Get in a deep horse stance in front of a hot, open, oven door. Breathe out… breathe in. Grip wads of paper towels in both hands, and lift the unwieldy, 20 pound ball of 350 degree grease off a searing hot roasting rack. Lift with the legs, not the back. Rotate the hot grease ball a quarter turn to ensure evenly browned, crisp skin. Repeat at least four times, or until the medicine ball is cooked through.

I avoided this oven roasted turkey ritual this year by smoking my main course outdoors in a Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. And forget turkey. Even brined, butter slathered, free range, never frozen, organic, heritage birds aren’t as flavorful as a beefy prime rib. So as with my cranberry sauce recipe, I continue to stomp on tradition with my entree.

I’ve owned this smoker for about a year, and I’m confident enough now to cook my family’s Thanksgiving meal in it and not spoil an expensive hunk of meat in the process. There are several schools of thought on cooking prime rib, including these two:
1) The traditional English method: Start in a very hot oven to sear the outside of the roast, then lower the temperature to a moderate 350F degrees to finish cooking.
2) The low and slow: cook at 200 degrees for a longer period, then finish in a 500 degree oven to brown the outside.

Both methods will produce a rosy medium rare at the very center of the roast, but by using a gentler heat of method #2, more of that rosy pink is preserved closer to the surface. If you want to read more about the theory behind the methods, check out Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for the Food, one of the books I’ll write up for my Required Reading list.

These principles apply to both indoor ovens and outdoor cooking over live fire. My friend Russ turns his prime ribs on an outdoor rotisserie using method #1, reportedly with great results. Since my Weber smoker is an outdoor oven that can hold temperatures in the 200-250 F degree range, it’s perfect for roasting a prime rib with the low and slow method. And if I say so myself, the result was fabulous. It’ll be long time before I roast another turkey in November.

He said “wood.”	Holding steady at 240	“Dam” fine pumpkin pie!

One tradition I chose not to stomp on this year is the pumpkin pie from the Filling Station Cafe, Orange County’s foremost pie bakers and my default purveyor of holiday desserts. Sure, I can bake my own, but for $20, I’d rather buy one that’s far better than one I can ever make myself. Note the height of the pie in the clickable photo. All their pies are singularly massive. A substantially thick, slightly sweet short dough crust acts like Hoover Dam and retains enough pumpkin to fill Lake Mead, yet crumbles under your fork like a Lorna Doone cookie. Baking this much pumpkin custard takes more time than pies of lesser size, yet it’s always perfectly done: never too loose, and never dried out. It’s flavored with just enough familiar spices to imagine your mama baked it, that is, if your mama got mad pie skillz.

Every year, they limit holiday pre-orders because demand is that high. When I picked mine up, I learned they stopped taking orders seven days before Thanksgiving. If you want one for Christmanukah, I suggest you call today. The caramel apple pie is my other favorite choice. Walnuts anchored by a hardened slurry of brown sugar “caramel” cascades like magma down the top crust of this massive, peaked, apple chunk volcano. The coating isn’t technically caramel but rather a sandy textured, dark brown sugar frosting. It’s a minor quibble with an otherwise damn fine pie.

Filling Station
This is their original location where the baking is done. Breakfast and lunch only.
201 N. Glassell St.
Orange, CA 92866
714-289-9714
and
195 Center Street Promenade
This location is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and has a small, well chosen list of interesting beers and wines.
Anaheim, CA 92805
714-535-2800

Of the things falsely attributed to the Mongolians, the Mongol hot pot might be the most delicious. A flavorful pot of broth boils at the table, and you dip various meats, seafood, vegetables, dumplings, and noodles in it.

Other Asian cultures have variations of the hot pot, like the Japanese shabu shabu. Unlike the Japanese version where you’d cook in plain hot water then dip your food in a sauce, here the broth is pungent with spices, herbs and chilis and adds all the flavor you’d want. One selects from several broths of various intensity, and differnent dishes to cook in it.

This style of dining lends itself to large family style gatherings, and 32 hungry chowhounds convened for this feast. With about ten people per table, we sampled many more dishes than we could with a smaller group. I love that this adventurous horde is up for any type of cuisine and will try pretty much anything, even the odd sounding stuff.

“What the hell is Mongolian Fresh 18?”
“Don’t know, but we’re gonna get one.”

First page of menu

Second page of menu

Half mild and half extra spicy bowl of bubbling broth. The mild one tastes of green vegetables and herbs, and can be eaten as a soup in the last course. The intensely spicy red broth is too hot to drink as a soup, even for chiliheads. Note all the herbs and spices floating in the broths, which is the style served at Little Sheep. Not all places leave the floaties in.

