continued from part 1

Having finished our salads, everone took a break while I finished cooking the main course. This took about 1/2 hour, giving everyone some time to digest.

Instead of rolls this meal, we had Karelian pies, a traditional Finnish snack that my sweetie first tasted when she went to Tampere to sing with the Finnish National Orchestra. I'm pretty sure that the reason why she wanted to do Skandinavian this year was so she could make these again. She made them using the Beatrice Ojakangas recipe.

This traditional recipe is enough work to really make them a holiday food. It's also got to be holiday food considering the amount of milk and butter, and that you top them with mashed egg butter. They worked well for the low-salt diet we had to cook to, but would not have suited a low-cholesterol diet!

For the main course, I chose a recipe from Lagom that would make discrete servings (so as not to create leftovers), but would look dramatic and festive. And taste great, of course. What I settled on was this dish of cod with brown butter shimp. The stacking makes it look very restauranty, but shrimp and cod is a pretty standard Swedish combination.

In keeping with American traditions, the base is garlic mashed potatoes. On top of that is cod baked with lemon and dill, and that's topped with shrimp fried in browned butter with sage. The layered flavors of butter, sage, dill, and garlic really created a palate-pleaser, even though I made the whole thing low-salt.

Finally, dessert. My sweetie combined a German apple cake recipe with the rosemary apple cake from Lagom. The result was amazing; you wouldn't think that rosemary would work with apples and cinnamon, but it really does. Since there were only the four of us, she made a half-recipe in a 6" baking pan, which meant one slice each.

So that was this year's non-traditional Thanksgiving. How was yours? Did you get creative, given this year's restrictions?

Petite Apple Cake with Cardamom and Rosemary

(based on Luisa Weiss’s Versunkener Apfelkuchen from Classic German Baking and Steffi Knowles-Dellner’s Apple Cake from Lagom)

1-1/2 medium apples (a good sweet-tart apple is best, or use a mix of sweet and tart)
Zest and juice of ¼ lemon (approximately)
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
¼ teaspoon vanilla 1-1/2 eggs (crack one egg into a bowl and beat it, then use about 2 tablespoons)
¾ c. flour 1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoons salt
Heaping ¼ teaspoon cardamom
1 rosemary sprig, smallish, leaves stripped and chopped
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon 2 tablespoons dark brown or demerara sugar

Heat your oven to 350 degrees, and line the bottom of a 6-inch cake pan with parchment paper, preferably one with “handles”—if you don’t have that kind of parchment, use a 6-inch springform pan.

Peel, core, and quarter the apples. Thinly slice each quarter lengthwise, but don’t cut all the way through, leaving the slices hinged together like a fan. Place them on a plate (keep the slices together) and set aside.

Zest the ¼ lemon into a mixing bowl, and squeeze the juice out into a small bowl and set aside.

Add the sugar and butter to the lemon zest in the bowl and beat either with a mixer or with a wooden spoon until fluffy and pale. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the vanilla; beat until incorporated. Add the whole egg and beat until combined, then add the ½ egg and beat again; scrape down the sides of the bowl and make sure it’s well mixed.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and cardamom. Beat the flour into the butter mixture in two additions just until combined, then beat in the reserved lemon juice.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Sprinkle the apple slices with the rosemary and cinnamon, then place decoratively over the batter. Sprinkle with the sugar, and then with the pine nuts.

Bake for 10 minutes, rotate the pan, and continue baking until the cake is golden-brown and a tester inserted in the cake (not an apple) comes out clean, about another 10-15 minutes.

Place the pan on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes; run a thin knife around the edge of the cake, then use the parchment “handles” to remove the cake from the pan (if you’ve used a springform pan, remove the ring of the springform). Let cool to room temperature.

Serve with whipped cream, if desired. Makes one six-inch cake, serving 4 generously, or 6 in small portions.

Given how hot it is in so much of the Northern hemisphere right now, nobody wants to get out a pan to make a finishing sauce for dinner, particularly after cooking everything on the grill so that you don't heat up your house. But dinner needs a little something to elevate it from just food to cuisine.

Behold! This traditional Skandanavian sauce is one of the easiest, most useful things you will ever make. It's good on fish and vegetables, especially asparagus, which is still available here on the West coast, at least (traditionally, it's served with gravlax or herring). It comes together without any heat or power tools, uses inexpensive common ingredients, and will keep in the fridge for several months, so feel free to scale it up for the whole summer. While based on mustard, it's mild and balanced so that even non-mustard-lovers are good with it. It's also vegan.

