Venison Calzones: not pretty, but tasty


The calzones ended up being reasonably well received. I flubbed the dough somewhat, which may have been a function of never having experienced the type of instructions the recipe used to make it (have you ever covered your sponge in water until it popped up? Never heard of that). I also added an egg wash so that the calzones would have a nicer finish than I thought they might without. I thought the dough was too crunchy, where I look to a calzone to be kind of doughy and chewy. I have enough filling to make more but I think I'll stick with my regular pizza dough next time. Definitely a recipe worth tweaking.


I have a lot on my mind but blogging will have to wait until after Entropy Girl's upcoming birthday celebration. Not that we're planning this huge, crazy party or anything. It's just that my house is not ready to receive my mother (you know, the one who thinks that Queen Elizabeth is a bit too casual? The one who thinks that Martha's a clever girl who just needs a bit more attention to detail?) and so I'm planning to devote tomorrow to things like dusting my baseboards, spacing my clothes hangers an inch apart, washing my punch cups, things like that.


To hold you over, here is the soon-to-be birthday girl herself, on Christmas day. Can it be true that it's been almost a year? I guess it's true what they say about raising kids - the days are long and the years are short.





Entropy Girl, on Christmas Day, trying on her new scarf from Aunt Marla


Happy birthday, Entropy Girl. Mama loves you!

I don't know why the act of making noodles has always scared me a little. I've seen Marcella do it, I've seen Lidia do it and I've seen Martha do it. Heck, I even have a dim memory of seeing Jack Tripper do it. Still, noodle making is not (despite the presence in my house of a groovy Atlas roller appliance thingy) something I get enthusiastic about. I guess I'm always afraid thay'll be crappy - gluey, sticky, floury, pasty, or whatever other ailment can afflict something that on the surface seems so easy. Two ingredients and a world of potential wrongness. If you flub something that has, say, 22 ingredients people are sympathetic but messing up the flour and egg thing? Well, geez, what kind of dork are you? Of course, people who like to cook know that the simple stuff will sink you well before the more complex.


But I had made this chicken broth and it turned out really well. For soup, I added chopped kale, carrots, peas, celery and, of course, chicken. A bit of seasoning - salt, pepper, the tiniest amount of fresh ground nutmeg and the result was wonderful but for one crucial, glaring absence. Noodles. I have a box of elbows on hand but they seemed a little coarse for such a fine soup and I'm saving my orzo for a stand alone side dish. I picked up a box of ditalini but, well, fussy came to mind. There was only one solution. Face the fear and make the noodles.


So I did. And they were great. I even dusted off the Atlas that my good friend Donna so graciously gave us as a wedding present. I feel very full of myself and quite accomplished. I guess it's like driving somewhere for the first time, you might have some fear before you set off but once the trip is made you wonder why you felt trepidatious in the first place.


The other big experiment this weekend is still in progress. The dough is made and (hopefully) rising, the veggies (zucchini, well drained, since I didn't have eggplant) are sauteed, the cheese is grated and the venison is browned (with the cooked bacon crumbled in - I have no use at the moment for cooked bacon so I figured hey! why not?). Pending successful rising of the dough we'll having venison calzones for dinner tonight. In a nice bonus, I had enough of each of the filling ingredients to make a double batch so we'll have the added pleasure of something new and different in the freezer.


Not at all a bad weekend, cooking-wise.

Sing it, Meg.

I was talking with a girlfriend recently about people who, when asked, will give you one of their recipes but then leave out a step or ingredient. We disagree on how these individuals should be handled - I argue for compassionate rehabilitation, she prefers the death (as in social death) penalty. My feeling is that if you don't want to share a recipe, you should be gutsy enough to admit it and not mess around with petty little passive-agressive dramas.


I, myself, have never knowingly sabotaged a shared recipe although I have been known to refuse a recipe request. I have been granted some on the condition of everlasting secrecy and I keep my promises. We all want to be special in some way and so there are some recipes I consider household-specific and they will be shared only with my children or, under some circumstances, with my sisters. Others I am happy to share and am thrilled to have provided enough pleasure to someone that they are prompted to inquire. In turn, I respect the inclination to not share, although I was once seriously torqued to find out that I was refused an recipe that was granted to another party-goer. I was steamed for weeks about that episode.


It's one thing to receive a recipe from a non-food professional but there's a side to the non-working recipe story, though, that is much more sinister. Deb writes about her troubles making a recipe out of a Martha Stewart recipe, troubles echoed in the post's comments. I have had similar problems with not only Martha Stewart, but also Emeril and Bobby Flay. And I'm not talking about the occasional recipe for which my skills or equipment are no match, but rather chronic, consistent failure. I don't know if inadequate testing is the problem or if there's some other factor at play but it really annoys me to spend time and money on a recipe only to have something either inedible or not resembling whatever it's supposed to be.


When I first noticed recurring failures I assumed that the problem was mine and I spent a lot of time redoing the work, making sure that I had lots of quiet (i.e., non-kid) time and a thoroughly prepared mise en place. When the outcomes were still bad (in some cases fabulously so) I had to assume that fault lie elsewhere.


