Maggie's Farm

I learned about Poutine from NRO.

Best food in the world? I would need convincing. The freshness of the curd seems to be key.

This makes the best cornbread I've ever had - and I have had plenty of cornbread. I'll never bother with another brand. What makes it special is the sort of corn meal they use: coarse-ground with corn hunks so it comes out chewy but with a crunchy crust.

They sell it at Costco. Also, I was surprised to see, at Amazon. Try it.

Maple sap begins to flow when there are sufficient daily temperature swings between below and above freezing. That tends to be towards late February-early March in New England, depending on latitude and the weather. Curiously, Sugar Maple sap does not just flow up from the roots - it flows both downwards from the branches and up the trunk, depending on the time of day and the whim of the tree.

• About the tree: Click here: Sugar Maple


• Sap flow: Click here: How to Explain Sap Flow


• Grading - Many of of us like the intensity and gnarliness of the lower grades , but you won't find them  in supermarkets. They are easy to find in Maple sugar country, though.  Click here: Maple Syrup Grades


• FAQs: Click here: Massachusetts Maple Producers Association


• $ - We pay retail in the $20s/gallon, but the farmers get between $2-$3/gallon, usually. More in a "bad" year.


• When it looks like it has gone bad, it hasn't. Give it a light boil, skim it, and it's fine. Better yet, use it before any mold grows on the surface.


• Besides on waffles, French Toast, and pancakes, what can you do with it?

- Put it on oatmeal like the Pilgrims did.
- Pour some into winter squash halves with a pat of butter and bake, like my Indian ancestors probably did.
- Drizzle some over fresh-fallen snow. Instant Maple popsicles with the power to pull out all of your fillings and crowns.
- Drizzle some over Pumpkin Pie. Wow. Tom taught us that.
- Drizzle it over salmon before baking

Butternut squash, halved lengthwise and a wide shallow groove cut out of the pithy part, with butter, maple syrup, salt and pepper. Brown sugar would substitute for maple syrup. Good simple Yankee food. I would happily eat all of them. If one is not being proper, a spoon works well.

A friend was thoughtful enough to give us a year's subscription to Zagat's online for Christmas. Zagat's has gone global now.

A (free) alternative to Zagat's is Yelp. Pick your city. I have been warned, however, that a 3-star rating on Yelp in NYC is equivalent to a 5-star rating elsewhere. New Yorkers are highly critical and demanding about dining - and about everything else. "If I can make it there..."

For example, we were in the city this weekend at the Irish Repertory Theater and were looking for Venetian restaurants in the neighborhood. We tried Le Zie in Chelsea on 7th Ave. Not pricey. Zie had some rough reviews on Yelp (people love to bitch in reviews) but the place was better than any neighborhood trattoria in Italy. The ten "small plate" seafood appetizers were wonderful, and the Venetian calf's liver with onions and vinegar sauce was a fine treat.

It was fun checking out Zagat for Venetian restaurants in NYC. Here are a few of them, for your amusement.

The menus give a good idea of what Venetian cooking consists of:

Cipriani

Osteria al Doge

Antica Venezia

Osteria Laguna

REMI

All good fun. Here's inside Le Zie:

I visited Venice for a few days many years ago, and do not feel driven to return - it's a giant tourist trap with a pickpocket team on every block - except that I wouldn't mind catching the Venice Regatta in August:

On further thought, I wouldn't mind getting a little more experience with Venetian cooking. All I know about it is Risi e Bisi, which doesn't look like much but which is killer delicious when Mrs. BD makes it.

Here's When I Paint My Masterpiece live with The Band in 1971:

This is an annual re-post.

With hunting season coming to a close, it's time to get cooking what we have in the freezer. It all begins with the sauce:

Uncle Bill's Jus de Gibier (mixed game) sauce, aka Brown Game Stock, aka Clean out the Freezer Sauce

This will be the tastiest sauce base, or sauce, you have ever had in your life, for chicken, game birds, turkey, venison, pork, veal, pasta, ravioli, etc. It's an ideal base for pheasant, chicken, venison or goose bourguignon. It has an earthy richness to it which is remarkable. We like to make a woodcock ravioli with black truffle, and this sauce is essential for that.

