DIVA DISASTER - A WEBER THANKSGIVING

Good Afternoon dear Chefs..

It was Thanksgiving 1996 and a horrible snowstorm reared it's ugly head just the day before.  I was expecting 23 dinner guests.  The menu was Thanksgiving customary.  Turkey and all the trimmings; potatoes, vegetables and dessert.  Everything was prepped the night before.  Stuffing made and refrigerated, potatoes peeled, vegetables cleaned and ready to go; I had baked two pumpkin pies that night, since I knew my oven would be occupied to at least 2:00 p.m. the next day.  The turkey was washed, dried and salted, wrapped in towels and refrigerated.  The refrigerator was packed with barely enough room to close the door.  Everything was ready to go. 

The night was ueventful, weather-wise; the snow eased, but you can hear the wind howling in the darkness throughout the night.  My day started at 5 a.m. I preheated my oven, stuffed the bird, washed dishes and put the turkey in the oven. 

Now my Thanksgivings are quite traditional, but over the years I added my own traditions, separate of the meal itself.  At 9 a.m., the family tunes into the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and I head out to Walgreens for their pre-Black Friday sale. 

When I return home, I find everyone just sitting around with the TV off.  A little over an hour had passed, since I left and I was wondering why the parade wasn't on.  I learn that the power had gone out and has been out since I left.  OMG!!  My oven.  My turkey.  The power outage effected several hundred homes in the area and there was no repair in site.  I have 23 people to feed in less than 4 hours and my beautiful bird had another two hours to go.  The refrigerator remained cold, but still all that food had to be removed and made.  I had no idea how I would salvage this meal or how to accomodate all these people without lights, heat or a flushing toilet. 

Then it hit me...I'll use the grill.  I got the grill going.  I proceeded to carve the turkey in its semi-cooked state, removing all the meat from the bones and creating a platter to take outside with me.  I started boiling water on the side burner for the stringbeans and the potatoes were quartered, the mushrooms remained whole and I cut up some onion to make kabobs, alternating the two types of potatoes, with mushrooms and onions in between.  I was outside for the better part of two hours, freezing, trying to cope with the bulkiness of a winter coat.  I put the stuffing into an aluminum pan and set that on the grate next to the turkey.  The stuffing was already cooked and just needed a good warming.  I mixed some of the juices from the turkey pan with a can of turkey gravy, thickened it a little and got that warming to serve as gravy.  The turkey was cooking nicely and as it was coming off the grill, it went onto a divided platter to separate the dark from white meat.  As each dish was done, everything was wrapped in heavy aluminum foil to retain its heat and placed inside the still warm oven. 

Guests began to arrive and were told about the power outage.  We accomodated everyone, with very little discomfort.  I was asked about the food and told them what I did to salvage the meal.  They were appreciative and joked how they never had barbecue for Thanksgiving.  Yeah, me either....

Knowing what I know now and how much stress went into pulling this off, if there is ever a next time, my guests will be joking about having Chinese for Thanksgiving.  

Until next time.....love and good eats to all of you!!

IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME...

Good Evening Chefs....

I've been so busy lately and I cannot believe I haven't posted in six days.  Shame on me!  Hope you are all doing well, eating well and just overall feeling great!

I don't know what it is about Barbecue Ribs, but that has been my most popular post and thanks to all of you that have commented and left me messages.  Since I don't write your usual "cooking/recipe" blog, although so many I have come across are absolutely delightful, I don't have that kind of structured style.  I do plan however, to fill my recipe vault with some of my original recipes and they will come as we go, but in all honesty, a good cook, is just that; And although we do experiment with flavors, our creations turn out quite similar in many instances, mainly because we belong to a peer group that are trained to think within the creative cooking realm.  So before I go and bore you with recipe after recipe, the writer in me had to step in and captivate you through stories, tricks and tidbits of useful information, that ultimately makes cooking enjoyable.  So, with that said,.....

Today I decided to tackle an obstacle of mine in cooking that has been my achilles heel since I first tried to duplicate the amazing flavors and textures of Greek cuisine.

There's this little Greek diner near my home and I really don't get to frequent it that often.  When I lived in New York, Greek restaurants were everywhere and where I would succumb to my favorite dish Spinach and Feta Pie, a.k.a. Spanakopita. (Sorry, I don't have one of those little dingies for over my "o"...)

Now being familiar with Mediterranean cuisine I was sure of one thing.  The Greeks would travel and some would settle on the shores of the Mediterranean.  By the use of cargo ships and by being a seafaring nation, they would have access to foods from foreign parts, that were not native to Greece.  Pasta, lemons and oranges, spinach from Persia, tomatoes, almonds, etc.  Greece being particularly noted for their amazing produce, their olives and figs in abundance and grapes, that were not so much eaten as a fruit, but dried to produce wine are just a few of what Greece has to offer.

Given that the Greeks had access to so much variety, it gives us a better understanding, why their food, as unique and tasty, incorporates a multiude of ingredients from other countries, with a distinct influence in Italian cooking, thanks to the Romans for employing Greeks in their households.

My weakness for Greek food was their use of a flaky pastry called Phyllo.  Phyllo, a paper thin pastry, buttered and layered in Greek dishes, creates texture and flavor that is amazingly light, yet so substantial.  And when you incorporate spinach and warm feta cheese, this explosion of flavor occurs on your palate and you're really hooked from that moment on.

I have never been able to quite master the handling of phyllo, adding to my ongoing frustration to produce a dish that is relatively quite simple, but for me, personally, I cringe at a recipe calling for it.  My heavy-handedness, is truly my demise, as I rip and tear this delicate dough, trying so hard to keep it in one piece.

I battle with the experimentation of the dough's temperature to get it just right...Chefs, I need help here.  What is it about this delicate pastry that befuddles my ongoing attempts at success....Please if you would be so kind?....... Visit the RECIPEVAULT for my take on this mouthwatering goodness....

Until next time...OPA!