Anne Had Me At Kale Chips, But A Different Recipe Stood Out Plus Other Things To Consider Including One-Sided Fish Cooking

Secrets of a Restaurant Chef with Anne Burrell

Israeli Couscous with Celery, Scallions and Cranberries

Crispy Tuscan Kale

Seared Cod with Blood Orange Glaze

Blood Orange and Red Onion Salad

No excuses for being away, just enjoying things and I wanted to get these pictures right…Weren’t we talking about kale recently? I was so sure that this kale recipe of Anne’s was going to be the star of this show, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Seared cod does not sound that exciting, but Anne added a blood orange glaze, which completely livened it up.

Anne cuts the cod into 6 oz. portions and puts it on a baking tray. She says you can use haddock too, which is also “mild and delightful”. She covers the fish loosely and puts it back in the fridge to dry out. (That’s also a good idea for a whole chicken or chicken pieces with the skin. Season them, put them in whatever dish you’re cooking them in and then back in the fridge, uncovered, for about 4 hours. The skin will dry out and come out crisper after roasting. Folks do that with turkeys too. I don't want my raw turkey butting up against other stuff in the fridge, but a chicken is easier to control.)

Anne takes Tuscan kale out of the fridge and says it seems to be all the rage and she’s noticing it everywhere she goes. Me too! She cuts off the tough stems at the bottom and preheats the oven to 250°F. She coats the kale with olive oil, salt and chili peppers and places it in one layer on a baking tray. The kale gets baked for 30 to 35 minutes.

For the couscous salad, Anne cooks the couscous in super salty water and flavors it with a garlic clove and big slices of blood orange zest. One secret she gives us from the restaurant is to use everything around the kitchen to flavor things. A bay leaf goes in too with the smashed garlic clove. Anne cooks the couscous in a big pot of salted water and then she’ll drain it. That makes sense because couscous is actually a type of pasta, but I don't cook mine that way.

I just think that if I don't have to waste the time and energy bringing a big pot of water to the boil, why should I? Plus the directions on the container say to cook it in a smaller amount of water and not drain it, so I go with that. The only benefit I can think of for using more water is that the couscous comes out as more separate grains and is perhaps more suitable for a salad. But  Israeli (or pearled) couscous can be cooked either way.

Anne supremes blood oranges and grapefruits for the Blood Orange and Red Onion Salad during a break, which is simply to cut the sections of citrus fruits away from the pith and membranes.

She chops one really hot bird’s eye chili to add to the citrus with some red onions. She says the kale chips smell delicious.

Dried cranberries, sliced scallions, celery and garlic get marinated in white wine vinegar for the couscous dish.

Earlier, Anne talks about the celery almost being like a ceviche and getting “cooked” in vinegar. That’s so interesting. I’m totally in love with shallots in white wine vinegar, which become “pickled shallots”, so I guess this might be similar. I’m not as big a fan of celery as Anne is, though. I like the crunch, but I don’t love it when it’s bitter.

Now it’s “cod time”. Anne gets her oil smoking hot and she seasons the cod with Kosher salt. Incidentally, Anne lists her three favorite pieces of kitchen equipment. Guess what they are. I’ll give you a moment…

• Fish spatula
• Wooden spoon
• Food Mill

I love all those things, but they’re not my top three. Mine are:

• A Microplaner
• A Chef’s Knife
• Every single one of my Strainers and Colanders. (I have ten and I use each one for something different. It’s funny that a friend was recently talking about downsizing and I was thinking about how thrilled I was to be able to have a different strainer for each and every job. And I’m not even including my slotted and strainer spoons!)

Anne adds the cod to the oil and does not move it. She says it will unstick itself when it’s cooked.

Anne drains the couscous and takes out the bay leaves and orange zest and adds it to the celery mixture. She adds her “big fat finishing oil” to the couscous and to the citrus salad too.

Anne is moving a mile a minute now to get everything done. She takes out the kale chips and crunches down on one piece. Loverly.

I like that Anne kept the kale in big pieces, so they come out of the oven as these big bouquets of crispy greens on stems that you eat like cotton candy. The hard part is getting the flavoring (vinegar, salt) on. She makes a valiant attempt to season it before cooking by tossing them in a big bowl.