Gibier refers to mixed game, but we do it with mixed meat too, but not beef, which would overpower the subtler flavors. It is the best use of freezer-burned game and other stuff in the freezer. It's fun to make (but it takes a while), and you can clean out the freezer and the fridge at the same time. I freeze the used carcasses of Thanksgiving turkey, ducks, goose, random deer bones, etc. to use when I make this, once or twice a year, along with freezer-burned chicken, pheasant, etc. You could do this with entirely store-bought stuff if you lack a hunter in the family. The more stuff, the better.

You need a 10-12 (or larger) quart stovepot to make this, if you have a lot of stuff to use, but it freezes fine when made. It's good for a few months, at least.

Bake in oven until browned (not necessarily cooked-though) your saved carcasses and freezer-burned game meat and meat, especially pork and pork bones are good, and veal bones, (even if they have already been cooked). Yes, you bake the bones too. Do not burn them in the oven. I tend to use freezer-burned venison, pork chops, all my game bird carcasses, venison bones (cracked with a mallet), a bunch of veal bones and veal scraps if I can get them nowadays (it doesn't hurt to hit up the butcher for some stuff for this), turkey carcass, woodcock carcasses, and a pile of chicken wings. Chop this stuff roughly with a cleaver into 3-6" chunks and toss in the pot. Try to crack the bones.

As I was considering some dinner plans, naturally the idea of foie-gras-stuffed quail came to mind.

Quail, around here, are Bob Whites. (Hunters in the South call them "birds," hence the origin of the term bird dog.) Habitat loss and development is the main reason that these Eastern US birds are approaching endangered status in parts of their range. You can read about them here. 

I have heard them calling their name out on Nantucket, Long Island and on Cape Cod, but nowhere inland in New England.

Fortunately, they are readily pen-raised and thus easily available at supermarkets - and for preserve shooters who typically, even in the South, release thousands of pen-raised birds for the pleasure of the sports.

This site has 91 quail recipes.

That's supper for our friend the ex-blogger Hog on Ice (I like that raw sweet onion on the plate) whose book we'd like to plug.

Got any Woodock in the freezer?

The USA is unusual because wild game meat can not be sold in stores. All "game" meat sold in the US is farm-raised, whether venison, quail, pheasant, duck, or whatever.

That is the correct and righteous legacy of the devastating, 12 month/year market hunting of the past which devastated the seemingly endlessly abundant American wildlife populations.

There is no bird as special for the table as Woodcock, but you have to shoot them yourself. One way to do justice to this diminutive bird (smaller than the European Woodcock) is a ravioli dish I learned from my Cordon Bleu chef friend.

Take a few Woodcock, and cut all of the meat off them - breast, thighs, etc. Chop the meat into roughly 1/2" pieces. Throw in a bowl and mix with a bit of sauteed very finely-chopped shallots and carrots, salt, pepper, a bit of fresh thyme and parsley and a little bit of truffle oil.

Take some wonton squares and brush some whisked egg on the edges as glue. Put a teaspoon or two of the mixture inside, then seal the squares tightly to eliminate any air inside, and place carefully into gently boiling water until done. It only takes a few minutes.

Serve the raviolis drizzled with somewhat reduced gibier sauce, with a few shavings of black truffle on top.

Can't be beat.

This is a repost:

We respect and value - with a deep sensitivity to cereal differences - hot breakfast cereals from strange, exotic, far-away cultures like Montana, etc. Here's what we like (besides English muffins):

1. Cream of the West, from Montana
2. Red River, from Manitoba
3. McCann's Oatmeal, from Ireland

Being Yankees, we are also partial to Apple Pie for breakfast (that's what it used to be made for), but you must not buy that at the store - there are some things in life you would never buy.

Readers know that we also love Chipped Beef on toast, but a quarter of an Apple Pie (a multicultural tarte tatin will work, too), two coffees and a couple of smokes will get anyone ready for a cold, rugged day of work in the drafty old office.

This is an annual re-posting.

The global cooling we are experiencing inspired me to consider some truly fine cool-weather all-white breakfast eats which are not easily found in Yankee-land. The good stuff that sticks to your arteries ribs and warms you from the inside.

Creamed chipped beef on toast is the fine old Yankee version of the southland's biscuits 'n gravy. Both have done wonders for warming the hearts and narrowing the arteries of generations of American boys. Add some potatoes and you have the perfect meal for a lumberjack or hunter.

