Food memories of Thanksgiving 2009

        
Thanksgiving is a great food holiday and I love it so here are a few food memories.  Ok, the pie was before Thanksgiving.  Still.

Darcey's Risotto

So gather round the television and watch a holiday favorite like Home for Holidays with Robert Downey Jr during his coke days and Holly Hunter crazy as usual and directed by Jody Foster.   It was very entertaining and fun to watch "the old days" - no cell phones and email.

Here's the risotto recipe that was the hit of the evening:

4 shallots
1/4 cup butter + 1/4 cup cubed for later
4 T. olive oil
2 cups Arborio rice
2/3 cup dry white wine
6 cups vegetable stock
2 cups finely chopped kale
1 cup parm. cheese
salt and pepper to taste


Melt butter and olive oil in large heavy pan.  Add shallots, saute until translucent (I also used 3 cloves of garlic).  Add rice, stir for 1-2 minutes until it's coated in oil.  Add wine, stir until almost absorbed.  Add stock 1 ladle at a time.  Stir until all liquid is absorbed.  Add kale, parm. cheese, and butter cubes.  Stir until butter is melted and all ingredients are incorporated.

Spinach Lasagna

Finally, it is cool enough to make some fall/wintery foods - soups, chili and lasagna.  I bought some spinach from the farmer's market and was ready to go.  So here is how it all ended up.


Spinach Lasagna


Olive oil
2 c. chopped onion
3 minced garlic 
1 bag of fresh spinach (more if you have it)
1/3 c. flour
1/2 t salt
1/4 t pepper
1 jar of tomato sauce (whatever your favorite is, I threw in some garlic, fresh tomatoes and some basil and of course a splash or two of wine and cooked it a bit with a great bay leaf)
12 lasagna noodles (for some reason my Whole Foods did not have the wheat ones that I prefer so I used regular)
2 c. shredded moz


1.  Put the water on for the lasagna noodles and cook them while you are doing the following.


2.  Saute onions until brown for about 8 min.  Add spinach and garlic. Cover and cook for a couple of minutes.

3.  Whisk together flour milk salt and pepper in a pan (I also added a few red pepper flakes).  Bring this mixture to a boil stirring frequently then reduce heat and cook one more minute.  Add 2/3 of the mixture (saving about a cup to put over lasagna later) to the spinach mixture.


4.  Time to put it all together.  Hopefully your noodles are done by now. throw a bit of tomato sauce on the bottom of the greased 13 by 9 pan, then the first layer of noodles.  Next half of spinach mixture, noodles, 1 c. tomato sauce and some moz cheese, noodles, rest of the spinach, then last layer of noodles.  Now the rest of the tomato sauce, the reserved milk mixture, and some more moz.  Bake 375 for 45 to 50 minutes.  Yummy.   


Get a fresh baguette from Rue Cler (after 2pm everyday) and heat it up.  You are set now.  Even better the next day of course.


Also, this takes a lot of pans.  Try to arrange for someone else to do the dishes for sure.

video class - home project - music

check out my class project on home:

Dino Crawl in Downtown Durham

For my friend Matt's Birthday, we decided to do a walking, eating and drinking exploration of downtown Durham on a Friday night. The weather was perfect and all the places we went were within a half mile (see below and link google map). I highly recommend getting to know downtown Durham. We tracked our dino crawl with a small card (above) that we filled out with dino pencils about the quantity of beverages (witnessed, of course, not that I don't trust ya) and about our good time (people were creative here). Here are the links to the places we went to. And yes, we did have designated drivers, of course.

Started off at Bull McCabes for dinner at 6pm, then Whiskey (new bar, had $3 drafts of good beer), Dos Perros (new restaurant closes at 10:30 but looking to open for late night later), Revolution (white leather bar stools and great mixed drinks), Pinhook (to catch some live music), then to West End Wine Bar (at West Village, they had some delicious chocolate covered potato chips). A couple of people hit the Federal earlier in the day.

We saw Durham's finest on Bicycles throughout the evening and it was great running into friends as we walked around. There are plenty of places to go. I have to say even with a bunch of people, we had great service from all the places. Sitting outside was great since the weather was nice at Whiskey and West End Wine Bar.

Let me know of suggestions for our next time out....




View matt b-day in a larger map