Mincemeat

Some people like sausage, some like scrapple, those often delicious, often intimidating mixtures of unidentifiable ingredients where you're probably better off not knowing exactly what you're eating.  I love mincemeat, which in England just means (hamburger) but in the US means a sweet melange that is most often found in pies.

When I was a kid I remember mince pie as standard fare (i.e. you could buy it at the store if you didn't feel like baking) although maybe my memory is wrong.  Today it seems to be an exotic relic prepared and eaten only by aficionados.  Of which I am one.

I hadn't baked a mince pie in many years for one reason or another -- too rich, too many desserts on the menu already, people wanted pumpkin, etc.  But as I was taking requests for Thanksgiving dinner my son mentioned mince pie and that seemed like a wonderful idea.  My husband, who loves to poke around in the back of cupboards and remind me of all the goodies I bought ten years ago and haven't served yet, found not one but two little boxes of mincemeat and delivered them with a flourish.  "These are probably so old we can't eat them any more," he announced, in terms that were guaranteed to make me take up the challenge.

So how old were they?  I don't know.  They looked a little beat-up, as might be expected from having been in the back of the cupboard for a decade.  They didn't use the nutritional labeling format we're familiar with now, so several years at the very least.  I know they were less than 18 years old, because the label said copyright 1992.   But I thought mincemeat is probably similar to fruitcake (which I also love) in that its mystery ingredients probably include some industrial-strength preservative.  I forged ahead. 



The Thanksgiving pie was wonderful, and nobody died from old age or botulism, so yesterday I pulled out the second box of mincemeat and made another pie for Christmas.

If you didn't love mincemeat in advance, you would never proceed past the opened box (much like the old story marveling about the first person to eat an oyster).  It reveals a cellophane-wrapped brick of dark brown composite that smells glorious but resists arrest. 

I don't recall the texture of a fresh box of mincemeat, but the texture of my box was dense and a bit sticky.  The package said to "finely crumble" the stuff but I used a fork and plenty of elbow grease to break it into bits, then added water and brought it to a boil.

You could make a pie with just mincemeat (although that would require more than the single package I had left) but I have always added apples to cut the richness just a bit.  This pie required two big apples to fill it snugly.  I didn't bother mixing, just layered the apples and mincemeat.

Now comes the part where I channel my grandmothers -- the official way to trim piecrusts is to heft the pie in your left hand and wield the knife with your right, cutting downward as you twirl the pie around.  Yesterday I opted to seal the crusts by pressing them together with the tines of a fork, but meanwhile I was watching the movie of my grandmother pinching the crust into raised zigzags with her elegant fingertips.  And finally you must cut a flowing tree shape into the top crust so the steam, and a bit of juice, can escape.

I had a tiny sliver of pie last night, which along with the sliver I ate at Thanksgiving constitute the only desserts I have eaten in almost two years.  They were both worth the wait!!

Merry Christmas to everyone -- may your goose be fat, your pudding full of plums and your mincemeat pies delicious, now and in the new year.

My other favorite homemade condiment

My husband loves really hot mustard, hotter than he has ever been able to find in a store. Fortunately it’s easy to make our own – and wow, it’s really hot!

Start by buying “Regular Canadian Mustard Powder (medium)” from Penzey’s.  Or you may be able to get Colman's Mustard powder at your supermarket, which is almost as hot as Penzey's.  For ordinary hot mustard you could reconstitute this with vinegar, wine or water. But that’s not hot enough for Ken, so we reconstitute it with a concoction we call hot vinegar.

Hot vinegar is made not on the stove but by putting hot peppers into a glass jar and covering them with plain white vinegar, then putting them on a dark shelf at room temperature. A couple of weeks (or years) later the vinegar has become infused with lots of pepper heat. After you pour off some for a batch of mustard, add more plain vinegar; you may be able to keep the same peppers producing heat for several batches.

To make the mustard, put powder in a pint mason jar to fill it a little more than halfway. Pour in hot vinegar (hot refers only to the flavor; do this at room temperature) and stir it, adding more vinegar as the powder dissolves to a paste. It’s important to get all the powder incorporated into a uniform slurry and not lurking in dry pockets at the bottom of the jar. Lift the jar and peek at the bottom to make sure there are no dry areas; you can use a chopstick to get into the corners and mix everything.  I think from this photo that I have one of these pockets at the bottom of my jar, and I will go stir it up right now.

Reconstituted mustard will thicken up as it sits in the fridge after mixing, so you want the slurry to be more liquid than the finished mustard. If it gets too thick, stir in a little more vinegar or white wine. I haven’t tried this, but if you’re a fan of sweet mustard you could stir in some honey or brown sugar.

