H-Mart has peeled and partially peeled cooked chestnuts, but they aren't in jars they're in foil pouches. Great for snacking; not precisely the same as roasting yourself, but I think they'd work in stuffing.

You should be able to find chestnuts at tomorrow's Green City Market (Hillside Orchard). The Hillside stuff is also at the downtown Farmstand.

It happens to be my 3rd wedding anniversary as well so since both our families are out of state we decided to just stay home and do something different by ourselves. Started the confit last night, gave it a low and slow session in the oven and now it's lounging in a corningware filled with a quart of duck fat.

Fun Fact: Spilled duck fat attracts ants. Turns out if you spill some on the floor but don't notice it and it sits overnight...you might wake up to a few hundred ants that have drowned themselves in the fat (what a way to go, right?) Good thing is those little guys are pretty absorbant so clean up is easy.

My Menu

Apps
Cranberry Glazed Sweet and Spicy Shrimp
Stuffed Mushrooms with Manchego Cheese and Prosciutto

Meat
Turkey Thigh Confit
Roasted Turkey Breast

Sides
Stuffing of Bread, Sage, Carmelized Leeks, Mirepoix, and Red Chile
Herbed Butter Corn with Bacon
Byaldi and Humboldt Fog Cheese Terrine.
Mashed Potato Gratin
Brown Gravy

Dessert
Sweet Potato Tatin
Cranberry Granita

CleofusMcd3 wrote:Turkey Thigh Confit

I have been wanting to make this for years. Is this recipe from Food and Wine (or is it Bon Appetit)? If not, what recipe are you using?

I think that, next year, I'll finally go for it. It's not a traditional T-giving turkey prep, but a lot more fun for a small crowd, IMHO! Please post back and let us know how it turned out.

Herbed Butter Corn with Bacon

This might possibly be the world's most perfect phrase.

Cathy2 wrote:Oh, bah! If your food is in the danger zone for too long, you may get so sick you will wish you were dead. Now onto something less revolting ....

So you're saying, don't go with Kris Kringle - I mean, Chris Kimball - on this?

Being a big believer in the law of averages-- Bill Gates and I average about $6 billion apiece; Wilt Chamberlain and I... anyway, I approached David's dilemma of the blandness of Turkey day in a different fashion. Rather than adobo pancetta deep frying my maple-glazed hoisin turcarpmoose, I had lunch at Khan BBQ with two young men of my acquaintance (one mostly just ate naan, the other bravely scarfed chicken boti). So on average, my Wednesday-Thursday dining achieved all the comfiness of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with piquant Indian spicing and hot, crispy onion naan for a side. And instead of football, we watched cricket. The best of both worlds, and delicious in both respects.

tgoddess wrote:

Herbed Butter Corn with Bacon

This might possibly be the world's most perfect phrase.

Actually, if it was perfect, it would be "herbed butter bacon with corn".

HI,

I have a friend who prepared Thanksgiving dinner under the fog of jetlag. She awoke at 5 AM to prepare the stuffing and had the turkey in the oven around 7 AM. She called around noon to advise her turkey ws finished. How could she hold it until 4 PM when her guests arrived? Her idea was to hold it at 175 degrees, which didn't seem right to me. My initial reaction was call your guests to alert them to arrive earlier than planned. I then remembered listening to a Butterball answerlady earlier in the morning. I recommended my friend call 1-800-BUTTERBALL, then advise me the answer.

Butterball advised she slice up the turkey and arrange on pyrex pans to refrigerate until her guests arrived. She should then reheat the turkey at 350 degrees. She followed their advice for a successful Thanksgiving meal.

Regards,

Mike G wrote:The best of both worlds, and delicious in both respects.

Another option? Much like the first Thanksgiving, invite the Indians to dinner! Of course, these are family friends of the South Asian persuasion. They added chickpea chole and homemade paratha's to the table which went quite well with the cranberries. If you think about it, various cranberry preps are often just a few spices away from being chutney-ish anyway.

