Christmas Eve Mac and Cheese

I’m doing a blogging challenge—one post a week until Christmas. Maybe it’ll help me get in the posting habit so I don’t go 18 months between posts! Ha!

So I’m starting off easy with a food post. This is Christmas Eve Mac and Cheese, so called because it is a creamy baked mac and cheese based on traditional Welsh rarebit, perfect for Christmas Eve dinner with cider and ghost stories.

Ingredients

4 Tbsp unsalted butter, plus 2 Tbsp

1/2 medium yellow onion, minced (NOT sweet)

1/4 cup all purpose flour

2 cups milk heated (I used 1%, microwaved for 3 minutes)

3/4 cups dark English style beer (I used Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale; porter or stout would work well too)

2 tsp mustard powder (prepared yellow mustard will work too, but I like Colman’s mustard powder because it’s traditional in Welsh rarebit)

3 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

8 oz. pasta (I like the curly kinds!)

3 slices of bread, crusts removed, cubed (I used cracked wheat sourdough. For a more traditional rarebit, a nice hearty rye would be awesome!)

Let’s Cook!

1. Preheat oven to 375 and put water on to boil for pasta

2. Melt 4 Tbsp of butter over medium heat in a large saucepan until foamy

3. Add minced onions to melted butter and cook over medium heat until translucent

4. Stir in flour with a whisk, stirring to keep it from getting lumpy. Cook roux for a few minutes, but don’t let it get brown

5. Add hot milk a little at a time, whisking continuously to make a smooth bechamel sauce

6. Add beer to the bechamel, whisking. It will look gross, like it’s curdling, but it’s not—just keep whisking! Then whisk in your mustard powder.

7. Cook sauce, whisking continuously, until it starts to thicken, about 5 minutes or so. Remove from heat.

8. Cook pasta according to package when your water is boiling. I undercook mine just a little to keep it firm after baking in the sauce

9. Melt 2 Tbsp of butter and toss it with your bread cubes

10. After letting your bechamel cool a few minutes to prevent graininess, add your cheese a little at a time, whisking until it’s melted each time. The sauce will get really thick.

11. Spray a casserole dish with cooking spray. This recipe fit perfectly in my 1.8 L casserole dish

12. Pour cooked pasta into casserole dish and pour bechamel over it. Fold together a couple of times to make sure all the pasta is covered in sauce.

13. Spread buttery bread cubes over the top, and bake for 30 minutes or until brown and bubbly.

14. Let sit for about 5 minutes, then try not to eat the whole thing in one sitting. It will be hard!

This makes 6 good sized servings. Serve it with a green salad with vinaigrette!

Happy Christmas!

Night Blooming Peony:Shaheen-inspired Tiki glamour

AKA OMG I DID A COSTUMING POST!!!!1111!!1!11

So I should be working on my 16th century linen jacket for the Nor Cal Ren Faire. Am I? Of course not!

Next weekend is Costume College (hurray!) and the theme for the Gala this year is Creatures of Night. Suggestions were things like an Elizabethan bat, a late Victorian owl, that kind of thing. Do I already have anything that I could wear, since I really didn't want to make anything for CoCo this year? Well, sort of. I have a black 1920s dress that I probably could have done something with. But, eh...

But then I fell in love with Alfred Shaheen, or more precisely, with his Hawaiian sundresses from the 1950s. I luuuuuuuuuuuurrrves them! And I had to have one. And thus began my agony. You can find them on ebay and etsy, but they cost an arm and a leg and are almost universally made for very small women. I am not a very small woman.

Whirling Turban makes recreations of some of Shaheen's most popular styles and they'll make them in my size, but there we are back to the arm and leg factor. Sigh.

On ebay I found this gown being sold by Bombshell Betty.



If I was still the size I was in high school and had a spare $350 laying around, I would have been on this like ants on something sweet and sticky. The drape, the color, the circle skirt. Oh.My.God.

So, I'm making one. Of course I am. Because what else would I do? I'm working on a pattern to do the style like this


with the built in bullet bra, but that's going to take too long to perfect for this event.

So I'm using Vogue 1176. Easy to scale up and modify to include the shirred side panel, easy to fit, easy to change the skirt out for a circle. Hurray!

Here is the fabric I have to make it--a gorgeous cotton from the Alfred Shaheen line. Hard to tell, but it's accented with gold. Very glamorous! The fuschia is cotton sateen for the lining.



I'm gonna bone the hell out of the bodice (heh), add fun straps like on my inspiration dress, and TA DA! Night-blooming Peony! All in less than a week.

Hopefully.