The problem with fresh kale is that the leaves are virtually waterproof. It’s like trying to season something wrapped in plastic. Dry stuff just bounces off and wet things run off. So Anne does the best she can, and presumably the kale holds on to enough of the ingredients to actually flavor it.

Anne puts the cod on a rack over a baking pan and finishes the cooking in a low and slow oven. Here's something noteworthy - Anne only cooks one side of the fish in the sauté pan. She gets the bottom nice and browned and then places it, cooked side up (the side you'll see), on the rack.

When you're broiling or sautéing fish, you really only have to do one side. You're only cooking the fish to get it warm, perhaps brown it for its looks and change the texture. It doesn't really matter if both sides hit the heat. (Even with chicken, I concentrate on getting really good color on one side and then I may let things slide a bit on the second, as long as it's cooked through.)

She gets rid of the oil in the fish pan and adds some blood orange juice and chopped blood orange supremes.



She adds parsley to the couscous salad. I’m getting a little lost about which dish is which.

But, wait, I have a problem with her cutting up the blood orange supremes. Why would you go to all the trouble of cutting away their pith and peel to reveal their singular segmented shape only to chop them up and boil them away? No, add the juice to the sauce, but use the supremes as a garnish, where you can see AND taste their beauty.

Anne adds vinegar and sugar to the blood orange reduction. Oh, that’s in the wiped-out fish pan and that will go over the fish at the end. The fish comes out of the oven and Anne plates it with the couscous salad. The dried cranberries are “a lovely punctuation”. She likes the champagne vinegar in the salad. As Anne tastes everything, she says it’s all ”happy stuff”. I love the blood orange glaze. It makes her taste buds “want to dance”. Mine too.

This was an absolutely delightful fish dish and you can lighten it up even more by poaching the fish in some water and wine, instead of sautéing it. It’s all about the blood orange glaze. Don’t have any blood oranges? Use navels and ruby red grapefruit, either together or singly. Or use divine clementines, which make delicious juice and an even more delicious sauce.

I also liked the couscous salad - as a base for the fish...AND on its own.

Paula Pays The Piper…I Guess

Oy, this is really bad news that Paula Deen has Type 2 diabetes. But if you watch her video message on the Diabetes In a New Light site, you wouldn't know that. In fact, she almost makes it seem (with the soft lighting and sappy music) that life is better WITH diabetes.

In the video, Paula never mentions, of course, what can happen if diabetes is not managed properly. It is a really scary disease that’s not that easy to understand.  It affects a whole host of different systems in the body. The reality is that a diagnosis of diabetes is, at the very least, life altering, and can be life threatening or, even, life ending.

I would imagine, though, that it’s not that helpful to terrify people with all the possible horrible outcomes when they’re first diagnosed…or even later. People have to feel they have some control over the disease and that it can be treated or even reversed.

I know that Paula and her boys’ appearance on The Today Show this morning to announce the news was only the first step. But I would have liked a more proactive approach - as in…THIS is what you can do NOW to limit your risk or to live a healthier life with diabetes.

For example, there are plenty of well-known studies that report that eating a cup of beans a day can reduce a diabetic’s need for insulin. And exercise is a huge component of anyone’s healthy lifestyle, but it’s especially important for diabetics. Paula did mention exercise and said she goes on walks with her husband now. But if you’ve seen the adorable Michael, you’ll know that he’s not exactly breaking any speed or endurance records.

It’s so hard. I have such ambivalent feelings about all this. On the one hand, I want my old happy-go-lucky Paula back, who has no real-world cares as she flings butter and cream around with abandon and deep fries anything that doesn’t get her first. But on the other hand, Paula has a huge opportunity to use her massive marketing machine to show us that if SHE can change the way she eats, ANYONE can.

I’m nervous that in her zeal not to undo her life’s work of over the top, super-fatty and sweet (and super-delicious) recipes, Paula is going to be super-careful not to diss her cooking of the past. And thus, on television anyway, it’s going to be difficult for her to change her style of cooking too radically or say anything much more than moderation is the key.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if she became Clinton-fit and a vegan…and reversed her need for the drug from Novo Nordisk for whom she’s a paid spokesperson?