Make sure to store the mustard in glass. It’s better to use a plastic cap than a regular metal Mason jar lid, because the mustard fumes will eventually rust the metal.  And make sure you don't rub your eyes until you've scrubbed all the pepper/mustard off your hands.

This much mustard in one bite (the part on the bread, not on the knife) is about as much as I can take without having steam come out my ears. Your mileage may vary.

Sodium in a can -- bean division

Sometimes I think reading the nutrition labels in the grocery -- or worse yet, in your pantry -- is a sure route to depression.  So many foods that seem healthy are full of things you'd rather not eat, and sodium is probably the worst and most ubiquitous.

In fairness, some of that is inherent in the process.  Salt retards the growth of microbes, so adding it to preserved foods is one way to cut spoilage, extend shelf life and maintain quality.  Food scientists call this the "multiple hurdle" strategy -- salt, plus refrigeration, plus chemicals, plus various other techniques or additives each reduce the likelihood of your food going bad.  In addition, salt in the hot liquid required for canning improves the consistency of vegetables.  Unfortunately, food processors tend to use considerably more salt than they strictly need for quality, because they know that salt makes things taste better.

Of course you can always buy the raw ingredients and cook your own, but that certainly removes much of the appeal of having those canned goods on the shelf ready for the last-minute meal.  I have always kept canned beans on my staples list, great for making chili and adding to pasta and soups.  But since I've gotten on my kick of checking sodium content, those beans suddenly look a lot less appetizing.

The good news is that you may be able to find equivalent products with far less sodium.  At the grocery I found that among the canned Great Northern beans, you can buy Bush's Best with 460 mg of sodium or Kroger Private Selection organic with 125 mg.  Among the kidney beans, Kroger has 440 mg, Bush's Best has 260 mg, and Kroger Private Selection organic has 120 mg.

So I'm going to keep buying canned beans, but sorry, Duke, it won't be Bush's Best.  And I'm going to be sure to get rid of the canning liquid.  You can reduce the sodium by 36% if you simply drain the beans, and by an additional 5% if you rinse them for ten seconds in running water.

Meanwhile, we visited our favorite ethnic grocery yesterday and loaded up on Goya dried beans.  (Dried beans, of course, have zero sodium.)  Goya has varieties not found in the ordinary supermarket and the quality is excellent.  I'm particularly enamored of Goya's canellini, which cook up rich and creamy.  The last time I made them, instead of adding a teaspoon of salt, or a tablespoon of Penzey's Galena Street seasoning, as I would normally do when cooking bean soup, I simply added a lot of black pepper and garlic.  At the table we used a pinch of sea salt but a lot less than would have been there in my regular cooking method.  (It may be time to change my regular cooking method!)

Comfort food

Every grandparent worth her salt enters into some kind of conspiracy with the kid that leaves the parents out of the loop.  In my case, it was funny that I had the same conspiracy with both my grandmothers.  I don't remember how it started, but probably one grandmother started it, the other heard about it and thought it was a great idea, and the rest was history.

The conspiracy had to do with sauerkraut.

Both my parents were picky eaters and it turned out that both of them loathed sauerkraut.  I know they both had to eat plenty of it in their good German childhoods, but by the time I came along they had put it behind them with a vengeance, announcing that not only did they not like the stuff, it stank up the house.  So when it transpired that I loved sauerkraut, both my grandmothers were thrilled.  Not only did it give them a way to coddle their little darling, it was a way to figuratively smack their own ingrate children in the face.

The conspiracy would begin when a grandmother knew I was about to visit.  Somebody would have gone down in the cellar and brought up a jar of home-canned kraut, then hidden it under a towel in the kitchen.  The instant my parents left the house, the car not even out of the driveway, the kraut was out of the jar and on the stove, stinking up the house.  If life was really smiling on me, there might be mashed potatoes to go with it.

Since then, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes have been my ultimate comfort food.  For 18 years, my office was across the street from an old-style cafeteria, which had been in the basement of a downtown office building since 1920 or thereabouts.  All the ladies who served the food had also been there since 1920, I think, as had the tables, the chairs, the dishes and the little board with the white plastic letters spelling out the daily specials.  Nor had the menu changed since 1920 -- lots of vegetables, old-fashioned meat, three or four kinds of homemade pie, and mashed potatoes every day.

And at least once a week, maybe twice, there was sauerkraut.  Sometimes it came with pork roast, in which case I was in heaven.  Other times it came with sausage, in which case I just ordered the kraut and mashed potatoes.  How many lousy, rotten days at the office were made a whole lot better with that for lunch? 

These days, I've retired from that job and the cafeteria has closed.  When I need comfort food I have to make it myself.  And Dad was right, it sure stinks up the house.

