Everybody Panic...

...because it's almost Thanksgiving.

I had a lot of interesting and fabulous food this weekend, and I am surely remiss for not blogging about it right this minute. However, Thanksgiving is this week, and every food blogger on the planet is having all kinds of ridiculous freakouts over it. So I would be more remiss in not blogging some random thoughts about said notable cooking holiday.

My best advice is not to panic. And don't get all food-fetish Martha Stewart-y if that's not your thing. I always think it's an excuse to have fun, even the year I committed to cooking everything. It worked out great. Keep your sense of humor, play around, and everything will be ok.

This year, we're lucky enough to be invited over for the holiday. I will be making the salmon rilettes and the cauliflower gratin from Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook, and everything else is someone else's problem.

Still panicked?

If you need something easy to take somewhere, try Cooking for Engineers' garlic potatoes or cheesecake cupcakes. I've made them both multiple times, and they're foolproof and delicious. Or go for the garlic mashed potatoes. They're awesome, too.

If you want something a little more complicated or posh, check out Serious Eats' Thanksgiving guide. They have a lot of delicious-looking sides. Until I decided to tone things down for the possibly-less-crazy palates at our potluck Thanksgiving, I was going to make the Momofoku Brussels sprouts.

If you're looking for cooking inspiration, or just some crazy aspirational food porn, Gilt Taste has been doing a great job of that lately. They also have a holiday cooking hotline going at 877-445-9228 during limited hours through Wednesday. I almost want to call it, just to chat up the no doubt awesome food people on the other end.

And that pumpkin milkshake? I WILL make you. Preferably after I start training for a marathon or something.

So, you're not panicked. Maybe you're more worried about the booze?

I believe in beer with Thanksgiving dinner. Or non-traditional wine. Whatever floats your boat.

For beer, try going local first. Here in DC, I'd grab some of DC Brau's limited edition Imperial Pumpkin Porter. It's substantial, but not too heavy, and not sickeningly sweet or overly flavored like a lot of pumpkin beers. I'd also get some of Port City's porter, which is lighter than most porters, but really well-balanced.

If you prefer lighter, Schlafly's Kolsch is a winner. It's an excellent session beer, goes well with a variety of foods, and is subtle but a lot more interesting than most light beers. New Belgium's Abbey, Boulevard's Tank 7, or Abita's Harvest Ale are all nice choices.

Apologies for the lack of California beers- I'm trying for geographic diversity, but can't think of a great West Coast beer I really love. Bear Republic might have something good, or Anchor Steam, if you're into it. I think I like Firestone Walker, but haven't had enough experience with their beers to recommend anything in particular.

What about wines?

The traditional choice is Beaujolais. If you go this route, please go Villages and not Nouveau. Speaking very generally, the nouveau tends to be candy-like, treacly, thin, and awful. And it sells at a premium, because it's what *everyone* wants for Thanksgiving.

Honestly, I think something from the Languedoc is more interesting. Their wines are also relatively light, but tend to be simple, dry, and lower-alcohol, with more offbeat flavor notes- leather, graphite, violet, and the like- and gorgeous deep purple color. Or, if you're into white wine, go for a rousanne, viognier, verdejo, or similar. I'm a huge fan of mineral and marine flavors. Trader Joe's has a kosher white still that's pretty nice. Even a vinjo verde could be interesting, or a cava. And if you see Spanish or French cider, just grab it- it's bound to be perfect.

Yucatecan Salmon at Home

For dinner, I had some coho salmon, with fava beans, plantains, tomatoes, and a glass of shiraz.

The salmon was interesting. I took a mild risk by dousing it in one of the Yucatecan spice rubs("recados yucatecos") I've been obsessed with lately. They're quick to make, and pack a huge punch of warm spice flavor.

This particular one, adapted from Rick Bayless, contains garlic, cumin, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, oregano, black pepper, and achiote, aka annatto, all ground with apple cider vinegar and flour to form a paste. I added some olive oil to make a better rub for fish, and rubbed away.

The rub worked really well- I went kind of light with it, figuring the flavors would be a bit heavy for the salmon. It paired nicely with the wine, a rather heavy Australian shiraz that had an ABV higher than I'd normally go for. I figured the label art went with my Mexican theme at least:

The wine was awful by itself, though slightly better slightly chilled. Paired with food, it was average. It was described as "heavy fruit" by the Trader Joe's wine assistant; I knew at the store it wouldn't be a wine that appealed to my somewhat spare, minimalist, subtle, low ABV self, but somehow we ended up with it anyway. Oh well. Like I said, cute label.

