cooking

[hudebnik]

Monday:
Mid-day Trader Joe's run, no line to check out. WFH FTW. ✓
Made cranberry sauce Monday night. ✓

Tuesday:
Mid-day grocery run, no line to check out. WFH FTW. ✓
Made cranberry curd tart Tuesday night. ✓

Wednesday:
Acquired heritage turkey. ✓
Bought and installed chest freezer ($200 for a 7-ft³ freezer, top-rated by CR.), which we've wanted for years but which is especially appealing during leftover-generating season. ✓
Made chocolate pecan pie Wednesday night. ✓

Thursday:
Mass slaughter of onions has begun.
Anointing turkey with butter and sage before cooking.
Next up: sausage stuffing, green bean casserole, roasted carrots, gravy.

Comments

[hlinspjalda]

I clipped that Cranberry Curd Tart recipe because it looks amazing. Will be interested to hear what you thought of it.

Chest freezers really improve one's life.

[hudebnik]

We've made cranberry curd tart each of the last several years, for Thanksgiving and perhaps again for Christmas. I described it to my mother in our weekly video-chat ("make cranberry sauce, add butter and eggs to form a custard, pour into a pie shell, and bake"), and she was initially startled, but eventually decided it could be good. The recipe I'm using calls for straining it and using "the strained liquid", but this year I used the coarse food-mill disk so it was more pulp than liquid (and there's more of it!). Still, the nut-flour crust (which I pre-baked in a 9" springform pan) was a good deal higher than the custard, so shalmestere suggested topping it with meringue. Which we haven't actually tried yet, but there's 5/6 of a pie left for experimentation.

[hlinspjalda]

Fruit pies always meet with the most success in this ménage, as you might imagine. I may try this one at Hanukkah, with the leftover cranberries, because I bet the tartness would make a good foil to fried food.

The meringue sounds like a good call, especially if the curd is particularly tart. Also, anything with a hazelnut crust has to be good!

[hudebnik]

The last time I tried to make this with hazelnut crust, the hazelnuts got over-toasted (for shalmestere's taste, at least). I looked for pre-made hazelnut meal, or failing that already-toasted hazelnuts, and couldn't find either at the last minute, so I used almond flour instead. The recipe also calls for rice flour, which I didn't happen to have, so I used a little bit of white wheat flour to hold things together. And it worked well.