Sunday Recipe: New Year's Pork Roast and Sauerkraut

As anybody who grew up in Western Pennsyvlania knows, pork roast and sauerkraut are traditional New Year's Day foods and where I grew up, the population was so densely and predominantly Slovak, Polish and German, that we ate sauerkraut year round.

Now, everybody's family does their 'kraut differently. Some families like it super sour and others prefer it milder, almost sweet. So your mileage may vary on this.

My grandmother (the Scotch-Irish one, not the Italian one) leaned toward a richer version of 'kraut -- still a bit sour, but not sweet, rather just savory. I should say here that she was a great cook. I mean, truly great. And I think, in another place and time, with other opportunities, she might have made for a fine restaurant owner and cook. I'm not talking about opening a restaurant that serves foams and uses liquid nitrogen and the like, but a restaurant that makes just flat out delicious home cooking -- like the food you want to get at home, only better. This is my take on her sauerkraut (which she taught to my mother.)

Sunday Recipe: Christmas Ravioli Filled with Mushrooms

Yesterday, as always on Christmas Day, I made traditional ravioli. Well, they're a tradition in my family and growing up, I always felt sorry for kids who ate turkey on Christmas Day. How boring! Our Christmas tradition was always ravioli, a tradition started by my great-grandmother who left her tiny village in Abruzzo to make her way in America. Gram's traditional ravioli are filled with cheese and served with a rich, savory tomato sauce, one that is often flavored with a beef shank or some pork ribs or both. [My recipe for that sauce -- which I call Aunt Fulmay's Sauce -- is coming henceforth in a later post.]

Meanwhile, I made my traditional cheese filled ravs as family obligation dictates, but my feeling is that getting the dough right and then doing the assembly of the ravs is the hardest part, so every holiday (Christmas and Easter), I try another filling. This year, I made a mushroom filling and I have to say, for a recipe I basically made up on the fly, they were amazing -- Top Chef worthy ravioli.

Sometimes I Close My Eyes and Dream of Hip Checks

Last night, I dreamed that NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan suspended Penguins defenseman, Deryk Engelland. For a couple of games. As he should.

In the first period of the Pens thrilling 3-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks last night, Engelland left his feet and drilled Chicago's Marcus Kruger with a high hit along the boards. I'm not sure if Eggo was targeting Kruger's head, but it doesn't matter what his intentions were. He aimed high and leaped into his check. Somehow the officials missed it. Kruger left the game and I haven't seen a report on his status this morning. If, as predicted by people much smarter than I, Shanahan hands Engelland a two game suspension for the hit, Eggo should take it and say,  "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"

Because NHL players need to learn to stop aiming high. Period.

Top Ten Christmas Movies

It’s that time of year when AMC has “White Christmas” on a constant loop, which might account for the fact that I believe that movie has a running time of about 28 hours. But it made me think -- if I ran a movie channel, which Ten Christmas movies would I put into rotation this time of year? (Sadly, not on the list is The Hebrew Hammer -- mostly because I haven’t seen it, so I couldn’t consider it.) Without further ado, the Top Ten Christmas movies.

10. The Ref. 1994. Starring Dennis Leary, Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey.

This movie could have been better. It should have been better. And yet, it still contains enough despair, enmity, sarcasm, dysfunction and general shittiness to make the cut. This was back before Dennis Leary annoyed me with those ubiquitous Ford commercials, 'natch.

"From now on, the only person who gets to yell is me. Why? Because I have a gun. People with guns get to do whatever they want. Married people without guns - for instance - you - DO NOT get to yell. Why? NO GUNS! No guns, no yelling. See? Simple little equation."

Sunday Recipe: Sicilian Meatballs with a Basic Tomato Sauce

It started, simply enough, with a stale hunk of bread. Really.

I had purchased a loaf of rustic Italian bread from Breadworks and used about two-thirds of it. There it sat on my butcher's block in it's paper bag. It was too hard for sandwiches, yet I left it there. Finally, that stale hunk of bread taunted me. Silently, I could hear the bread whispering recriminations as I tried to catch up on my viewings of Top Chef and Parks & Rec. I tried to get on with some writing assignments, but the bread was almost shouting at me. This went on for a solid day. The next day I woke up and thought -- meatballs.

Sunday Recipe: Caribbean Seasoned Roasted Chicken a'la Belize

Few things say Sunday dinner to me like a whole roasted chicken and I often do a really basic Italian roasted chicken with garlic, thyme, etc., but a couple of weeks ago, I was craving a something a bit different. I started thinking about a trip I took to Belize years ago and the amazing spices of the stewed chicken I had there. Everywhere, positively everywhere, there was just amazing, rich, flavorful stewed chicken, from the tiniest hole in the wall joint to the less tiny hole in the wall joints. (What can I say -- I was in a remote area. There weren't Michelin starred restaurants -- but the food was amazing. Caribbean soul food.)


For years, I've thought about that chicken and finally I resolved to replicate those seasonings and flavors. Instead of stewing chicken parts, I thought I'd roast the whole bird.

The Steelers, Turnover Differential and Playoff Possibilities

If the playoffs started this weekend, the Steelers would be the No. 1 seed in the AFC. Those Steelers? My Steelers? Sure. But the Steelers, despite their 6-2 record, and despite their handling of the New England Patriots on Sunday at Heinz Field, feel like an incomplete team, a less than great team, don't they? And I think that feeling at the back of your mind which is causing your skepticism is turnover differential.

