Huevos ahogados mas fácil? Nope.

Huevos ahogados with crispy masa nest. © Ryan Schierling

Historically, on New Year's Day, we make a big deal out of eggs. Anyone can scramble, fry and boil. If you're adventurous, you can sous vide or smoke, or just straight up Rocky Balboa it, and swallow them raw. 

For the last decade, we've prepared Scotch eggs on the first of January, which are hard-boiled eggs, peeled and wrapped in heavily-spiced breakfast sausage, breaded, and deep-fried. They are ridiculously satisfying, delicious dragged through tangy HP sauce, but so intense and heavy we could only justify eating them once a year. So we've been thinking about this since... last New Year's eggs.

Maybe it was time for a change?

For 2015, we adapted a Mexican poached egg dish, huevos ahogados – drowned eggs – with a pair of sauces and a fried masa nest. It was so simple when we concepted it months ago. It ended up absolutely ridiculous when we were trying to figure out the nest. It was silly, and better than it had any right to be once we figured it out, prepared, brought everything together and ate it. 

Steamed Chocolate Pudding

Steamed chocolate pudding with cinnamon-clove sauce. © Ryan Schierling

For Christmas every year my Grandma Munroe makes a single petite steamed chocolate pudding with an intensely-spiced cinnamon-clove sauce for dessert. It's a tradition. A tradition that goes back a long way. As in, my grandmother will be celebrating her 95th birthday in the new year and this recipe came via her mother, who we think got it from her mother-in-law. It has been a Christmas tradition for all these years – one tenacious little gem in the pantheon of English steamed puddings, uniquely stovetop "baked" cakes which are know to have originated sometime before the mid-1600s.

My first memories of this steamed chocolate pudding are vague, and more of an impression than anything else. I remember always thinking it should be an unconventional flavor combination – the chocolate with the cinnamon – yet tasting the flavorful spices of cinnamon and cloves as they saturated each dense little slice were such a delight! For me it has become a truly special holiday treat.  

My grandmother is the only person I've ever known to prepare this (although I have confirmed that one or two of her siblings have made it, as well). A few years ago, knowing my fascination with this particular dessert, someone in my family gave me a steamed pudding mold for Christmas. It took me a while to try using it, and my first attempt was something of a disaster due to my misinterpretation of the recipe and a failure to research the essential concepts involved when using a steaming mold. I won't go into details, but I have since corrected, and clarified, the essentials for my future self and others who may visit this post. You see, the original recipe is written in that familiar vernacular which assumes the process and nuances are already known to the cook – where the ingredients and instructions are but mere reference notes to self, passed from one cook to another. 

Following the fete.

(Bottles L-R) Limoncello, plum bourbon, Rainier cherry bump. © Ryan Schierling

We kind of skipped the ever-inundating pre-Thanksgiving food-blog blast this year, instead opting to toast to some post-feast palliatives. You already know what to do with your turkey, you know how to make the classic sides and the not-so-classic sides, you know how to crank out handcrafted heirloom sweet potato ice cream with back-woods small-batch maple syrup and homemade marshmallows, obviously.

Obviously. 

Get started on a few of these tipples now and you'll have plenty of practice time before next season's holiday haze begins. 

There are menu pages of before-dinner drinks available. Some people just call those drinks. The French have a couple of words that have become synonymous with the intake of specific alcoholic beverages before and after dinner – apéritif and digestif – which basically mean "to open" and "a digestive." In America, we call apéritifs "happy hour," and that's unfortunate, because it literally translates to "half-price well drinks and non-import draft beers, cheapskate."

Apertifs are usually herbal recipes meant to stimulate the appetite. I don't typically need a reason to be hungry, so here at home we occasionally like to sip on the after-dinner beverage – the digestif. 

New Orleans, new again.

I-10 East, 90+ mph, just out of Houston. Swing-lens panoramic film camera. The flask is in my argyle sock, sucker. (Click for larger.) © Ryan Schierling

I was a teenager the last time I was in New Orleans, insisting on eating nothing but giant bowls of seafood gumbo as our family vacation took us through Louisiana and across the south. I didn't understand the nuances of Creole or Cajun cuisine, or the origins of the dish, and I didn't care. All I wanted was a spicy bowl of something new and exotic – kissed with Louisiana hot sauce – that I couldn't get back home in Kansas. I affectionately remember Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo, the Maison Dupuy's talking bird in the hotel lobby, and window shopping for a Nikon F3HP camera that I couldn't afford on Canal Street. 