While apple pie is an old-time Yankee breakfast staple, it has been replaced long ago by eggs, toast, and bacon, maybe a chunk of fruit, and preferably home fries with ketchup on them. Not Heinz 57, though - it's not my job to feed John Kerry.

Some people eat cereal for breakfast. Why? Because Dr. John Kellogg, a health-food charlatan in the 1800s, told them to. Zero nutrition. Breakfast cereal is a fraud and a scam, unless it's plain grits or cream of wheat or oatmeal. The crunchy granola stuff? Well, I thought the guy who discovered that you could sell people plain water was a genius, but the people who decided to sell guinea pig food to humans was his creative equal.

(At Maggie's Farm, we are also fond of fish for breakfast, like the Brits. Kippers. Or a lighty sauteed trout someone has caught early, sprinkled with parsley. Or left-over broiled salmon.)

The chipped beef was always a boarding school standard, and half loved it and half barfed to look at it. It does look like vomit, but it's great stuff. It's a gourmet's delight, but nobody makes it anymore.

When I did my time south of the Mason-Dixon, a local favorite was hot dog gravy on biscuits. Grits on the side, of course. Everything white. Not a refined breakfast, just gravy made with supermarket hot dogs instead of sausage. A truly revolting flavor. I prefer my Sabretts on a bun at Yankee Stadium. But other sorts of southern gravy, made with ham or sausage, are just fine. I won't presume to offer a biscuit 'n gravy recipe, because every Southern Mom has her own. Well, here's a Virginia one from someone's Grandma.

Biscuits 'n gravy, and grits. Food for the soul.

Image: New Hampshire chipped beef on English muffins - with home fries. They don't do grits up north (except in Italian homes and restaurants, where they like to call grits "polenta") and it's a damn shame. Good stuff.

Wines for fast food. Prof B

Nutrition and Tradition The Science of Food and the Culture of Cooking

A small Canadian seaside town in New Brunswick has been warned lobsters that wash ashore cannot be eaten because they weren't caught under license.

Whole Foods' John Mackey: Food Fighter

How school lunch programs manage to promote obesity and hunger at the same time.

Photo: Butterflied lamb from the grill. There is nothing better. Lamb must be cooked rare or it isn't worth eating, and the butterflied leg in the photo looks overcooked for my taste. Costco has great butterflied leg of lamb.

Ethnic dining? A bit of England in New York City: Tea & Sympathy.

A BD pupette made home-made pumpkin ravioli last week. Nothing but butter and a little chopped sage on top. Delicious, but one only has to make the home-made ravioli pasta one time, just for the experience. After that, you can use wonton wrappers from the store instead.

Here's Alton on the topic:

Had enuf cookies yet?

Among the host of other Christmas goodies, the BD pupettes produced a couple of dozen Ginger Snaps made with grated fresh ginger. All other Ginger Snaps pale in comparison.

Maggie's Farm is a Stilton cheese place. It's our favorite artery-clogger, although there are hundreds of other cheeses we love too. We also believe that great cheeses should be served after the main course - either instead of dessert or before dessert. (I agree with that article that you can and should eat the rind of cheeses - unless coated with wax or stuff.)

Somebody you know needs a Stilton Spoon. Give them a wheel of cheese to go with it - or what good is the spoon?

I see Williams Sonoma has them. They have the proper spoon, and the cheese too. Who needs bread or crackers? You could eat it right off the spoon like ice cream.

Another not overly safe-for-work idea with diamonds for the gal you love and desire, below the fold -

Long Island duck or duckling, or any farm duck, is not the same thing as wild duck. Farm ducks, which are basically the Chinese Pekin duck, are much larger and fatter than wild duck. Being grain-fed, they are also less gamey in flavor. (The gaminess and fishiness of wild duck, for me, are wonderful and rare treats.)

I am always happy to eat either sort of duck, as long as the meat is red in the middle, the skin is crispy, and there is no darn orange sauce or maraschino cherries anywhere near the food.

I agree with Alton Brown that pan-seared quarters of brined duck is the best way to cook the bird. He steams his first to extract the delicious fat, but that is for fat farm birds. Do not do that with wild duck. When I want duck fat, I buy it at the store. 

Duck is good with sauteed fresh figs or other fruits and a gibier sauce.

Here's Alton cooking a Long Island duck for his Dad. Interesting, and educational:

Being Yankees, we are attached to exotic Indian foods like winter squash, cranberries, corn meal, baked beans (and hot Thai curries).

