We had some leftover sausages and plums, except Iris had eaten all the plums, and it was only a sausage and a half, not enough for all of us. So I looked in the pasta drawer and found it dangerously low: spaghetti, fettucine, vermicelli, lasagna, and elbow macaroni. I’m not even sure why we have vermicelli, since I don’t even like it.

Trader Joe’s mac and cheese is a lunchtime staple here, especially on farmers market day, when Iris usually demands broccoli and we make mac and broc. Today, though, I grabbed the box of Barilla elbows (which have ridges and are the best elbows I know of), boiled it up, and chopped up the sausage into bite-sized pieces. I warmed the sausage with the remaining wine-plum sauce and used it to sauce the noodles. I threw in a handful of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and a little olive oil.

It was delicious, of course, and now I can’t wait to have more leftover sausages and fruit so I can make it again.

Every year for Thanksgiving, we make Cornish pasties, which are football-shaped meat and potato pies. (American football, not soccer ball.) We’ve been looking forward to this for several days, so when Laurie went to get Iris up from her nap, she said:

> **Laurie:** Do you remember what Dada is making for dinner?

> **Iris:** Lobster!

> **Laurie:** Not lobster.

> **Iris:** Pasties!

This year, for the first time, Iris got her own pasty, a little one like those sold “for the cheel” in Penzance. She didn’t eat very much of it, probably because we ate dinner at five o’clock, but then after we got back from visiting the family, she attacked the leftovers like a Cornish coyote. She also brushed the egg wash on the pasties with impressive precision; I think she’s already better with a paintbrush than I will ever be.

Our pasty dough has a secret ingredient: lard. Many pasty recipes, including the ones we inherited from Laurie’s family, call for shortening, margarine, or both. I’m obviously not a health nut, and there are trans fat-free versions of both products, but there’s something, well, unfestive about them. Pasty dough is fairly bland to start with, and flavorless shortening and margarine aren’t going to help. Also, hey, this is Thanksgiving, America’s holiday, and for centuries lard was America’s fat.

So I replace the margarine with butter and the shortening with lard. But not the hydrogenated lard sold in supermarkets, which tastes like shortening. I buy pork back fat at Uwajimaya (it’s as cheap as you might expect); it’s a common ingredient in dim sum dumplings. I render the lard using what I think is approximately Paula Wolfert’s method. This is total, unforgivable name-dropping, but I know Paula Wolfert, and she totally loves Iris, who calls her “Friend Paula.” That said, it’s not like Friend Paula made me her lard-rendering apprentice; I learned this from her book.

Cut the pork fat into chunks and put it in the food processor. Process it into a paste. Put it in a saucepan, cover, and put in a 250-degree oven for a couple of hours, stirring occasionally. Then strain. After I strain out the cracklings, I usually strain the lard through a paper towel. It will keep in the fridge for at least a couple of months. Use it for making pie crust, cooking quesadillas, roasting potatoes, making tortillas and tamales, or frying doughnuts.

Why isn’t lard more popular? Atkins may be over, but lusting after high-end pork products is still socially acceptable. Paul Bertolli recently quit his job as chef at Oliveto to concentrate on his salami business.

Lard is cheaper than butter and has less saturated fat. Maybe it’s the name, although “lard” has got to be better than the Spanish name, “manteca de cerdo,” which Babelfish translates as “pig butter.” In any case, if you eat pork, there’s really no reason not to have lard in your fridge. You can get pork fat at any Asian grocery, or you can ask your butcher (even a supermarket butcher) to save you some. It makes pastry magically flaky and gives everything else a subtle savory undertone. Luckily, I have plenty of lard left after today’s pasty-making adventure.

One unrelated Thanksgiving story. When we were out visiting there was a bowl of gherkins.

> **Me:** Look, Iris, a gherkin. It’s a tiny pickle.

> **Iris:** (*swiping the gherkin*) Iris like a gherkin.

> **Me:** Hey, Iris stole my gherkin.

> **Iris:** Not Dada’s gherkin. Iris’s gherkin.

Nearly every recipe in the mighty 50 Chowders, including the leek and mushroom chowder I made this week, recommends serving with toasted common crackers. What are common crackers? Jasper White explains:

> The common cracker descended from hardtack, also known as ship’s biscuit–a very dense, unleavened brick of baked flour. Necessity wrote this recipe, since flour would not keep in the damp and vermin-infested conditions aboard ship.

(Two of the things I love about Jasper, things that make it very hard to call him anything but “Jasper,” are that he’s always saying mildly folksy things like “necessity wrote this recipe,” and that he has a Yankee sense of thrift. He touts one recipe for making a fifty-cent bowl of chowder.)

It’s a shame there’s no such thing as a time machine, because I would really like to go back a couple hundred years and tell a grizzled ship’s captain that I spent $15 ordering hardtack on the net. Specifically, I ordered two boxes of common crackers from the Vermont Country Store.