Somehow, It's been 25 years since I set foot in the Crescent City. Julie's never been. 

Now that we're living in Austin, it's an eight-hour drive to New Orleans. There are no longer any excuses. Mardi Gras seems a touch over-indulgent for a proper reintroduction, so I make a few impulsive calls and December 30th we point the car east for a celebration of New Year's Eve.

Hot toddies and hand pies.

Apple toddy hand pies. © Ryan Schierling

In a brazen act of nostalgia, I bought one of those Hostess™ apple fruit pies. It was a timely impulse, as it was just a couple of weeks before I learned the brand was going out of business. I remembered enjoying them as a kid, and on the day of my purchase I was curious how I would feel about them now – and how wide the chasm compared to homemade. As it turns out, getting past the first bite on this nostalgic interlude required a level of food masochism I was simply incapable of entertaining.

Yes, occasionally, I like to make little apple hand pies. They are easy and fun, and with just the two of us in this household the presence of a whole pie is downright daunting. These recipes are simple and can easily be whipped up in the time it takes to reduce an apple to a quarter-inch dice and roll out a batch of double-crust pie dough. Heck, if you have a handful of delicate dough left over from those pot-pies you just busted out – use that to assemble a few little hand pies and throw them in the oven while it's still hot. 

My intention was for this to be a happy little story to document our trusty apple hand pies, just the apple-filled single-serving pastry to satisfy that all-American pie craving this holiday season. My typical filling includes heavy cream, which is uncommon, though not entirely unheard of – it seems to be of German or Dutch influence. I have no idea where I picked up this nifty trick, but that little bit of cream conspires to do the work of butter and flour with those delightfully-tart Granny Smiths. I'll include that recipe below, as well.

You see, before I managed to actually make a batch, I got soundly derailed.

Grandma's turkey and noodles.

(L) Grandma in the kitchen. (R) Turkey & noodles, center stage. © Ryan Schierling

When the time to taste-test the noodles comes, Grandma Dot is curt, and slightly critical. "They're tough," she says immediately. "They need more time." For those noodles, we will gladly, patiently, reverently wait, year after year.

In this age of ever-faster food there is one ingredient often unavailable – one that not everyone can afford, and that ingredient is time.

This recipe is a legacy, going back more than 100 years and at least four generations in our family. It may predate my Great Grandma Carpenter, but hers was the first turkey and noodles I remember having as a young child. When I was a bit older, Grandma Dot's holiday meals weren't complete without turkey and noodles. My mom's been making them for years as well, and I've finally gotten a hand on the family egg noodle recipe to go with my own turkey stock.

If you like chicken and dumplings, you'll love these noodles, simple and swaddled in a velvety turkey stock thickened by the flour-dusted noodles themselves. Served over mashed potatoes, they are the holiday side that everyone in our family looks forward to more than the main course itself. But, they take time.

A turkey Hajj (or "pilgrimage to Mecca").

Open-faced hot turkey sandwich. © Ryan Schierling

I'm totally with you, internets! We don't need 400 new recipes to create from Thanksgiving leftovers. We know that the best way to eat them is just to eat them. Sometimes, it's only a matter of reconfiguring them on the plate. This particular arrangement happens to be my favorite.

My story begins in a wonderfully gritty little dive bar/café – Mecca Cafe. It is this establishment that I have to thank for my sincere appreciation of turkey. Located in the heart of Seattle's Lower Queen Anne neighborhood, it is a stone's throw from the Space Needle and was walking distance from our old place. It is every bit as unpretentious and personable as its motto, which reads, "Alcoholics serving alcoholics since 1929." Split into two separate spaces, they serve stiff drinks on one side and offer rock-solid comfort food on the other, in true old-diner style.

And I know I am not the only one to have found delicious respite in their particular style of open-faced hot turkey sandwich.

"On a bad day, one of their good greasy breakfasts or the hot open-faced turkey sandwich might just save your life." - The Stranger, Dec 13, 2007

Most Thanksgivings I have had the opportunity to eat turkey, but most of those years I took a pass on the bird. My general opinion was that eating turkey just wasted stomach space for the really yummy things on the holiday menu, like mashed potatoes with dressing and gravy. And pie.