A friend asked me about squash pie. It's really the same thing as pumpkin pie, but made with winter squash (of which the pumpkin is just one type).

The winter squashes were discovered and genetically-engineered by clever American Indians - as was corn (maize), the potato, and the tomato. Modern Western cuisine owes a lot to the Indian gourmets.

This recipe for Butternut Squash Pie works for any type of winter squash including pumpkin. Squash pies (as in photo) have a more subtle flavor than pumpkin.

For a wonderful but not New Englandy dish, Butternut Squash and Pasta With Sage.

Pumpkin or winter squash ravioli is a fine dish too. We have become convinced, by a Cordon Bleu chef friend, that using supermarket wontons is perfectly fine for making ravioli. We will never bother to make our own homemade ravioli pasta again, because it's too darn much work and it's the inside that counts. (My Woodcock ravioli recipe will be posted one of these days).

I am fond of baked Acorn Squash with some butter and Maple syrup inside, but you can use any winter squash. Simple, and tasty:

From our archives:

Christmas is a traditional feast day (but it was not for true puritan folk like Dutch Reform or Congregationalists, who did not historically care for Christmas), so you are expected to cook something tasty. We have done all of the things: turkey (again), goose, roast beef, crown roast of pork with apple stuffing (real good).

On the other hand, the southern Italians do a cool thing - they do the Christmas Eve fish dinner - because it is a vigilia di magro (fasting, Italian-style).That is darn good. Fried baccala, fried calamari, scungilli, clams, mussels, maybe lobster etc etc. I love the baccala, and those little fried minnows bagiggi - smelt - with lemon that you eat whole like french fries, and clams (if they aren't cooked), but hate those cold seafood salads - dolphin food. In Sicily, the tradition is seven fishes. Serious abstinence: cook a leg of lamb, and you burn in hell for eternity.

But back to Yankee Christmas dinner, and goose.

As regular readers know, we cook our Canada geese with the breast only, marinated and sauteed rare. We confit the legs and thighs.

Store-bought goose tends much smaller (maybe in Dickens' time they had bigger farm geese - if you can find a giant Christmas goose as big as Tiny Tim, great), and has lots more fat on it. In fact, it seems about 50% fat, which oozes out during cooking and fills the pan below. If you want to cook that traditional English bird, you need a few of them. I would say, one per 3-4 people, minimum, if you are using the supermarket birds. (Some might disagree with this.) One bird will not do it, as a turkey does, because once the fat melts off, there isn't much left except bones. The plus side of all of the fat is that they are self-basting.

This is a good approach. Overcooking a goose, at low heat, is not a bad idea. For a roast goose, you may really want the meat falling off the bone, unlike a nice rare breast of wild goose. Goose is, of course, a dark meat like duck (but more coarse in flavor, I think).

Make a tasty sauce out of the drippings, once you have removed the fat. Add a little red wine, maybe a handful of huckleberries or dried cranberries and a bit of sugar, and reduce/thicken.

What to serve with goose? Mainly braised and sauteed roots. Parsnip, carrot, potato, turnip. And how about a rutabaga puree? Or a celeriac (celery root) puree? Maybe a pile of braised, sauteed baby squash, too. Cranberry sauce? You bet.

I made a batch of Gingerbread Men yesterday. Only three are left on the plate.

I guess they ran away. Gingerbread Men are known to do that.

My favorite Christmas cookies are either Ginger cookies, or those plain Christmas cookie-cutter cookies with some sprinkled colored sugar on top, and maybe red-hots for the eyes in the reindeer.

Here's a good basic Ginger cookie recipe.

Here's the plain basic Christmas rolled cookie recipe. They should be thin, I think, and not very sweet. Not soft - crunchy.

A timely annual repost, since I am going for a nice brunch now, after church:

I do not care for vodka in any form other than in a Bloody Mary or its variants, no matter what our team member Opie says about Grey Goose: I think it's just ethanol with a twist. (To me, a vodka Martini is only suited for auto fuel for the sanctimonious feel-gooders.)

At Maggie's Farm, we are feel-gooders of the other variety. While it's not a strictly holiday drink, I seem to only have Bloody Marys around this time of year. Besides Irish Coffee, it's the only drink a proper gent can have before noon without looking like a drunk. (Coors Lite for breakfast doesn't count as alcohol.)

