Friday, March 28, 2003

Ah, yes, Houston. I have to say that as much as I need to get out of New York City, I don’t think that Houston is the solution.  This is not because of the armpit weather – actually, it’s just amazingly pleasant around here right now.  And it’s not, per se, the endless suburban-sprawl hell – in-law Ethan and Elizabeth’s house has a yard with grass and saplings being planted even as I type, and the mockingbirds sing and the treetops over the fence in the bayou beyond are lovely.  And certainly there’s the advantage that it is fabulously easier to get decent Mexican food.  But man, does it take forever to get anywhere!  Christ, you’re driving all the damned time.  Might as well be riding the subway.  And you can never find anything because all the strip malls look alike. Thursday was spent playing with the gorgeous if often sleepy young Caroline, and shopping for the big blow-out dinner.  Due to baby sleeping schedules and a missing nipple, time was a-pressing, and rather than the original plan of browsing around the ethnic markets, we made a beeline for the Central Market.  God, god, god, I love a good grocery store.  I love aisles.  I love helpful staff and clearly labeled produce and the salsa shelf.  Bitch expensive though.  The goose cost like twenty dollars more than I’m used to, and it was frozen.  But almost worth it to be able to load it into all into a big cart and check through in a flash and then just roll it to the car and load it in.  Heaven! So the idea was to thaw the goose, stuff it with veal and pork and chestnut stuffing, and roast it – Oie Braisee aux Marrons.  Also would be making Choux de Bruxelles aux Marrons, Brussels Sprouts Braised with Chestnuts, and some potatoes sautéed in rendered goose fat.  All in a strange kitchen, with a 2-month old baby in the house.  Certainly sounded like a recipe for disaster.  And disaster was what Ethan and Elizabeth were hoping for.  When I started on Thursday morning to make my shopping list, I asked for Ethan’s copy of MtAoFC, which Eric had assured me they had.  Lo, Ethan brings out MtAoFC, Volume II!!!  Happily it was just a joke, he had Volume One as well.  This is the kind of prank people who know me think is just hilarious.  I’m telling you, there’s more laughs around here than a barrel of monkeys.  And Elizabeth could barely contain her excitement at the prospect of witnessing a patented Julie breakdown.  But really, it all went more or less without serious incident.  Yes, we soaked the frozen goose in the left sink to thaw it, and Eric had a good deal of trouble prying out the giblets, and there was no liver in it (again.  I guess they just don’t have regular goose livers anymore.)  And yes, it’s true, I dropped a giblet into the sterilizing baby bottles in the right sink, but a little salmonella never killed a baby.  And so yeah, dinner was an hour and a half later than anticipated, and Elizabeth was about ready to fall over by the time it was served at 7:30.  (Elizabeth, in addition to being the mother of possibly the most adorable, if sleepy, two-month old on the planet, is also the teacher of special kids, and she’s got a new one she calls Hannibal because he tends to try, with some success, to eat people.)  But all in all, a disappointingly smooth ride. I started by making up the dressing.  Sauteed some onions, scraped them into a bowl, boiled down some port in the pan, poured it into the bowl as well.  Mixed it with ¾ pound each of ground pork and veal, a half pound of chopped salt pork, two beaten eggs, salt, pepper, thyme, and a chopped clove of garlic.  This was stuffed into the goose, when at long last the goose was thawed and cleared of frozen, not at all salmonella-y innards, layered with chestnuts, which I had bought canned, because my kind readers have a very good point, and really there is no reason on earth to waste these precious hours of my life away on peeling fresh chestnuts.  One can of chestnuts I’d bought online, 9 dollars plus shipping and handling.  At Central Market they have the same can for $6.50.  Kinda makes you wonder how they can sell them online at all – it’s the Amazon Effect, I guess.  We didn’t sauté the liver and mix it with the stuffing because, as I’ve mentioned, there was no liver. What are they doing with the livers?  Are all geese tortured foie gras factories nowadays?  Or are the livers being hoarded for some sinister machination of the industrial-poultry-farming complex?  