After getting all my Santas settled in their correct places, we moved on to Hanukkah tonight. John made some incredibly delicious latkes which were thoroughly enjoyed by us and by our next door neighbors. Indeed, the wafting smell of grease and frying potatoes probably had the whole vicinity wishing that had latkes tonight. Happy Hanukkah!!
John’s recipe for Potato Latkes
(This is best done outdoors due to the lingering smell of grease and slickness of the floor after frying in the house.)
Ingredients:
5 medium russet potatoes
1/2 medium onion
1 tbs table salt
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 tbs olive oil
2 tbs flour or matzoh meal
1 tsp baking soda
Lots of vegetable oil for frying
1/4 cup olive oil for frying
Important power tools are electric fryer (I use an electric wok) and food processor with coarse shredding disc.
Tonight I try to make an Ethiopian dinner much like we have at Zeni’s in San Jose. There is not a single person in our household who does not preface Zeni’s with mmmmm…Zeni’s!
I think my atakilt which is cabbage, potatoes, and carrots in an aromatic blend of spices is pretty good. Tonight I also made misr wat, spiced lentils. But one of the best things about Ethiopian food is that it is served on a platter lined with injera, their bread made from the ancient grain, teff.
I try making a faux injera with AP flour, rye flour, club soda and vinegar. Sarah and I try making it as a crepe but it doesn’t work out. Then we try baking it in a thin layer in the oven. It still comes out after 45 minutes tasting weird and not thoroughly cooked.
I think my Ethiopian-at-home adventure is over. The next time I want authentic flavored I will go to Zeni’s. Mmmmm….Zeni’s.
Mary: Much like last trip, John will be helping with the blogging. I feel like a juggler with three blog balls up in the air. I am so glad that John is keeping Today’s Worry from dropping. If you are interested, there are also posts up today on The Adventures of Clark and Lewis and Dining Lite.
John: Departure day.. We awake at 4 AM, shower, finish our last-minute packing and run through our checklist many times before our friend George picks us up just before 6 AM. We have left some extra time to allow for traffic. There is no traffic, only darkness. We check in, rather on the early side and head to the Admiral’s Club for a pre-breakfast breakfast bagel. Lewis peruses the menu
Mary: Today we seem to have a lot of pictures of Clark and Lewis and not too many of us or sights. This is probably because we look like zombies after the long flights and we really haven’t seen much except the inside of airports, the car and the hotel.
John: The flight to JFK is uneventful and gets in ahead of schedule. Mary even has a sleep. We settle down in the JFK Admiral’s Club and have some wine and munchies. Clark and Lewis enjoy the whole experience. Yay, for snacks!
John: Next, on to Rome! The flight is good; we both get some sleep (a miracle). We land on time, breeze through immigration (no passport stamp, though), baggage claim, customs, and car rental. We’re on our way in record time.
We had landed in a light drizzle. As we drive south on the A1, the rain gets heavier. A few kilometers before we are to get off the autostrada, traffic stops. It appears that a truck has jackknifed across the road and cars can get by only on the right shoulder. This costs us about 20 minutes. Lots of emergency vehicles. We hope the truck driver is OK. The big backup
John looks tired
John: We finally arrive at our hotel, the UNA Il Mulino, in Benevento. It’s in a converted mill complex, very new. Our room is large with plenty of closet space space and a fine enclosed shower. The staff are incredibly friendly and helpful.
Mary: I am very impressed with the hotel. Our room is enormous. This is just a one night stop so I wasn’t trying for anything too exciting just clean and not too expensive. Clark and Lewis are ready for bed
John: We have dinner at the hotel restaurant, Le Macine. We really do not want to have to drive anywhere else today. It’s a very good choice:
– tasty bread and exceptional fennel-flavored bread sticks. Fennel bread sticks and bread
Mary: Just want to say that in the old pre-diet days we would have eaten all the bread and all the breadsticks and probably asked for more. We had a couple of breadsticks and a couple of slices of bread. The end.