Our first meat: paper thin slices of lamb. We also ordered “fat lamb”, sliced pork, lamb meatball, and cuttlefish dumplings

Pea shoots, or pea tips, as they’re called on this menu. Our table also enjoyed sliced daikon, nappa cabbage, cauliflower florets, slices of kabocha pumpkin, baby bok choy, and three mushrooms: black fungus, enoki, and oyster.

Little Sheep noodles: a hot bowl of noodles minus the soup. These udon-like wheat noodles absorb the rich lamb broth they’re cooked in and are served with vegetables and meat.

Hand pulled noodles. These broad thin noodles flavored with green leafies (spinach?) are cooked in the hot pot.

This is Mongolian fresh 18. It’s a cold noodle dish with vegetables and tofu skin flavored with sesame oil, vinegar, and chilis. Delicious.

Several other cold dishes we tried included thinly sliced daikon and naga yam. Naga is known in Japanese as yama-imo, a root vegetable with crisp white flesh and mild flavor notorious for oozing a mucous-like slime when sliced, as okra does. Here, they’re cut into bite sized wedges and served in a suprisingly Japanese style with soy sauce and shaved bonito flakes (aka katsuoboshi). These were not a big hit at my table. Dorothy remarked that every time she eats with me (like when we ate banh cuon in Little Saigon) something slimy’s going to show up on the table.

Spicy pork wontons. Thick skinned hand formed dumplings filled with ground pork, and sauced with red chili oil, green onion and black vinegar. Very popular at our table.

Scallion pancakes. This is a Northern Chinese staple, and this thin version was very good, if a bit oily.

Lamb pancakes. Hand-rolled skins contain juicy lamb patties flavored with herbs. Like a Middle Eastern kofta kebab in a thin crisp fried skin. The inside of the skins absorbed some of the meat juices, yielding a nice crispy / chewy contrast in texture.

So spicy you’ll need this much paper to blow your nose

Final tab for my table, with a Tsingtao beer for some of us, came to just $20 per adult, including tip.

Little Sheep
120 S. Atlantic Blvd.
Monterey Park, CA 91754
626-282-1089
and
227 W. Valley Blvd. #348
San Gabriel, CA 91776
626-457-5599
and
1695 S. Azusa Ave
Hacienda Heights, CA 91745
626-581-4922

There’s always room for ice cream. Little Sheep doesn’t have much in the way of dessert, so we caravaned over to Fosselman’s, a Los Angeles ice cream institution since 1924. The local Asian and Mexican populations have influenced their menu over the years, with green tea, ube, macapuno and dulce de leche offered next to seasonal American offerings like eggnog and pumpkin.

Fosselman’s Ice Cream
1824 W. Main St.
Alhambra, CA 91801
626-282-6533

Many thanks to our chief instigator Paloma for organizing yet another memorable feast, and to all the friends new and old who make these gatherings special!

There’s nothing new under the sun in the food world and this technique as applied to fruit preserves is probably in use somewhere. For all I know, this might be a common technique in jam making, which I know little about. If you know of a recipe like this that starts by adding fruit to hot caramel, please point me to it so I can research it further.

The key idea is to minimize the cooking time to retain the fresh fruit flavors and aromas. Start with no added liquid other than honey and maple syrup cooked down until it’s a caramel. Adding fruit to this intensely hot syrup causes the fruit to pop quickly and give up its juices fast. The small amount of juice produced is the only liquid that needs to cook off.

This recipe yields a chunky sauce of thick consistency with cranberries that still pop between the teeth, and apples that stil have some texture. If you like a less chunky sauce, I have some suggestions after the recipe.

********
Fresh n’ Fruity Cranberry Chutney
©2004 Professor Salt

Yield: roughly 1/2 quart (all measurements in US units)

Ingredients:
One 12 oz. bag fresh cranberries
1 medium sized apple – I used a Fuji
1/4 cup maple syrup - I like the dark and strongly flavored US grade B
1/4 cup honey
freshly grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt

Optional:
Black pepper, a few grinds, to taste
Ground cardomom, to taste
Grand Marnier, a splash to add flavor, but not enough to booze it up.
Maple syrup, to taste