The favas and plantains were nice- the favas (actually a fava/garbanzo mix), were canned, from our local Middle Eastern grocery, and a little salty. The plantains, from our local Mexican grocery's freezer case (Goya ftw), were a little sweet. So it all balanced. Maybe they would have been better with a little crema.

The grape tomatoes were tasty- I've recently discovered they're awesome roasted in the oven with some olive oil and salt. Pretty much every veggie is. Maybe that's why I love veggies so much lately.

Salmon Burgers at Home

For dinner, I had a salmon burger with a baked potato and a beer. I also roasted some red peppers, but forgot about them until I was done eating. Maybe breakfast?

The salmon burger came from Dierberg's. Dierberg's is quickly becoming my favorite non-posh grocery store, only because they tend to be pretty average. We live right between several nice neighborhoods and several very, very bad ones (not to glorify crime, but the local paper just came out with this really cool murder map), so most of the local grocery stores vary hugely based on the socio-economic neighborhood they're in. Going to the grocery store has become a sociology dissertation in itself, so sometimes it's nice to just go somewhere and not have to get angry that the one in the "bad" neighborhood has crappy food and the one in the "good" neighborhood has an entire aisle of organic produce.

In any case, my salmon burger was surprisingly tasty. Between copious use of breadcrumbs as filler and its error-riddled instructions (I pity the inexperienced cook out there who believes its "precooked- no cooking required, just re-heat" instruction label), I expected something bready and excessively fishy, but no, it was good.

The potatoes were less successful. One unfortunate side-effect of having a Trader Joe's in town is that I never want to buy any produce items TJ's sells anywhere else, because they're always cheapest at TJ's. I bypassed the cute little dutch creamers for this reason, and ended up with some funky-looking russets instead. Despite my heretofore foolproof methodology (wash, dry, coat with oil and salt, roast on pizza stone for close to an hour), the potatoes smushed into little, oddly sticky chunks when I tried to split them. I added some grated garlic and butter, which made them passable.

In other news, there are no pictures, still. Not (for once) because I'm lazy, but because my camera (a very sad 3.1 megapixel relic from five or six years ago) has finally died. No photos til I get a new one. If anyone has any camera recs, or if you just want to send me the DSLR of my dreams because you love me so much, let me know.

I hope dinner won't kill me. But it's so good.

For dinner, I had some homemade cured salmon, with an arugula salad and a Fireman's 4 beer.

Cured salmon is one of my favorite things to make. I base mine loosely on this recipe from Cooking for Engineers. My version is very lazy and very easy. Basically, you rinse the fish, then coat it with a 50-50 mix of sugar and salt and whatever herbs or spices you like. Wrap in plastic wrap, stick in a drip-proof container, weight with a plate for 24 hours, then flip and weight for another 24. Unwrap the mess, rinse off any remaining mixture, and eat. This time, I bought about a half-pound of wild salmon, and flavored it with some Ethiopian bere-bere spice mixture I had lying around. I was a little worried about how the spicy and exotic mixture would go with the salmon, but it turned out very well. It doesn't taste weird or fishy, just a mellow sweet-spicy salmon flavor. Next time I make it, I'll try to remove the skin prior to curing, because it's always very hard to separate the fish from the skin after curing.

I had a huge arugula craving today. I bought bigger leaves than I normally do, so my arugula salad was very spicy, a nice counterpoint to the salmon's spicy-mellow flavors. Originally, I meant to cook some rice for a chirashi sushi sort of meal, but I didn't have time to cook the rice. Nonetheless, it was pretty good.

The beer, Fireman's 4, is from a (sort of) local brewery, the Real Ale Brewing Co out of Blanco, TX. I always thought it was an Austin-area brewery, but it looks like Blanco is actually out pretty far West into Hill Country. F4 is the only beer of theirs I like. I respect little breweries a lot, but their other beers are just ok. F4, on the other hand, is a drinkable, medium-bodied ale with a sassy label.

Salmon at Home

Last night, I ate baked salmon and rice for dinner.

The salmon was from Whole Foods, one of their pre-seasoned fish selections. I chose the almond-encrusted honey seasoning because it sounded revoltingly sweet and a little strange. In fact, it was very good, in a buttery-sweet sort of way. We'd planned on eating our fave canned fava beans (Palestinian recipe is the best, btw), but I ended up making more tasty basmati rice in the cooker instead. To drink, I had a Lone Star beer, the PBR of Texas. Yum.