Mon Petit Grand Chouxfleur

Tomorrow's soup will be cauliflower. I bought this baby at the shuk today, and she weighed in at 2.2 kilos! For you who are metrically-
challenged, that's almost 5 pounds, heavy enough to bring home from the hospital if it were a real, full term baby.

I have a feeling that nutmeg is the spice of choice for cauliflower, but I don't like nutmeg, so my guests will have to add their own after cooking is done. That's toughhostesslove.

Turkey, Roasted

Too full to blog. More photos on Flickr.

Gobble, Gobble

This week's Soup Salon has morphed into a Thanksgiving Day Turkey Dinner. It's gonna be just like a Norman Rockwell idealized Thanksgiving, with a few exceptions:
- there won't be a parade (we had enough parade stuff two weeks ago)
- the event will take place on Friday (tomorrow) 'cause that's when working folks have a day off
- there won't be national football games on TV ('cause football is soccer, and anyhow they don't play big games in the afternoon)
- most of the participants won't be related to each other
- the weather looks like it will be balmy enough to have the dinner outdoors

The various items on the menu have been assigned to various guests, and I get to stuff and roast the turkey. Well ordinarily that wouldn't faze me, but local grocery stores are not in the habit of selling whole turkeys, so I thought ahead and special ordered one from a newly-opened branch of a large grocery chain. David, the store manager called me with some news last week: the Health Department won't allow him to pick up a fresh-killed turkey for me from his main branch store, so I had to go and get it myself.

Luckily the main branch store is fairly close to a friend I haven't seen for about six months, and the store itself has 3 or 4 in-store restaurants. So yesterday I took the train to Rehovot, my friend picked me up, we browsed the cavernous and nearly-empty store (Wednesday afternoon is not a favored shopping time), lunched at the Noodle Bar, all the while me getting more and more anxious: would the turkey be there, as David had promised? From the photo, you know the answer.

As I entered the train station for my return trip, I got a kick out of opening my shopping bag to displaying my 7.63 kilo raw turkey to the security guard when he asked if I had any weapons.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sushi!

Ms. 14 came for a visit to Tel Aviv today, and gave me a most satisfactory sushi lesson:

Step One was going to the Shuk HaCarmel in search of the right store, and I spotted it just as I was buying cucumbers. At the Tel Aviv Far Eastern Market (according to their bag, they have a Jerusalem branch)I bought nori, wasabi, a sushi rolling mat, and the piece de resistence, frozen raw red tuna.

Step Two was making rice according to this Internet recipe, and letting the fish defrost. It took about 1/2 hour. While the rice was cooking, I cut the fish, avocado, and tuna into strips as directed by Ms. 14.

For Step Three, Ms. 14 took over and laid out the ingredient in their proper proportions and positions, allowing an empty margin of nori at the near and the far edges for "gluing" the roll together at the end of the next step.

Step Four was rolling and moistening the far edge of the nori so it would stick to the near edge.

Step Five was cutting the roll into serving-size pieces and arranging them tastefully on the wrong kind of plate (round). I don't have any square or rectangular Japanese dishes. Yet. But I do have a Japanese knife that I've used and treasured for 20 years! Amazingly, about 10 years ago my painter's assistant decided to use it as a screwdriver, and even more amazingly, the painter had it repaired and the assistant called me to apologize.

Step Six was stuffing ourselves with sushi, dipped in wasabi and soy sauce. Next time - and there will be a next time (tfu, tfu, tfu) - I'll buy some Kirin beer at that Far Eastern Market.