Good gravy! Gravy!

Yesterday I hinted at the fact that I needed to share a major life revelation. Here I am, about to do, boldly going where few Cubans have ever gone before.

I have finally eaten gravy. For the first time in my life.

Yes, gentle reader, lift up thine jaw from where it's surely fallen to the floor in shock—I speak the truth! In my 29 years of life, I'd never ONCE tasted turkey gravy, or any traditional brown gravy made and beloved by so many on their turkey and mashed potatoes. Not once!

You must understand that this stems back to the days of my youth. When I was just a wee one, with my soft, impressionable mind still highly prone to serious molding and sculpting, my father took it upon himself to impress upon me many of the foods that are on his seemingly unending list of evil foods that no one in their right mind should ever, under any circumstances, consume. Foods that because he does not like, he thinks no one else should like either. This list includes: mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, and most other condiments, peanut butter, Cocoa Puffs cereal, all types of squash (my mother and I delight in hiding squash in things, making him eat them, asking if he liked it, and after he says yes, telling him that there was squash in what he just ate and liked—but he still goes on saying he hates squash), avocados, al dente pasta, any soft drink that isn't clear (he actually had me trained as a child to respond to his question, "What is Coca-Cola?" with an exuberant shout of, "Poison!"), any and all Mexican foods (including burritos, tacos, and tortillas), curry, stuffing, chewing gum, whipped cream, most kinds of frosting, and let's not forget, for the purpose of this blog entry—gravy.

I think it's the color and the consistency that my father's not happy with, or perhaps it's the fact that gravy (in the traditional American/Thanksgiving essence) is not part of the Spanish or Latino food pantheon, but my father passionately despises gravy and refuses to eat it. My mother also politely and less vocally turns up her nose at it, but she still turns it up. So while I had the good sense to ignore my father on most of his other warnings about the evils of the foods on his most-hated list (how could ANYONE hate whipped cream!), the gravy thing really stuck with me. I just never had an occasion to eat it growing up, so I never did.

But what about at Thanksgiving? you ask. Surely there was gravy for your turkey then! Ah, dear friends, we Cubans sassed up the turkey Latino style and instead dressed it with mójo (pronounced MOH-hoh), a Latino "gravy" made of hot oil, thin-sliced onions, garlic, and citrus juice. It's simple and delicious and is perfect with meat and potatoes—or in our case, lechón (roast pork) and yucca. Even when gravy was made available to the Gringo contingent of our family, there was also always mójo, so I never hesitated: I went with the sauce I knew.

For the last 4 years, I'd attended Thanksgiving dinner at Jeremy's parents' house. His mother is an excellent cook and makes a pretty traditional Thanksgiving dinner, including homemade gravy. My father had me thinking that this was made of no less than the tears of abandoned Asian infants thickened with essence of Adolf Hitler, so for the last 4 years, I absolutely would not eat gravy at the Trout family Thanksgiving dinner. I politely helped myself to everything else that was available, and when the pitcher of gravy came my way, I discreetly passed it along to the next person, dressing my turkey only with cranberry sauce or forkfuls of stuffing (one of the foods I was wise enough to ignore my father on, because it's scrumptious!). I just couldn't bring myself to ladle a spoonful of the thick brown stuff out on my plate.

But this year I had a serious pre-game pep talk with myself. All right, self, said I, this is it. You're 29 now, and you're into food more seriously now, and you're always trying new things, so how can you possibly hold your head high and call yourself a lover of food if you've never had the guts to try something as simple as gravy? For god's sake, it's just meat drippings mixed with roux! Get over yourself! Try it! How bad could it REALLY be?

I spent the pre-dinner hours helping in the kitchen and warily hovering near the gravy, checking it out. I watched Jeremy's mother concoct the gravy. I watched it turn brown. I watched it thicken. I even stirred it for a few brief minutes when she left the room to answer the phone. And when the time came and we sat down to dinner, I took the gravy pitcher with only the slightest tremble of unsteadiness in my hand and put one conservative spoonful into an indentation I'd specifically made for it on top of my mashed potatoes. I passed the pitcher. I took a deep breath, and then I took a forkful.

I didn't die! I didn't immediately grow horns and find myself indentured for all eternity to Satan! My insides didn't shrivel from this noxious substance! I ate the rest of the gravy-covered potatoes in relief.

Later, on the ride home, I confessed to Jeremy that during dinner I'd eaten my first serving of gravy ever.

"What did you think?" he asked.