The implications frighten me. We didn’t truss the duck because there was no twine with which to truss, and besides, we wanted the goose to cook as quickly as possible so Elizabeth could eat it and go to sleep. I stuck it in a 450-degree oven to brown for fifteen minutes.  (A sparkling clean oven, I should mention.  I think Ethan and Elizabeth’s oven is not seeing the kind of hazardous duty mine does.  On the other hand, the entire house is super clean, so maybe I’m just a piglet….)  While that was doing I a) rendered some geese fat I’d yanked out of the goose’s bum, and b) used some of that fat to brown the chicken giblets (rinsed of baby bottle cooties) and neck, and some sliced onions and carrots.  I added six tablespoons of flour, cooked that for a bit, then poured in some boiling beef broth and vermouth.  The combination of not reading ahead and not being familiar with the kitchen equipment led to me using a dangerously small skillet for this operation, but I managed to simmer it all for a bit without creating a godawful mess.  I was then to pour this stuff in around the goose.  In fifteen minutes, the goose had managed to exude an alarming amount of grease.  Two chestnut cans full, as it turns out.  I sucked it out with the bulb baster, then poured in the goose-y, winey stock.  Turned the oven down to 350 degrees, and that was that for two hours, so far as the goose went. For the Brussels sprouts, I just had my husband trim them, then boiled them for five minutes.  Stuck them in a pot with some more drained canned chestnuts, some melted butter, and salt and pepper.  Shoved them in the oven for forty-five minutes.  For the potatoes I went out on the patio with Elizabeth to smoke a menthol while Eric peeled the potatoes and diced them, then I heated up some more goose fat – we’re drowning in the stuff, after all – and fried the potatoes up in them.  Using, again, a too-small skillet so the potatoes didn’t have the room to brown like they should, but no matter because, hey, goose fat.  When the time had come the boys took out the goose and carved it while I boiled down the cooking juices and added some port to it for sauce. It was good, I guess.  It was Elizabeth’s first time eating both Brussels sprouts and goose, and I don’t know that either of them were good enough to win any converts.  The goose was not dry, but not a moist masterpiece either.  The stuffing was feeling the lack of the goose liver and, to me, tasted mildewy.  I think it was the canned chestnuts.  Although I was insistent on this, no one else seemed to think so.  Either they’re lying, or maybe I have a brain tumor that’s making food taste weird to me.  The Brussels sprouts were Brussels sprouts, with chestnuts, which didn’t taste mildewy, but didn’t taste like much of anything else, either.  The potatoes were good, because they were fried in goose fat, but there weren’t enough of them.  And I drank too much.  It was the Shiner that was my undoing. This morning I put together the Marinade Cuite, cooked wine marinade, for the leg of lamb we’ll be cooking on Saturday.  Not really enough time – Julia calls for three to four hours of marination – but that seems a little excessive.  The marinade is a cup each of sliced onions and carrots, some garlic, and some “celery” – actually the leaves of celery root that we bought at Central Market for Saturday, because it was what I had – sautéed with olive oil.  Then add six cups of wine – I used every drop of the stuff in the house, including two half-full glasses left sitting out from last night – some red wine vinegar – again completely using up the house supply – salt, peppercorns, cloves, parsley, bay leaves, rosemary and gin.  I could have used juniper berries instead, if Central Market wasn’t charging eight bucks for them, which is really ironic given that they literally grow on trees around here.  I cooked it all for twenty minutes, then let if cool before pouring it over the leg of lamb.  Now it sits on the counter amid the baby bottles, marinating. And I am posting.  At last.  Another bad thing I have noticed about Houston is all the cable TV.  In the thirty-six hours I have been here I have watched Back to the Future, Shallow Hal, the tail end of Real Genius, the beginning of The Bourne Identity, and now Three Days of the Condor (“with Faye Dunaway when she was young.”)  Christ.  If I lived in Houston, I’d never get anything done ever again. 3:48:49 PM    comment []