much appreciated!

See you all next year, when we return to America for a Martha-Stewart-style traditional American Thanksgiving.

The turkey has landed

A nineteen-and-a-half pound gobbler is now in my fridge – let the games begin!

Thanksgiving, North African-style

This year’s Thanksgiving dinner will be centered around Moroccan cuisine.  The thing I’m most excited about with Moroccan food is the unique combination of flavors – meats, fruits, nuts, saffron, cinnamon.  I think these will come together and combine with the tastes of the traditional American Thanksgiving nicely!

I have settled on a pretty simple couscous stuffing – couscous flavored with saffron, mixed with a variety of fruits and nuts, and finished off with cinnamon and toasted almonds.  I’m also trying a new way of cooking the turkey this year, thanks to Cook’s Illustrated.  I’m going to butterfly the turkey, and cook it over the stuffing.  The drippings from the bird will add flavor to the stuffing during the last 20-30 minutes of cooking.   The nice things about cooking it this way: (a) the couscous won’t turn to mush and (b) the whole process will take only 2 or 2.5 hours for a 20 pound bird.

Watch here for more info as I figure out the menu! 

Le P’tit Laurent

Glen Park is stepping up in the world. When I moved here, the local nice cafe/wine bar was in the midst of closing. About a year later, our local video store closed. Years before, the local grocery had burned down. We had a few restaurants – a great taqueria, the local greasy spoon, our three-star restaurant Chennery Park, a nice little cafe and a good, local crepes place. We had two bars (until one closed), both were “locals”. Still, the neighborhood felt smaller than it was.

Not so anymore. The grocery has been rebuilt, along with a new public library and some condos. The video store was taken over by a place that does bubble tea and snacks. The local pizza place (that I didn’t care for at all) was replaced by a fantastic little Italian thin-crust pizza place. And, this week, one of the local bars was replaced by Le P’tit Laurent, a french bistro (named after the owner, Laruent)

They retained the bar, redecorated a bit, put in small restaurant tables.  The windows have been redone  (though the outside of the building is still under construction).   The menu is french fare, perhaps bistro influenced but perhaps kicked up a notch.  We had some simple dishes – a sauteed sole with carmelized endives, tender chicken with couscous and vegetables in a ginger-citrus sauce.  Both were excellent.

The staff is friendly, ready with stories about opening a new place in the neighborhood.  I suspect I will be back here again and again, exploring the rest of the menu, diving into the cheese plate that you could see circulating through the restaurant as people finished their dinner.  And, of course, partaking in their nice wine list and an after dinner drink since home is just a short walk away!

Pictures from the party…

On Flickr.  Many thanks to Pablo and his mad photo skills!

Thanks!

With all of your help, we had another successful and very fun party! We are very happy and glad that you chose to spend the evening with us. And I am very honored that you all celebrated my birthday with me. Thank you!

Now about the food: You seemed to enjoy the salsas, but the peach pico de gallo was the clear winner, despite being the spiciest (ok now we know you like spicy food). The pistachio mole was a big hit, with and without chicken.

You liked the barbacoa, but not nearly as much as the carnitas with salsa de tijera. The nopales in pumpkin seed sauce didn’t seem to go over with you – the enticing aroma perhaps didn’t make up for its odd appearance or messy nature.

However, the clear favorites of the night: pastel de tres leches (some of you might actually have a cake fetish, it turns out), and the empanadas. Bite-sized pastries always seem to go over well, but these seemed to do particularly well. Let’s look at the stats:

• Time to make 100 empanadas de rajas mixtas: 4 hours
• Time to bake 40 of them: 32 minutes (at 350 degrees F)
• Time to eat 40 of them: about 37 seconds

As they say, “the numbers don’t lie”.

Watch this space for photos, coming soon!

Party time!