But one fateful day nine years ago, months away from any gratitude-based festivities, I made the acquaintance of the open-faced hot turkey sandwich at Mecca. I was smitten. Thick slices of egg bread, 1/8" cuts of turkey breast that pulled apart easily with a fork, and a fluffy heap of mashed potatoes all generously drenched in warm delicious gravy… sigh… a revelation.

I don't recall if someone recommended it to me that day, or if I ordered it on a whim. I'm not even sure if I was alone or with a friend. All I remember is that it was a turning-point. I was eating the most amazing turkey plate I had ever eaten in my life and realizing that this was what a holiday meal involving turkey aspired to be. Oh, the gratitude!

There's nothing fancy at all about a hot turkey sandwich. It's a straightforward layering of sliced turkey over bread, snugged up to a pile of mashed potatoes, then all topped with turkey gravy and served with a big spoonful of cranberry sauce. But each element is important; flimsy honey-wheat bread, dried out Butterball®, rehydrated Idaho® Spuds™ and generic gravy from a jar are NOT going to give you the same sandwich. Also, the cranberry sauce had better be fresh because the gelatinous kind from a can will never deliver that wonderful sweet-tart sensation of a whole cranberry bursting between your teeth.

This year we planned for having adequate leftovers. All the extra home-cooked goodies for this meal were waiting in the refrigerator: roasted turkey, mashed potatoes with butter and cream, and cranberry sauce made with fruity cabernet. Bread was the only additional item we had to buy to make this – which actually worked out perfectly for us since we'd already gobbled down the sourdough dressing. Now that we're living in Texas, we decided to try it with a loaf of Texas Toast instead of egg bread. Because of its similarly-thick slices and light texture, it was a satisfying facsimile of the real deal. 

There are a thousand ways to dress up, dress down, and devour those Thanksgiving leftovers, but few more simple than this – unless you're eating things cold right out of the fridge. It is also the most turkey this quasi-vegetarian will probably ever eat off of one plate at a meal. Spicy pumpkin and smoked turkey risotto be damned. This weekend I'm going to have to insist on a hot turkey sandwich.

Root to leaf.

Stuffed beets with greens. © Ryan Schierling

Ryan didn't grow up eating beets quite the way I did. What he remembers was more of the canned or pickled variety, which (unsurprisingly) didn't put beets on his "must have more of this" list. Although I'm not sure he'll ever recover entirely from this early aversion, it has been my great pleasure to share my appreciation of beets with him. So far, as long as I'm not asking him to eat a whole, roasted beet plain and keeping some goat cheese on hand, he's very much enjoying them.

We grew beets in our garden when I was little, and I loved them. There were a great many things from that garden that were canned or frozen every year in our home, but I don't remember beets being among them. It's a pretty good bet that it was limited, primarily-seasonal fair, which may have added to my attraction, as it was a pretty special deal to get beets and greens for dinner.

I was a picky enough eater as a kid. I hated fresh tomatoes (yes, even those sweet, perfect ones straight from the garden), fresh mushrooms, and green beens (unless they were either raw or canned French cut – go figure). But a few of the common culprits kids get picky about were on my favorites list. I loved broccoli, cauliflower and – to my mother's great astonishment – even brussel sprouts. Thanks to my parents' big garden and the mysteries of taste bud genetics, I enjoyed a lot of pretty delicious things straight from the earth as a child, beets among them. Beets were also my first introduction to cooked greens, and beet tops remain my favorite green to this day.

My mom was blessedly straightforward with the beet preparation. She usually cooked/steamed the beets on the stovetop with a little water. Or maybe she roasted them. I only remember them being deeply purple, tender and sweet. She never missed an opportunity to use the greens, either. She would simmer up those tops, add a little salt and finish them with a good squeeze of lemon juice (or more likely in those days, ReaLemon®). They were delicious eaten with the beets.

And so, the inspiration for these stuffed beets – using the whole beet. Simple flavors with pairs of compliments: goat cheese for the beets, lemon for the greens. Together, an earthy, sweet and tangy kind of pleasure. We prefer more vs. less goat cheese because it is just so delicious with the sweetness of the beets, but the truth is that you could omit it entirely and still have a very delicious beet.