Anyone else exhausted right about now? As many times as I've hosted Thanksgiving, I'm beginning to realize that only the cooking gets easier each year and everything else -- especially the set-up and clean-up -- take more out of me than they used to. I'm wiped. Of course, we had 20+, which takes its toll.

Our meal was an overall success and went pretty much as planned, although it was on the table about an hour late, which was as much a function of late-arriving guests as anything else. I scrapped the notion of making deep-fried turkey when I finally came to understand that even in the best case scenario, frying would require me to be outside (and away from the kitchen) for too long a period of time because I was unwilling to leave the frying rig alone for even a few moments. Instead, I cooked one bird in the oven and 2 more on the Komodo (lump charcoal and apple wood), which worked out fine. I didn't brine the birds but salted them (a departure) and even though I made my gravy from unsalted necks and giblets (and previously made turkey stock), I did add some of the drippings from the oven-cooked turkey to the gravy -- after tasting them -- and the salt level was perfectly fine.

I cooked my stuffing on jellyroll pans this year -- instead of baking pans -- and that created a very nice crust to interior ratio. The stuffing was a 'wing job,' which included some sagey home-made breakfast sausage. I eliminated Macaroni & Cheese from the menu and added a turkey stock-fueled Quinoa dish to which I added sauteed red onions and portabellos. I mixed in some pomegranate seeds after all the cooking was done. That was a nice dish that I'd experimented with before and will definitely make again. In lieu of mashed potatoes, which my sister ended up bringing anyway (*groan*), I roasted a combination of diced russets, carrots, parsnips, turnips along with some shallots and garlic. That was a big mover, too.

So, another one is in the books and I can't say I'm shedding any tears over it. Yeah, the meal was pretty good and well-appreciated by my guests but I can't say that I enjoyed myself as much as I have in years past. One nice thing about Thanksgiving is that for me, it falls on the first day of a 4-day weekend. Not only will I need some of the next 3 days to recover but I'm also looking forward to relaxing a bit. I joked earlier in the week that if Thursday didn't kill me, I'd give thanks on Friday. I had no idea how prescient those words were when I uttered them.

=R=

Everyone's Thanksgiving sounded real good. I had turkey roll on our Cruise Ship. To say I'm dissapointed would be an understatement. I'm hoping there are some stray fresh turkeys still in the store when I get off this ship and back to Chicago tomorrow night. I want to cook a make-good Thanksgiving diner for myself and the Chow Poodle on Sunday.

Thanksgiving at our house turned out excellent, the Turducken from Cajun Connection was a hit even with the people cautious about trying something new.

I was up @ 5:30 yesterday to get the meal together, the previous night I baked off the 2 layers of the carrot cake, but everything else was prepared Thursday morning. I boiled off two lbs of shrimp & made some cocktail sauce, whipped together some dressing, grean been casserole, sauteed some brussel sprouts in bacon grease, cooked bacon, soy sauce, and oyster sauce, peeled a few lbs of potatoes, made a pumpkin pie, made the cream cheese frosting for the carrot cake, frosted the cake, simmered turkey neck, and the turkey organs etc. The Turducken took 4 hours in the oven, 1.5 hours uncoverd @ 425, and then 2.5 hours covered with foil @ 350.

Besides the mashed potatoes, and excellent pan gravy, the Turducken was my favorite, and I can say it was the best thing I have ever eaten on Thanksgiving. Crisp skin, moist meat, and flavorfull cornbread stuffing. I will do one next year for sure.

Here are a couple of pics, I am still not good at linking pictures to this site where they show on the thread so here are the links:

A few notes on the ever-evolving yet timeless feast this year:

1) Since I never get much in the way of pan drippings, it all cooks off, I tried adding some chicken stock to the bottom of the pan to help keep it liquid. It took two or three additional replenishings with water, but I wound up with about a cup of salty (I brined) but excellently flavored drippings. I used the fat to start my roux for the gravy, and then concocted the final gravy by using all of my (salty) drippings, all of my (not at all salty) stock made from the neck and assorted vegetable ends, and a goodly amount of last year's post-dinner frozen stock. Gravy was excellent, very turkey-flavored, and in the end, I had to salt it slightly.