John: – an antipasto compliments of the chef: sauteed calamari strips, fried artichoke slices, and garbanzo beans in a garbanzo puree. Antipasto compliments of the chef
Mary: I cannot even tell you how good the fried artichoke chips were.
John: – a small rigatoni-like pasta with white beans and local cheese for Mary’s primo, and artisan tagliatelle with broccoli and mussels for John. Plate of goo John's primo
Mary: John made the better choice here. I had a plate of goo. It was okay. I tried to avoid as much goo as possible.
John: – grilled fish filet, (maybe bass), served with fried spinach, sauteed fennel and a wonderful cauliflower puree with black salt grains and local olive oil. Best fish I have ever had in Italy. Our secondi
Mary: I think the fish was swordfish.
John: – for wine, we have a local 2008 Caudium Aglianico made by Masseria Frattasi. A nice light red that goes really well with all our courses.
We stopped first at Jacuzzi Winery to make our wine club selections. This was followed by a visit to Robledo Winery and more selecting. Robledo is our newest wine club. The place has a nice story of an immigrant family who worked the fields saving up and buying land to grow grapes and make wine. Our final stop was a Imagery Winery to pick up another wine shipment. Having completed our wine chores by around 2 PM, we headed over the mountains into Napa and decided to have lunch at Bottega in Yountville. Since our quest continues to be finding the perfect calamari, we started with the calamari appetizer. Our first two requests for wine were unfortunately unavailable. The waitress suggested a white Italian white by Scarpetta. I like the pig on the label.
We had a great Thanksgiving. Here we are left to right, MaryMomBeeba, JohnDadZayde, Nathan, Auntie Leigh aka Ryan’s sister, Jonathan, Ryan, Sam and Sarah. Everyone helped in the preparation and I think the dinner came out as one of the best in recent memory. Although we made all of the old favorites there were some new twists.
Well, here it is almost Thanksgiving again. I have rutabagas in my refrigerator awaiting the axe. I love how the kitchen smells when the Thanksgiving dishes are cooked. It certainly proves how much memory is wrapped up in the aroma of the kitchen.
As usual we have so many “must have,” traditional dishes that we have to set up a separate table for food. We are trying a new technique on the bird this year, though. For the past few years we’ve been deconstructing the turkey and boning out and stuffing the thighs. Then we start the thighs ahead of the breast so that everything comes out perfectly cooked at the same time – so much work and so much mess!
So this year we have bought a kosher turkey which means we don’t have to brine it. Then we are going to butterfly it by taking out the backbone. Finally we are going to pack ice around the breasts for an hour before we roast it so that they will cook a little more slowly. Hopefully this will mean a shorter cooking time with everything getting done simultaneously. We’ll also put the stuffing under it so that it can soak some of the turkey goodness.
Jon and Ryan are making a green veg plus cranberry sauce and dessert. Sarah is making chipotle sweet potatoes a la Bobby Flay. We are in charge of turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, rutabagas and Death by Broccoli. No rolls this year! And maybe pie instead of Indian pudding. Gasp! what a break with tradition.
The first time John and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner, it was just the two of us. Now we are up to eight. Undoubtedly, though, it will take until Nathan and Sam are teenage boys not to have a ton of leftovers. It will be fun to have them at the table this year. Sam has begun feeding himself . Hmmm… maybe I do need rolls.
We started our trip with a stop at Imagery Winery to pick up a wine club shipment. We like Imagery a lot, it has many interesting varietals. Since it was lunchtime, we sat on their patio and had lunch. Since it was our anniversary, we had a bottle of wine.
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Then we headed on up to Chateau St. Jean and tasted some wine on their back patio.Â
Later, we had a fabulous dinner at Cyrus in Healdsburg. We’ve been there several times before and have never been disappointed. John had Thai marinated lobster with avocado, melon and hearts of palm, sea bass with sweet corn and spring onions, mussel and saffron sauce, pompano with cannelini beans, trotters and crayfish glaze, and rabbit ballotine with agnolotti and chanterelles with an olive oil froth. I had the lobster as well and also the sea bass but I also had a terrine of foie gras with lychee and tamarind and toasted crumpets and a crispy poussin with potato puree, haricots verts and morels. We started with champagne and then had the sommelier pair wine with the rest of it. It was great! We also had amuse bouche, a cucumber gelee, some sort of popsicle palate cleanser and bunch of tidbit desserts (which we didn’t order.) Even though the portions are not large at all, we were really, really full by the end.