1. Rinse cranberries in a bowl of water. Discard stems and spoiled berries. Drain berries in a colander.
2. Core and chop apple, with skin on, into small pieces about the same size as cranberries
3. Mix maple syrup and honey in a 3 quart saucepot with a heavy clad bottom, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
4. Reduce the syrup and measure it with a candy thermometer until it reaches hard crack stage, 300 degrees Farenheit.
5. Quickly add cranberries.
6. Stir fruit with a heat resistant silicone spatula or wooden spoon constantly for 2 minutes. Scrape syrup off the bottom of pot, and coat all of the fruit with the syrup.
7. Add the apples, and stir again to coat.
8. Reduce heat to low, and allow the fruit to seep out its juices.
9. Cook uncovered for 20 minutes or until the juices have evaporated and/or absorbed into the sauce. Stir every few minutes during cooking. Time will vary depending on how juicy the fruit started out.
10. Remove pot from heat, and dip the pot into a sinkful of cool water to bring contents quickly to room temperature.
11. Add salt, pepper, lemon zest, and optional ingredients like vanillla, Grand Marnier, or spices, and taste.
12. If more sweetener is desired, drizzle maple syrup and meditate until nirvana is achieved.
13. Transfer cooled sauce into a sealed container, and store in refrigerator.

********

NOTE: Sugar burns are extremely painful. DO NOT touch or taste the syrup no matter how tempting it looks. Use a larger pot than you think you need (I used a 3 quart saucier) because the syrup foams up alot. Overspilled sugar will wreak havoc on your stovetop. Ask me how I know.

Maple and honey start boiling. Its water content is still high at this point. Pay attention to its color and the size of bubbles as it cooks off.

240F, “soft ball” stage. Individual bubbles are fairly large, and color has darkened.

300F, “hard crack” stage. I’m a jackass and dropped the thermometer. Tiny bubbles form a tall foam.

Cranberries start popping immdiately. Stir well to coat evenly.

Apples go in a minute later. Notice the amount of juice already given off.

Sorry, I didn’t take a photo of the final product. Use the Force to know when it’s done, you will.

This is a tart, almost chutney-like sauce because the honey and maple syrup have caramelized enough that it loses its sugary character and takes on a darkly roasted caramel flavor. The variety of apple will also affect its sweetness. If you want yours sweeter, add additional maple syrup after the sauce has cooled to room temperature.

If you like a less chunky sauce where all the cranberry skins have popped, try one of these options:

1) Cover the pot while it cooks to retain liquid, and increase your cooking time to 30 minutes or slightly more. The additional time will help break down the cranberry skins until they’ve all popped.
or
2) Cook the sauce uncovered per the instructions, then run the room temperature product briefly through a food processor.

If you try this technique, please come back and comment. I’m still dialing it in and I’d appreciate your feedback.

My Japanese family emigrated to New York in 1973 blissfully unaware of Thanksgiving, cranberry sauce, or turkey induced food comas. I have my second grade teacher to thank for introducing me to all that, and seeding a love for cooking on the one day Americans celebrate clueless FOB immigrants.

I was seven years old. Ms. Shapiro was a pretty first year teacher fresh out of grad school (ahem…schoolboycrush). It was 1975, and she let us play the Bay City Rollers on the record player and dance like goons if we were good. She taught us about holidays through food traditions and having us kids cook in class. We formed wontons on Chinese New Year for instance, and she did the frying. Being the only Asian kid in my school (except for my sister), I already knew how to use chopsticks and helped her show the other kids how (ugghahem…teacherspet).

On Thanksgiving, we made cranberry sauce in class. Hers is the classicly simple recipe: berries, apples, sugar, water, orange juice and zest simmered for a couple hours until thickened. I’ve made cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving since. The jellied gloop still shaped like a can has never fouled my parents’ holiday meal out of sheer ignorance of the stuff. I think of Ms. Shapiro every November and often thought I should track her down to say thanks for imbuing an early love of food and cooking. Two years ago, I did exactly that and we’ve since been in touch via email.

She confessed that she spilled those cranberries all over the floor while she was prepping the recipe. We kids were in another classroom at the time so we didn’t see her having to chase them all over the room, under the desks, before we could cook. Mmm… dust bunnies. I also learned she got her recipe from her mom. So this tradition goes back a ways.

I admit that after nearly three decades of making this sauce, the magic wasn’t there for me. I didn’t need B.B. King to tell me the thrill was gone. I tweaked the basic recipe every year by adding spices, wine, or Grand Marnier. I tried using maple syrup or honey instead of white sugar for added flavor. And I realized that was the whole problem: I was adding other flavors to make up for a lack of fresh berry and apple flavors. Why the lack of fresh fruit flavors? Because I was simmering the sauce for two hours and all the volatile aromas and flavors had long since cooked off. Why did I need to cook it for two hours? Because it started off with too much liquid. Why, why, why? Because that’s the way our mamas did it and we don’t screw with tradition, that’s why.

In my next post, I’ll share a technique I came up with last year for a fresh tasting, quick cooking cranberry sauce.