2) I made the same simple cranberry sauce from a Bon Appetit recipe from a few years back. The kids, who pretty much wouldn't touch it last year, scarfed it this year. This one is so easy and so tasty (well, it helped to use really flavorful cinnamon sticks fresh from Spice House), I highly recommend it. Of course, once you've bought a bottle of not very good but not cheap either port to use in it, you'll have to make it every year.

3) Another food-mag dish I really liked last year didn't do as much for me this year-- brussel sprouts shredded, roasted, tossed with parmesan. I overcooked it a bit but it also just didn't have novelty any more. Time to try something new next time.

4) I started making the New York Times sweet potato-orange ginger gratin linked above, then I got cold feet about how plain it was (one problem was that I could tell the ginger I'd bought was not very flavorful). So I tarted it up with some curry powder and brown sugar. It was all right, but I kind of just came away thinking that gratins are not the thing to do with sweet potatoes; either sliced or pureed is a better texture.

5) Last year I tried making Parker House rolls and they were not very exciting. Not sure if it was a lame online recipe or what. I decided I'd be better off leafing through a Southern cookbook for inspiration and in James Villas' book I found "pocketbook rolls," which deny strenuously that they are Parker House rolls. Other than the fact that they don't really stick together when you fold them over, these were great-- a wonderful feather-light dough, buttery flavor, yum. You can see the recipe by searching for the word "pocketbook" in the book at its Amazon page.

6) I always try to make or order something the night before so we'll have leftovers for lunch and not end up going to whatever fast food place is actually open. So one of the best things I ate on Thanksgiving was... a slice of cold homemade pizza, olive oil and pepper and fresh mozzarella from Caputo's on the crust, then topped after baking with prosciutto, arugula and shaved Avondale Truckle cheese. Happy Turkey Day!

I am not much of a baker, but I really wanted to make homemade rolls.

I made these yesterday, exactly as described:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Buttery-Pa ... etail.aspx

They are delicious, even the next day, because of all the fat. They were also incrdibly easy and came together quickly in the Kitchen Aid with the dough hook.

They don't need butter, but with the Organic Valley Pasture Butter, I've been snacking on them all day today.

I'll be making these again, definitely before next Thanksgiving.

Thanksgivng for us was all about driving. Heading from Chicago > Frankfort > Barrington > Chicago for apps at the first stop and dinner at the second.

Since most items were covered we made a cranberry sauce with pears and ginger and I did a baklava. Baklava was made with walnuts and honey from a beekepper that uses my friend's property in Jackson, MS. It was so good I am considering another batch this weekend

Since my fav part of Thanksgiving is leftover turkey sandwiches, I grabbed a 24lb bird to smoke on Sunday

Jamie

More driving for me than I normally like as well; Chicago>Kenosha>Chicago>Eat/Drink/Be Merry>Kenosha>Chicago makes for a long day.

We had a great time though, Turkey, green bean casserole with wild mushrooms, cauliflower gratin, stuffing, several pies and cakes.

Tonight is dinner with the gf's parents. I'm looking forward to it, the menu sounds great.

I didn't host, but made the trek to the in-laws for lunch and to Mom's for dinner. I did prepare Cook Illustrated's Pumpkin Cheescake, and man was that good. It received all raves. The consistency was very smooth and lushous. The taste of cream cheese went well with the pumpkin, and the crust turned out perfectly crisp. Overall the spices were right on.

While the recipe is a bit fussy, with draining the pumpkin on paper towel, and the handling of a water bath for the baking, I definately reccomend this dessert.

Now I have 3 turkey carcasses giving their all for my stock. As the carver at the in-laws I am able to leave enough meat on the bones to fortify my stock well. (Never let someone who professes a desire for the carcass carve the bird. )

I agree that the sweet potato gratin wasn't quite right. In my case, I think it had too much butter and cream (I was worried it would be too dry). I liked the orange and ginger, so I may try something similar next year, maybe sliced and layered with ginger and orange and using orange juice instead of cream.

