tiny toasts

I am actually making beef stock today, thanks to my new book. However I think I will just be finishing it right before I head out to my 10 year high school reunion (10 Years! Can you even believe it?). So, I won't get a chance to write all about it until tomorrow (when, hopefully, Jack will be using it for some French Onion soup!)

So here's what I ate while working on my stock today.

I love those little min-toasts. They are my favorite vehicle for brie and other soft cheeses and cheese spreads. They are simple...no powdery overly-herbed flavors. Just tiny toasted crunchy bread. Gorgeous.

I roasted some beef marrow bones along with soup bones for my stock. Once out of the oven, I couldn't help but scrape the tiny bit of marrow out of a couple of the bones to try it. Bone marrow is after all, what Tony Bourdain chose as his last meal for the new book My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes by Melanie Dunea It's a neat book (and uh-oh! tony is nooood innit!) that's fun to read. Thought-provoking and drool-inducing...luckily they provide recipes AND restaurant names. For a really good preview of the book, check out Time magazine's slideshow. Anyway, although my marrow wasn't veal marrow, it was still a fantastic little nub of rich flavor. Sooo good. All I did was sprinkle some kosher salt on it and put it on a mini toast:



Although rich and delicious, one tiny toast with a little bone marrow does not a lunch make. A friend gave me some leftover cranberry chutney he had made. I don't have the recipe, but it was a spicy chutney. Yum! I pulled some meat off a store-bought smoked turkey leg and had myself a little thanksgiving teaser:




Okay, I gotta go add the veggies and aromatics to my stock and get all prettified to see my old pals.