 This is a versatile sorbet - it’s not very sweet, and the champagne lends festivity to any dinner party. I served it as a palate cleanser between courses at the L-cubed tapas dinner, and offered it for dessert at Thanksgiving this year. It’s simple to make, and the alcohol content prevents it from turning into a solid sorbet-cube in the freezer. Perhaps add scoop at the bottom of your champagne at midnight on New Year’s Eve? |
Just a quick post to remind you that voting for a variety of food blog awards is going on right now over at The Accidental Hedonist. Voting closes on the 31st of December, at midnight.
Want to jump straight to the “best group blog”? Here you go. (We’re still incredibly flattered to be listed there.)
 I’ve made this cake a few times, sometimes adding in chocolate, sometimes running the recipe as printed in Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course. Most recently, I served it as finger food at our tree-trimming party . Interestingly, it’s so rich that even when there’s no chocolate, everyone is sure there’s some in there! I like to serve it with an apricot glaze; the book also recommends a ginger ice cream, which I think would also be spectacular. |
I have a new favorite foodie show: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America. The premise of the show is simple. Gordon Ramsay - a chef as famous for his short temper and vocabulary that would make a longshoreman blush as his culinary prowess - takes on the challenge of turning around a different floundering restaurant every week. Gordon sweeps in, examines the restaurant from top to bottom, critiques the food, frightens the employees, picks on the owners, revamps the menus, and of course proves that all the abuse-flavored advice was worth it when by the end of the week the restaurant seems to be on the mend. A month later, Gordon returns unannounced to check up on the restaurant’s progress.
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 Late Saturday night, Lisa and I were talking about the effects of our recent drastic increases in consumption of rich & yummy food. I love the decadence people allow themselves through the holidays, but I certainly can’t eat that way every night. This is the sort of thing I make at the end of a long weekend of holiday eating to recover. (Sunday, in fact.) I think the simple orzo really picks up the delicate flavor of the green garlic, and the salty proscuitto is a nice contrast to the roasted cauliflower. |
The Accidental Hedonist has noticed a startling lack of food blog categories in this year’s Bloggies… so Kate’s thrown open the doors and is running one just for us food bloggers. Neat! Nominations are open until the 19th of this month, and then voting will likely commence. You can place your nominations here.
I was startled and touched to see that Gastronome had been noticed and mentioned in the group blog and recipe categories. Thanks, Tara!
 Everyone seems to have leftover-Thanksgiving-traditions - and this is the one I grew up with. Sure, there were sandwiches, and reheated stuffing - but turkey noodle soup is the leftover I dreamed about. I remember roasting a turkey my freshman year in college for fun with a few friends, and being most excited about the prospect of next-day soup. This recipe’s for Robert, who helped us eat some of this year’s bounty. |
This apple & cranberry crumble I served at Thanksgiving 2004 was intended to be Patrick Farley’s crumble - but I couldn’t leave well enough alone & changed it all about. This recipe is wheat-free & smelled just heavenly while it was baking. It almost didn’t make it down to the dessert-holding room on Thursday; William and I were ready to devour it on the spot when we took it out of the oven.
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Inspired by a recent post on Gothamist, Mike and I decided that we wanted a good, traditional-as-we-can-make-it lasagna… no clunky boxed noodles, no overly chunky fillings, no gobs of cheese, just clean, pure flavors and textures.
This dish was the surprise hit at Thanksgiving 2004. Since we were doing the potatoes mashed, I wanted the sweet potatoes to have a different kind of texture. We decided to wedge them into pieces and roast them in the style of patatas bravas, and William whipped up a very tasty chipotle-maple sauce to accompany them. We used two preparations of chipotle in the recipe - Tierra Vegetables’ chipotle powder and chipotles en adobo. I don’t particularly care for sweet potatoes, but even I thought these were pretty darned good. Apparently, we should have made more sauce…. |