THANKSGIVING, AWAY GAME

 

So here we are in the midst of the Holiday Season… in a foreign land devoid of football as we define it, Nice! With a few handfuls of ex Americans we made ourselves, this past Saturday, a wonderful potluck Thanksgiving. Kenya and I put together dishes based on these recipes: Home made Pumpkin Ice Cream, Turnips Au Gratin and we had shot for a Pork Tenderloin with caramelized quince and pomegranate sauce but our pyrex Dutch Oven broke over the range and we lost 90 percent of our sauce… it called for massive freestyle. 

I was thinking of the political correctness surrounding the dialogue of Thanksgiving and wanted to see the alternative holiday images that may come up on Google…Somehow I was introduced to Gustave Doré, a French Illustrator from the 19th century. I fell in love with his imagery despite the work having nothing to do with the holiday images I set out upon finding…

This depiction shows dead Pilgrims from the times of the first Crusade, a religious variety, not the political or cultural type the Americans speak of. Our myth is about a variety of Pilgrims thanking god for having helped them through their brutal transition… and /or the native inhabitants sharing their bounty to help the new settlers survive the harsh lands… which sometimes looks like Montezuma vs. Cortez in the way there are not so many indigenous indians around as much as religion… I like to enjoy the national day off work side of things, the seasonal foods building such a specific traditional menu, I look forward to the crisp clean air and the permission to participate in all day festivities and food and family.

Our Recipes/ Dishes coming up in the next post or so…

 

 

Savory Biscuits for Breakfast with water

To do the apples: I skinned and cored the apples using a bread knife. I prefer to use a bread knife to cut my fruit, just my style. I cut the fruit quite thin, almost paper thin. Lay them on a non stick baking tray in the oven for an hour with a temperature of 100 degrees C. Also we kept the fan on to circulate the heat inside the oven. While the apples cool you can begin the dough, it doesn’t take very long at all. When the apples are cool to the touch chop them and knead them into the dough. We cut up a ziploc bag so to make a cling film like item, so we could roll the dough into a log. We made the dough the night before cooking it so that it can rest, but an hour or so should do if you would like to keep it moving.

This passed and last Wednesday my friend Jason Page swung through for coffee and a breakfast of home made biscuits… we had only just begun… when the morning took to the emotional sentiment of that same song’s title that played in that horrible hotel room horror with John Cusack.

A man had knocked on the door and when I answered he replied…”You are in trouble!”
INS?… I can not remember having gone painting anytime recent…that bus that I banged into the corner panel was actually turning into and almost going to squish me… can they really cctv me running red lights around town…
Oh a Thames Water supply official. He made three and  joined us for breakfast, teaching us much about how our water is piped into our London homes. We got to tearing up carpeted hallways, going into trap doors in the floor, checked and re-checked stop valves,  learned how to make a siphon with a pint glass and a faucet to check for leaks, and how to listen to running water with his walking stick like early modeled stethoscope …

Halloween, Ghost Cakes Part 2

We had decided, as I had mentioned in our last post, that for Halloween we wanted to make Ghost Cakes. I found the recipe amidst Parenting Magazines and Baby Magazines and the odd, yet sought after National Geographic at the Doctor’s Office. So we did as you can see, and oh did we make cakes… Now Kenya had mentioned at Andy and Kiliaen’s Friday night, that the cake was far too dense and way sweet and mind you she said so with a smile and icing on her fork,  so I got to thinking about remix-ing the recipe and try try againing. 

A special shout out to Elizabeth Zimmer, senior editor at the Village Voice, handling dance. She is a remarkable friend of Kenya’s, and with such a wonderful and warm heart she has welcomed me as well. Early last year  she had visited Greene Contemporary to see my Casper Disaster show and was inspired to mail along these fun shaped cup cake tins. I had forgot about them, Kenya could not imagine that I could forget,  and after remembering nor could I. A perfect solution for my spooky bread problem I had made the day before.

Saturday it was trick-or-treating out all around us, and we had no candy to share which was extremely strange given a certain someone’s constant stash of sweets in our junk drawer… Little ghosts and skeletons and witches and zombies and ballerinas knocking on so many doors and there we are baking cakes almost oblivious to their little needs. I felt like those people my parents warned me about,taking candy from strangers,  like I might be understood to be a Misfits’ song lyric in Halloween. Cause you know I would think it fun to give out ghost shaped cup cakes…which would be more in line with the actual lineage of said holiday. These cup cakes have a God given name, Soul Cakes. Soul Cakes are /were distributed on All Souls Day November 2-which is not to be confused with All Saints Day October 31, which is actually Halloween-both are marking the passing of summer, another shout out to Samhain-  to children whom were soulers (a name given to the poor.) They went from door to door caroling and praying to free souls from purgatory, yet ultimately feed themselves and families. Shit, after all it is a recession and people are struggling a heap despite wanting to say so in public. 

