The reason I can get behind the Super Bowl

A giant vat of chili, made pretty much like this, but without the masa harina. 84% less garlic, 300% bigger chunks of chuck (thoroughly browned, leaving the aroma of suet lingering in closets days after) and the same number but a slightly different selection of chiles (reconstituted and messily puréed), and with the addition of several kinds of beans (the few Texans among us were not chili aficionados).

1.5 gallons, all gone by the fourth quarter — and there were gumbo and wings too! But in trade we received a fridge full of beer.

Meatballs

This is a spaghetti and meatballs recipe that my dad makes. He found this in a Roman Catholic church cookbook in the 1970s and has made it on special occasions ever since. It’s perfectly Italian-American and major comfort food.

1lb ground turkey thighs
minced clove garlic
fennel seeds
minced parsley
salt, pepper
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/3 cup grated Parmesan
1 egg

Mix turkey and spices, then add the bread crumbs, cheese, and egg. Form into golfball-sized meatballs and fry in olive oil until brown on all sides. Meanwhile, bring one 28oz. can tomatoes, one 7oz. can tomato paste, and 1 cup of water to a simmer. Add one chopped (raw) onion and salt to taste. Add meatballs and simmer for 30 minutes. Serve over spaghetti — the sauce should cover 1 lb. spaghetti and serve 4-6.

Adapted from A Treasury of Favorite Italian Recipes by the St. Theresa Guild of Holy Rosary Church, Bridgeport, CT. The original recipe was contributed by Theresa Bucci.

Mushrooms & Lamb Kidneys

My mom grew up in Dutchess County in the early 50s, when the area was still mostly farmland. Grandpa fancied himself a gentleman farmer, and he raised some sheep on the property. Mom sometimes named the lambs, but learned not to grow too attached because grandpa would inevitably slaughter them for food. Lamb kidneys and mushrooms definitely graced the family table a few times, and to this day lamb is my mom’s favorite meat.

Cheese Soufflé

Guest post by Holly Tashian

This is a great time of year for a soufflé. The recipe follows…

Below freezing, with 40-mph winds

That’s what it’s like outside in Brooklyn today.

I thankfully remembered a couple of weeks ago to bring the composting worms inside, along with the few survivors of the fire escape garden (though one tomato plant out there is still clinging to the last of its miraculously green leaves):

What’s this? What’s the tiny speck hanging off the middle plant?

Could it be? It is.

The little alpine strawberry plants we got from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden last spring are the toughest little guys I’ve ever tried to grow on purpose. Matt and I have both killed one or two each through neglect, and while only one of his came back from the dead only to be met with further neglect that it couldn’t live through a second time, my formerly-dead plant seems to be rallying nicely, and her sister is bearing a sizeable fruit on this, the eleventh day of December.

There’s no excuse

Over Thanksgiving, we ate too much (22 pounds of turkey and four pies for eight people!) and whiled away hours of digesting by playing Nintendo and Blokus and watching movies — “Away We Go” and “Objectified,” both altogether enjoyable.

In the latter, the otherwise insufferable Karim Rashid makes a couple of statements that the designers around me liked. The one I still remember — Why, with the millions of chairs that have been designed and produced, are there still uncomfortable chairs? — reminded me of something Steingarten wrote (probably in The Man Who Ate Everything), about how the standard for chocolate-chip cookies, provided on the back of the Tollhouse morsels bag, is both widely available and good, and therefore there should be no excuse for lesser cookies to exist in the world. (Could be that I’m generously misremembering, since the only quote I can find seems only to say that the recipe makes all other chocolate chip cookie recipes superfluous.)

That’s how I feel about this chocolate cake.

Matt is undertaking to become the baking expert around here. And when he was looking to bake something for a friend’s birthday, I directed him to a recipe that the Amateur Gourmet has written about several times. It’s true what the AG says, the cake is a people magnet. And more than that, it is very, very good. (Even when you forgo the second layer because you only have one cake pan each in 8″ and 10″.) Maybe one of the best chocolate cakes I’ve ever had, in fact. It’s easy enough and so good that you wonder why there are so many dry, tasteless chocolate cakes out there.

But then again, I’ve got a few uncomfortable chairs too.

Doing Mom proud

I contributed a dumpling recipe (my mom’s, actually) to the October/November 2009 issue of Jamie Magazine. There are still copies of the issue on US news stands.

Now that’s a spicy meatball

At the latest edition of Choice Cuts, we paid tribute to the movie Tilsammans with husmanskost, classic Swedish comfort food.

Have a heart

Or five or six.

[Warning for the faint of -- ahem: scores of undoubtedly cute little chickens, ducks, and guinea fowl gave their lives for this post.]

Fish in flavor

Our most recent edition of Choice Cuts was all about La Serenissima, and in that city of canals, one eats a lot of fish.

I somehow failed to get any pictures of the baccalà mantecato, but our token Venetian confirms that it holds up to the standard. Eating whipped salt cod on grilled polenta is like wrapping your tongue in a Snuggie (that’s a good thing), and the dish is actually pretty easy to put together. It just requires a little forethought — the cod needs a few days of soaking so you can keep all your teeth (and your mixer can keep its motor intact).

Sarde in saor, on the other hand, is a giant pain in the ass. Not only because the dish requires several days to complete, but because it turns out filleting sardines is not really as easy as the internet would make it seem. (Corollary: Filleting sardines to feed 20 is no fun.) But I love this dish, whose name is Venetian for “sardines in flavor” or “sardines in tastiness” and very apt.

Filleted sardines get a roll in some flour and then are deep fried.

Meanwhile, onions get stewed for a while in vinegar with raisins and pine nuts.

Alternate layers of onions with sardines in a big (ideally ceramic) vessel. Cover it and leave it in the fridge for two or three days.

Mangia. And then hunt down a fishmonger or friend skilled in filleting for next time.