Thanksgiving Post Mortem
Thanksgiving has come and gone, but the food stays with us, in our refrigerators, freezers and thighs. As promised, here’s the post-mortem.
The heritage bird that Blair landed for us was great; nice flavor without being overly gamey. The roasting instructions I had were for top heavy birds, rather than the mature, thick-thighed Kansan from Hertiage Foods USA that made its way to Brooklyn’s Bierkraft. The breast meat wound up somewhat dry, which was a bit disappointing; thankfully there was a whole mess of gravy to remoisten the meat.
The sausage/polenta stuffing worked out well, thanks in large part to an aggressively meaty brown chicken stock. Also, I did the polenta day in advance, using regular cornmeal instead of quick-cooking polenta, but retaining the 1:3 corn:water ratio, rather than the traditional 1:4 ratio. I also added fontina cheese, because fontina is del.icio.us.
The Persimmon-Cranberry Sauce was as expected; I think one the persimmons may have been not so good, though. I don’t know what persimmons taste like.
As it turns out, I didn’t need to make the Cornbread Casserole and Butternut Squash, Mushrooms, and Ancho Mole, but man is this a good recipe. Traditional pain-in-the-butt fancypants magazine vegetarian entree — “First cut up 7,000 things, then make a sauce that requires a food processor, then a stew, then cornbread, then combine it all and bake it.” All told, though, it’s healthy and worth the effort. The mushrooms are pretty muted (I used oyster mushrooms and a couple of portobellos) and the mole could use a little more spice, I think. And if you’re not a vegetarian, use stock instead of water. Duh.
Also, Blair made some extra delicious stuff. Highlights include a gluten-free pizza topped with shrimp, cocktail sauce and cream cheese; a cocktail involving champagne and Pom (called “Pom-paigne” (I made a “Common Sense” joke that didn’t go over very well)); sweet potatoes; and a pumpkin pie that was awesome.
But obviously the best and most important part of T-Day was the company — Jessica’s family — and they were wonderful guests/company. The fact that everyone was easy going really made hosting fun, and the fact that everyone helped out (going so far as to leave our kitchen cleaner than when they found it) really made a huge difference.
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Typical– the chef will now denigrate his cooking in the hopes that someone will contradict him. Well, I for one am not biting! That said, everything was delicious. Seriously delicious. I didn’t think that Evan the turkey was dry (being a Heritage bird it had a name and, I’m sure, a very full pre-roasting life, but I don’t care, because I am a stone cold killer), I thought it was moist and flavorful. I actually do know what pomegranates are supposed to taste like, and they are supposed to taste like they did in the fantastico cranbery sauce (and Ruth Reichl cooked it for her feast as well! That makes us Gourmet by association!) The stuffing: perfect; the cassarole: just right (I even liked the mushrooms, which I am usually unilaterally and inexplicably against). I will take issue with one thing: my family behaved atrociously. When my parents weren’t busy buying us a dining room table and cleaning our kitchen, they were performing sexist charades, drinking all our Grand Royale, and taunting Evan the turkey. Darcy and Blair, though they did bring tasty food and pom-chaigne, disgraced themselves with displays of gratuitous nudity and proposed a post-dinner round of Russian Roulette which we all found a bit tasteless. Seriously, they are ANIMALS.
Dan, for Christmas I am sending you an apron, a bow tie, and a set of gold-rimmed spectacles. Though I have every expectation that you will be able to release the violence that Chris Kimball keeps firmly knotted behind his apron strings — you will be able to tap into the seething, primal energies that Kimball cannot. I hereby proclaim you the Kwisatz Haderach of precision cooking, and I want an invitation to dinner sometime, damn it.
PS. Kate keeps telling me that a groan is _not_ as good as a lough, but don’t you believe it. Keep making the pom-chaigne jokes. They’ll still work for you when you’re in an ascot, wondering where the energy came from.