Large beets are a side dish so fantastic that they could very well steal the show from your entree. Small beets make a perfect 'knife and fork' appetizer and the tiniest are a single, simple amuse bouche.

Patriotism is patronage.

(L) American Idol Pop-Tart. (R) Passport w/ tinfoil hat. © Ryan Schierling

We are a nation of immigrants and descendants of immigrants, each celebrating life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness through the most sensual of daily pleasures... food.

An amazing array of cuisine from all over the globe lies waiting outside our doors and we just plain take it for granted sometimes – that Thai restaurant down the street where we get the occasional pad pug take-out, that little Greek cafe around the corner with the amazing avgolemono. We are the proverbial melting pot, fusion perpetual in this equation, and we're also a lucky bunch to enjoy such incredible diversity in food and flavor influences.

Sometimes we're also a bunch of awfully unadventurous bores compared to the rest of the world. We're squeamish about eating insects, we have generally bland expectations of flavor and seasonings and we have a deplorable propensity toward eating over-processed pre-packaged foods – well, maybe in some circles that is considered being adventurous....

Regional, sub-regional, generational, individual, traditional, international deliciousness is so close for most of us. We don't even have to buy a plane ticket or remove our RFID-chipped passports from their tinfoil wrappings to get there.

There are people in our neighborhood, down the street, in our town who have so much to share about the world outside of Hamburger Helper. There are little specialty grocery stores tucked into strip malls carrying foods we'll never see at the big supermarket chain stores. There are grains, spices and condiments that will invite a world of new sensations into our kitchens and possibilities to our palates.

New techniques enhance our cooking skills and challenge our ways of thinking about what a meal is or can be – and getting started is easily accessible. It's all at our finger tips with a world-wide web full of recipes and helpful tips and tricks.

So, while we may be standing over the grill contemplating the massive quantities of hotdogs and hamburgers being cooked up for Independence Day, we should also consider what else constitutes All-American cuisine. Let's actively celebrate the independence of millions who are free to make our lives and country richer because they have brought with them the history and flavors of their families and food.

Let's go out and try tasting something new; read some reviews, experience a new kind of cuisine, and then another. Then let's seek out the appropriate resources and try making our favorite dishes at home. Perhaps one will find a place of honor in the family dinner rotation – an indulgent tribute to the wealth of diversity the good ol' USA has to offer.

Thanks Easter bunny! Bawk, bawk!

Rabbit sugo with pappardelle. © Ryan Schierling

When my dad was a child, he and a friend decided to go hunting. His buddy had a bb gun, and so off they tromped through field and stream, forest and glen, in search of wild and wily critters. They returned with a rabbit, and I can only imagine my father holding the expired beast aloft by the ears as he proudly presented it to his mother (my grandmother) to clean and cook for them. "No way! Get that thing out of here!" was apparently her response, quashing my father's dreams of ever becoming a big game hunter.

Anyone can have a grandma, I guess, but not everyone has a nonna.

Julie and I have been preparing rabbit and eggs on Easter Sunday for a number of years now. The last incarnation was breakfast – rabbit sausage, over-easy eggs and little bunny-shaped toasts. This year, we decided on rabbit sugo with hand-made pappardelle, a little fancier Easter bunny and Easter eggs.

But where to get bunny here in Austin? We checked Central Market first, but were left feeling a bit sad for the Pel-Freez rabbits and the uncertainty of where they came from and how they got there. Were they factory rabbits stuck in cramped, stacked-up cages their whole life? Were they chock full of antibiotics and who-knows-what-else? Back home, a little bit of internet and a little bit of phone calling directed us to Sebastien Bonneau and his Countryside Family Farm in Bastrop. Bonneau raises rabbits, ducks, geese, chickens and pigeons for meat, and he had the happy bunnies that we were looking for. He was also willing to make room in his busy Sunday schedule for us to pick up the rabbit directly from him.

This is one of those recipes, like ragu, where I imagine there are a core set of ingredients that are necessary (mirepoix, wine, some type of meat). But beyond that, I figure all's fair in love and sugo.

It's all hearts and roses.