Ready? This'll take just five minutes.

simple mustard-dill sauce

3 Tbs Dijon mustard
2 tsp dry yellow mustard
2 Tbs sugar (possibly more)
2 Tbs white wine vinegar (or rice or apple vinegar)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup minced fresh dill (or 1 Tbs dried)
equipment: medium bowl, whisk, measuring cup with pouring spout

Whisk together the mustard, dry mustard, sugar and vinegar in a bowl, until homogenous.

Pour the vegetable oil into the bowl in a stream, and whisk the mixture with your other hand; this will produce an emulsified sauce with a texture like mayonnaise. If you have trouble doing it two-handed like this, then just add 2 Tbs of oil at a time, whisk it in, and then add another 2 Tbs.

When all of the oil is incorporated, mix in the dill. Taste it; if it's too sharp for your taste, add a couple teaspoons more sugar. Let sit at least 1/2 hour for best flavor.

Makes about 1 cup, enough sauce for fish/vegetables for 4-6 people. Store leftovers in the fridge, keeps for up to 4 months.

While you can make this sauce with dried dill, get fresh if it's not too hard to find, it does make a difference.

Over the past 2 years in Portland I have become familiar with pretty much all of the fish markets on the East side, due to various quests to find particular seafood items. I will save you some time by sharing this with you:

H-Mart has an excellent fish counter, particularly if you're looking for whole fish or shrimp. The one in Beaverton is larger than the one on Belmont but they're both good and affordable.

Fuban also has a lot of whole fish and seafood. Their main virtue is cheapness, so only shop there if you're really good at picking out seafood.

Flying Fish Company right now is good for a tiny selection of very high-quality fish and a larger selection of gourmet frozen seafood. After they move to their new location, their selection of fresh fish will improve.

Portland Fish Company is a great place to go if you're looking for advice & guidance, or if you want to special-order some particular seafood in advance. Both FFC and PFC are on the high end of seafood pricing (although not as high as Zupans).

Hollywood Fred Meyer has I think the biggest seafood counter among the FMs; they smoke their own salmon there. This is a good place to go for salmon (anytime), dungeness (in season) and to look for a sale on "basic" seafood like rockfish, shrimp, and snow crab.

The various New Seasones generally have pretty good fish counters; their selection is broader than Fred Meyer and their prices are usually higher. I was actually not impressed with Burnside Zupans fish counter; I felt it has the same selection as New Seasons for 20-75% more.

Desipite its name, Sheridan Fruit Company actually has an excellent (premium) fish counter, with a good assortment of super-fresh fish.

PacificSeafood is the largest international shipper of seafood in the world. We just happend to be blessed, right here in Portland, with one of their handful of retail fish counters. This means that if you give them enough time & notice, they can get you just about anything if it's obtainable anywhere. Note that they sell primarily wholesale to restaurants, though; you get the seafood the way you get it and they won't clean it for you. Very affordable, though.

For the ultimate in affordabilty, though, there are several Chinese-American-owned seafood markets on Division or Powell near 82nd. These markets focus on the Asian restaurant trade, so their selection is limited, a lot of seafood is live, and everything is low-priced. If you're looking for 5lbs of live spot prawns for $25, this is where you'd get it (if your timing is good).

Best Places to get Whole Fish: H-Mart, PacificSeafood, Fuban

Best Places to get Inexpensive Wild Salmon in Season: Hollywood Fred Meyer, PacificSeafood

Best Places to get Dungeness Crab in Season: Hollywood Fred Meyer, New Seasons, H-Mart

Best Places to get Live Shellfish: Chinese markets near 82nd

Best Place to get Imported Frozen or Tinned Seafood: Flying Fish Company

Best Places to get Advice on What/How to Cook: Portland Fish Company, Flying Fish Company

Once stuffed with the zakuski, the family retired while I finished cooking the main course. They were fine with the half-hour break, since there had been so many zakuski.

Of course, we had to have varnyky. Or is that pirogi? As far as I can tell, these dumplings are the same, even having mostly the same fillings. The name just changes depending on which country you're in (varnyky in the Ukraine, pirogi in Poland, and either in Russia). Regardless, they're delicious, and an absolute requirement for any serious Russian/Polish/Ukranian meal. The ones in the picture are filled with a potato, onion, and twaróg cheese mixture, and then tossed with butter and browned onions. The recipe was mostly from Please to the Table, but I made some modifications.

I'll do full instructions, with pictures, on how to make varnyky later.

