And it tastes great! Go us!
I fried my patty in lard and topped with salsa, creme fraiche and avocado.
Fleshy Bits
This is where the meat dishes go
Lunch, At Last
Slow roasted pork leg, fresh, lovely tomato salsa with probably a clove too much garlic with some thick cream and Chicharrones. That’s all I have to say on this. Excuse me while I take a little culinary “me time.”
Fish Stew Tonight and Dancing With My Dad
Oh you know, some onions, a blob of garlic, dash of hot stuff. Add some toms get all brothy. Then add some fish. Fish stew. Yum
Meanwhile and much more importantly, your daughter would like to step on your toes and do a little jig to whatever is playing ( Britney. That’s how we roll ). Just like I did not so long ago with my Dad. A little dance on the toes with my Dad makes my world go ’round.
This is the look of absolute, unrefined joy when you are a wee one looking at your mum or dad as they twirl you around feet on feet.
Hamburger’s Helper
Drooling with anticipation of our next lot of ground beef ( coming soon! Inquire within! ), I stretched my cheap, tomato salsa turn tomato sauce to a lovely Bolognese meal. Some was served with a little macaroni bombarded by small chunks of mozzarella. I still have some beefy sauce left and it’s very tempting to turn it into an Indian dish. Not unlike seeing how far you can go when the fuel light bings on, I’m curious to see how many countries I can touch with one, basic starter.
Saucisse Toulouse
I’ve seen recipes call for Toulousaine sausage that featured a picture of short sausages that were not exactly Toulousaine. I’m sure the spices were right, but for me it’s the extremely long-ness of it all that captures sausage inspired by Toulouse.
When you buy this type of sausage from the butcher you don’t tell them, “how many” but rather, “when.”. When do you want them to stop winding sausage around their forearm.
A bit of a boil, then a brown. Pull out for some sauce. Stick it all back together like BFFs and pop in an average oven to make up again. We call this “Brown Note Sausage .” I suspect I’ll detail this later.
Oooo, Shanky Beef Braise
Browned in duck fat ( it’s duck fat central over here ). Here’s hoping the rest turns out alright.
I will serve with sprouts as it is sprout season. Have you cooked a sprout today?
I Feel Like Chicken Tonight
Chook covered in olive oil ( and butter if it’s not totally frozen ). Lemon squeeze. Garlic smoosh. Thyme and salt and pep. Roast that baby and forget about it because your toddler didn’t nap and dagnabit, it’s time you grabbed a glass of wine and walked around the farm in the feezing cold for a few minutes while dinner cooks.
The Beginnings of a Lovely Beef Curry
( beef cubed, ginger and perfectly blended Sri Lankan spices )
A friend hand delivered a box full of ingredients that would do me good for a fine beef curry. Alls I have to do is add the beef. Seeing as we are beef farmers, I happen to have a kilo or two of beef in the freezer ( or on the field depending on how you wish to slice it ).
Thus far, I’ve got my meat locked and loaded for a few hours of supermarionation. This will soon be followed with a quick sweat of the onion bits, a browning of the beefy bits followed by some water and tomato purée to bubble away for a couple hours.
I must say, the “curry kit” was an awesome gift. As I know you don’t Patek your curries, that pre-spice blend can take a little time. Having it pre-made was a great gift. A little holiday idea for you. As a recipient, I was most pleased.
Thanksgiving Pot Pie
Okay, it’s not done yet, but I layered Thanksgiving in a pot pie. Sure it’s been done before, but I ain’t got time for interwebs. What I have is a lotta leftovers.
A turkey stock milky gravy, frozen peas, carrots, leftover roast yams, some leftover mashed pots, leftover turkey chopped that is all covered with leftover stuffing will hopefully make for a warming dinner tonight. Only time will tell.
I’ll let you know if it sucks.
Our Evening Of Brown
As we are in France and the kids didn’t get last Thursday off, we gave our thanks on Saturday. I like to do Thanksgiving dinner because it is very American. It’s also an easy dinner to do that isn’t a huge cost ( I’m glad the lord didn’t bless the pilgrims with a mother load of rare abalone ).
In America, a whole turkey is easy to find. Often, they give them away free if you start loading up your cart with oodles of pre-Christmas bargains ( cha-ching ). In France, this is not so. I can buy whole birds of many varieties. You got your pheasants, your pigeons, your ducks, your chickens, your medium birds, your teeny birds, your big birds all of which come complete with heads and feet. But do they sell a whole turkey? No.
To fill my Thanksgiving table, I run around town in search of turkey parts. This year, we had a two legged, three roast turkey. Now if I may draw your attention to exhibit A, you’ll notice that that is a rather large leg for a turkey. I’ve cooked ( okay my husband has cooked ) a lot of whole birds and we’ve never seen a leg quite that big.
Should you grab a minute while your potatoes are boiling and the yams are roasting to take that leg and mentally build a turkey to scale, I believe you will arrive at a VERY large bird. So you wonder, do they not sell whole turkey carcasses in France because they don’t fit in the refrigerated display case? Are they not able to carry the entire bird, a glass of red wine and a cigarette at the same time? Or is it something more mysterious like it’s not actually a turkey, but a prehistoric genetic strain of pterodactyl that tastes an awful lot like turkey.
We’ll never know. Each year, I will keep at our little slice of America. Maybe someday, I’ll grow a little pterodactyl of my very own. Until then, I use my favorite Thanksgiving photo as inspiration which hangs in my kitchen.
Girl On Grill Action 