Sugar cookies with rosewater icing. © Ryan Schierling

Grandma has been a rose gardener as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I recall walking through her well-tended garden in the summer and carefully bending my nose into the flowers of each and every variety. I remember noting how some smelled faintly sweet, or rich with the essence of strawberries, while others had a more sophisticated perfume.

My grandmother loves roses. My grandmother's birthday also just happens to be very close to Valentine's Day. A few years ago, after tasting a revelatory rosewater ice cream at a local Persian restaurant, I couldn't help but think it would be fun to make her a sweet treat with rosewater. Sugar cookies seemed like just the thing. I could give her roses and she could eat them too!

I love these cookies. They are soft, delicious, and the aroma that envelopes your senses as you eat them is just amazing. If chocolate is just not the answer this Valentine's Day, these are the perfect way to give hearts and roses to the ones you love.

They may be modestly classic recipes for cookies and icing simply adapted for the occasion, but these cookies are most definitely personal. They have become my cherished Valentine's Day tradition – roses for Grandma – hearts and flowers for the people I love.

It's National (insert food here) Day!

Capriole Farm's Sofia from Antonelli's Cheese Shop. © Ryan Schierling 

It's National Cheese Lover's Day!

What a coincidence, because I do happen to love cheese. But Julie loves cheese even more than I do – there are some stinky cheeses she celebrates that I can only wrinkle my nose at and refer to as our old neighbor Damir did, calling them "foot cheese."

How wonderful that we can celebrate this love with a nationally recognized holiday!

But then I was curious... who comes up with these things? Are they actually sanctioned by any particular legislative body or are they just divvied up and assigned at random to days of the year? So I queried the internets, and apparently, the President of the United States can declare, by proclamation, a special event or day. And so he does – there are hundreds of national food days (and weeks! and months!) that I had no idea even existed.

See, I didn't get any emails on January 14 saying it was "National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day," or last December 30, which was "National Bicarbonate of Soda Day." Heaven forbid I miss out on celebrating "National Something On A Stick Day" March 28, or "National Deviled Egg Day" November 2.

Though, with all due respect, I am probably going to skip "National Gumdrop Day" (Feb. 15) because they're foul and disgusting sweets, "National Candied Orange Peel Day" (May 4) for  the exact same reason, and "National Play-Dough Day" (Sept. 18) because that's only a food holiday if you're in kindergarten.

Sadly, there is no National Chicken-Fried Steak Day. But, rest assured, I will be contacting lobbyists and trade associations about this oversight immediately.

If the United States can celebrate play-dough as a food, then they can most certainly make room for the national dish of Texas. Oh, wait, that's chili (Feb. 25). Well, we've got to be able to squeeze a day off for CFS in there somewhere. 

Neapolitan Casatiello

New Year's Casatiello. © Ryan Schierling

Sometimes I have trouble putting myself to bed. It's a hold over from being that kid who was absolutely convinced that going to sleep would mean missing out on something important and exciting. I'm still not always able to simply "go to bed" like a reasonable adult. I must force and cajole myself, like a tired child, finally into slumber. 

On one particularly obstinate evening, I found myself flipping through the local PBS channels and came upon the show Ciao Italia with Mary Ann Esposito. I've never really watched this program before, and likely would have just kept surfing that night, but then I noticed what she was working on looked an awful lot like the dough I make for pizza. 

So I stopped, and watched... 

First, I was hooked because of the ingredients... olive oil, cracked pepper and pecorino cheese. Then I sat perplexed as I watched her assemble the dough using the regular paddle attachment, instead of the dough hook, on her big professional model KitchenAid mixer. The sticky dough actually looked like it was beaten "fluffy" for a few moments. Finally, the day was saved when she turned the dough out onto the counter and began to knead it with marvelously expert hands. 

To this point I really had no idea what she was up to with this recipe, and was still thinking "some kind of pizza, maybe," as she began to roll out the proofed batch that magically appeared from a far counter. The surface was brushed with olive oil... and...  

Fishnet stuffings.

Birth of an American Pop Star. © Ryan Schierling

Imagine your holiday dinner ruined by a precocious little girl who stuffed her Barbie doll into the Tom turkey – along with the onions and apples and rosemary – mid-way through the roasting process. This is a true story, some 30 odd years ago. This is Kim's story.


Happy Thanksgiving.