What's better than a holiday devoted entirely to food?? Thinking.... thinking......... nope, nothing I can think of right now. Ok, maybe Christmas. But Thanksgiving is a truly American holiday. What is Canadian Thanksgiving anyway? (Sorry Canadians but can anyone actually tell me what Canadian Thanksgiving is? I think we had it first).
Thanksgiving was spent with the parents and grandparents down in PA and dad and I volunteered to do the cooking. My dad watches a cooking show called Cook's Country and they had a very interesting turkey and mashed potatoes recipe. The turkey is cooked with salt pork on top of it and then the salt pork is taken off halfway through cooking to let it brown. As I've mentioned, I'm not a big fan of pork products, but this recipe is meant to moisten the turkey. It came out delicious! Everyone agreed that the turkey was incredibly juicy and tender,and my mom even consented to eating some of the white meat instead of the usually more tender dark. I'd highly recommend this method, even though cutting through the salt pork was very difficult. Of course the pork is really disgusting after you cook it. I can't understand why anyone would voluntarily eat that; basically its just fat. Shudder.
The mashed potato recipe is actually quite brilliant and makes so much more sense than the normal way of making mashed potatoes. This method is actually supposed to be used for garlic mashed potatoes but I vetoed the garlic because it didn't seem Thanksgiving appropriate. The big secret is that instead of boiling the potatoes in water, you actually boil them in the cream and then mash them. It worked out really nicely and they got a big thumbs up.
The only other really time consuming cooking activity was making the gravy, for which we used all those nasty inside turkey bits that make gravy so tasty. You cook those up with stock and drippings from the turkey and some flour and voila! Gravy! And good gravy at that!
We made the stuffing the night ahead and gave it the final cook up on the day of. I don't love stuffing, but this one was really tasty and had everything imaginable in it from apples to cranberries to nuts to wild rice. I think in the end the rice was unnecessary, but I hardly ever find rice necessary so I might not be a good judge.
The rest of the menu was pretty simple: Roasted Brussels Sprouts ( not high on my list), steamed green beans, artichokes (cooked by my grandma), baked canned yams ( also courtesy of grandma, rolls and two kinds of cranberry sauce. All in all it was very successful and yielded leftovers of course.
On a related topic, my world has just been rocked because apparently the correct term in "Brussels Sprouts", with an 'S' not Brussel Sprouts. I had no idea.
Here's what the cooking prep and final products looked like.
Some of the ingredients...
The turkey is all wrapped up in cheese cloth
Getting a bath
Knife sharpening
Yams!
Various prep and snacks
Festive table decorations
artichoke remains
Table is all ready!
Turkey on the table
Some snacks from earlier
Even though Tom doesn't look golden, he's still delicious!
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