Of course, that’s probably not the way most people react to news of diabetes either and Paula is no one, if not every man woman.  Changing food habits and editing out all the good (as in bad for you) stuff we eat is hard.

I love Paula. I don’t want people talking smack about her. I’m worried for her. I love her zest for life and I don’t want that to end anytime soon. But there is an ick factor to all this. We can’t pretend that diet isn’t a huge part of why so many people are getting Type 2 diabetes.

Paula has gotten real with the public before. Remember when she wrote her autobiography and Larry King asked her really idiotic questions? She was open about the tough times in her life, about her agoraphobia and the different mistakes she had made. Couldn’t this health situation have been an opportunity for her to say, “I have to change things in order to be around for the family I love. Those recipes were then. THIS is now and I want to share a new way of cooking and eating with you.”?

The argument that she always pushed moderation is really a nonstarter. Did ANYONE get that from any of her shows? But the truth is also that I never watched Paula to get a blueprint of how to cook or what to eat. I watched her to hear her laugh and to see the twinkle in her eyes when her boys were near.

We shouldn’t forget that she has had 3 years to get used to the idea of diabetes and I actually hope that in her own private life she ISN’T reacting the way she’s trying to make it appear. I hope she HAS been scared by the diagnosis and is working hard to get healthier.  Hope, laughter, optimism and love are all powerful drugs, but they don’t replace careful eating and vigorous exercise. 

On The Night Of The New Hampshire Primary, I Vote For Kale

Giada at Home with Giada DeLaurentiis

Power Boost

Baked Halibut with Arugula Salsa Verde

Blueberry Frozen Yogurt

Turkey, Kale and Brown Rice Soup

Rise and Shine Juice

I LOVED Giada's kale and mashed potatoes a little while back, but I’ll get to that in a second…Today Giada is cooking healthy. We see her in some gorgeous paradise (her backyard?) doing yoga in a small group with a teacher. Back in the kitchen, Giada’s making her “Rise and Shine Juice”. She grabs a bag of baby spinach from the fridge.

I’ve mostly given up on bagged greens. They don’t taste that great to me and they get slimy really quickly. Now I buy lettuce and spinach in those plastic box containers. You would think that it’s more expensive, but there’s no waste. Why don’t I buy regular lettuce? Occasionally I do, but after washing and trimming and coring, I don’t think it’s that much cheaper and the stuff in boxes lasts longer.

Anyway, Giada juices one bag of spinach, 2 stalks of celery (I detest celery juice), 2 carrots (which I don’t like without apples)…and, oh, wait, 2 apples. Okay, this is looking up. She adds Gala apples, half a lemon and a piece of ginger. I’m happy about that, because I always add ginger to my all-time favorite juice, which admittedly isn’t as healthy as one with greens. It’s 2 Granny Smith apples (or use Gala, whatever), 2 carrots, 1 (or 2) thick slices of ginger and 1 raw beet. SO GOOD!!! You can leave out the beet and it’s still good, but it doesn’t have that amazing magenta color.

Giada pours her juice over ice. She pretends to really like it.

Next up is a turkey, kale and brown rice soup. When I made Giada’s kale with mashed potatoes recipe, it was the first time that I had sautéed kale without blanching it first, which is certainly a healthier way to go. The worst part about kale is that it overtakes your cutting board like kudzu taking over Georgia, but it does cook down so much that you have to start with a lot. The last time I cooked it, I sautéed the kale as in Giada’s recipe and then I added cubed, cooked sweet potatoes and some raisins. It was really good with a brown rice pilaf. 

 

Back to the soup, Giada chops shallots (a lot of shallots) and sautés them with chopped carrots and red pepper and then one pound of ground white meat turkey.

Next she strips the kale leaves off the stem and roughly chops them and adds them to the pan with a can of diced tomatoes, a tablespoon of herbes de Provence (ick), 1 cup of cooked brown rice and  4 cups of low sodium chicken broth, Giada simmers it for 15 minutes. Lastly, she adds lots of chopped parsley and a ¼ cup of Parmesan. “Light, but hearty,” she pronounces.