Sorry, Mom doesn't approve

As a mom myself, I am always alert to advertisements that take my name in vain.  Such as the flyer we got in the mail last week from McDonald's, announcing that "Mom Would Approve" the breakfast sandwiches pictured, and pushed with coupons on the back of the flyer.

Well, not this mom. 

I don't want my kids or anybody else eating a sausage biscuit with egg, 500 calories, 58% of them from fat, and 1080 mg of sodium (that's more than 2/3 of the daily maximum for healthy diets).  Or a sausage McMuffin with egg, 450 calories, 53% of them from fat, and 930 mg of sodium.  Or a sausage egg and cheese McGriddle, 560 calories, 50% of them from fat, and 1290 mg of sodium.

What surprised me on my calculator-armed visit to the McDonald's nutrition website was that the huge sodium dose from those two breakfasts does not come from the sausage patty, which I would have expected from highly seasoned cured meat.  That has only 310 mg of sodium -- but the biscuit alone has 680!  The egg McMuffin has 850 mg of sodium, while adding sausage adds only 80 mg more.

Suppose you need a sugar jolt in the morning and order a deluxe warm cinnamon roll.  That gives you 590 calories, but only 36% of them come from fat.  Does that make you feel healthy?  It shouldn't, because that roll contains 36 grams of sugar -- almost as much as a 12-ounce can of industrial-strength Coke.  (And how many of those cinnamon roll eaters are washing them down with a large industrial-strength Coke?)

You can hit the junk food trifecta -- fat, sugar and sodium -- by ordering hotcakes and sausage.  Even without your Coke chaser, that will deliver 770 calories, 39% of them from fat, 930 mg of sodium and 45 grams of sugar.

Maybe you'd like a McCafe hot chocolate, featured in the coupons, with your sausage biscuit.  If you order the large, it'll bring 460 calories, 35% of them from fat, and 54 grams of sugar. 

In the name of moms everywhere, I take offense at being used to endorse breakfasts that are tasty, convenient, cheap, and a one-way ticket to a cardiac bypass, if diabetes doesn't get you first.  But it isn't just McDonald's that wants us to do the wrong thing.  Our whole food system socializes us to want fats and sweets for breakfast -- and has even brainwashed us into thinking that's a nutritious way to start the day.

I've been thinking a lot lately about breakfast, and what we really should be eating for good nutrition.  Not sure I have the answer yet, but I know it isn't McGriddles breakfast sandwiches.

Vegetables in the news

You can often find the same subject on page one and the op-ed page of the New York Times on the same day, provided it's an important one like war, terrorism, financial crisis or politics.  But you don't often find it when the subject is a vegetable.

In today's newspaper, however, sweet potatoes hit the daily double.  On the front page, we learn that we're having a record harvest this year in the US, that sweet potatoes are being served at White House state dinners and appearing on 40% more restaurant menus than last year.  The bad news is that the engine of growth is the sweet potato fry, perhaps tying with sweet-potato-marshmallow casserole and sweet-potato pie for least nutritious preparation of a fabulously nutritious vegetable.

But the good news is that even if you fry it, the sweet potato is strong medicine for what ails you.  They're great for diabetics because they contain complex carbohydrates that don't raise blood sugar the way refined sugars and grains do.  And they're great for nutrition in general, rich in vitamins A and C, beta carotene and fiber. 

roasted sweet potatoes, with a little paprika sprinkled on for pep

The Center for Science in the Public Interest rated all vegetables on a complicated scale where points were awarded for vitamins and other good nutrients and deducted for fat, sodium, sugars and other bad nutrients.  The sweet potato scored 184, with nothing else within 100 points of it!  (The next three were white potato, spinach and kale.)  If you like to count calories, say about 130 for a medium baked sweet potato.

What I like about sweet potatoes is that unlike white potatoes, I'm delighted to eat them absolutely plain -- no butter, no salt, no gravy necessary.  I usually just bake them about an hour in a 400-degree oven, alone or alongside the chicken breasts.  They're also great cut into chunks, tossed with a little olive oil and roasted at 425 degrees for maybe a half hour.  Roasted vegetables, of course, can include both kinds of potatoes, winter squash, beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, broccoli, cauliflower, onion and garlic, especially nice for a crowd, as everybody can choose what they like and leave behind what they don't.

On the op-ed page of the Times, we learn that plant scientists are developing new varieties of sweet potatoes to be grown in Africa, providing far more nutrients than the indigenous sweet potato, popular but vitamin-poor.  Some think that the sweet potato may be a key to overcoming malnutrition on that struggling continent.

So on this Thanksgiving night, I'm thankful for sweet potatoes and resolve to serve them more often.  Not only are they nutritious, they're beautiful, vanquishing the all-white meal in a millisecond.