Some Thoughts on Historical Costuming: Renaissance Faire Edition

I think there is a tendency among those of us who care deeply about improving the historical accuracy of Renaissance faire costuming to be frustrated with the slow pace at which we are able to encourage the change we wish to see. What do we do at established events with established communities, where historicalness within the theatrical framework is not discouraged, but where the minimum standard is more theatrical than historical, or where there simply are not standards at all?

I think it is important to remember that it has taken us 50 years to reach where we are. I was looking at pictures from the very first Renaissance faire started by the Pattersons. If you've never seen them, or if you haven't looked at them for a while, go check them out. The costuming is about what I expect from patrons of our current faires. In the 50 years since that first faire, some faires have gotten better, some have gotten worse, some look about the same. My point is this: it has taken us 50 years to get here.

To terribly misuse the words of two brilliant individuals, Mahatma Ghandi and Max Weber, I think the best way to improve the historicalness of faire costuming is to be the change we want to see, and to realize that, like politics, it will be the slow boring of hard boards and that if we seek to do it we must risk our own souls. Faire fashion, like all fashion, follows trends. When actors are replacing their costumes, of course they'll make or buy what they admire on their friends. Not everyone is going to be as committed to research as we are, as much as we may wish it were so. But if we look good, then at least some of those people will be imitating us, and when they express interest in what we're wearing, we can share our research with them. I wouldn't mind seeing a faire populated entirely by cast members who imitated someone else and did no research of their own as long as that someone else had done the research.

Another brilliant, if slightly less well known person, Elizabeth Stewart Clark of the Civil War reenacting community, describes her view on historical accuracy in reenactment as "progressive". She says, "A person with a progressive mindset endeavors to recreate, as closely as possible, the lives and circumstances of the past. This applies to material culture, as well as to internal knowledge, and it’s a process, not an 'arrival.'"

You'll never get everyone on board, and you'll certainly lose scores of people if you try to force it all at once at an established event. But you can help make historical accuracy (or at least improvement) less threatening and more appealing. Check out her piece The Missionary Position: Proselytizing for Progressives or a Brief Guide to Polite Progression. It's aimed at mid-19th century impressions, but the lessons are applicable to any time period.

The slow boring of hard boards. Hey, I'm willing to risk my soul. How 'bout you?

CSA Meal #2--California Summer Moussaka

So we've doing random little things with the veggies from our first CSA delivery (we're getting one every other week to start with. There's only 2 of us, after all!)--grilling up the carrots (so good-you should try it!), we sauteed some of the zucchini with garlic, shrimp, and white wine and ate it over couscous--that kind of thing.

One of the things we got was a lovely big globe eggplant. I love eggplant, but I've never cooked it. Hurray for experiments and new food! J isn't wild about eggplant normally, but seems to like it ok when it's in stuff rather than just on it's own. I mulled over what to do with it for a while and then I thought: Moussaka!

For those who don't know, moussaka is a greek casserole similar to lasagne that uses eggplant instead of noodles. Traditionally it is made by frying the eggplant slices and layering them with a rich tomato sauce with ground lamb. It's then covered in a cheesy bechamel sauce. It is yummy, but really rich and heavy. Very much a fall comfort food kind of dish.

So I came up with this lighter, vegetarian version that makes use of all the wonderful summer produce we have available in Northern California right now. I substitute tons of veggies for the meat and grill the eggplant instead of frying it for less oil and a nice charred flavor. I made my trip to the farmers market to supplement my CSA stash and cooked it up. It takes a longish time (about 45 minutes to prep with one person) and multiple steps, but if you've got a lazy day and you feel like cooking, give it a try. You should eat this in a bowl with a spoon, 'cause it'll be a little bit soupy.

Here it is done! This makes approximately 12 servings. Unless you're like me and you want to eat it all because it's just that darned good!


California Summer Moussaka

Ingredients:

1 large globe eggplant
3 medium-ish carrots, chopped in 1/4 inch pieces
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic minced
1 lb assorted summer squash (I used green and yellow zucchini and pattypans), chopped
3 large juicy tomatoes chopped (I used random big dark pink heirlooms. No idea what kind they were, but they were juicy and sweet!)
1/2 tsp ground clove
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried marjoram
1 tbsp fresh oregano
1 tbsp fresh majoram
kosher or sea salt to taste
Bechamel sauce (recipe follows)
breadcrumbs (optional)


1. Prepare the eggplant: cut the top and bottom off the eggplant to make it stable. Peel it and slice it into 1/4 inch thick slices. Place the slices on a platter covered in paper towel and sprinkle them with salt. Let them sit for 30 minutes or so to sweat some of the bitterness out of them.