The Steelers are -10. Yes, that's minus ten. It's the worst turnover differential in the AFC and, in fact, it's the worst in the entire NFL. By way of comparison, teams with comparable records, the Detroit Lions (6-2) and the Buffalo Bills (5-2) are +13 and +9, respectively.

I started to wonder if any team had secured the overall 1 seed for the playoffs with a worse turnover differential than this version of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

NHL Realignment -- A Sane Solution

With the Atlanta Thrashers at long last becoming the Winnipeg Jets, there is sensible, necessary talk of re-aligning the NHL. Currently, Winnipeg occupies Atlanta's former spot in the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference. Look at a map. If the Columbus Blue Jackets and Detroit Red Wings are Western teams, then so, by god, is Winnipeg. Re-alignment is clearly necessary, just for geographic sanity.

Per the Post-Gazette this morning, the below four division re-alignment has been proposed:

That is simply asinine. 

Sunday Recipe: Beef Brisket Fit for Your Bubbe

I'm not a steak eater. I'm not that much of a meat eater, really. I like it, but it's hardly my favorite thing and when I crave beef, it's usually a good burger I'm after. But every year at Passover, Geargirl makes beef brisket or, as I think of it, Jewish pot roast. And I love it, even though I usually only eat it once, maybe twice a year. With the sudden dead of winter like conditions, brisket seemed like the perfect meal today.

Warning -- this recipe is very, very easy, but it is better if you can cook it one day, refrigerate it and then heat it and serve it the next day. Give yourself two days, is what I'm saying.

Mighty Macs, a Rumination

[The real Cathy Rush and Carla Gugino as Cathy Rush in 'The Mighty Macs']

I've written a ton about women's sports over the years in this space, most predominantly football and basketball. As I reported on local women's basketball programs (Seton Hill, Pitt, Duquesne), I kept running across links and ties to Immaculata College, the little women's college that could. No matter where I went, there was another connection to Immaculata -- from my excoriating of Rene Portland, to Suzie McConnell-Serio lighting up at the memories of being coached by Theresa Grentz, to spending an entire day with the dynamo, Ferne Labati.

So I started educating myself about the real Mighty Macs, the players and the coaches. I started to read about the first women's championships. I learned about the old game that girls used to play.

Jim Harbaugh, Manners and Free License to Be a Jerkwad

It’s pretty easy to get cynical about sports. It’s pretty natural to see somebody like NFL coach Jim Harbaugh act like an entitled jerk and then come to the conclusion that everybody is like that -- assume that he is simply doing what all professional athletes and coaches do. It’d be easy to think that behavior like Harbaugh’s is not merely tolerated, but actually celebrated.

I heard some of the talking head din after the handshake bruhaha, some of which framed football as war (stop me if you've heard this one before). The thrust being that it's okay for Harbaugh to be a jerk because (wait for it) -- the Lions and their coach Jim Schwartz are “the enemy.” Puh-leeze.

The Curse of the Winter Classic Sweaters: A Call to Action!

Baseball's fall classic is nearly upon us and my thoughts can't help but run to the sport full of mysticism and metaphysics, faith and the occult. After all, seamheads love the romance of baseball. But what they love even more than all that treacly sentimentality are their curses -- the Curse of the Billy Goat, the Curse of the Bambino, the Curse of the Black Sox, the Curse of Rocky Colavito and the Curse of the Cowboy (how were those for obscure curses for yinz?)

Personally, I don't cotton to curses or karma. I don't subscribe to the belief that mystical forces are afoot in the real world, with fairies and trolls wreaking havoc in our daily lives. I don't believe in god and if I did believe in god, I'm pretty sure he or she would be far too busy with other things than to worry about torturing the fanbase of this or that particular sports franchise.

Is the NHL Really Serious About Head Injuries? Only Time Will Tell

On Saturday night in Calgary, notorious head-hunter Matt Cooke took a flagrant elbow to the head courtesy of Flames defenseman Cory Sarich. After the hit, Cooke was very shaky and missed the remainder of the 2nd period, though he did return in the 3rd period.

Who cares if Matt Cooke gets hurt? After all, he's hurt enough guys in his time, right?

I care if Cooke is victim of head-hunting and not just because I'm a Penguins fan. I care because I think this is exactly the sort of hit the NHL can use to send a message.

Sunday Recipe: Pasta with Butternut Squash Sauce

I love fall veggies, perhaps none more than all the varieties of squash available at this time of year. Last week, I posted a roasted cauliflower recipe (which I have made three times in the past two weeks and I intend to make again before this week is out.) Last fall, I posted a roasted butternut squash soup recipe that is one of my favorite soups of all time. Squash and pumpkin are used with pasta all over Italy, but particularly in the north, in places like Verona and Mantua, you find pumpkin or squash ravioli on every menu of every little trattoria you stumble into. I love pumpkin ravioli, but this is a much less labor-intensive way to pair pumpkin with pasta. It's a very simple recipe, but you need to start your prep about an hour before you want to eat, because you have to cook down the veg for a long time, so, be warned.

Sunday Recipe: Perfect Roasted Cauliflower

I love fall and winter vegetables. I love the idea of roasting cauliflower, but it's often either overcooked mush, or too crunchy for any use other than crudite. The idea of a cauliflower gratin is appealing, but most takes are just too cheesy, more like melted cheese with just a hint of cauliflower.

Last week, I hit the farmer's market and returned home with several heads of cauliflower, determined to make the perfect roasted cauliflower.

I think I succeeded. This dish is the perfect fall or winter accompaniment to a roasted chicken, pork roast, pot roast and it would make a terrific Thanksgiving side.