There are about a thousand different Bloody Mary recipes. Here's an interesting one. I used to have our wonderful Connecticut Yankee neighbor William F. Buckley Jr's recipe, which included canned beef broth or consomme and sounded like a complete wholesome meal in a glass - protein, vegetables, roughage (the celery stick) and booze - but I can't find it. (Thanks, reader. You remind me that some folks call that a Bloody Bull, but I'd still like to find his recipe - it has obviously worked well for him.)

The Bloody Caesar (or plain "Caesar"), I learned recently, is the most popular mixed drink in Canada. It must be all that clam broth that makes Canadians so "nice." It could not be more simple, because the magic is in the magical Mott's Clamato. Rimming the glass with some lime and salt is a delicious touch and also wards off the dread Scurvy. I like the Spicy Clamato more than the regular. Here's the history of Clamato - one of Canada's great contributions to civilization, second only to the Labrador Retriever.

On most days, I'd take the Caesar over the Mary or the Bull. We olde Cape Codders cannot get away from that clam broth, which was Mother's milk to us ever since the kind Indians taught our ancestors how to dig the tasty quahogs.

Addendum:  Opie doesn't want our readers to forget the Bloody Maria

A friend and beer afficionado responded to our post about Sam Adams' Winter Classics with this email:

"The best beer available in the USA is Palm. It's the only beer I will drink these days."

I guess I'll have to give it a try, but I don't think my local discount beer dump, which carries about 200 American and imported brands, carries it.

Palm is a Flemish beer. It has only been imported to the US for a year or two. Have you tried it?

Your editor is going off duty until tomorrow. 20 people arriving in a while (all bringing pies or vegetable dishes) - and a few more just for dessert. Here's what we're doing:

One just begun on the grill:

One in the oven, stuffed:

The cranberry sauce:

Squash pies (with heavy cream, spices, and brandy). More Pilgrim-authentic than Pumpkin:

It's the time of year when I stock up on bags of Ocean Spray Cranberries and throw them in the freezer.

The canned cranberry "sauce" pictured is garbage. It's just congealed sweetened cranberry juice.

The recipe on the Ocean Spray bags is pretty good, but I cut the sugar they recommend. It's nothing but water, fresh or frozen berries, and sugar.

Better yet for Thanksgiving, game, and even chicken, is Cranberry-Orange Relish. Raw berries and an orange. Thanks to the mother-in-law for introducing me to this tangy thing years ago.

A great food, the Cranberry. I love to put them in pancakes (the combination of the sweetness of the maple syrup and the tartness of the cranberries is perfect).

Here's our old post on Cranberry Season and the Heart.

Funny thing about Cranberries: not many animals or birds like to eat them. Maybe bears? I've seen Box Turtles take a bite out of one, but I've never seen anything else eat them. I love Cranberries, as long as they aren't cooked too sweet. Here's a tiny Massachusetts Cranberry bog, flooded for harvest:

 Here's how it's done:

We used some of those plastic Cajun Classic meat injectors (image on right) to inject our birds (ducks, turkeys, pheasants, etc: Deep Fry Turkey Day with Red-neck Yankees, aka Les Tres Riche Heures du Bird Dog.

Those plastic injectors are worthless crap. The herbs and spices jam up the injector holes, and the whole thing falls apart after a few birds.

We then made do with a large-apertured medical syringe which one of our medical friends had (which I hope was clean), but this is really the cooking tool that is needed: the stainless steel Bayou Classic with one needle for herb mixtures and another for marinade (photo below).

I am going to buy a couple of those for my cooking buddies. (Update: I did, and got one for myself too. Would be scary to see a nurse approaching you with one of these.) This year, I am going to inject those big SOBs with a mix of sherry and herbs under the skin and deep into the meat.

A repost from last November -

A great hunt this morning at a pal's rod and gun club. Heavy snow flurries and a stiff breeze made things interesting. Had two good Labs working for us today. Had to break the ice in their water tubs. Being Labs, naturally one insisted on climbing into the water tub to play with the floating hunks of ice and was not eager to come out.