Good gravy!

I am amused to see, in antique stores or the back of other people's kitchen cabinets, gravy boats that might hold two cups, overflowing.  In my family the official gravy container is our cat pitcher, a wedding present, that will hold eight and a half cups if it really has to, and isn't at all happy with less than five or six.

Many people besides those in my family, I suspect, love gravy but may be intimidated by making it.  If you're one of them, listen up.  Making good gravy does get a lot of dishes dirty, but it's not difficult.

The starting place, of course, is the roasting pan in which you have made a turkey.  The more good brown drippings in the bottom, the better your gravy will be, so I put the turkey neck, extracted from the top cavity, onto the rack alongside the bird for even more juice.  When the turkey is finished, remove it from the oven, remove it from the pan, set it aside (wrapped in foil and towels to keep warm, or turned over to your helper for carving) and take the pan back to the stove.

Put a cup or so of hot water into the pan and scrape all the browned bits free.  I use a plastic spoon with a straight edge for good leverage.  Don't worry about the strange congealed globs of unappetizing mystery protein; stir them in too.  They will give up their good essence but bow out long before showtime.  If the browned bits seem to be resisting arrest, you may want to put the pan over a burner and heat it up a little to speed the process, or add more water. 

Eventually, when the pan is clean, decant the liquid through a sieve into a clean pitcher or bowl.  Press all the liquid out of the debris in the sieve, then pitch the debris.  You're left with a pitcher of brown turkey juice, with fat beginning to rise to the top. 

Contemplate how much liquid you have in the pitcher, compared to how much gravy you would like to end up with.  There's almost certainly not enough, so add more.  You could add chicken or vegetable broth from a can, or even plain water, but my favorite additive is found in the back of my fridge, the little mason jars of juices from baked chickens of the past.

Every time I fix a couple of chicken breasts in the oven, I deglaze the baking pan with hot water and scrape up all the good brown bits, just as described above.  Again, I strain the juices through a sieve into a mason jar and stash it in the refrigerator.  Usually the juice gets used within the next week to moisten pasta or risotto, or to add to a soup.  But as a turkey holiday approaches, I save it to add to my gravy.

Yesterday I had three little jars of chicken juice saved up, which went into the pitcher.  I ended up with six cups of juice.

A general rule of thumb is that one tablespoon of flour and one tablespoon of fat will thicken one cup of meat juice.  Keep that same ratio of flour and fat, but add more or less meat juice to make a thinner or thicker gravy. 

In a time-free world, you could stick your pitcher of turkey juice in the refrigerator, come back three hours later, lift the risen and congealed fat off the top, measure six tablespoons and discard the rest.  But in the real world, the turkey is waiting on the counter, the guests are going wild with the delicious smells, and you need to get that gravy going NOW.  So you don't have time to let the fat and juice separate themselves for accurate measurement.  Not to worry.  This is home cooking, not a cookbook testing laboratory.

Spoon off several tablespoons of liquid from the top layer of the pitcher, capturing as much fat and as little juice as possible.  Put it in a clean saucepan, large enough to hold all the liquid in your pitcher.  Add as many tablespoons of flour as you have cups of liquid, more or less.  Do not agonize; you can always add more flour later if you need to.

Cook the flour and the fat a few minutes over medium/high heat to make a roux.  Stir with a whisk.  This is a stage when you must devote your full attention to the gravy, so have your helpers do other tasks if needed. 

Then you can turn down the heat to medium and start to incorporate a little more liquid, whisking hard.  After all the lumps have been stirred down into a smooth soup, you can add the rest of the liquid from your pitcher, in two batches.  Keep whisking -- lumpy gravy is a cliche that you want to avoid.

After a couple of minutes, when the gravy has gotten hot again and is starting to bubble, you can stop whisking long enough to taste (probably needs a touch of salt) and to gauge the texture.  If it's too thick, add a little hot water.  If it's too thin, you'll need a little more flour. 

Here's how to do that without getting lumps.  Pull a half-cup or so of the gravy out of your pan and put it back into your empty pitcher.  Add another tablespoon of flour and whisk till it's smooth and totally incorporated.  Then pour back into the pan and whisk it in.  Whisk some more on general principles, making sure no colonies of thick gravy have collected in the corners of the pan.  Then decant into your serving boat or pitcher. 

If you haven't managed to delegate last-minute tasks like mashing the potatoes, cap the gravy pitcher with foil and cover with towels, or stick it back in the oven if the heat has been off a while.  It will stay warm while you finish your cooking and serving.

Finally, pour gravy over everything in sight!  Somehow, I missed the meat before I took this picture, but remedied the situation immediately with another ladleful.  There was plenty to go around.