We're Opening Doors
The Friday Newsletter is counting down the days
Can I confess something to you?
I really enjoy the trend of making advent calendars for everything.
24 days of hot sauce!
24 days of Star Wars LEGOs!
24 days of tiny bottles of wine!
24 days of amulets you must pass on to another person before the sun sets or be cursed forever!
(Okay, I made that last one up. Why would you buy that? But still.)
When Bonne Maman jam—a staple in our household year-round, we stan The Good Jam—put an ad for an advent calendar with 24 tiny jars of seasonal jams in my Instagram feed a month ago, I bought it in a heartbeat.
Now, I know these things are all just ways to sell eager fools like me more stuff, a crass commercialization of a once-religious tradition. Heck, Advent isn’t technically the first 24 days of December (and don’t get me started on the “advent” calendars I see that have 12 things in them, what kind of nonsense are you trying to pull?).
I don’t care. I love the countdown.
We’re in the end run of the year, and it’s exhausting. My calendar is jam-packed with travel, shopping lists, party invites, travel obligations and a frantic scramble to meet year-end deliverables at work before everyone needed to meet them disappears for the holidays. It can be a really stressful time, and I acknowledge that there are many reasons why this can be a difficult time of year for folks.
(With that in mind, let me make my periodic plug for Over the Rhine, who in addition to their wonderful non-holiday output, have recorded three fantastic albums of what they call “Reality Christmas” music:)
I recognize all of this, and I’ll be as relieved as anyone when January rolls around and the calendar finally clears. I’ll also miss the excitement of winding down a year that, for better or for worse, is ending in a few weeks no matter what we do.
In the meantime, I’m excited to open each and every little door on the way.
ooh, Orange Yuzu Grapefruit jam!
Friends, it’s Friday at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.
There’s only a handful of Fridays this year, but that hasn’t dampened my weekend momentum.
Today, I’m perhaps-belatedly discussing Thanksgiving leftovers, mixing up a classic cocktail, enjoying some great music, and a whole lot more.
Open the door. It’s Friday.
Before anything else, though, I must re-share my holiday magnum opus.
Three years ago, I got it in me to write the true story behind a Christmas classic—that is, the story of what really happened “one foggy Christmas Eve” with Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
What resulted was a longform New Yorker-style interview with some of the other key figures from that night, a piece I titled “All Of The Other Reindeer”.
It is perhaps my favorite thing I have ever written, and I implore you to read it now, especially if you haven’t before.
(I’ll wait.)
It’s good, right?
(You should also share it, and tell everyone about The Action Cookbook Newsletter, IMHO.)
Now, on with the rest of our business.
When Stock Pays Dividends
If I had been truly geared toward service journalism this year, I would’ve been waiting in the wings with a how-to-use-your-Thanksgiving-leftovers guide last Friday, right when you needed it most. I wasn’t that organized this year, and frankly, it was nice to take Black Friday off and focus on building holiday LEGO sets with my kids.
That doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk about leftovers, though—even if it is a little late.
I made an absolutely terrific turkey this year, and (to my wife’s slight chagrin after a day already filled with cooking), I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make stock from the carcass on Thanksgiving evening. I tossed everything in the pressure cooker, let it run for 75 minutes, and ended up with a gorgeous golden stock.
I didn’t even have a plan when I made it, but it was so good that I quickly formulated one: I cooked up some fresh ramen noodles (Sun Brand, I found it at Whole Foods) and tossed them with leftover turkey, scallions, mushrooms, crisp pork belly and soy-marinated eggs that all got covered with this glorious gold broth.
That only ended up using about a third of the stock, so the next day? I made a half-batch of Zach Rau’s excellent Chicken and Sausage Gumbo, swapping in cooked turkey for the chicken the recipe below calls for.
Anyways, these aren’t necessarily new recipes, and it may be too late for you to parlay any Thanksgiving leftovers into your own versions. They were both great, though, and no one’s stopping you from roasting another turkey this weekend.
(Go on. Do it! I dare you.)
No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn
A few weeks ago, I picked up a bottle of Bigallet China-China, a traditional orange-forward French bitter liqueur. In my first cocktail effort with it, I went all-out on big flavors, making a wonderfully-rich cocktail I called The Dark Forest.
The bottle now opened, I figured there was no better time than the present to take on a quiet classic of a cocktail—