The turkey came out well - I salted it, and did it on the WSM with no water pan. Cherry wood for smoke. Very tasty. It was a bit salty for me, but I don't think it was over salted in general. Plus, the stuffing needed a little salt, so together they worked. The stuffing was just dried bread cubes (mixed leftover wheat and a loaf of white I made) fresh parsley, sage, thyme, salt, pepper, butter and turkey stock.

Although I didn't get drippings as it cooked, as it was being carved it let off a lot of juice, so that went into the gravy. I made a turkey/chicken stock with no salt, so the salty juice was ok, and I ended up salting it at the end. But it was a 5 minute gravy, because I nearly forgot! I took the fat from the stock and some flour and made a roux, then threw in the liquids and boiled the hell out of it.

The brussels sprouts were a big hit, I could have made a lot more of those. I ended up roasting them in the oven instead of browning and braising in a pan, which was less hands-on.

We had a lovely cheese plate to start, with 2 different ages of manchego, cheddar, soft goat, morbier, a soft sheep cheese with rosemary, along with a mushroom terrine, apricots, mixed nuts and fig jam.

And I forgot to put out the cranberry sauce until dessert but we had it with the soft goat cheese and it was good that way.

Mike G wrote: I started making the New York Times sweet potato-orange ginger gratin linked above, then I got cold feet about how plain it was (one problem was that I could tell the ginger I'd bought was not very flavorful). So I tarted it up with some curry powder and brown sugar. It was all right, but I kind of just came away thinking that gratins are not the thing to do with sweet potatoes; either sliced or pureed is a better texture.

leek wrote:I agree that the sweet potato gratin wasn't quite right. In my case, I think it had too much butter and cream (I was worried it would be too dry). I liked the orange and ginger, so I may try something similar next year, maybe sliced and layered with ginger and orange and using orange juice instead of cream.

I made the same sweet potato gratin and I thought it came out fantastic. I followed the recipe exactly, except that I added toasted pecans instead of hazelnuts. I let the finished, pre-baked gratin sit at room temp for a bit before putting it in the oven and occasionally pressed down the sweet potato with a fork to make sure it was submerged in the cream, which it was by the time it went into the oven. First, I loved the prominent orange flavor. Second, I loved that the “minimalist” nature of this dish showcased how naturally sweet sweet potatoes are. I’m not a fan of adding brown sugar to any sweet potato dish, and I thought this proved it wasn’t needed. Finally, I loved the texture. Mashed or sliced sweet potatoes tend to be stringy or overly dense/weighty on the tongue. The grated sweet potato in this dish had a really light texture. A winner for me, but I guess I’m the only one!

Some of my notes echo those above:

1)

ronnie_suburban wrote:I didn't brine the birds but salted them (a departure) and even though I made my gravy from unsalted necks and giblets (and previously made turkey stock), I did add some of the drippings from the oven-cooked turkey to the gravy -- after tasting them -- and the salt level was perfectly fine.

I didn’t brine either but salted the turkey, adapted from the Zuni Café method. (My roasting method was a hybrid of Zuni Café and Cook’s Illustrated.) I also stuffed a compound butter with rosemary, garlic and orange under the skin. I was very happy with the result, which was a moist, but crispy-skinned turkey. I didn’t add water to the pan (per Cook’s Illustrated) as I was afraid that it would create too much steam in the oven and inhibit the crisping of the skin.

My gravy was a wing-job. I didn’t get more than 1/4 c. drippings after skimming, so I deglazed the roasting pan with Riesling to add sweetness, and then strained the reduction into the drippings. I started with a 2T. butter/2T. flour roux in a saucepan, added the drippings/reduction and about 1 1/2 c. rich turkey stock, and finished it with pink peppercorns. While it didn’t thicken as much as I’d like, taste-wise, it was the best gravy I’ve ever made. (I also took it off the stove as soon as it was thickened somewhat so it probably could have used a few more minutes and maybe one more tablespoon of flour.) Like ronnie_suburban, the pre-salting of the turkey meant that I didn’t need to season the gravy any further, and I agree that the salt level was perfectly fine, not too salty.