Now we see Giada in a gorgeous garden with a small but beautiful raised bed of herbs. She’s picking thyme for her frozen blueberry yogurt. She mixes 2 sprigs of thyme with a ¼ cup of blueberries, 2 tablespoons water and a tablespoon of honey in a small saucepan to make a syrup. Giada mashes the blueberries with a potato masher (a fork would work just as well) and brings it to the boil and then lets it sit.  

Giada adds more blueberries to a food processor with 1/3 cup honey and 1/4 cup agave nectar. She says agave is great because it’s a sweetener, but it’s “a natural sweetener”. But isn’t that (combined with the honey) kind of a lot of sweetener, no matter what kind she’s using?

Giada adds a few tablespoons of lemon juice to the blueberries in the processor. She adds 2% Greek yogurt to the processor. She removes the thyme and pours the (still hot!!!) blueberry syrup into the yogurt and processes it. She freezes it in a glass container for several hours. “Plastic makes it too icy.” I’m not sure what that means.

The next scene is adorable Jade eating the frozen yogurt out of an ice cream cone, while Giada coaches her on how to lick it. (I’m simply narrating the events, not commenting on them…well, not that one, anyway.)

The last dish is a quick fish dish. Giada chops chives and parsley and adds lemon zest. That will go on top of the fish. She puts 4 pieces of center cut halibut on a baking sheet with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. She spoons over the herb and lemon mix. It bakes at 375°F. for 8 to 10 minutes. Meanwhile, she makes an arugula salsa ved-DAY, Yup, that’s what she said (over and over). She’s talking about a salsa verde. She puts one cup of baby arugula in the processor with capers, lemon zest and juice, salt, red pepper flakes and a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil. She processes it and that’s all there is to making a salsa ved-DAY. When the fish is cooked, she tastes a small bite with the salsa ved-DAY and loves it. It looks great, but I wonder if she couldn’t cut down on the olive oil a bit and the overzealous pronunciation.

Next time, I'll report on Anne also cooking kale. It’s a trend!!!

Breakfast Of Champions

Ali and Frazier, Philadelphia 2003

I’ve been waiting for the right occasion to use this picture I took at the Newseum some time ago. It was from a special exhibit of sports photos by the amazing photographer Walter Iooss. The original (not my silly photo of it) is incredible. You can see the actual one on this site, but showing it does allow me to bring up the topic of breakfast.

I always use New Year's Day as an excuse for a breakfast of bagels and all the good stuff that goes with them - smoked salmon, whitefish salad, vegetable cream cheese, lox cream cheese. Plus a frittata is always good.

Here is the frittata I made –

Potato And Onion Frittata (serves 6)

Printable recipe here

1/4 cup good olive oil (I often double the amount of oil to avoid sticking. Since you’re draining the onions and potatoes, it’s not as bad as it could be...or so I tell myself.)

2 large onions, sliced

2 big Idaho potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes

2 tsps. salt, divided

1/2 red pepper, finely chopped

1/2 zucchini, cubed

1/2 yellow squash, cubed

6 eggs

1/2 cup Swiss cheese (or any cheese you prefer)

handful of parsley, chopped

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Heat oil on medium heat in a heavy bottomed, medium saucepan. Stir in onions, potatoes and 1 teaspoon of salt. When you hear a sizzle, turn down the heat to low and cover. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes to prevent sticking. (Every stove is different. When you lift the lid, there should be a good head of steam even on low heat. If not, raise the heat just a bit, but you want the onions softening, not browning.)

Stir in the chopped red pepper and cubed zucchini and yellow squash. Continue cooking until onions and potatoes are completely soft, at least 15 to 20 minutes total. Remove pot from heat, uncover and leave to cool just a bit.

Beat eggs with remaining teaspoon of salt, cheese and parsley. Stir in onion and vegetable mixture.

Pour into an 8 inch square glass baking dish, which has been sprayed with Pam. Bake in a preheated 350°F oven for 30 minutes or until the center comes out mostly clean when tested with a toothpick. Cut into squares and serve.

(The frittata is really good served with tzatziki, which I had leftover from the night before.)

I followed our late New Year’s Day breakfast with my favorite cookie of the moment (more about that at the end of this post), James Beard’s Apple Cake (email me for the recipe), clementines and chocolate-dipped fruit from Prides Crossing Confections (a gift from my father – the chocolate is fantastic).