Before a late lunch we had some venison sausage and I fixed myself a Clamato Bloody Mary while we cleaned and oiled our weapons. For lunch, they made us rare roast beef with Onion Pie, with a nice Chateau Simard '86 (Simard remains an excellent wine for the price). I do not know whether it was just the effect of a long cold day in the field, but this onion pie was about the tastiest, most savory thing I have ever eaten. The cook made it with a plain white-cracker piecrust and maybe sprinkled cracker crumbs over the top. This pie is to a kiche as a Grizzly Bear is to a Teddy Bear. Rice Pudding for dessert, of course: what else would you serve at an old-fashioned guy's club where women are not allowed?

As my friends know all too well, it's great to have somebody else to drive so I can indulge a post-prandial, post-hunt snoring snooze. I do not know why my friends put up with me.

Prepare unbaked pie shell. Start heating oven to 400 degrees. Saute onions in butter and dump into pie shell. Toss the cheese with flour, sprinkle over onions. Beat eggs well. Stir in milk or cream, salt and pepper. Pour over cheese. Sprinkle crack crumbs on top. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Then reduce oven heat to 300 degrees and bake 25 minutes longer or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Serve hot, in wedges.

That is soul food with a rare roast beef. Might be a good treat for Thanksgiving, too, as an alternative to creamed baby onions (which I love).

Re-posted from last Thanksgiving -

We did one turkey in the oven, stuffed with cornbread stuffing, and the other one on the grill with occasional doses of soaked apple wood chunks and with white wine in the steam water. Both brined 24 hrs before cooking, and each around 18 lbs.

We had plenty of family and friends to eat it all up.

I think people preferred the grilled (no stuffing in the grilled bird).  It was my first time trying grilled turkey. Beginner's luck: It came out perfectly: moist, with a pleasant hint of smokiness. It took around 3 1/2 hrs to cook. Keeping the temp at near 325 involved carefully titrating the number of briquettes and fruitwood chunks to keep the heat low, but to not let the fire go out.

Nice grill, eh? This cast-iron thing weights 500 lbs. I had to assemble the darn thing off a truck, and got most of it right. Except for the wheels, which fell off. Now it takes a few pall-bearers to move it.

This is halfway:

And done:

The puppy seemed equally happy with scraps from the grilled and from the oven-roasted turkey.

In New England, Indian Pudding is as essential a part of Thanksgiving dinner as Pumpkin or Squash Pie.

It's called "Indian" because it is made with corn (maize) meal - the staple food of North American Indians.

Simple rustic ingredients. No sugar? You use molasses. No flour? You use corn meal. The only trick is to make sure it is neither too firm nor too runny. Serve warm.

Here's a bit of the history of this dessert, with a good recipe.

Re-posted and revised, from 2007

It's time to review mincemeat pies. I just bought a bottle of decent French brandy for the purpose.

Regular readers know that the history and the making of mince pies is a favorite winter hobby down at Maggie's Farm. They were once banned in Boston. Made with lard, of course, and preferably venison (I am using local venison shank this year), well-aged with brandy.

Favorite mincemeat pie quote: "Dad, what's a mince?"

Here's a photo one of ours from last Christmastime. I used cranberries in it along with raisins and currants. Serve warm, with vanilla ice cream or hard sauce.

The Englishman recently posted his favorite recipe. It must be well-aged, weeks or a month, but it will work fine with a couple of weeks of aging.

I am in the middle of Conroy's new book, South of Broad, which is set in Charleston.

Being a Yankee, I had no idea what Benne Wafers were. Here's the recipe.

It's nice to know that there are still places in America where ladies routinely have teatime with homemade tea cookies. It is civilized and civilizing, like so many old Southern habits.

Regarding other low-country foods, She-Crab Soup is fine and dandy, but this summer I discovered how much I enjoy Shrimp 'n Grits (and I don't even love shrimp. I like it with the smaller shrimp).

This is my idea of a fine dressing for Mr. Turkey: Foie gras, apple and chestnut.

I have baked some quail with foie gras stuffing (damn good), but never turkey. Time to do it.

I may do a side of oyster stuffing and a side of the foie gras stuffing, but fill the bird itself with the expected chestnut, sausage and cornbread stuffing. Or maybe not.

Anyhow, I have to cook two, so I'll do one on the grill, unstuffed of course.