2. While the slices are draining, preheat your gill or grill pan on medium high. Rinse the eggplant slices and pat them dry. Brush one side of the slices with olive oil and place them oil side down on the grill. Grill for 3 minutes.

3. Just before flipping, brush the other side with olive oil. Flip the eggplant and grill for an additional 3 minutes. Remove and set aside.



4. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Over medium high heat, heat a little olive oil in a large pan until shimmering. Add the carrots to the pan and stir to coat. Cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until the carrots begin to caramelize. You want the veggies to develop a little color, since the caramelization will add to the depth of flavor.

5. When the carrots have started to get some color, add the onions and again, cook for a few minutes, stirring occassionally until they also begin to get some color and get soft.

6. Add your squash and garlic and stir, repeating the step above. Add two or three pinches of sea or kosher salt.

7. Add the tomatoes and their juice. Stir and add the dried herbs and the spices. You can add more to taste, but since this is a lighter moussaka, I went a little easy on the traditional clove and cinnamon. Cook this for a few minutes until the juices are nice and bubbly and it looks like big yummy mess. You don't want to cook it too long--this is a fresh sauce and you want the veggies to be identifiable, not broken down and mushy.

How gorgeous is this?


8. Spread a little sauce in the bottom of a dish. I used my French oven, but a lasagne pan or other baking dish will work well too. Then place a layer of eggplant slices. Continue to layer sauce and eggplant slices, ending with a layer of sauce.

9. Cover with bechamel sauce (see below) and sprinkle breadcrumbs on top if desired. Put the moussaka in the oven and bake for 45 minutes uncovered.

10. Eat and enjoy!

Pecorino Romano Bechamel Sauce

2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups milk heated
4 oz shredded pecorino romano cheese

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat

2. When melted and bubbly, whisk in the flour

3. Cook on medium for two minutes

4. Gradually whisk in the hot milk, making sure to keep the sauce smooth

5. Cook for about 5 minutes until the sauce starts to thicken. If it gets too thick, you can whisk in a little more milk

6. Remove from heat and whisk in the shredded cheese. Continue stirring until the cheese is melted and totally incorporated into the sauce.

CSA Meal #1-Ricotta Stuffed Peppers

So we started getting deliveries from a fabulous farm up in Yolo County. I have a great affection for Yolo, having spent 7 years in Davis. The folks who run the farm are second generation farmers and second generation UC Davis grads, so yay!

I can tell already that something this Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) thing is going to do is get us thinking more creatively about our food. As part of the first box, we got an enormous bag of smallish yellow peppers, not bells, more like the tapered Italian kind. Also, a bunch of purple basil and a huge-ish musk mellon. Among other things, but this is what I'm dealing with currently.

So what to do with these little guys? The answer was Grilled Peppers with Herbed Ricotta.

For fresh ricotta, I used Michael Chiarello's recipe which is basically this: 1 gallon of whole milk, 1 quart of buttermilk, mix and cook over medium high heat, stirring and scraping the bottom so it doesn't burn, until the curds separate from the whey. Then remove it from heat, ladle the curds into a cheesecloth lined strainer to drain, and let it sit there for like 20 minutes. This makes about 4 cups of cheese.

Here is what it looks like draining.




And here's what it looks like done. Kind of like really small curd cottage cheese.


So I took the peppers, cut off the tops and pulled out the seeds, and rubbed them with olive oil. Here they are being prepared to grill.



Then I grilled them over medium high heat until they were a little blistery and soft, but still held their shape.

I mixed minced garlic, fresh chopped basil, kosher salt and dried Italian herbs into the ricotta until it looked nice and herby. This is really up to you. I used 1 tsp each of minced garlic, fresh basil, and dried herbs for 1 cup of ricotta, and about 3 biggish pinches of kosher salt. Taste as you go. Here is the herby cheese.




When the peppers were done and still hot, I spooned the cheese mixture into them. That's it. Here they are. YUM.



I served them with half the musk mellon cut into slices and wrapped in prosciutto. It was delicious and super easy. The hardest part was making the cheese, and that wasn't really hard, it just took a little while (about 30 minutes to cook). Ta da!

Smock #2--Embroidery

So I'm the worst costume blogger ever, since I never post pictures or descriptions of the finished projects. One day, I'm just going to have J. take pictures of every finished piece of costume I've made and post them all in one fell swoop.

Until then, next project!

I'm making another high necked smock for this season. I only had the one last year, plus the low necked smocks I'd made years ago. They work fine, but the high necked one is easier since I don't have to wear a partlet with it. But only wearing one smock per weekend is G-R-O-S-S, especially early in the season when it is still hotter than two rats getting it on in a wool sock. Plus, an excuse for more pretty period embroidery!