We also needed some nutritional balance to the meal, so I included a beet, cucumber, and potato salad from Mamuska, with both red and golden beets. This was excellent, although I recommend adding the red beets in last or everything in the salad turns a muddy red.

To make it a festive meal, I wanted to have a fish dish, but nothing too complicated. A Pomeranian (the province, not the dog) flounder dish from Polska seemed perfect. However, the dish required a whole flounder, which was out of the question (actually, not, but see the footnote to this post), so I had to make it with about 1.5lbs of "Dover" sole filets. This let me adapt the dish to use more apples, and become kind of a fish casserole. See the recipe at the bottom of this post.

We served all of this with dark beer, rather than wine. I really don't care much for Russian taste in wine, which tends towards sweet reds. But Russian-style beers are terrific. These were Oregon beers, though: a porter and a dark lager.

Finally, dessert: a hazelnut layer-cake. This recipe comes from my sweetie's family friend Vera, who has it from her Russian family. It's a cake made from ground hazelnuts and egg whites, with "boiled" chocolate frosting. With a different frosting and a minor tweak, the cake could be gluten-free. Regardless, it was delicious and really rich ... the perfect finish to a Russian/Polish Thanksgiving!

Now, what cuisine should I do next year? Leave your ideas in the comments.

Pomeranian-style sole with apples

based on a recipe from Polska

• 1.5 lbs of flounder or "Dover" sole filets
• 4 medium apples, peeled and sliced about 3 cups
• About 8 Tbs butter
• 2 Tbs lemon juice
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup sliced raw almonds
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup minced parsley
• 8" x 10" baking pan

Heat the oven to 375F. Melt the butter. Toss the apple slices with 3 Tbs of butter and the lemon juice as soon as you've peeled and sliced them (otherwise they'll turn brown). Create a single layer of apple slices in the bottom of the baking pan; you'll have to place them with your fingers. Bake the apple slices for about 12 minutes, you want them to cook and maybe even sizzle a little.

Meanwhile, coat the fish filets with 3 Tbs butter. When the first layer of apples are done, take out the hot pan, and carefully create a layer of fish on top of the apple slices, overlapping the filets if they are thin. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Cover this with a single layer of apple slices, which should use most of the rest. Season with a little more salt and pepper. Pop this back in the oven for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, sprinkle the top of the casserole with the sliced almonds, covering about 40% of the apples. Push back in the oven and cook for another 10 minutes. If your oven has a convection function, use it for this portion of the cooking. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with parsley. Serve hot, and do not reheat. Serves 4 to 6.

Warning: do not make this dish, or anything, with the fish sold as "arrowtooth flounder". While legitimately a flounder, the arrowtooth has an enzyme which causes its flesh to disintegrate when cooked. This is also an important lesson in having backup fish in the freezer whenever you make recipes with a strange fish.

Suckers walk, money talks
But it can't touch my quick gravlax
            -- Salmon Hagar

Think lox is way expensive? No decent smoked salmon in your area? Want to impress your friends with a fancy appetizer while spending less than 30 minutes on prep? Gravlax is your answer.

This simple cured salmon looks and tastes better than most nova lox, but does not require a smokehouse or any fancy equipment; if you have plastic wrap, some tupperware, a fridge, and 3 days of passive time, you're all set.

Gravlax

1 lbs Salmon filets, skin on
1/3 cup salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground black or white pepper
1 cup rougly chopped fresh dill
2 shots aquavit or vodka

The salmon filets should be two same-size pieces, either two matching tail pieces, or two rectanguar cuts from the thick (head) end of the salmon filet. Previously frozen salmon is actually preferred here for texture and sanitary reasons, so you can save money as well.

Pat both filets dry with paper towels. Get a small glass, plastic or ceramic container just barely large enough to hold both filets.

Mix together the sugar, salt, allspice and pepper. Put 1/3 of the dill on the bottom of the container. Generously sprinkle the skin side of 1 piece of salmon with about 1 Tbs of the sugar-salt curing mixture. Put it skin-side down on top of the dill. Sprinkle the flesh of that filet with another 1 to 1.5 Tbs of sugar-salt, and another 1/3 of the dill.

Holding the other piece of salmon flesh-side up, sprinkle the flesh side with about 1 Tbs of sugar-salt mixture, then put flesh-side down on top of the other piece of salmon. Pour the shots of aquavit/vodka over the top, and then sprinkle with another 1 Tbs of sugar-salt and 2 Tbs of dill. Set the rest of the sugar-salt aside for use in future batches of gravlax.