By the way, I also made clementine mimosas (sorry, no picture). Amazing. Clementine juice is sooo delicious. I (actually, it was a young person on the premises) put them through a juicer (without their skin) and we got loads of juice out of them. Half clementine juice and half champagne was the perfect combination. Realllllllly good!

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The night before, to ring in the New Year, I went with a few new snacks this year. I loved this Food52 recipe - Buffalo Mozzarella with Balsamic Glazed Plums, Pine Nuts and Mint.

Basically you boil down balsamic vinegar, add some plums (I used peaches) and cook them for a bit.

They get served with mozzarella and toasted pine nuts. Yummy.

I liked the leftovers over a spinach salad the next day.

I’ve been making these sausages from Trader Joe’s a lot lately. I often serve them with TJ's wonderful pretzel bread.

These are the Chicken Andouille ones, but I was serving veggie-lovers for New Year’s, so I used Tofurkey Italian Sausages, which were nowhere near as bad as you would have thought. The trick for any kind of sausage, no matter how left wing, is to cook it until it’s browned and crispy.



Then I toasted slices of the pretzel bread in a pan in the toaster oven (so one side stays soft). I slathered half the slices of bread with a tangy coarse mustard and the other half with a sweet one. I topped them with the sausages and a slice of gherkin is always nice too.

I also had to make my favorite dip with my favorite tzatziki. This time instead of plating it -

I bowled it.

For something sweet, I made a variation of Jamie Oliver’s Chocolate Pots. I've been making these for ages and they’re basically tiny servings of spoonable chocolate truffles. I use (unused) votive candle holders as their little bowls.

I did something different this time. I made one half of the recipe as written, with semi-sweet chocolate. I filled the “bowls” halfway and let them set for 20 minutes in the fridge. Then I made half the recipe with WHITE chocolate and poured that over the semi-sweet chocolate. The Semi-Sweet Chocolate Pot sets up just like a truffle. You can spoon it out, but it’s stiff. The white chocolate mixture doesn’t set and has the consistency of a mousse or pudding, so it’s like a sauce on top of the chocolate. SO GOOD. I finished them with chocolate nibs (not pictured).

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PS Here’s more info about that Ali/Frasier picture, written by Walter Iooss.

PPS I tried this cookie recipe awhile ago. I thought it was a bit cakey and not sweet enough. BUT I LOVED the little trick at the end – You hold back some of the cranberries, chips and nuts and stud the tops of the cookies with them after they’ve been baking for five minutes.

Now I just make the normal Toll House cookie recipe with white and dark chips and dried cranberries. After 5 minutes of baking, I add 2 small pieces of hand-chopped semisweet chocolate (or chips will do), 2 small pieces of hand-chopped white chocolate and two pieces of whatever nut I’m using and a couple of dried cranberries to the top of the cookies. I love the chunky, chewy look it gives.

Happy New Year!!! 

I hope you enjoyed yourselves with lots of good friends, family and food…plus a beverage or two. I'm just getting some pictures organized. I'll see you soon...

Twas the night before Christmas...

 

I finished my baking... 

 

 

 

and now I'm waiting for Santa. 

To all of my wonderful blogging buddies and readers, I hope you have the best holiday ever! Enjoy your loot, have a great dinner, but most of all, enjoy your family and friends. 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVE!

 

                                                             

It's Christmas In Pioneer Woman Land

Pioneer Woman with Ree Drummond

Christmas

Cinnamon Rolls

PW's Prime Rib with Rosemary Salt Crust

Brussels Sprouts with Balsamic and Cranberries

Duchess Potatoes

Burgundy Mushrooms

Whiskey Cream Sauce

Pioneer Woman has been off my radar for a while. Maybe she left the ranch and moved to the city. She might be living in a condo with wall to wall carpeting and a doorman, for all I know. The kids could be enrolled in ka-rah-TAY and an afterschool art appreciation course to teach them the difference between Giacometti and Grandma Moses.

So I checked out her Christmas spectacular and, no, she’s still on the ranch doing all those pioneering things she likes to do. No Rockettes for her family, just wrangling the cattle…(I wonder if Ladd is going to give the kids a day off on Christmas or if he needs to teach them that on a ranch there ARE no days off. Maybe Ree will add a little festive nutmeg to their 5 am chicory and coffee before they’re sent off onto the plains.)