2) For the “stuffing” portion, I made a choucroute bread pudding from Food and Wine magazine at the request of someone who loves this dish. I’ve made it before, with good results, and while it sounds like one of those gimmicky, let’s-take-a-dish-and-turn-it-into-some-other-dish, type-dish, it actually is quite delicious. It has a plethora of pork products for starters (ham, bacon and andouille sausage -- not a traditional component of choucroute, I know), is moistened mostly by a ham stock made from the ham hock and has a noticeable a tang from sourdough and sauerkraut that lifts the taste from herb-heavy savory stuffing doom. Thanks for the recommendation, LTH, for the Thibodeaux andouille sausage product from Treasure Island-- a really excellent product. (A note on Treasure Island below.) This recipe also gave me the opportunity to use my own lacto-fermented sauerkraut.

3) I generally try to round out any heavy meal with an honest-to-goodness composed salad to balance out the meat and cream-heavy dishes. This year, I made a composed pear salad from last year’s Cook’s Illustrated with watercress, butter lettuce, caramelized pear and toasted pecans (I forgot to add the shaved parmiggiano-reggiano):


Not the prettiest salad, but it struck a balance between feeling not-indulgent-enough and being too indulgent. A note on the pear: I used an Asian pear, which I caramelized in the pan with a teensy bit of sugar. The result was a supremely fragrant, concentrated, even boozy-tasting fruit, even though I didn’t add any liquor to the pan. I’ve caramelized pears before for dessert, but I don’t recall tasting such a transformation from raw to cooked. I don’t know if it was that my pear was better -- purchased from Green Grocer from local Oriana's Orchards, but I think I will try to incorporate caramelized pears more into savory dishes as the boozier flavor profile is a unexpected bonus.

4) I made a cooked, jellied cranberry-grappa sauce from Gourmet. (Eat your heart out, Kennyz! :) ) This is the second year I’ve made it with great results. I love the interplay of the sweet grappa with the tart cranberry. A good dish.

5) For dessert, I went with a Pumpkin Cheesecake with Bourbon-Sour Cream topping from Gourmet, again:


Again not the prettiest dessert, but it wasn't too sweet or too spicy, two things that generally turn me off of pumpkin-style desserts. I was really happy with the creamy texture, which I attribute to using Philadelphia cream cheese. It was noticeably pumpkin-y (as opposed to being spicy with a hint of pumpkin) and I attribute that to using an entire can of pumpkin and knocking down the cinnamon by 1/2 t. (to account for the cinnamon in the graham-cracker crust). Also, I noticed that the quantity of spices in the recipe were fairly conservative already, so except for the downgrade in the cinnamon, I just followed the recipe. I loved the hit of Bourbon in the cheesecake and the topping. In retrospect, whole toasted pecans would have been a prettier garnish, but I had to toast chopped pecans for two other dishes, so I just short-cutted this step.

6) Mashed potatoes were the Buttermilk mashed potatoes from Zuni Café. My favorite recipe, hands down, and there’s no replacing the silky texture that results from first ricing/food-milling your potatoes and then whipping them.

7) I tried to use local and organic ingredients where possible. I used sweet potatoes from Genesis Growers, local potatoes from Angelic organics, bought local produce items from Green Grocer, such as pears, shallots and onions. I used Libby pumpkin, which is local! Beyond that, I tried to use organic items. Some of the wine was biodynamic.