Common crackers are just over an inch in diameter and half an inch thick, and they bear a strong resemblance to Parisian macaroons. They’re baked in such a way that they’re very easy to split in two, kind of like an Oreo without filling. If you eat one out of the box, its stale blandness will remind you that this is what sailors (and presumably pirates) were forced to eat when they ran out of jerky.

But split a common cracker, brush it with melted butter, and bake it for ten minutes, and you’ll have a crunchy treat. Eat these with a bowl of chowder (you can dip, crumble, or just enjoy them on the side) and you’ll never want chowder without them again. Plus, kids love them. Iris had a friend over the other day and they were scarfing common crackers like regular deckhands.

There’s a recipe for common crackers in the book In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs. It’s interesting to learn how they’re put together, but should you make them? Let’s give Jasper the last word:

> [A]lmost no home cook knows how to make them. Even those who do know don’t bother, because they take almost two days to make and if you do everything just right, they might turn out as good as the ones you can buy at the store.

Right now I shouldn’t be writing this post, because I’m on deadline for a restaurant review. Restaurant critic is an intriguing job, and everyone wants to know how it works, so I put together this handy FAQ.

**Q: Do you tell the restaurant who you are and when you’re coming?**

A: Of course. Otherwise I might not get special treatment, and I *live* for special treatment. Generally I call several days in advance and ask the restaurant to procure the largest possible lobe of Grade A foie gras and begin marinating it in grand cru Sauternes. On the day of my meal, I call to confirm that they have sufficient Iranian beluga on the premises. So pretty much the same thing you do when you go out.

**Q: Who do you bring with you to the restaurant?**

A: Generally it’s me, Kid Sensation, PLB, Maharaji, and Larry. Larry is a white guy, but he is a real estate investor who makes a lot of money, so we bring him along to cover the caviar.

**Q: Isn’t the newspaper supposed to pay for your meal?**

A: If you’re implying that our bankrolls aren’t fatter than the foie gras, this interview is over.

**Q: Do you tell your guests what to order?**

A: Yes, with the caveat that Larry is a vegetarian, and he is getting *seriously* tired of grilled portobellos.

**Q: How do you decide how many stars to award the restaurant?**

A: I take into account the food, the service, the decor, and intangible factors, such as:

* The restaurant’s name is the same as its address (e.g., 727 Pine): minus one star
* Waitress is smoking hot: plus one star
* Prices on the menu lack decimal places or dollar signs: this must be a cool place, plus one star
* Grilled portobello: minus one star

**Q: Do you ever wear a disguise?**

A: I have a closet full of hand-tailored gorilla suits.

Seriously, now, I watched Kitchen Confidential before it went on hiatus, and one episode had the most awesomely misinformed restaurant critic plotline I’ve ever seen. The New York Times reviewer made a reservation and everyone knew it was her; she came to the restaurant alone on opening night; and the review ran the next day. Plus she was hot.

Today was the last day of the Broadway Farmers Market until next June. Last year we had to schlep to the U District, but then this year they opened a new market blocks from our house, and some of our favorite farmers were there, along with some new faces like Alvarez Farms. Everything Alvarez sells is organic and inexpensive, and it’s probably the best of its genre you’ve ever had. They specialize in peppers, but they also have the best corn and eggplants. It’s new world produce. Earlier in the year they had remarkable purple tomatillos, good enough to eat raw, and today they had firm and flawless red onions.

I asked the Alvarez guy whether they do a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture, where you buy a share of the farm and receive a weekly box of produce), and they said, sure, just pick the basket up at our farm in Mabton, which according to Google Maps is 181 miles from our house. Luckily, Alvarez is going to be at Pike Place Market through December.

Mabton is in the high desert of eastern Washington. I once overheard the following banter between two of the guys behind the counter while they were unloading sacks of dried peppers:

> **Younger guy**: What do you do with these, anyway?

> **Older guy**: You grow up in the desert and you don’t know dried peppers? What’s wrong with you?

I got some red onions and went chasing after Iris. It was foggy this morning, and on the way down to the market she was speculating about whether she would be able to see the vegetables through the fog. Today the market coordinator had brought her chickens, and Iris patted the rooster. Then Iris said we should get some carrots, so I got some at Willie Green’s, along with some celery root.

Celery root is a vegetable I admire because it’s so standoffish. When people talk about cooking simply with fresh ingredients and doing as little to the food as possible, they’re not talking about celery root, because for god’s sake, the thing looks like a shrunken head.

We just got the 2005 bound edition of Cook’s Illustrated, and it has an article about root vegetables with the subtitle: *Could we turn “boring” turnips, celery root, and parsnips into exciting side dishes?*

One of the recipes is Glazed Celery Root with Onions, Grapes, and Pistachios. I guess the grapes and pistachios make it exciting. I didn’t have any grapes or pistachios on hand, the combination sounded gross anyway, so I left them out, but I threw in some carrots along with the celery roots and used those Alvarez red onions. In other words, I took their “exciting” side dish and made it boring again, and of course it was perfect.