This smock is based on a late-period one detailed on page 119 of Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 4 (the color photos are on page 62). The shape, anyway. The embroidery pattern is my own, based on popular flowers and fruits during Elizabeth's reign--roses, pomegranates, and carnations (or pinks). I'm only embroidering the sleeves.

Here the sleeve pieces. They will be joined at the top seam with a knotted insertion stitch. I want to use this one, but I have to wait for my copy of the book it's from to get here. Sigh.



The embroidery is done with a medium terra cotta colored floss to give the feel of the pink embroidery of the original without being PINK. The pieces have been hemmed, but not ironed, and the copy lines need to be cleaned up, obviously.



So until my book comes, I'll be doing the rest of the smock--cutting and hemming the side gores, underarm gussets, neck gussets and collar, and sewing most of it together. Sleeves will go on last I guess, once my book comes and I can figure out my stitch.

And now, a detour from costuming

I've been asked several times over the last couple of days for the recipe I use for Carolina-style barbeque pork. Because I love you all, here it is. Just don't bring it to any potlucks we'll both be attending without checking with me first. Ha!

Ok, so after a little research I discovered that this is Lexington or Western North Carolina style barbeque. A couple of things make it so: it's done with pork shoulder, not a whole pig, and the sauce has a little bit of ketchup in it. Apparently, true Eastern North Carolina barbecue is done with a whole pig and there is NO ketchup in the sauce. But, I'm a westerner, so Western style it is.

Take your pork shoulder (pork loin will NOT work-it is too lean. You want all the fat and connective tissue). It doesn't matter how big it is, just keep in mind that you're going to cook it for 1 to 1 1/2 hours per pound. It also doesn't matter if it's boneless or not. Leave the fat cap on. Cover it in your favorite dry rub. Here is the one I use, from Steven Raichlen's Barbeque Bible. Some people don't really use a rub, just salt and pepper. Do what you like. Let your shoulder sit to absorb the rub flavors for 1-24 hours. I have never waited 24 hours because I rarely plan that far in advance.




When you're ready to cook, figure out how long you're going to need. Your going to be cooking this at a low temperature for a long time. You'll need 1 to 1 1/2 hours per pound of meat. This piece of meat is 3.68 lbs and I'm cooking it for about 5 hours at 275-300 degrees. I do mine on a gas grill. You can use a charcoal grill, or the oven if you don't have a grill. The oven won't give you the smoke flavor or the classic red layer directly under the crust, but it's still yummy.

Preheat your grill and get your wood chips smoking. I heat the grill on high, all three burners, with wood chips in a drip pan in the back corner covered by another drip pan. When the wood chips are smoking, turn the front and back burners to low and the middle one off, or set up the grill for however you do indirect cooking at 275-300 degrees. Put your shoulder on the cool part of the grill, or in the oven, fat cap up. Close the grill. Don't touch it for at least an hour. When your wood chips stop smoking, add more.

When about half your estimated cooking time has passed, start adding some moisture with a mop sauce. The easiest mop sauce is half cider vinegar, half water or broth. Sometimes I add crushed red pepper flakes or sliced onion, but often I just go with vinegar and water (this is better than some other uses for vinegar and water!). Baste your shoulder with mop sauce generously every hour or so. Keep your wood chips smoking.



When your shoulder has reached an internal temperature of 190-200 degrees, it's ready. It will look all black and crispy on the outside. Take it off the grill and let it sit for 15 minutes or so. Then just pull it apart. It will be SUPER HOT so use two forks or use latex gloves and work fast. The shoulder should just fall apart. If it doesn't, you can put it in the oven for longer until it does.


After you pull it apart, or chop it if you prefer, add your sauce. Carolina-style sauce is thin and vinegar based. The recipe I use is: 2 cups of cider vinegar, 3 tbs ketchup, 2 tbs brown sugar, 4 tsp coarse salt, 1 tbs hot sauce, 1-2 tsp red pepper flakes, 1-2 tsp ground black pepper. Again, courtesy of Steven Raichlen and his fantastic bbq books. Add enough of the sauce to the shredded or chopped pork to season it and keep it moist.

Serve this with cole slaw and hush puppies, or on a white bun with cole slaw piled on top. I like it with traditional creamy cole slaw, Jonathan likes it with cole slaw made by adding more of the vinegar sauce to the shredded cabbage. Either way it is YUM.

Here's what it looks like done, with my first attempt at hush puppies.


If anyone from any part of Carolina has an issue with any of this, feel free to tell me, but please be nice about it. I'm a California girl and there's a reason I'm calling it Carolina-STYLE barbeque. I know y'all can be touchy about your 'que. Enjoy!