Ree starts with cinnamon rolls, which she makes with her girls (I guess no male types are allowed to have anything to do with cinnamon buns) and her best friend Hyacinth. They deliver them “around town” wrapped in what looks like bandannas and a big bow. THAT’S a really good idea to use bandannas…except wouldn’t they get all sticky and gooey? Cellophane is probably the right choice for baked goods.

Ree makes the dough by mixing together a quart of whole milk (if someone ever asked for skim milk on the ranch, would he or she be taken back to the toolshed?), a cup of vegetable oil (safflower is always my choice for a tasteless oil for baking) and a cup of sugar heated to just below the boil. She cools it to lukewarm and then sprinkles in 2 packages of yeast and follows that with 8 cups of flour.  

COOKING ALERT! We’re only two minutes in and I have to take a huge exception to how Ree is proceeding:

No matter WHAT the recipe says, I always PROOF my yeast before combining it with loads of flour. In this case, I would heat ½ cup of the milk and 2 teaspoons of the sugar separately and sprinkle the yeast over THAT. I would wait to see if I got a nice bubble out of it and then I’d stir the proofed mixture into the rest of the lukewarm milk, sugar and oil mixture with all that flour. 

If you have a bum packet of yeast, do you really want to start all over with another huge amount of flour and all the other stuff? Definitely not.

Ree covers the bowl with a cloth (a homey-looking cloth, of course) and leaves it in a warm place for an hour.  Now this is interesting, she stirs an additional cup of flour with some baking powder and baking soda into the dough. She says the dough can be used then or refrigerated for up to 3 days.  

Here’s an entertaining site I just found by an opinionated pastry chef (the best kind), who believes that baking powder has no place in cinnamon rolls.  And here is a Q and A about why you might want to add extra leaveners to yeast doughs.

Ree probably never even thought about those added ingredients. It might be just an old family recipe that she is used to using. One benefit of the baking soda and powder is that they would help the dough to rise nicely if the yeast was handled a bit casually.

Ree rolls each half of the dough into 30 inch long pieces.  She drizzles over a cup of butter, saying “If you think you’ve added enough butter, just go ahead and add a little more.”  She smears the butter into the dough with her hands, which is fine EXCEPT that she immediately touches a measuring cup to get one cup of sugar without washing her hands.

Again, with sugar this time, she says to add more than you think you would need. Then she sprinkles over “an eighth of a cup” of cinnamon. That’s 2 tablespoons for those of you who don’t have that size measuring cup -BECAUSE THEY DON’T EXIST!

Another thing - why has she not mixed the sugar and cinnamon together? The only reason I can think of is because she was quite liberal with the sugar, sprinkling it over the edges of the dough AND the work surface, while the much more costly cinnamon stayed mostly ON the dough and wasn’t scattered all over the kitchen.

Ree rolls up the dough really tightly using what she calls “a typewriter maneuver”.  I guess she means that her fingers are constantly moving as she works her way across the dough, rolling it up. She pinches it closed and  places it seam-side down on the work surface. She cuts half inch wide slices and puts them in foil cake pans – about 7 to 9 in each pan. She covers them and lets them rise for 20 minutes.

Oh, listen to what Ree just said. The boys are out with Ladd feeding the mustangs, because, even though it’s Christmas, “The work on the ranch still has to be done.”  I knew it! (Are the child labor laws in Texas or Oklahoma, or wherever she is, particularly lax?)

Ree bakes the cinnamon rolls at 375°F for 15 minutes. She has some nonsensical exchange with her friend, Hyacinth, about bringing the rolls to the “Tulsans” one year and how they “never told us”. Told them WHAT? What is she talking about? Oh, they BOTH took cinnamon rolls SEPARATELY to the “Tulsans” and the people receiving the rolls didn’t mention that they had already gotten them from the other person. That was not worth the paragraph it took to explain that. Plus Ree’s monotone delivery made that less than a riveting story.