8) A note on shopping: I waited until late Wednesday afternoon to do all my shopping (with the exception of the turkey, which I bought on Sunday). Good things come to those who wait because the stores at that time were relatively dead. No problems with lines or crowds even at the Trader Joe’s on Clybourn, which you normally can’t pull your car into on the weekends. The real jewel, however, was Treasure Island, a place I almost never go to, but on Wednesday perfectly played the role of hybrid gourmet food store and chain grocer. Needing to go there for good andouille sausage, which they had, I found that they also had the same or better holiday sales as Dominick’s/Jewel on common items such as cream cheese (and on the Philadelphia brand, too), heavy cream, pumpkin etc. and carried odd items such as plain gelatin that would normally require a special trip to the Jewel. Because TI had all those things, I needn’t set foot in a Dominick’s; yet shopping at TI was calm, civilized, clean, organized, and the staff was helpful and friendly. Overall, it made me wonder why I hadn’t gone there before for holiday shopping.

Anyway, now that my notes from this year are written for posterity (mostly mine), I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

This year, we were lucky enough to share our day-late Thanksgiving with the very gracious Hellodali and her guest, possibly the best Thanksgiving meal I ever made. Of course, typical of me: when it comes to crunch time, I toss aside the recipes and just start cooking, so I don't think a single recipe was followed - but by and large, I think I improved on them.

First, the starter: this might work if tweaked further, but by far it was the least successful dish of the evening. Of course, I didn't follow the recipe strictly and my version had about three times the amount of green tea - but we all agreed it needed to be thicker and colder. I thought the Japanese cucumbers I used added an unpleasant bitterness. If I do this again, (I'm not sure that I will, it's more novelty than anything) I'm going to make a normal tzatziki, easy on the garlic and yogurt, and blend it with green tea ice cubes and a bit of tea. Because I wasn't near H-Mart when I was shopping, I bought canned salmon roe - I'd recommend getting sushi-grade ikura. This really is a summer drink: it's a cold cucumber soup with garnish and a quirky serving method. Kudos to the 'spouse for coming up with a source for straws of the correct bore.


Pomegranate and Watercress salad


Green Bean Casserole - I forgot to photograph, but you've seen one. This came where I was hitting the wall, so instead of following the excellent recipe recommended by leek, I improvised - I sauteed sliced criminis with shallots, made a quick roux, added cream and sherry and dumped it over frozen haricots verts (I swear I had fresh ones, but they disappeared. I'm frightened now of what will happen when I find them) and topped with French's. Turned out fairly well - certainly better than canned soup.

Roast confetti vegetables with EVOO and a spritz of vinegar


Hellodali's Ginger Cranberry sauce

This was not only beautiful, nice spice from 2 kinds of ginger, everybody loved it.

Stuffed Pumpkin - I highly, highly recommend this idea: the pumpkin juices give you a similar texture to in-the-bird stuffing without adding fat (or dangers of foodbourne illness) I only barely followed the recipe: I used slightly less fruit, about 2/3 the amount of apricots, and dried cherries instead of prunes, and some apples left over from pie making. I rehydrated the fruit in cheap white wine (excellent for that purpose, too sweet to drink) and kept half of the apples raw. I used a red onion instead of white, and added walnuts - and turkey stock with a slosh of port for the liquid, and used whatever bread I had lying around which meant cubed Torani french rolls and hamburger buns. I subbed sea salt for tamari, and wound up stuffing two pie pumpkins because that was what they had. Other than that I followed the recipe. This was really excellent: a balance of flavors and textures, and took gravy well. Sorry for the blurry picture.


Ann Fisher's Sweet Potatoes - again, I stole the idea but didn't follow the recipe, just whipped the potatoes with 1/4 cup of reserved orange juice, a good slosh of sherry, cream and butter. These were baked off in the orange cups. Sparky had a special tiny serving in a clementine topped with marshmallows. Again, these were spectacular - a great balance of flavor without competing with the potato itself.


Butterhorn Rolls - extra-special because Hellodali made them. They were a delicious cross between a biscuit and a roll, beautiful, and a perfect accompaniment to dinner...very good for breakfast, too!


