Company and Cookery (with a recipe)

[browngirl]

Yesterday thespian came over to watch Mr. Joshlet and hang out with us, which was several different kinds of nifty. It was a lot of fun having four redheads around; Eva certainly recognizes their innate kinship. *grin* And Thespian read from an extremely entertaining cookbook of Prohibition-Era soft drinks; the political language was quite familiar.

For dinner I made Himmel Und Erde (a dish I love for its fanciful name and ease of assembly) with sweet potatoes subbed in and browned butter added. Below is the recipe as I made it, modified from a recipe mama_hogswatch gave me awhile ago:

"Heaven And Earth"

3 sweet potatoes
3 assorted apples (1 Granny Smith, 2 Macouns [which are MacIntoshlike but more perfumed])
2/3 of a large sweet white onion
6 tablespoons butter

Brown four of the tablespoons of butter in a small pan; when it's as brown as you like, add the other two tbsp to cool it down and set it aside.

Peel the apples, sweet potatoes, and onion. Slice up separately as thinly as you can.

Grease a baking pan with the browned butter. Layer the potatoes, apples, and onions in the pan. Pour the remaining browned butter over the top. Cover with foil and bake at 325 for 80 minutes.

-- That tasted good, but it lacked cohesion and unity of flavors, and threw a lot of cider. thespian suggested grating the sweet potatoes instead of slicing them; that's what I'll try next time. Maybe I'll bake it uncovered for the last 20 minutes as well.

I also made sauteed summer squash cut into "noodles" with a serrated Y-shaped vegetable peeler as recommended by Alton Brown. I really love the supple, wiggly texture that produces and how quickly and obviously the squash cooks, and need to remember that method of preparing it. It'll be useful in Zuchinni Season.

(And then there was the beef stew, but that was catch as catch can and not really anything groundbreaking. It was worth breaking out the paper plates, though.)

While I'm nattering about cooking... I'm thinking of roasting a goose in December or maybe for my birthday, assuming of course I can get myself to Wilson's Farm in Lexington and back again with 15 pounds of frozen poultry. Has anyone cooked a goose? Is it to a duck as a turkey is to a chicken? Any advice?