Recipe Remix… :

We used the same ingredients as the night prior. But did so in two mixing bowls one containing; the butter, vanilla, flour egg yolks … and get ready …  zest/essence of one orange mixed together. The second; we beat the egg whites with sugar slowly poured in as we beat, till fluffy and a little stiff. We then folded the egg whites into the batter, slowly turning the bowl as we folded keeping the batter light and airy and fluffy. It helped some.

I had looked up and found some simple home made recipes ( Recipe 1, Recipe 2, Recipe 3 ) for icings that would hopefully prove a little less sweet than the teeth stealing sugars from the night previous. With the recipe above we made a granular vanilla flavored thick buttery cream. After it cooled it wasn’t half bad. For the chocolate icing which we made, in our patent make-it-up-as-you-go-along freestyle method, we used some Green & Blacks  hot chocolate mix to achieve that bit of chocolate flavor and a molasses sugar (often used in chutneys and pickles and marinades and Christmas/Soul Cakes) After it cooled it was perfectly lovely.

One week later, still typing as of last night, they have had a beautiful baby girl. Congratulations.

Mischief Night, Ghost Cakes Part 1

Kenya, while I was cooking dinner tonight, mentioned that this post was way late… I know, and there is even another one which will publish even later.  I see it as exciting, the whole waiting game. Like waiting for the new Ghostface Killah album or birthday presents. Please and thank yous’ for all your patience, yo. In the end these reads get sweet like pancakes with extra syrup.

Homemade Gnocchi with a creamy Salmon Sauce, with Alex

Soon after I had more or less moved out, I was able to catch up with my mom, my brother, my sister and my Grandmother. It is so hard remembering to be close so far a distance away and once you get close you see how close you forgot you already were. I have such a good time with my family. Like This brief visit was all of two days long. I arrived in the afternoon, drank some wine with my mom, who had just got back from a wedding and probably needed to celebrate not at all. Around 4 my sister got home and 4.3o my Grandmother did too. My sister and I decided that it was breaking at all, and that was enough for us. Off we took to the ocean our mostly right handed but sometimes left beach break spot. 

Back around 9pm we took to cooking.
I thought Alex was a bit out there for choosing to make gnocchi. She was all well, what kind of sauce are you going to make? I had not an idea. Grandma humored us by mentioning she had a filet of salmon in the fridge, she had just caught it.

So we took off… 

Andrew Sie’s Memorial

The very last day of our traveling through space and New York, we- me and Hue- decided on a few things… that it would be best to truly understand the ups and the downs of our 4 day stretch of high life by eating a perfectly adequate, built to consume burger-by the likes of McDonalds  so loving it by the millions who purchased happy meals just prior to our waiting in line (It was a gas, it had been near four years since I had McDonalds chips and even longer since I ate off a bun) As we masticated, we thought  that maybe we should avoid the west side of manhattan on the way back to Brooklyn. It was not entirely a difficult thing to do by  way of intellectual navigation, but our intuition-well thats another story. It was decided on for the sake of our evening’s plans and for our sore assed muscles, to skip the great wooden bowl on 35 street, situated next to the helipad. (On warm summer days-when Jon Bon Jovi or other Hampton rich folk go to and fro the City, the Hudson River by way of jet propulsion, gently-like Orca- splashes upon your face- almost, as if lovers where playing in the shower.) Well we thought, we knew we would get stuck there, like lovers playing in the shower. 

When in Kingston, NY earlier that day, I spoke with Stanley Light to get the right time and place of Andrew Sie’s memorial dinner. I understood it was going to be An Event. It was important for me to attend. More than my shallow attempts at Thrashn’

Bradley McCallum* came with me. It was an incredible feast with so many people in from all over  and so many loved ones celebrating. I got to see / hear of all the good he had accomplished and left behind.
He was an amazingly passionate and dedicated man. That I could say on an empty stomach. 

I will never forget all the times Andrew had filled my  head of thoughts and ideas while he filled our bellies. I will never forget how he always made an event out of eating and how particular he was to where and when… How beyond satisfactory it was to share a meal and a conversation with him, Andrew.

I had done it earlier with Hubert. Super small 3.5 minute scale. Now here I sit, on a large, large banquet scale. So much a perfect parting. With so much to settle. It was a process that took us till 3 or 4 am.