Roast Turkey and Giblet Gravy - my one picture turned out blurry so I'm not going to post, but I used the Alton Brown roasting method, though I didn't brine our beast - just stuffed under the skin with an herb butter, and tossed red onion, apples and cut-up clementines in the cavity. The turkey was done much quicker than I was prepared for - but it was the best compromise between breast and thigh meat I've seen yet; though breast was moist, it had just begun to separate into strings, and thighs were ever-so-slightly tougher than I like - I was the only one who noticed (I like my breast meat nearly pink and my thigh meat sliding off the bone; I'd originally planned to pull it early, show it off, cut the breast off, serve it, and put the thighs back in, but I'll know to pull at 155 degrees next time) The drippings and fruit/veg juices gave us a beautiful, complex mahogany gravy whose leftovers will be going over french fries soon...

Groaning plate:


Lovely to share Thanksgiving with friends, doubly lovely to share with friends who bring food that fits in perfectly, and who understand why we're taking pictures of everything...

Sparky made all the delicious desserts for the evening, which I'll post soon in the Cooking with Sparky thread.

The result was a supremely fragrant, concentrated, even boozy-tasting fruit, even though I didn’t add any liquor to the pan. I’ve caramelized pears before for dessert, but I don’t recall tasting such a transformation from raw to cooked. I don’t know if it was that my pear was better -- purchased from Green Grocer from local (I think) Olna’s Orchards, but I think I will try to incorporate caramelized pears more into savory dishes as the boozier flavor profile is a unexpected bonus.

It's Oriana's Orchards, soon to be the subject of a Sky Full of Bacon (not to mention her pears were glimpsed in the last one on the dessert at Blackbird)... and yes, a couple of her varieties (Yali for one) have a definite wine flavor to them which is really great, especially in a salad. I've been using them like crazy lately and also made an aigre-doux of some that had gotten kind of wrinkly in the fridge.

Besides just having weakly flavored ginger that robbed the gratin of a lot of its brightness, I think I was off on the ratio of sweet potato to cream mixture. Mine was pretty dry, maybe this dish just deserves a second try.

Mike G wrote:

The result was a supremely fragrant, concentrated, even boozy-tasting fruit, even though I didn’t add any liquor to the pan. I’ve caramelized pears before for dessert, but I don’t recall tasting such a transformation from raw to cooked. I don’t know if it was that my pear was better -- purchased from Green Grocer from local (I think) Olna’s Orchards, but I think I will try to incorporate caramelized pears more into savory dishes as the boozier flavor profile is a unexpected bonus.

It's Oriana's Orchards, soon to be the subject of a Sky Full of Bacon (not to mention her pears were glimpsed in the last one on the dessert at Blackbird)... and yes, a couple of her varieties (Yali for one) have a definite wine flavor to them which is really great, especially in a salad. I've been using them like crazy lately and also made an aigre-doux of some that had gotten kind of wrinkly in the fridge.

Yes! Oriana's Orchards is the one. I was blanking on the name - thanks! (I've gone ahead and edited my post above.) So I guess it was simply that I had a better pear -- wow -- what a piece of fruit!

MikeG wrote:Besides just having weakly flavored ginger that robbed the gratin of a lot of its brightness, I think I was off on the ratio of sweet potato to cream mixture. Mine was pretty dry, maybe this dish just deserves a second try.

FWIW, in terms of sweet potato quantity, I was just under two pounds ~ 1.80 pounds (three medium sized, well-developed but not "big-boned," sweet potatoes). That probably helped my ratios even out a bit.

Katie wrote: so I mixed up what was left with plain yogurt

Katie, that sounds great! I'll have to try that.

I love the taste of homemade whole-berry cranberry sauce, but can't stand any of the stuff that comes from a can (and don't get me started with the "tradition" of slicing a canned sauce onto a plate. The slices look exactly like the can...I actually find it revolting). Those of you who say you don't like cranberry sauce, have you tried homemade with orange zest in it? You might change your mind.

