Well, Sunday was cooking day..three of us in the kitchen..rotating prep spots...in the end we had a wonderfully brown roast chicken and vegetables with a creamed sauce with apple brandy, a butternut squash filled with creamed onions, mushroom strudel for app., a flat and chewy choco chip cookie from a recipe from Saveur, a cabbage casserole, mushroom risotto, galakeboreko, and apple blueberry crumble. How did we decide what to fix? That question faces us each month..My friend and pastry chef wanted to make the Greek dessert for a second time...cabbage for the first..and have me guide him through the risotto...my daughter wanted to make the cookies because the picture looked good and the strudel because she wanted to work with the phyllo and we also had mushrooms in the refrigerator..me, only a short stint during my culinary education and my externship were devoted to pastry....perhaps because I have to really measure to bake...so, the bird was mine, the creamed onion stuffed and roasted butternut squash, and the crumble. The fruits for that were decided because I had a couple of apples, and in the freezer was a lovely package of blueberries that my neighbor had picked and given us..so there we have the why...as for the butternut squash..one had been sitting here for a while...and I had the onions and the cream..the last two I try to have in my 'larder'...
It was a wonderful day of cooking...and made better as my friend and then an invited guest for the repast took all the leftovers home...so...somenow forgot to take pictures of all that food...but as good as the food was..better was the fun of cooking with friends, sharing that food, and sharing the knowledge of how to make those things that we had not made before and learning how not only to make those recipes..but then techniques that enable each of us to make things similar...so I can make any crumble now...just change the fruit..love the topping...my friend, he can make many types of risotto...and my daughter, is more at home working with phyllo....
The next time will be the annual Christmas stollen...and perhaps this year we will put some marzipan in the center of some of those loaves..
