Long time gone

It has been a tremendous long time since I've posted, which isn't to say that nothing has been happening, rather that there has been a TON of things going on, most of which keep me from posting here. This will be changing, however, as I am looking more and more to shifting my focus back to a food-related life.

We had a great 2nd night of Hanukkah with friends; I made up some regular and sweet potato latkes as well as roast beef from an eye round that I got from the great new butcher in Somerville, M.F. Dulock, as part of their monthly meat CSA. @StarkView took a nice snapshot of both:

The recipe was quite basic: a spice rub consisting of sweet paprika, ancho chili, ground ginger, ground coriander, salt, and sugar; then roasted in a 350 degree oven for 20m, then hitting up the oven to 425 for an additional 20m, resting it for 15 and slicing it to reveal this gorgeously pink center.

The night before we went to a tree trimming where I made a quite excellent egg nog (one of my favorite holiday traditions). Nothing beats homemade egg nog, and the recipe that I elaborate upon is pretty simple and enough for two servings with four people:

6 eggs
1c sugar
2c whole milk
2c heavy cream
spices to taste (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ground ginger, mace, cayenne)
alcohol to taste (rum, bourbon, or other like liquor)

Start with all dairy chilled. Whisk the eggs to a froth; whisk in the sugar, add the milk, cream, spices and liquor. Refrigerate and serve.

Suffice it to say that all ingredients should be of the highest quality - you don't want to be eating Stop & Shop eggs raw nor adding a flavorless mass produced milk or cream. Try to get un-homogenized cream and you'll have a wonderful (and filling) toddy.