Ree makes the frosting next. I guess it’s so thick and sweet, she doesn’t even bother to call it a glaze. She mixes powdered sugar, strong coffee (GREAT for the kids), butter and milk together. She adds maple extract. As soon as the rolls come out, she ices them. They do look fabulous.

Ladd comes in with the kids and they take the rolls to deliver them to folks. Oh, I see, she wrapped the whole foil pan in the bandanna, but I sure hope she covered it with foil or something.

Ree stays behind to clean up (yeah, I’m sure SHE’S really doing that!) and start dinner and she’ll meet up with the others at the town Christmas parade.

Ree takes an ENORMOUS slab of beef from the fridge and cuts it in half, so it cooks more evenly. She sears both pieces while she gets a peppercorn crust ready. She crushes tricolored peppercorns and mixes them with a lot of Kosher salt, chopped garlic and fresh rosemary and thyme. She refrigerates the meat and the salt mix.

Ree tells us that Ladd’s father spends 5 days making fudge every Christmas and Ree is serving that as her dessert.

She moves on to the burgundy mushrooms. She adds tons of button mushrooms to a stock pot with 2 sticks of butter, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, a bottle of burgundy wine and boiling water, chicken AND beef bouillon cubes. Ick. Then dill seeds and garlic go in. She simmers it covered for 6 hours! Then she simmers it uncovered for 3 hours. I’m sorry, I can’t believe that it’s worth all that cooking energy for a pot of mushrooms. Wouldn’t that be a perfect crock pot recipe?

That recipe does not appeal to me at all. It’s probably so salty from the bouillon cubes and Worcestershire sauce and I can imagine that the dill seeds make it kind of bitter.

Next up is the Pawhuska Parade of Lights. That looks like a pretty major parade. Ree leaves early to start dinner. (I was wondering how she could be at the parade at all. The cook usually has to miss all the fun stuff.)

Ree takes the slabs of dead beef out of the fridge. (Sorry, but they are!) She rubs them with oil and applies the salt and pepper crust. I think it’s a shame she used so much salt in the crust, because now all those lovely peppercorns and fresh herbs will be inedible. (I’m not against salt crusts in general. A whole fish cooked under a wall of salt is one of the greatest things around. But you can’t eat the crust.) She cooks them at 500°F for 20 minutes and then she turns down the heat to 300°F for about 25 or 30 more minutes.

Santa (wearing plaid?) comes by, which must mean the end of the parade. Ree is just getting started on the Brussels sprouts, which she says her children love so much that they can’t imagine a holiday dinner without them. How odd. OH, SHE GOT ME!!! She says she’s just kidding and that she’s making them, because SHE loves them. She halves them and sprinkles them with olive oil and salt and roasts them at 375°F for 20 to 25 minutes.

Ree shows us her already made “Duchess Potatoes”. She boiled diced potatoes and then dried them out in the oven. (Frankly, they look really waterlogged and bit overcooked and mealy. If she kept them in bigger pieces and used Ina’s trick of finishing the cooking by letting them sit for 10 minutes in a covered colander after being drained, she wouldn’t have to do that additional step of drying them out.)

Ree puts them through a food mill and then adds egg yolks (many), butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg and cream. She pipes the mixture into peaked scalloped piles (that doesn’t sound good, but they looked fine) on a baking sheet with a large star tip. She refrigerates them until ready to use. She dabs them with an egg wash and cooks them at 375°F for 20 minutes.

Oh, I guess that wasn’t Santa in the plaid shirt. He’s just going by now and it’s time for the rest of the family to come home.

Ree takes out the prime rib, covers the pieces with foil and lets them rest.

The  party’s in full swing. For a sauce for the meat, Ree adds whiskey (off the heat)  to already caramelized onions. She pours in beef broth and lets it reduce. Then she adds a cup of cream, salt, pepper and a little butter and it’s done.

Ree adds a syrup of sugar and balsamic vinegar to the Brussels sprouts with dried cranberries. Dinner is served and people appear to be eating that salty crust. Ree makes a toast to the Brussels sprouts. No one else joins in. Awkward.

Then it’s time for dirty Santa. That sounds awful. I hope he keeps his pants on. Oh, it’s like a present exchange…where you can steal from each other. Those folks on the range are so droll. I still think the kids could benefit from some martial arts instruction along with a little art history.