Our occasional contributor Kondratiev posted this recipe as a comment the other day:

Cooked this one last night using venison backstrap (loin):

Seared Venison Steaks with Baked Pear and Red Wine
Serves: 6

Ingredients
3 bosc pears (1/2 each)
1 small cinnamon stick, broken
5 black peppercorns
½ bottle red wine
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 trimmed 6 oz. venison steaks
Salt and ground black pepper
1 shallot, finely diced
1 tablespoon red currant jelly
2 oz. butter, plus extra for greasing

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter an ovenproof dish. Peel, core and halve the pears. Arrange snugly in the dish, hollow side up. Tuck in the cinnamon and peppercorns, then pour in half the wine. Sprinkle with sugar and dot with butter. Crumple up and wet a sheet of greaseproof paper, then lay it over the dish before covering with foil. Seal tightly and bake for 1 1/2 hours, or until the pears are tender. Turn the pears after the first hour. Keep warm. You will need their liquid for the sauce.

2. Pour the oil into a non-stick frying pan and set over a high heat. Season the steaks and fry for 2-3 minutes on each side for medium-rare. Remove the steaks and keep warm. Reduce the heat and gently fry the shallot before adding all the wine, including that with the pears. Boil vigorously, scraping the pan as you do so, until it has reduced by half. Microwave the jelly and, once it has melted, then stir it in, remove the pan from the heat and quickly whisk in the 2 oz. butter. Strain into a warm sauceboat and serve immediately with venison and warm pears.

I haven't thought about this old-timey Yankee diner dessert for many years, but someone brought it up the other day, and I am now hungry for one.

As I recall, the last time I had a slice of one was at a diner with my grandfather. Cannot think about the pie without remembering that polo- and poker-playing, shootin', fishin' slacker gramps of mine, who preferred shopping for horses, and dealing in sailboats and Elco yachts (leaving his real business to others) to regular work - and who died way too young of a series of MIs, at 63.

Boston Cream Pie is Yankee-simple, unfashionable, unsophisticated, and darn tasty, and it's a cake, not a pie, with potent if short-lasting anti-depressant properties.

You can make it yourself if you can't find it in stores. Easy to do.

Every once in a while I get a hankering for a good rare steak. My preference is for Ribeyes (sauteed rare in butter, at max heat, with red peppers) and grilled T-bones.

The best T-bone I think I have ever had was in the steakhouse on the ship last month. Grilled perfectly, of course: burnt on the outside but still trying to walk away on the inside. The chef told us it was a Sterling Silver steak.

I can recommend their meat to you (and I have eaten in plenty of the great NYC steakhouses).

Saddest thing is that I couldn't eat the whole thing. It's a thick steak, full of tasty fat. I have deliberately shunk my stomach by eating small to try to avoid the middle-aged fat thing.

The good Balsamic Vinegar comes from Modena (home of Ferrari, Maserati, and Lamborghini), where they have been making it for a thousand years.

It's called "balsamic" because it was thought to be a good balsam, or balm, for pain and disease. Our North American Balsam Fir was thought to be good for diseases too. The Romans viewed vinegar as a balm and a medicine - hence the Roman soldier kindly offering Jesus vinegar on the cross.

They make it from boiled-down Trebbiano grape juice. Balsamic Vinegar is not a wine vinegar.

The aging process seems to be key. As the volume shrinks over time and the vinegar becomes more syrupy, it is moved into smaller and smaller wood casks made of different woods until ready. Juniper is the final cask. 15 and 25 year-old Italian Balsamic Vinegars are readily available, and there are 100 year-old ones. The 15 year-old one in the photo is $70/bottle. Unlike a bottle of wine of that price, however, you only have to use a few drops at a time.

Northern Italians would never touch our supermarket stuff, nor would any really good American restaurant. But if a Chef isn't a food snob, you might as well eat at home.

The old story Marcella Hazan relates is about the old Northern Italian guy who ran down to the cellar when the Americans began bombing. Then he remembered, and ran up to the room where his small casks of very old Balsamic were stored and rushed them down to the cellar. Then he realized that he had forgotten one more thing: His wife.

Ever tried a good Balsamic on strawberries? It's a classic dessert. It's equally good on fresh fig halves with a touch of honey or sugar. Just make sure you use the good stuff.

Candied mint leaves. I made a bunch of these old-fashioned treats last weekend.

Since my mint patch (Kentucky Mint, of course) has grown like crazy, it's fun to thin it out while making a fine treat. If you like mint flavor, these are great to decorate ice cream, fruit cup, a bowl of berries, melon, or whatever. In the old days, they were passed around as an after-dinner mint: the original "mint".

