Sorbet For Dinner

One of the great things of all time is eating what you want for dinner. Yep, in my 40s and still reminding myself that's okay. I had a late lunch of some homemade split pea soup (the perfect thing to make with a left over ham bone) and wasn't too hungry when dinner time rolled around.
Seeing as the husband was on the air working for the evening, it was a great opportunity to cozy up to the Christmas tree lights in my PJs, plop in my Netflix oldie "Mildred Peirce," scoop up some pomegranate-lime sorbet and a couple of cookies and enjoy.

In one of many diversions from my cookbook project, I made this tasty sorbet last week. My pomegranate centerpieces from Thanksgiving needed some attention. I ate the seeds out of one fresh. And I just don't enjoy pomegranate seeds that way. I suppose they are okay in a salad or other side dish, but the mini-pit of each small seed is too bothersome. They scratch my tongue, they taste funny.....I try about once a year and it's time to give up. So I opened up 5 ginormous pomegranates, popped out their seeds and used a large pestle to push the juice through a sieve. It was fun in a get your aggression out kind of way.

I threw in left over fresh gimlet ingredients (minus the gin/vodka of course). Well because those gimlets were just so good I could have drank my way into a frenzy over the next several weeks. I took the left over lime and simple syrup and threw it in with the pomegranate juice after I'd cooked it down a bit with some sugar.

It may have been a cookbook diversion, but using up left over ingredients to make something new is definitely something I learned from my mother. Can't let anything go to waste after all...

Pomegranate-Lime Sorbet
makes a quart

• 3 or 4 cups unsweetened pomegranate juice (fresh is always best so if you have time press the seeds from the fruit).
• 1 cup sugar (some sorbet recipes have a 1:1 ratio of juice to sugar; I don't like mine too sweet, but if you do, you can add more sugar here).
• lime juice
• simple syrup
• 1 egg white

1. Dissolve the sugar in pomegranate juice in a saucepan over medium heat.
2. Let cook for a while. You could use a candy thermometer to ensure the liquid heats to 225 degrees.
3. Take off heat and add a mixture of lime juice and simple syrup (equal parts of each). I honestly just did this to taste with my left over gimlet mixture.
4. Leave in refrigerator overnight.
5. The next day add to ice cream machine and let it mix for about 20 minutes. Or follow manufacturer's directions.
6. Pour in a container and set back in to the freezer.

Got to mention the cookies. They taste great, but they didn't really bake well; I messed up the part where you roll them in sugar after they bake. Either I baked them too long or this part of the recipe needs to be re-examined. It could very well be me; I did throw them together in a hurry, so I rushed things quite a bit.

You can hardly blame me, it was a Saturday in December. I was busy getting through my to-do list, which has been laden with holiday musts, and we were dashing out to meet a friend to enjoy the luminarias around Greenlake. The cookies were the Citrus Snowballs from the Seattle Times cookie recipes I ordered last year. It's still not to late for you to order this years and an arsenal of the recipes from the past. They arrive nice and tidy and already three-hole punched for binders.

Turkey Carcass Soup

Throw all your turkey and chicken soup recipes away.... I've found the one! Actually, I've always known about the soup I am now calling "the one." My mom makes it religiously and I've made it once before myself. I must not have followed it exactly and thrown a bunch of other crap in it because I am not remembering it with the passion I felt after tasting last week's batch.

This is the soup I'll always turn to when I want to use up my homemade stock, in the days after Thanksgiving, or when a sick friend needs some comfort.

And here's how I know it's "the one": My husband who does not relish soups the way I do usually eats about 3/4 a bowl of any soup served and then moves on to the rest of the meal. But with Turkey Carcass Soup, he and I were actually fighting over who got the one remaining bowl. I suppose we could have split, but I caved in.

Last week, I pulled our two turkey carcasses from Thanksgiving out of the freezer and went to town, re-creating the recipe from Jane Brody's "Good Food Book."

It's a multi-step process. First you make stock, then you make soup. I recomend dedicating a weekend to the event. It's an event after all. Stock on Saturday, soup on Sunday. Voila, dinner is served. It makes for a perfect Sunday wind-down to the weekend. If only I could bring back the Sunday Disney movies and Mutual of Omaha's Animal Kingdom companion to the "soup and grilled cheese nights" of my childhood.

As Brody suggests, my mom gets her carcasses from her friends who have no interest in using them beyond their initial purpose. She also saves the chicken wing parts she clips off. Her friend Marty is one of her best carcass suppliers from what I hear.

The stock is proof positive that homemade is the way to go. You can stop right here and just make stock, or you can take it to the next level and follow Brody's recipe for Turkey Carcass Soup. It's full of good for you barley and earthy vegetables such as mushrooms and carrots.

This is one recipe that my mother hasn't really adapted, though you could substitute brown rice, or even white rice and switch out some vegetables. Though I wouldn't recommend leaving out the mushrooms. They make the pot. And here in the Northwest, we are privy to loads of fresh and local mushrooms that add a much richer flavor than plain old white button shrooms. I used porcini this go around.