"It tasted like turkey juice," I said. "Thickened turkey juice. It's not bad. It just tastes like turkey. But I think I prefer mójo." Here Jeremy made an appreciative noise, as he is a fan of my mother's cooking, including her mójo. (In fact, he's such a fan that every year he films her on his cell phone video camera making the mójo, which actually is quite a sight to see. Maybe we'll post the video on here this year.)

So there you have it: a Cubanita had her first gravy at the tender young age of 29. The spell is broken. The gravy was eaten. And I am still alive, and better for it, I think.

Checking out my edible adversary

How is Thanksgiving just around the corner? 101 recipes

He's done it again! My boyfriend Mark Bittman has done it again.

As Thanksgiving rapidly approaches, The Minimalist extraordinaire whips up 101 Thanksgiving dishes. I must say that some of these look positively delicious! I love his idea of making a cranberry relish with pomegranate seeds. What a great idea! I recently made some cranberry-orange relish with some cranberries a colleague shared with us from Cape Cod, but the idea of putting in pomegranate just sounds fab. (Especially since Jeremy is allergic to oranges and can't really eat my succulent creation---it's really good on chicken!)

And as a bonus, here's a green beans amandine recipe by Mollie Katzen. I tried these at a talk she gave recently here at Harvard (more on that another time) and the leek chips are what makes this so lovely. 

This year for Thanksgiving, I'll be celebrating with my beau/sous chef Jeremy and his parents at their house. His mom is a great cook, and one of my favorite things about the meal is the escarole soup, which is literally broth with escarole. But it's so DELICIOUS. I'll be bringing the same dish I made last year, roasted acorn squash with sausage stuffing. It's insanely good, and it looks really impressive! I'll try to remember to take pictures of them this year to post on here.

What do y'all do for Thanksgiving? Any traditional and delicious foods that you simply cannot be without for the holidays?

"If you're born round, you never die square."

So I don't really understand why Bravo feels the need to toy with my heart so, but there was no new episode of Top Chef last week--instead there was a reunion of "fan favorite" cheftestants from past seasons (including my favorite, Carla--Hootie-Hoo!). They are really stretching this season out. And it annoys me.

Since I don't have any cheftestant fails to talk about now, I figured I'd instead briefly talk about Born Round, Frank Bruni's memoir that I recently read---and loved. Frank Bruni was, until recently, the restaurant critic for the New York Times, and I've always loved his reviews. They're so descriptive and funny. (You can check out an archive of his articles here.)

Fank's memoir was very funny, but also very honest--sometimes painfully so. He was a chubby kid who has struggled with his weight and his relationship with food all his life, from the time he was a two-year-old baby bulimic. (Really. You gotta read it to believe it.) The journey he went on to become a food critic (a position he seriously debated taking because of his food issues) is touching and I could really relate to a lot of the things he said. I've also had a lifelong struggle with food, a love-hate relationship from the time I was a child. I've done fad diets (I, like Frank, tried the Atkins diet), taken pills (sometimes with terrifying, wake-up-at-night-with-chest-pains results), gone on spurts of obsessive exercise only to get bored and give up two weeks later (and did I mention that during a lot of those obsessive exercise periods my appetite increased and I ate more?), and even did Weight Watchers, where I lost over 25 pounds, which I promptly regained when I moved to Boston and got too busy being a grad student to track how many points I was eating a day. I've dealt with years of emotional and mental abuse from a father who cannot tolerate the fact that I weight more than 130 pounds. (A weight that is actually underweight for my height, but this doesn't seem to fase the man.) I have been an emotional eater most of my life. Loneliness and boredom led to sneaking snacks, anxiety and stress led to binging, being reprimanded by my parents growing up to clean my plate created a compulsion for always being in the Clean Plate Club that I am still trying to break. I am still trying to figure out sane eating. I am still trying to figure out eating that doesn't leave me weak and bloated with remorse when I'm done. I am still trying to un-fuck myself up. 

So if you've ever had moments where you lose a staring match against a cookie, Bruni's memoir will make you laugh, perhaps tear up a little (he IS Italian, so there IS that crazy family element, complete with Italian grandma who proves her love for you by stuffing you with food like you're a turkey), and it will definitely give you something to chew on.

Jeremy's Italian grandmother apparently still to this day (she's 92) says, "You don't have to be hungry to eat," proof that food is truly the glue that binds people together in so many cultures. While I appreciate the loving element of that sentiment, it's definitely something I need to learn to make peace with. Reading about Bruni's take with the same problem made me feel a little less alone.

