Flank steak with romesco sauce

The husband and I, while we share many interests and affections, have one area in which we diverge drastically: the sauce.

No, not sauce as in booze. We're both on board with that, silly! I mean sauces I make to go with food--tomato, cream, cranberry, fig-port, and now romesco.

He likes sauce. But I love it. I'm often at risk of drowning my food in it, if it's one I'm particularly fond of. I wonder if this is a very American tendency; I imagine the French and Italians use sauce sparingly, as a purposeful accent. Me, I sometimes return to the kitchen for another spoonful.

Awhile ago, we had dinner at our friends' house. Liz and Neal live down the street from us, which makes for easy and last-minute organizing, and even the occasional mid-week dinner party. We had grilled steak with romesco sauce, salad, bread, and cauliflower. I went a little nuts for the sauce, putting it on the steak and everything else. Nobody seemed to think that was weird, but maybe they were just being polite.

Liz might laugh that I still remember the menu, which we enjoyed at least six months ago, but my brain is a steel trap for food. Ask me what I read in the newspaper this morning and I have no idea, but I can tell you what I ate for lunch last Wednesday (leftover leftovers).

Anyhow, after a bit of of badgering on my part, she kindly provided me with the recipe for the romesco sauce. Or rather, she sent me a list of ingredients along with the singular instruction: "Dump it all in a food processor and let her rip."

And so I did. Aside from toasting the nuts and sauteing the garlic, it couldn't have been faster. I even had some bread crumbs I'd made the day before. The sauce turned out nearly as good as when we had it at Liz and Neal's house, but a little runnier than I would prefer. As I was dumping the entire jar of roasted red peppers in the food processor, I mused pointlessly, I wonder if I should have drained these. Well, yes. That would have been better. But the sauce still turned out gorgeously and it's the kind of recipe you can fiddle with and fix with oil, salt, pepper, bread crumbs, and vinegar as you prefer. Just my type of thing.

I'm also fairly sure it will last a little while in the fridge. So far, I've only dipped some crackers in it, but I think it would be great on pork or chicken, or in place of mustard in a sandwich, with green beans, or simply on crostini, garnished with a crumble of goat cheese. The options are endless.

Liz's romesco sauce

(ingredients are approximations; revise to suit your taste)

1 14-oz can fire-roasted tomatoes
1 12-oz jar roasted red peppers, drained
3-4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/4 c. olive oil
1/2 c. almonds, toasted and coarsely chopped
1/3 c. fresh bread crumbs
2-3 T sherry vinegar, or to taste
salt and pepper

Cook garlic in the olive oil until golden brown.

Dump all ingredients into a food processor and let her rip. Season to taste.

Penne with braised short ribs

I thought when I started working for myself, back in May, that I would be spending a lot more time in the kitchen. I had visions of rolling out pie crusts in the middle of the day, braving puff pastry from scratch, and at least once a week filling the house with the smell of good, yeasty bread.

It hasn't panned out like that at all. While I still spend more time in the kitchen than probably many people do during the week, I've always done that. Even when I was working in an office full-time, it was not unusual for me to roast up a pork loin to serve atop creamy polenta and a bitter green on a Tuesday night. I like to be in the kitchen, so it rarely feels like a chore to me. Few things relax me more than cooking leisurely while listening to the radio and drinking a glass of wine, with the husband and the other hungry dog periodically wandering in to check on me. It's the perfect mix of being alone and not being alone.

But now I'm busier during the day, with less time to daydream about what to make for dinner. And since I am working harder, sometimes I actually feel a little tired out by the end of the day.

The one way in which my new schedule has changed my cooking is that now I am able to make things that take a long time during the week--provided they are largely unattended. The kalua pig is a great example of this. It took five minutes to put together, and four hours later, dinner was served.

Yesterday I decided to make Giada's penne with braised short ribs. I'd seen her make it on TV awhile ago and had not forgotten how delicious it looked. The browning of the ribs and chopping the onion and garlic took a total of about 20 minutes; then, into the oven it went for two and a half hours.

The pasta was rich and deep in flavor, a result from long cooking as well as the fattiness of the short ribs. The recipe is a total hit, one which I will definitely repeat, although I must warn you, this is not for the delicate eater. If you aren't that into meat, or are squeamish about fat, skip it. Unfortunately, neither of these things bother me, so I dug right in.

A little goes a long way--as the husband pointed out, it's basically pot roast over noodles--not exactly light fare. But I really enjoyed it, especially on a rainy night, with the heat turned up and a bottle of Cabernet alongside. As you might have predicted, Frances also had the opportunity to sample some of the short ribs and she too deemed the recipe a blazing success.

The only change I made was that it called for fresh Roma tomatoes, which are nowhere to be found in December, at least not good ones. So I used whole canned tomatoes, and threw in an extra one or two, which turned out just to my liking.

Turkey tetra-what?

While America may be divided between red and blue, rich and poor, east coast v. west coast, there is one thing that has bound many of us in the last few days: Thanksgiving leftovers.

I'm a friend to the leftover (you know I am thrifty as all get-out), but Thanksgiving always seems to leave one with far too many to remain animated about. For one thing, you eat the best leftovers up first, in our case, the cauliflower gratin Stephanie brought, Claire's chocolate tart, and my mom's famous pumpkin chiffon pie. Then you good-naturedly devote yourself to the other items which were just as delicious but more plentiful so therefore less fought-over: the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, and  the highly addictive cheese pennies and Earl dip. And then there's the turkey.

Every year I am reminded that I don't actually like turkey that much. It's vastly inferior in flavor to the plump little chickens I roast, requires special tools (thermometers, basters, cheesecloth!), and demands serious upper body strength to hoist it in and out of the oven.

But the turkey is the thing you always end up with too much of. And what to do?

Yes, sandwiches. But then what?

You learn exactly what from your parents. Growing up in our house, the end of the turkey, after the cranberries and gravy were gone, was turned either into jook or turkey tetrazzini, a choice that in itself is a good example of my dual heritage: Chinese and mid-western.

I like jook fine but am not wild about it. Truth be told, I have mixed memories of turkey tetrazzini too. I liked the flavor fine, but for some reason my parents always made it with spaghetti or linguine, which didn't sit right with me as a kid and still doesn't as an adult. I like baked pastas with short tubes or shells--much easier to eat.

I decided to make up my own recipe, with the goal that I wouldn't buy any new ingredients for the dish. This led to mixed results.  I made a white sauce, but only had low-fat milk, and so it turned out a little runny, though with good flavor because I also used stock. I set it aside to see if it would set-up, which it did a bit, then tossed it with sauteed turkey, onions, sage, and spinach. Then the noodles,  buttered breadcrumbs, and parmesan, and into the oven it went.

The finished product looked like this, which I dished up like a nice little housewife and served to the huz.

He nodded his approval although with the caveat, "It's good, but it doesn't taste like food we usually eat."

I knew what he meant. I haven't really ventured into the casserole genre, and this dish, as decent as it was, screamed casserole, with its faintly-dried out turkey lumps and pale creamy sauce that could have easily been cream-of-mushroom soup. Still, I sort of liked it. But the leftover turkey tetrazzini? I may have to draw the line at leftover leftovers.