For the cookbook, I'll also keep Brody's recipe intact for the family members. But I did take some good notes and have a few shortcuts that I think one would be wise to follow. Like the teensy amount of leek used in the stock? I'm recommending that one use use the remaining leek in the soup. Another modification is that I recommend sauteing the onions, garlic, leek, celery and carrots in olive oil before adding the stock. I think that brings out more flavor.

We're sadly all out of our post-Thanksgiving batch. But my mom still has a quart left in her third freezer. She's lamenting that she gave too many quarts away this year. I'm fairly certain she doubles or triples the recipe because we certainly didn't have enough to share. But it's a wonderful thing to share.

Thanksgiving Recap

Okay, one last Thanksgiving post before we move on to new culinary adventures. Two items on our menu are headed for the family cookbook after all. And besides, we need a debrief.

Cranberries

The cranberry sauce was divine. I've been enjoying it with my turkey sandwiches for lunch ever since the big event. On the side though, not in my sandwiches. I was college when I first heard about putting cranberry sauce on turkey sandwiches. Must be an east coast thing. Regardless, it never happened in our house.

Here's a sneak peak at the cranberry sauce recipe that my mom has adapted in recent years...one can practically taste the vitamin C (in a good way):

1 lb Fresh Cranberries
1 C sugar
Juice and zest from 1 orange
Juice and zest from 1 lime
Juice and zest from 1 lemon

1. Dissolve sugar with the citrus zest and juices in a saucepan over medium heat.


2. When sugar is fully dissolved, add the cranberries, turn heat down a bit and simmer 10 minutes until the cranberries are just popping open.

Onions
These turned out okay. Last Thursday, they were a bit overwhelmed by the plethora of other eats. Besides, Kelly's creamed onions were to die for. Though on their own as leftovers, they've been scrumptious. I just finished the last of them tonight.

I ended up making them in advance just as Mom suggested. I got to the part in the recipe before they are cooked for 1 1/2 hours and need to be basted every 15-20 minutes. I knew I didn't have the heart to spend all that time basting onions with guests in our small house.

Pies
Pie pastry for the pumpkin pie was made from scratch via Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. But I got a great tip from the Splendid Table episode that I listened to the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Lynne Rossetto Kasper said that pastry comes together best when the ingredients (dry + fat) are frozen. Whatever the recipe, she keeps baggies of pre-measured ingredients in her freezer (and she has several on hand at all times). When the time comes for pie or tart, all you need to do is follow the rest of the recipe and add the liquids. I just love this and the pastry came out with better luck than usual. I enjoyed the process because I took my time instead of trying to force everything too quickly. It was a lot easier having taken two days off work to savor and enjoy the turkey day preparations.

Everyone seemed to have a great time and we definitely ate and drank well. My husband (the DJ) and his family like to spend time together more than they like food, which makes everything fun and stress free. It sure went by with the wink of an eye. Weeks, days and hours of preparation fly by in an afternoon. And have I mentioned the sunny Seattle weather we were blessed with for most of last week?

Side Dishes from Sisters In-Law

My sister in-law Kelly made the most fabulous side dishes for Thanksgiving. YUM, they were my favorites of the day: Brussel Sprouts and Creamed Onions.

Sisters in-law must be known for their onions. Mom's onions come from her sister in-law, Gege. I was convinced that my other aunt had a creamed recipe, but turns out her onions are one and the same as Gege's. Then my sister in-law shows up with the creamed onions. They were delish! Turns out the recipe is from Epicurous and you can find it here: GRATINEED MUSTARD CREAMED ONIONS. A note from Kelly: "it's a little heavy on the mustard; cut back a bit."

And then there were her bright chartreuse brussel sprouts, that was I was convinced had been blanched first to retain the vibrant color. Not according to their source, also Epicurious. BRUSSELS SPROUT HASH WITH CARAMELIZED SHALLOTS are a keeper!

Onions

Have Gege's family onion recipe in hand. Just got off the phone with mom...who I haven't told I'm revising the cookbook project just yet. I thought the recipe was from Lainey's family, but it's the other aunt. It's probably the easiest thing I'll make for Thanksgiving, basically just putting a bunch of peeled/parboiled onions in a casserole pan, throwing over a sauce of melted butter and sugar and cooking them for as long as possible--about 1 1/2 hours. Mom and I had an interesting back and forth about making ahead and reheating. She almost over abuses the make ahead concept. What's the point of getting the oven going twice, if there isn't a lot of heavy lifting to begin with? I'll go as far as getting the onions and sauce in the pan beforehand but will wait until Thursday to put in the oven.... she didn't like that idea.

Anyway, it will be my first "official" recipe test. Sure, I've cooked many of the cookbook recipes before, but not with the eye for testing and actually writing them out the way they should (or the way I think they should) appear in a cookbook.