Still, even with so much wasted food, money and time, I'm not Martha-, Emeril- or Bobby-bashing. They and their compatriots have done much for the state of entertaining and homemaking, giving us all a sense of possibilities and, in many cases, more courage to try more than we might otherwise might have. I look to them as more idea labs (like the famous Bell Labs of yore) than instructive resources. Like all those home renovation and decorating shows, gardening shows and endless rows of shelter mags, I think we'd be wise to remember (I know that I certainly would be) that what works on paper or in a photograph has little to do with what actually works in life. Some furniture arrangements I've seen lately, as lovely as they may be, might as well be courtesy of ILM for all the relevance they have to my own home.


And so it is with food. Tonight's roasted chicken, with garlic slipped under the skin and preserved lemons stuffed inside. might not be the stuff of glamourous culinary money shots but it's real and it's home. And I never need to worry if it'll work.

My husband has become quite enamored of a sandwich that Iron Hill Brewery, one of our favorite family restaurants, serves and which they have somewhat oddly named The Carolina Pork Barbecue. The pulled pork concoction is light on the smoky, sticky, sweet barbacue sauce that I find so objectionable (frankly, I think it's one of the worst things about summer - why it's impossible to get a grilled chicken breast without for three solid months is beyond me) and leans more toward the lightly peppery and vinegary.


On our last visit I was convinced to abandon my conviction that all barbacue sucks and try a bite, if only so that I could attempt a recreation in our own kitchen. What a revelation! The rich, ever-so-slightly fatty meat blended with the sharp sauce to create what I think you almost call a vinaigrette - fat and vinegar, salt and pepper and just the smallest hint of smoke all worked together to complement the meat's delicate, lacy texture. Abandon my conviction I did and I am currently roasting a rather large pork butt as the first step toward making karmic ammends to pork barbecue lovers everywhere.


Normally, I would have tried slow grilling the meat but I wasn't sure if we had enough propane and refilling stations aren't exactly thick on the ground here in January. So I slid the roast - thickly rubbed with fresh ground rosemary, garlic, pepper, cayenne, black pepper, salt and oregano (the last a remainder of a Sardinian ex-uncle) into a slow (about 250 degrees F) oven about five hours ago, with just the smallest amount of chicken broth at the bottom of the pan. At the last check the pork was just getting to pullability. I'd give it another hour or so.


Even if I didn't make a sauce, the roast would be delicious. The bits I've cut off to taste have been sublime - earthy, pungent, moist and suave. Awesome. But, a Caroline Pork Barbecue needs its sauce, does it not? I've made a couple test batches of sauce but because I need to test them on the pulled meat I won't be able to tell how close I they are to the real deal. Each starts with cider vinegar and proceeds from there into various combinations and amounts of black pepper, Worchestshire sauce, red or cayenne peppers, dry mustard, prepared mustard, paprika, minced onion and/or liquid smoke.


Once the meat is pulled the testing will commence. Tough job but someone has to do it. Oh...and someone will have to go buy rolls tomorrow, too, and I'm guessing that beer would be in order as well. Stay tuned!

We're just back from a holiday trip to Philadelphia. As much as I miss it and, to a degree, consider it "home" our trips back make it ever more clear that my push earlier in the year to move back was misguided. We've not yet been gone two years and there are so many changes - changes that are organic to our friends and family who live there but are jarring to us as they appear to have happened out of the blue. I've come to understand that what I really want is to move back to four years ago, when J. was alive, the F. family wasn't in Tennessee, the S. family wasn't so far north, we weren't here yet, and before T. met and married "she cannot be named". This, I know, is not possible and so I am resolved this New Year to bloom where I am planted.


To that end, I have spent some time this week preparing canning jars for the upcoming canning season (strawberries are just five months away!). I haven't bothered to clean jars that were already empty since they'll have to be recleaned and sterilized anyway but I've checked the rims for chips and discarded any that aren't utterly smooth. I also took an inventory of lids and rings, since these are notoriously easy to lose track of - I know I've got another box of lids around somewhere dammit, but at least I've got a start. The next step is to empty filled jars with stuff that I will not use and is not suitable forgiving. The failed butterscotch sauce, for example, and the two remaining jars of applesauce that none of us will eat because it tastes like wet paper. (I can't remember what apples I used, but they were absolutely not saucing apples.)


I usually hesitate to rid myself of these failed experiments on the grounds that it would wasteful but I need to face the fact that it's even more wasteful to hang on to stuff that will not be used and that is taking up resources (jars, rings and shelf space) that could be used more productively elsewhere (not unlike using mental energy trying to regain a time in one's life that is over, no?). This, I feel, is a lesson that I can also apply to other areas of my life if I am able to master it in the canning cupboard.


The upshot of this exercise is that, hopefully, I will be able to jump right into canning when the time comes because my supplies will be ready and organized. No need to find the time to run for rings or lids because they are present and accounted for, no need to spring for yet more jars because the failed experiments have been dispatched and the jars readied.


If I can find my digital memory card (can we keep it's misplacement between us? no need to inform my husband, right?) I will post a photo. I've been neglecting to post photos here lately, but now that I have a groovy external storage device thingy (with a handy string with which I can wear it around my neck for maximum geekitude) it's a small matter to zip around to our various computers to prepare shots for blogging. Easier, actually, than getting any one computer to hold the various software needed thereby guaranteeing that such an arrangement will never happen. Now, if I can just get my hands on that memory card...