Mama Pidal's picadillo

Picadillo! Not peccadillo mind you--pee-kah-DEE-yoh! It's a dish made with ground meat and vegetables and it was a Cubano kitchen staple for me growing up. In addition to Mama Pidal's lentil soup, this was one of the first things I ever cooked for myself. In fact, I can remember cooking these two recipes together on the first weekend I ever ventured into cooking non-pasta/stir-fry food for myself.

There are variations on picadillo, of course, but this is my mother's spin on it, and I have to say that it's delicious just as it is, and VERY easy to make, so I highly recommend it! The word "picadillo" comes from the Spanish word "picar," which means to finely chop. I remember that sometimes my mother would have leftover picadillo, not quite enough to make a filling dinner for the three of us, that she would mix with cooked white rice in a casserole dish and top with slices of cheese. Then she'd bake it so the cheese would melt. YUM. Best of leftovers! This is also good as a burrito or taco filling.

Last night while waiting for Jeremy to come home, I decided to throw together a pan of picadillor for dinner. Jeremy had bought the ingredients a few days earlier, because he is a love, and had somehow managed to find quite possibly the largest green bell pepper I've ever seen. I seriously need to get a digital camera to document things like this because the thing was the size of my head. After cutting it in half and removing the seeds, I started to dice up half of it. I swear I just kept chopping and chopping, and there was still more pepper to chop. I finally ended up putting half of the thing away in the fridge and out of my sight.

I also diced one sweet onion and then minced 3 small cloves of garlic. (You can use less, but I love garlic, so I use a little extra.) I poured some olive oil into a large fry pan (use one with a lid), enough to just coat the bottom of the pan, and turned the heat up to medium high, then added my veggies when it was nice and hot. You let those cook for a few minutes, stirring frequently, until the onions start to get transparent and you're about to drool because your house smells so delicious. Then you add a pound of ground lean turkey or ground lean beef. I tend to always use turkey because it's less fatty, and Jeremy bought me the natural, non-antibiotic/growth hormone Wild Harvest brand from Shaw's, which actually just LOOKED like better quality poultry than other brands of ground turkey I've used in the past. (Kudos to you, Jeremy.) Use the leanest meat you can find to prevent your dish from getting greasy---our turkey was only 7% fat. Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper and use a wooden spoon to break it up into little chunks (this is the "picar" element of the dish), stirring to allow the meat to cook on all sides. This will take a few minutes.

After you've cooked the meat nearly all the way, add some other seasonings, like garlic and onion salt or some adobo powder. Then add about a quarter cup of ketchup. Turns out we were nearly out of ketchup last night and the amount in the bottle just didn't look like enough. Lucky for the Tridal household, I frugally save the little single-serve ketchup packets that come with our take-out let's-eat-unhealthy-crap meals so the four we had sitting in the fridge were enough to tide us over---I knew they'd come in handy one day. (As a side note: some people use diced tomatoes, but I find that this can make the dish watery, and sometimes the taste of cooked tomatoes just doesn't do it for me, so I just stick with ketchup. If it's good enough for Mama Pidal, it's good enough for me.) Stir the ketchup in thoroughly, then add a generous dash of Worcestershire sauce (one of my favorite things about Worcestershire sauce is hearing my Cuban mother try to pronounce "Worcestershire" and just ending up saying "Worchesshersher") and two tablespoons of capers. Or, if you're not into capers, add a couple of tablespoons of chopped olives. Or, if you're REALLY adventurous, add both.

After you've stirred everything into a glorious melange and tasted to adjust your seasonings, lower the heat to very low, put the cover on the pan and let everything cook and simmer together for at least 10 minutes, no more than 20. Make sure to stir every couple of minutes so that nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan or burns, and discard any water that accumulates on the inside of the pan lid to prevent your dish from getting soggy. It's so good! The dish I made last night was particularly good because the turkey was just so good. I really think it makes a significant difference when you use the highest-quality meat. Jeremy has been eating this dish since we moved in together and even he agreed that this was the best pan of it I'd cooked up. Huzzah!

I just love this dish. It's easy, it's relatively hassle-free, it's delicious and filling, and if you use turkey, it's pretty healthy. It's also so versatile: you can eat it as it is, you can use it as a filling for stuffed peppers, you can mix it with rice into a casserole, you can use it to fill tacos or burritos or empanadas or meat pies. Eating it takes me back home; it was one of my favorite dinners, I never got tired of it, and I didn't mind eating the leftovers. And it makes your house smell so good! I can't recommend it enough. If you do decide to try this one, let me know what you think and if you love it as much as I do!