JimtheBeerGuy told me he had his grandmother's homemade noodles on his mind lately (who would be out of town for Thanksgiving). I told him I had never made them, but that I'd give them a shot. It didn't take any time at all to whip up a batch, and, after they were mixed with some gravy, they turned out to be my favorite item on the plate. (I'm usually a big mashed potatoes fan, but this time, the potatoes were ignored. Sad.)

stevez wrote:Everyone's Thanksgiving sounded real good. I had turkey roll on our Cruise Ship. To say I'm dissapointed would be an understatement. I'm hoping there are some stray fresh turkeys still in the store when I get off this ship and back to Chicago tomorrow night. I want to cook a make-good Thanksgiving diner for myself and the Chow Poodle on Sunday.

Update: After meeting the ship's executive chef and expressing my displeasure at being served turkey roll for Thanksgiving, he told me that they served 5,300 lbs of turkey. All of it was deboned and rolled from whole birds in the ship's kitchen. He said that he decided the only way to serve Thanksgiving dinner for over 3,500 people was to debone it first. I guess it actually was real turkey, it was just seasoned poorly (like most of the food I ate this week).

aschie30 wrote:

CleofusMcd3 wrote:Turkey Thigh Confit

I have been wanting to make this for years. Is this recipe from Food and Wine (or is it Bon Appetit)? If not, what recipe are you using?

I think that, next year, I'll finally go for it. It's not a traditional T-giving turkey prep, but a lot more fun for a small crowd, IMHO! Please post back and let us know how it turned out.

Didn't follow a recipe, just followed a duck confit prep. Go for it next year though, it was pretty awesome.

I used two thigh portions without the leg, salted and let sit overnight with some sage, rinsed, dried, and covered with about a quart of duck fat. Cooked it and let it sit in the fat for 3 days.

I couldn't get started till about 9pm the night I cooked it so I ended up falling asleep, I meant for it to go for about 4 hours at 220 degrees but it went for close to 6, and at some point, someone in the house turned the heat to 250.

It came out dry around the edges and the skin didn't crisp up like I was hoping

but,

it was amazingly tender, the meat could be nudged off the bone (which ends up perfectly clean) and the meatier portions were still melt in your mouth succulent.

For the past several years I’ve been using the brined turkey breast recipe from the Weber site. It works very well and it never comes out salty. It makes the bird so moist that you have to have a good sharp knife or you wouldn’t be able to cut the meat.

http://www.weber.com/Recipes/Recipe.aspx?rid=159

One of the few things that can temporarily ease the pain of this miserable economy is a wonderfully delicious fried turkey. We had a successful meal with all the trimmings.

I set up at my in-laws house. I tried to protect their lawn with layers of dropcloth and an old carpet. It worked well except that after I put the ducks in (I always fry a couple ducks before the turkey), there was a nice flame under the pot where the dropcloth had ignited. Fortunately a hose was nearby and it wasn't a problem. The layers protected the grass nicely, and periodic hosing down of the carpets prevented anymore flames.



Side dishes were yams with pecans, cornbread with chorizo, my mother in laws bread stuffing, my mother's cranberries, and a friends red cabbage.



The next couple pictures speak for themselves





Dessert was my butter toffee apple pie. I took the picture at home before I left. It wasn't served on the foil!

RevrendAndy wrote:We had a successful meal with all the trimmings.

Rev,

Looks Delicious!

Question, how can it be possible the part of the turkey that goes over the fence last made it to picture taking time? With fried turkey, any turkey actually, that is by far the best part, especially crispy crunchy fatty hot straight from fryer or oven.

An impressive display of willpower.

Enjoy,
Gary

Cathy2 wrote:BTW - has anybody seen raw uncooked turkey tails in the grocery store? I see plenty of smoked, but not raw. A friend saw them once, she roasted them with the bird to save the combat over THE tail. Turkey tail is very popular in my house, too.

To answer my own kitchen: the annual discussion about raw turkey tails came up the other day. My friend Helen commented she saw them at Lewis Produce Market in Waukegan. I bought a package of six tails priced at 79 cents a pound. This guarantees I get at least one roasted tail instead of my usual none.

Lewis Produce Market
2727 Grand Ave,
Waukegan, IL 60085
(847) 693-3100