Patriot Stew

For reasons we won't go into, I spent much of the Fourth of July making slow-cooker stews. When the sweat dried a bit, I wrote a bit of a story about it. If I were normal, I'd tell you I hadn't turned the stove on since, but Sunday's rendered lard would give that the lie. Still, I think I sweated out my meat cravings for quite a while.

Every year around the beginning of July, I get the urge to roast a turkey. 98 degree days and beckoning beaches be damned; I hear the siren gobble of rich gamey gravy, sweet potatoes, and tart cranberry sauce. The source of these cravings remains shrouded in mystery, but I’ve always assumed it had some connection to the start of the summer vegetable explosion at the farmer’s market--an immediate urge to celebrate the harvest.

Since I don’t work for a major food magazine (the best excuse to roast turkeys out of season), and don’t own an air conditioner, an actual early Thanksgiving is not an option. This ‘Patriot Stew’ is the perfect answer, a celebration of New World ingredients in slow-cooker style.

Cheap and delicious, bone-in turkey thighs shine in the slow cooker. They cook down tender and flavorful without any risk of drying out. Tart dried cherries stand in for cranberries, and sweet potatoes, poblano chiles, and corn play themselves in their traditional roles. In keeping with the American-born theme, I used Six Point Righteous Ale for the braising liquid, but any assertive ale will work.

Just brown the onions, chop a few vegetables, pour in the beer and you’re free to spend all day at the beach. Have a beer for yourself while you’re at it. It may not be the traditional hot dog, but a bowl of this all-American stew with a tart green salad is a sparkling accompaniment to fireworks in the cool of the evening.

Tuesdays with Dorie: All-In-One Holiday Bundt Cake

TWD is running amok this month--any recipe can be made for any Tuesday. Admittedly, I made the majority of this month's recipes in October...but since I haven't yet made the official one for this week (hold your breath for cranberry-apple crisp), I still relish the freedom. And the part where Dorie posted on my Caramel Chestnut post. That makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Also warm and fuzzy, and far less complex than three layer chestnut confections was the All-In-One Holiday Bundt Cake, featuring almost every flavor associated with the Thanksgiving-Christmas season. Cranberries? Check. Pumpkin? Check. (Around here it was sweet potato, but no harm done) Apple? Check. Nuts? Check. (I used almonds). Spices? Check.  Kind of gimmicky? You'd think so, but it really works. This is just a simple, really, really good cake. The kind you eat with every meal of the day until it's gone. The kind your (my) mother likes. No, really. I'd suggest making it. The recipe is here.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Sweet Potato Biscuits

Ooooh, these should have been mine. Thank you Erin of Prudence Pennywise, for getting to them first so that I didn't have to wait. Basic biscuits with a touch of nutmeg, a glop of sweet potato puree, and no one in this house could stop eating them. Those who live nearby (especially in the house) will remember my obsession with Orangette's Sweet Potato Pound Cake. Sweet potato and nutmeg are pretty much my ideal flavor combination. These have the added advantage of speed and sandwich capability. Here's Matt's--turkey, apple butter, cornichons, and dijon mustard.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Sweet-Potato Marzipan Bread Pudding

This week's official Tuesdays with Dorie assignment was something that Dorie refers to as Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding, a classic bread pudding with chocolate melted into the custard before soaking the bread.

I had made it before in both chocolate and non-chocolate forms, and I have finally decided, based on that experience and on a few restaurant encounters, that chocolate bread pudding is not a great match. I think chocolate is great, bread pudding is great, and they shouldn't mix. My ideal bread pudding is still one that I encountered one late night in Cuzco, Peru, of all places.

Cuzco, being the tourist mecca that it is, has a bizarre mix of Irish Pubs, Peruvian nightclubs, and one amazing Scandanavian breakfast place all within walking distance of the town center. It should be off-putting, and I'm not sure how long I could have stood it, but for a few days, Cuzco is strange but satisfying, if overcrowded and more touristy than Disneyland. Anyhow, like Disney (so I'm told), you can pick any cuisine of the world for every meal of the day. Unlike Disney, the options are usually run by expats dedicated to recreating nostalgic flavors for homesick tourists, so the results are usually pretty good. At one such place, Jack's something or other, an English/Irish pub overlooking the main plaza, my sister's British friends demanded that we order individual bread and butter puddings. These took the better part of an hour to arrive, but when they did...perfect, crunchy, custardy, and with creme anglaise to dribble over...

Liana and I have been dreaming about those bread and butter puddings ever since, and I have recreated them (sans creme anglaise, come on people) more than once with varying success, but all in all the experience has given me a soft spot a mile wide for bread pudding, and a corresponding discernment--all bread puddings are not created equal.

So, in my eternal quest to top Jack's in Cuzco, I decided that this week's TWD would skip the chocolate (absolutely wasted to my mind, brings down both elements, but this is purely and obviously a matter of taste) and instead throw in a little marzipan that was lying around. For bread, I used half a loaf of a soft sweet potato sandwich bread that I recently made, toasted in the oven to stale it up.The resulting pudding wound up soaking a little too long while waiting for the granola to get out of the oven (sometimes my kitchen is like an irate roommate situation with everyone waiting for someone else to get out of the bathroom), and so was, in the end, a little more soggy than I like it, without much differentiation between pieces of bread, but the marzipan was excellent, mostly but not entirely melted, and the whole thing was faintly orange from the sweet potato bread, and altogether pretty pleasing. Matt loved it, and at least it's not too terrible for us, as I used skim milk and mostly egg whites.