Thanksgiving en Español

Thanksgiving is upon us and there are dozens of turkey recipes making the rounds (and I did a good number of turkey and side dish compilations on the Twitter weekend feed #KaliFoodGoddess).

We like turkey but as our household is comprised of two tiny humans, making a full turkey is insane. We’d be eating for three months. One year I made a turkey breast and it was still too much.

I love a meal that can be adapted into another or several meals, but there are limits.

We are going traditional ‘Rican holiday meal – rice with pigeon peas and roast pork.

Easy Arroz con Gandules
Chop a medium onion and a couple cloves of garlic (I also like to add a small red or yellow pepper). Sauté on medium low heat in a tablespoon of olive oil until the onion is translucent. Add 1½ cups of stock, increase heat to high and cover until it begins to boil. Add 1 cup of medium grain rice, stir for a minute, and decrease heat to low. Cover and let cook for about 10 minutes. Add a can of pigeon peas and reverse the liquid; add about two tablespoons of salad olives with pimentos and a dash of oregano. Add stock if rice becomes too dry and begins to stick to bottom. Stir. Cover and cook for another 10 minutes.

The veggies almost disintegrate into the rice to flavor the oil and the final dish. The oil will help separate the grains and give it a velvety finish. The beans will be soft, earthy, and savory.

Roast Pork (Pernil)

pork shoulder

1 head of garlic

1 tablespoon oregano

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons wine vinegar

1 tablespoon of whole black peppercorns (to taste)

1 teaspoon Kosher salt per pound of roast (to taste)

Place all ingredients in a blender to crush and blend into a paste (it will be slightly wet). If you have a mortar, crush it by hand. Stab the pernil and making sure you fill the slits with the marinade. Refrigerate at least overnight before cooking.

Take roast out of fridge at least half hour before cooking. Preheat oven at 425° F.

Pernil cooks at 350° F 30 minutes per pound or until you reach 175° internal temperature. If skin starts browning too fast, tent with foil. Let it stand for 10 minutes before cutting into it and serving.

When I was working I’d buy pasteles from a lady at the office. I sometimes bought them at a local Dominican restaurant (second choice). No extra cash this year for that, but might use my last royalty check and get tamales instead.  

Finally, to round off the meal, a lettuce, tomato and avocado salad with a homemade Italian dressing (or mofongo).

The point is that this year to say thanks, we will say gracias instead. 

It’s been a tough year. We need comfort food and this reminds us of my great grandmother – the ultimate solace in a cruel universe: a double gammy!


For more recipes, how-videos, and information about Puerto Rican holiday foods, go to the Pinterest board:

Like Buttah

Back in the 1990s, Mike Myers used to do a great skit on Saturday Night Life called “Coffee Talk.” Accurately pronounced co-AH-fee tawlk (although I personally do not enunciate this way: shut up, Zinful!), his Linda Richman character declared everything that pleased her (much like anything that came out of Barbra Streisand’s mouth), “Like buttah!”

Butter is smooth, a guilty pleasure, rich and delicious. Everybody has at some point or another loved butter, even if unknowingly. Some of us ate butter, from its stick form, because the teenage body requires pure butter in its diet (it feeds the zits).

You know when you go out and have a nice, expensive meal in a fancy restaurant? Do you know what usually makes it taste like heaven?

I could but will not give you a dissertation on butter. This is precisely why the Geek Gods gave us Wikipedia. Bon Appétit did a piece on the flip-flop flippancy of science regarding butter (“It’s good for you!” “No, wait, it will kill you!!” “It can help you lose weight!!!").

Julia Child loved it, and spoke the truth about it.

There used to be a time when there were only two types of butter in the supermarket: the (plain) dairy product and the peanut kind. The most variety you could count on was salted and unsalted. Progress has come to butter!

This started because Reese’s has turned their cups into a peanut butter, and added another with chocolate. There was also a conversation about Trader Joe’s cookie butter and the baking possibilities. And in these two separate conversations a blog post was born.

These kinds of butters are perfect for breakfast and snacks (as well as packed lunches).

Making homemade peanut butter is ridiculously easy and a perfect gift for folks who are trying to steer clear of processed foods. All it takes is peanuts. You may add a little bit of oil, sugar or substitute, and a dash of salt.

Peanut butter is probably very popular and most people’s favorite guilty pleasure since childhood. Tasty-Yummies ran veritable primer on several varieties of nut butters that you all should bookmark. The article includes recipes for raw cashew, almond, pecan, sunflower seed, and Nutella, as well as the spices that go well with nut butters.

The magazine Cooking Light also has a primer on the topic, and it covers almond, cashew, hazelnut, macadamia, peanut, pecan, pistachio, and walnut – with suggestions for cooking with these butters as an ingredient.

For savory, compound butters, all you need is unsalted butter and a bit of imagination. These can be used over fish, meats, vegetables, on breads, and certainly to cook with (if you wish).

SheKnows has a mother recipe with several varieties that all sound delicious: herb garlic, citrus tarragon, blue cheese and chive, smoked paprika and jalapeño, spiced brown sugar with walnuts and raisins, and even a cookie butter.

I’ve done a simple garlic and chive compound (with pressed garlic and fresh, chopped chives), with unsalted butter, and pepper sauce. We used to melt it over roasted potatoes and yams. You can also use to give Ramen a different flavor (obviously you'd skip the flavor pack when preparing this as a side dish).

Finally, Brit + Co has a veritable festival of links for flavored butters from the spicy to the sweet, from the simple to the sublime. There are 29 recipes here, some with fruit, cheese, nuts, and my personal favorite: bacon chive butter!

These make for spectacular additions to your dinner table, but they also make for out-of-this-world gifts. Something to consider for the upcoming holiday season.

The following links are for those of you who just like to read about food. These are affiliate links, and if you choose to buy, a portion of the sales go to fund my starving artist existence, just so you know…

Garlic herb buttah

Bacon buttah

Peanut buttah 4-packs (coconut, cinnamon raisin, honey pretzel, and sesame cranberry)

Amish-Buggy Gift Pack flavored buttahs (apple, blackberry, cherry, blueberry, peach, and plum)

Jif Whips (peanut, maple and brown sugar, as well as whipped peanut buttah)


UPDATE: If you enjoyed this article and the recipes in it, you can link to its companion piece, a dedicated Pinterest board you can refer to any time.

http://www.pinterest.com/amapolapress/food-goddess-butter/