All you do is cut off some mint leaves (or tips of stems -even better), brush them with well-beaten egg white, press them into granulated sugar, and let them dry for 6-24 hours on wax or parchment paper. They will last a couple of days. When they dry enough, they are a bit crunchy.

Delicious. You can do the same thing with violet flowers in the springtime.

Students of Italian cooking know that you do not put sauce on top of pasta. You put the pasta into the sauce in the saucepan, and stir to lightly coat and warm up the pasta. And any casual student also knows that you should never serve that bright red, heartburn American "marinara" crap on anything (except in Napoli). That stuff, which we Americans all eat sometimes, is only really fit for pizza topping (but I eat it too if there's nothing else around. That's why God made Tums.). In Rome, I am reminded, 2/3 of pizzas have no tomato sauce.

My favorite Italian foods have no tomato sauce anywhere near them.

Furthermore, a pasta is only il primi. Pasta is not an Italian meal - but it can be a stand-alone snack. My favorite pasta snack is a Puttanesca (Whore's Sauce) - or maybe it's pasta with the Magic Italian Triad: sauteed chopped garlic in oil, and a lot of chopped fresh Italian parsley on top - plus plenty of salt and pepper. (I only use spaghettini - or angel-hair pasta for watery sauces. I hate the regular thick spaghetti, but that might just be me.) I don't object to a white clam sauce either, if it's made with fresh Cape Cod clams and angel hair pasta.

When it comes to tomatos and sauce, I had two such things in Italy this summer: an al tomate sauce with fish in Capri (small halved fresh tomatoes in a light oil, herb, wine and butter sauce, with some capers), and an excellent Bolognese sauce at a restaurant in the high hills outside Lucca.

(Another secret to Italian cooking is that you serve separate courses. They never serve a plate with veggies, meat, pasta, etc. It's all separate, so you can taste it and appreciate the flavors - and so the cook can make each thing special, including a salad course like the spinach sauteed with garlic and oil and a bit of chopped pancetta.)

Thus I lied when I said we never touched a pasta in Italy. I don't know how I forgot about the fine lunch at Fattoria Villa Maionchi up in the hills outside Lucca (they have a few rooms to rent, too). This farmhouse restaurant made a wonderful Bolognese for which the close recipe is below the fold. The entrance to the place had appreciative signed photos of every famous Italian opera star you can imagine, including Pavarotti and Scotto.

They make their own wines and their own olive oil from their own vineyards and orchards on the farm. Here's the entrance to the place:

Recipe and more photos below -

I like sitting in European cafes, sipping a cafe or a beer, maybe having a smoke, and watching the world go by. I also like running around trying to see everything noteworthy, but as I get older I appreciate just soaking up the atmosphere and the feel of a place.

I have seen, and prayed in, more medieval cathedrals than my brain can ever absorb, and I do not do shopping.

A re-post from our archives -

The Bird Dog family enjoys providing coffee hour at church. It's a gratifying ministry because it promotes fellowship. The more goodies you provide, the more fellowship you nurture, and the longer folks stick around and get to know eachother.

If a church is a manifestation of the living body of Christ, you can't have loose body parts all over the place: a congregation needs to congregate, in small groups and in large. Other churches in the area have copied our tradition of providing more than coffee and a pitiful bowl of goldfish crackers. We do brunch, essentially. Here is what we brought today:

Bagels and cream cheese; red and white grapes; plain pound cake, sesame pound cake, walnut pound cake; Vermont cheddar, brie, and Roquefort cheese and crackers; blanched carrots, broccoli, sugar snap peas and string beans with blue cheese dip; strawberries with sugar to dip them into (no matter how many you bring, they will disappear fast - the kids go for them like piranhas); cheese "Danish" pastries, tortilla chips with that excellent Costco salsa and Costco guacamole; corn muffins, chocolate chip muffins and blueberry muffins; croissants. Coffee, cider, and orange juice. I forgot to bring the sliced red peppers for the vegetable dip, and forgot the strawberry jam for the corn muffins.

I was surprised by how the blue cheese disappeared first today, and I brought a huge hunk. We don't bring doughnuts anymore because the little kids stuff themselves with them and the fussy parents don't seem thrilled with that. Next time, I think we'll bring a spiral-cut ham with honey mustard, and slice up a mountain of baguettes. This would be good with a ton of sliced melons. (Too bad we don't do wine and beer too - people would never go home.)