Showing posts with label holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holiday. Show all posts

Sep 17, 2007

Rosh Hashanah

It was my 3rd Rosh Hashanah, and our goal this year was to be a little traditional, here and there. Brisket. Rugelach. OK, that's the extent of our tradition, and even those two things were bent a little. He made the brisket with a really wonderful barbecue-based sauce chunky with onion. Some eggy noodles and a green salad, and we were happy.

M chopping onions (so cute in this photo,
I put it in the sidebar too!),
while he seared the gorgeous brisket.
Sauteeing the onions until they're buttery and have just the right bite.
Hours later, slice the brisket until
it's all done. Warm it in the sauce (how-to not shown here, sorry!).
The brisket, slathered in oniony rich sauce.
Egg noodles swirling around in extra sauce.

And I made the rugelach -- since I'd never done it before, and since I felt kind of lazy, how could I not fall for this "lazy rugelach" on alpineberry. The recipe is great, so make it yourself! Toasted walnuts and bits of semi-sweet chocolate, along with sugars and cinnamon in the middle. We ate ours too quickly to take a picture, so I'll put hers here:


I didn't know anything about making rugelach so I read a lot of recipes -- all have a dough of flour, cream cheese, and butter (different proportions, but those are the standard main ingredients). You can put anything you like in these little cookies. M and A have eaten rugelach before and said this version is so much better than the traditional shape; maybe it's the specifics of this recipe, or maybe it's something about this particular shape, but this is a new favorite. SO good.

Happy new year!

Nov 24, 2006

Magret, fennel, and mashed potatoes

Our Thanksgiving feast, a day late thanks to our general malaise
(or was it ennui?) on Thursday. The star attraction:

The Moulard duck is a hybrid cross of female Pekin and a male Muscovy duck. The duck is corn fed several times daily in the three weeks before processing. The breast, called magret, is aged seven days on the bone to provide a red, meaty flesh. It is so big that it's sometimes referred to as a duck steak.

Then, our duck breasts with the fennel ready to roll:
And the potatoes simmering before mashing:

And here we go......

Fennel

Mashed potatoes with garlic and parsley

Our very luscious dinner. The sauce on the duck was a reduction
of red wine, orange juice, and chicken broth.