Today has been an active day! After a quick bout of shopping, four of us dove into the final prep for the party. We started with two salsas (a peach pico de gallo and a salsa de muchos chiles, which is exactly what it sounds like). We got the barbacoa cooking – an hour in the pressure cooker with its marinade and some bay leaves and avocado leaves. You’ll probably still be able to smell the rich sauce when you arrive!

We got some chicken braising which we’ll serve with the next sauce: a pistachio mole. It’s quite a bit different from the standard red mole you may be used to – pistachios, onions, garlic, a little veggie broth. We’ll serve this with and without chicken.

Finally, some ceviche – raw mahi mahi mixed with lime juice, serrano chiles, onion and served with some avocado and red onion. The fish will cook in the lime juice over three hours, and will end up being something quite memorable – juicy, bright, mild fish with a delightful citrus taste.

Come hungry, come happy, and we can’t wait to see you all!

Night before…

After a night filled with cooking, chopping, zesting, and great smells and tastes, we are that much closer to having another party in the bag. The big project for the night: homemade margarita mix. You didn’t think we’d just open a bottle of store-bought stuff, did you? Well, to make margarita mix for 20 liters of margaritas is an undertaking. The major ingredients are zest and juice – many cups of juice, and 2 cups each of lime and lemon zest (and for those not experience with zesting lemons and limes, this is equivalent to several metric tons of zest). Luckily, we had the “fab four” to help us out tonight.

Also on tap for the night – barbacoa. Tonight we set some lamb and grass-fed organic beef to marinating in a mixture of guajillo and ancho chile peppers, onions, garlic, and spices. The marinade by itself (well, okay, with a spoon) would be a treat. After being mixed with these meats and then cooked tomorrow with some avocado leaves for an hour under pressure… let’s just say you better get to this one early.

There will be two desserts at the end of the evening: pastel de tres leches, a cake that is baked and then soaked in a mixture of three milk products, and polvorones, which are little “orange dust” cookies. Coupled with these is a real special treat – dulce de leche, which is milk, sugar, and vanilla cooked down until everything turns a rich caramel brown.

We also put together a salsa de cascabeles (cascabel chile pepper salsa) and the beginnings of a pistachio mole.

Tomorrow is another day – watch here for more updates!

Tequila! (cue music)

So, I mentioned that some tequila might be showing up.  Well, it turns out more than a little tequila is showing up.  How much?  Here’s a snippet from a chat conversation, just to give you an idea:

[16:33] ED: 3.5 liters of tequila….enough?
[16:35] ED: so its 10.5 liters of margaritas
[16:35] AB: 2.5 gallons?
[16:36] ED: 2.7 gallons
[16:36] ED: yeah
[16:36] AB: 44 cups
[16:36] ED: so, no.
[16:36] ED: not enough margarita
[16:36] AB: yeah

Hojas

I went off in search of a particular ingredient tonight – hojas de aguacate. These are the leaves of the avocado tree, and are sometimes added to soups, stews, sauces, braises, etc. in Mexican cooking. They are similar in appearance to a bay leaf, but add a bit more of an anise-like flavor when used in cooking.

For us, they are destined for several dishes – most immediately, for barbacoa, which is lamb stewed with chiles, spices, and avocado leaves (wrapped in foil, in a pressure cooker, for an hour. Yah, I know… it’s gonna be good!)

They are surprisingly difficult to find. After wandering around Redwood city from store to store looking for these, I happened upon a market named Peña Market. I asked the younger kid (teenager) working the desk if they had any. He said he didn’t think so, and turned to ask an older person (his dad?) After a bit of translation for him, he said he did not have any but if I would follow him we’d get some. How many did I need? About twenty, I said.

We left the shop and walked across the street. An older woman was cleaning up in her yard. He said hello, explained what I was looking for. She invited me into her yard and we walked around back where she showed me three different kinds of avocado tree. She cut down a few branches with a smile and sent me on my way. I only wish my Spanish were a bit better so we could have chatted some more.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers, we have this special ingredient which will go into barbacoa tomorrow, plus some mole.