It was a pretty perfect day. Happy Anniversary John! ”
Do you ever feel like you are saying stuff and no one is listening? Well, yesterday I had an experience of someone actually listening. Last June, we took Ryan and Jon out to dinner at Don Jose’s Mexican Restaurant in St. George. You can read my review here.  In case you don’t go back and read it, let me tell you that it was really bad. But apparently there are new owners and the new owners obviously must have googled up their restaurant. And what they found was my review. So they wrote to me. Here’s what they had to say –
“Just wanted to let you know that Don Jose Mexican Restaurant is under new ownership and would love to invite you back for a much better experience.
Changes were made with a lot of the recipes and the response has been very favorable.
We now have someone making fresh corn and flour tortillas. Margaritas were definetly a must so we obtained our liquor license in order to be able to serve Margaritas and a wide variety of beer. Last but not least all you can eat chips and salsa is served with your meal.
Changes have been made and for the better….. ”
Yay, for them. I think we’ll venture back for a second try.
 I remember hearing a skit on “You say potato and I say potato” somewhere. Was it Monty Python? The person reading it just couldn’t understand why it was funny. (He obviously had never heard the song.) It’s more amusing aurally than it is in script. Anyway, tonight I made mashed potatoes.Â
When I was a kid (Oh no, not another “when I was a kid” story), we had mashed potatoes every night. I mean *every* night. It didn’t matter what else we were having. Hot dogs and sauerkraut? Perfect with mashed potatoes.  Swedish meatballs and noodles? Another fine fit for mashed potatoes. Truly, anything could be washed down with a blob of potatoes.
My mother or father used to mash the potatoes when I was little. Later my older sister would mash them. Finally, it was my turn. Just the right amount of butter and warmed milk. Smash them with masher but then whip them with a spoon. With a well made in them for gravy or, at my house, stewed tomatoes, they were what dinner was all about.
I’ve grown away from mashed potatoes. I probably only make them once or twice a year for a holiday – turkey gravy and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, for instance. But the other day I was talking to my hair stylist about my childhood and how we always had mashed potatoes for dinner. And it got me yearning.
So tonight I made mashed potatoes to accompany grilled flank steak and broccoli. I really salted the water heavily. It’s amazing how much salt potatoes need when you boil them. I used russet potatoes and threw in about 5 crushed garlic cloves. After they were boiled, I drained them and mashed the garlic and the potatoes together over a low flame to evaporate any lingering water. Some butter, a little milk, switch to wooden spoon for whipping and, viola, mashed potatoes.
They were so good and, obviously, they brought back memories of sitting at the family table years and years ago.
This is actually more of an expose’ on a type of food. While we sitting around at lunch today, my brother-in-law, Gary, explained how cheese doodles are made. Have you ever even thought about what the basic ingredient in a cheese doodle is? I guess I always thought it was rice if I thought about it at all. But no, it’s potato! As the potatoes come down the production line some are shunted off for potato chips and other are destined for doodleland. The doodle potatoes are pulverized, shot through with air to puff them up and then either deep fried for a hearty crunch or baked for a delicate crunch. Then they are coated with the orange stuff which I am sure is not cheese. I am a fan of the hearty crunch and my sister is more of a delicate cruncher. So there’s your snack info for the day.
Note: No actual doodles were harmed during the investigation for this blog.
UPDATE
In an effort to make sure my facts were right, we shopped for Cheez Doodles (the actual correct spelling.) Cheez Doodles are a Wise product. These were not available in our local stores. We bought Cheetos instead. Cheetos are made out of corn! So I am not sure about the composition of Cheez Doodles. Gary said he saw the potato ingredient on Food Network. Does anyone out there have a package of Cheez Doodles to verify the ingredients?
 
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