Good morning. One of the more satisfying wintertime weekend activities is the making of stock: beef, say, or chicken or vegetable. (Lobster if you’re fancy.) These come in handy when you want to make a risotto of uncommon flavor, amp up a soup or supercharge a gravy.
I’ll make the beef version this weekend — it’s Julia Moskin’s adaptation of a bone broth that the chef Marco Canora devised for his Brodo empire — and use it as the foundational bass line for Melissa Clark’s mushroom Bourguignon (above). Of course you could use mushroom stock instead, but I’m telling you: That beef stock is sublime.
What a fantastic recipe: two pounds of mixed, meaty mushrooms seared hard in a pot to offer an incredible depth of flavor, with pearl onions, leeks and carrots in a flour-thickened gravy made with the bone broth, red wine and tomato paste. A little tamari rounds everything out and fried chanterelles go over the top at the end, with a sprinkling of smoked paprika and chopped parsley. Serve over egg noodles or with polenta.
Featured Recipe
Mushroom Bourguignon
Other weekend kitchen shenanigans as we head into the holidays: a batch of this marvelous ginger sesame granola, either to package as gifts or to snack on with yogurt while the family opens gifts; and these make-ahead coquilles St.-Jacques to serve on Christmas Eve.
And I’m thinking ricotta toast with roasted grapes for dinner on Saturday night, although there will be children home from college begging for Chinese food, and moo goo gai pan may win out instead.
Then, on Sunday, after the Bourguignon for lunch, I’ll downshift into fried eggplant for supper-time heroes, no recipe required. Peel some Italian eggplants, trim their ends and cut them lengthwise into thin slices. Place those on a wire rack on a sheet pan, salt them and allow them to sweat for 10 minutes or so. Pat dry with a paper towel, shallow-fry them in olive oil until they’re just tender — maybe 30 seconds or so each side — and then return them to the wire rack.
Now make a flourless batter: eggs scrambled with Parmesan and pecorino. Get the oil in your pan nice and hot again, dip the fried eggplant into the egg mixture, then fry in batches until the slices are puffed, golden and cooked through, probably three to four minutes in total. Return the fried eggplant to the wire rack once more to cool under a sprinkle of kosher salt and cracked black pepper.
Cut open your hero rolls, slash some mayonnaise on the bread — or hit it with some balsamic glaze, olive oil and red wine vinegar — and then layer eggplant into the sandwich with sliced fresh mozzarella and some chopped cherry peppers. Close and press, cut in half and serve just as the Buccaneers kick off against the Cowboys in Texas. Nice!
There are many thousands more recipes to cook this weekend waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. Go browse them like a gift guide. (Speaking of: Here’s how to purchase a gift subscription.)
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Now, it has precious little to do with black cake or turnips, but I’ve been sucked into the Paramount+ show “Lioness,” another Taylor Sheridan duty opera, violent and soapy.
A gift for the Swifties in your life: Jennifer Harlan’s “Taylor Swift Poetry Quiz” in The New York Times Book Review. It’s based on selections from “Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift,” edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty, and it’s not easy!
Here’s Calvin Tomkins in The New Yorker, with a profile of the artist Rashid Johnson, who has a forthcoming exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Finally, do read Lindsay Zoladz’s “Amplifier” newsletter, about 10 songs that shaped her year. It’s a musical memoir with a playlist attached. Listen to that while you’re making stock, and I’ll see you on Sunday.
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