Cover with slack plastic wrap, and then set some kind of weight on top to press the salmon lightly (around 1-2lbs). Place in fridge for 24 hours. Take out, flip the bottom and top pieces together. Sprinkle the skin now facing up with 1/2 Tbs more sugar-salt mixture, replace plastic wrap, and put back in fridge for another 24 hours of curing.

At this point, the gravlax is ready, or it can be cured for 1 more day if you like. For additional curing, flip the filets again. If the salmon does not seem to be getting firm, feel free to sprinkle a little more curing mix on it.

When done curing, wash the salmon off with cold water and blot dry. Filet the skin off, and slice thinly on the bias. Decorate with a few sprigs of parsley. Will last in the fridge for a week to 10 days.

This simple-but-delicious Italian fish dish is called "pesce all'acqua pazza", or "fish in crazy water". Where exactly the name came from isn't clear, but it's one of the more delicious things you can make in less than 20 minutes on the stovetop. More importantly, it's tomato season, so the perfect time to make this.

Like a lot of other traditional recipes, you'll find a bunch of variations on acqua pazza. This one works for me, but feel free to play with it.

pesce all'acqua pazza

3-4 cloves garlic, sliced
3 Tbs olive oil
1 to 1.5 lbs white fish filets
1.5 cups diced fresh summer tomatoes
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped flat leave parsley
2-4 large, thick bread slices (1 per diner)

Optional additions: 6-12 live mussels
6-12 live clams
1/4 lbs peeled shrimp

Toast or grill the bread. Put each slice in the bottom of a wide, shallow bowl.

Heat the olive oil and garlic slices in a wide (12-14"), deep skillet for which you have a lid, using medium-high heat. When the garlic starts to sizzle and color, lay the fish filets on top. Let fry for 1 minute, then cover with the chopped tomatoes and their juice. Add the mussels, clams and/or shrimp if using, scattered evenly around the pan.

Add the wine. Add enough water to make the contents of the pan a bit soupy: around 1/2" of liquid up the sides of the pan. Cover and reduce heat to medium. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the fish is done and any shellfish are open. Around 2-3 minutes before it's done, sprinkle with the chopped parsley so it has a little time to cook.

Serve each diner a portion of fish on top of the toasted bread, and then spoon a bunch of the tomato-wine soup (and shellfish) over the top, until the bread is soaked. Serves two people as a one-dish meal, or four with other courses.

Fish: most kinds of white-fleshed fish skinless filets or boned steaks will work with this: butterfish, halibut, rockfish, striped bass, etc. The recipe also works with sole, but you will need to shorten cooking times, and not do the shellfish because they take longer than the sole does to cook. Tuna and mahi-mahi are a bit strong-flavored for this recipe.

Bread: use any white-flour unsliced real bread loaf, like a nice sourdough batard. Slice it about 1/2" thick and toast it for a few minutes. Trim slices as necessary to fill bowls.

Second Course

(continued from Part I)

The main choice I had to make for the second course was tagine vs. couscous. While I quite enjoy a good couscous — and let's face it, a major holiday is the only time I'll ever make couscous from scratch — I really wanted to try some bread recipes, so bread and tagine it was. Particularly, I wanted to try some of the semolina breads from Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco.

Pictured above is the "tagine bread" from her cookbook. I'm not sure it quite worked out; the bread was a bit denser and harder than I was expecting. Wolfert said that the reader could substitute coarse-ground (pasta grade) semolina for the fine semolina flour Moroccans use in the recipe, but I think maybe that didn't actually work.

The tagine itself, namely the "fish tagine with creamy onion charmoula", worked a lot better. In order to bring in another very old Thanksgiving tradition, I added mussels to it, and swapped out winter squash (butternut) for the summer squash in the recipe.

As a lighter side, I included "beet salad with cinnamon", again from Wolfert. This was another must-keep, as the cinnamon dressing just accented the beets without taking away from their essential flavor. It's displayed here in another one of my bowls from that nesting set.

Dessert

For dessert, we ranged a bit further afield and my sweetie made "Om Ali" a filo "bread pudding" from a Nigella Lawson recipe. But hey, Egypt is in North Africa too, right? Kinda?

Anyway, to Thanksgiving it up, she swapped the apricots and raisins normally in the recipe with dried cranberries. This was brilliant, more like a rich, light noodle kugel than a pudding made with filo.

So another successful Thanksgiving with no turkey ... and that's something to be truly thankful for! I know the turkeys are.