Thanksgiving Retrospective

Surprisingly, amid a birthday and Thanksgiving, we only ate out once this extended weekend, and that is the subject of another post. This year, we eubilliently avoided having to entertain any friends or irritating relatives. Super fantastic. So, only cooking for three, it was easy to scale down what is normally a monstrosity of conflicting tastes and variable quality. The thing I detest about huge family gatherings is that everybody feels compelled to bring their favorite dish, to which everyone else hates, but with all the false joyous enthusiasm they can muster, grind a few complimentary choice words...thereby setting up next year's misfired side dish.

"Oh, but you loved my Oilcan Gizzards last year!"

No so fast.What is good (for me) about being an accepted gourmand is the ability to lightly criticize each dish without causing exaggerated offense. For instance, a distant relative will make the slightest offhand comment:

"Well, it could use a tiny bit of cream, it is tirimisu, after all."

And it will elicit a howling defense:

"I substituted soy milk because my husband is lactose intolerant, you insensitive bastard!"

Honestly, dietary modifications for health should be kept at home, or not served to the general family (keep it in the fridge). The general rule is that you want to bring something you believe everyone will enjoy, and these are usually safe staples:

Candied yams
Mashed sweet potatoes
Glazed carrots
Corn, of some sort
Peas, for chrissake
Cheesecake
Green beans and almonds
Pumpkin pie
Etc.

Weird family favorites, or cultural delicacies should be deftly avoided. Re: lutfisk.

I have to confess, for Thanksgiving I -yes I- cheated and bought the meat this year. Last weekend was a hodgepodge of celebrating various milestones, and I thought my family would be better served just paying for the meat, allowing me to concentrate on side dishes...which are really the creative outlet...not a flippin' turkey. With that, here is what we had:

As I admitted, I bought smoked turkey and roast duck from Whole Foods. I reconstituted a demi-glas instead of a gravy. The turkey was pretty dry but had a lot of infused smoke flavor. Because it wasn't salted, the smoke tasted somewhat thin, but intense. The demi helped pull out that flavor, and when it commingled with the smoke it produced a thoughtful, complex flavor of hickory dancing with hyperconcentrated veal stock.

Nobody would touch the duck but me, and thank god for that. I love food that only I enjoy, so there's no competition. The duck had already been roasted to crispy perfection, I just needed to make a glaze, which was maple syrup, ginger and a touch of soy. Nothing truly complex. I reheated all the meat in a Toast-R-Oven, because the heating elements bring back the crispy texture and heat, something a microwave could never accomplish, and a large gas oven would dry out everything before the skin re-crisped.

I saved my efforts for the noodle kugel, standard Jewish fare for Yom Kippur. As I finish the sentence I realize only Jews will get that joke. My great-grandmother's secret recipe, which I got off the internet, follows:

1 bag egg noodles - Streits, Maneschewitz, something that sounds like your dentist's last name
3 eggs
1 cup cottage cheese
1/2 stick cream cheese
1 cup sour cream
sugar to taste (1 1/2 cups, but taste it)
pinch of salt
raisins optional, pineapple optional...I use neither
dash of vanilla extract - people, use real vanilla extract, you're already skipping real vanilla bean
crushed corn flakes
1 teaspoon butter
cinnamon

Boil the noodles until al-dente, they'll cook the rest of the way in the oven. In a separate bowl, combine the cheeses, eggs, sour cream and sugar. Mix in the fruits, if you so desire. Mix the noodles in and pour everything into a corningware casserole dish. Separately, melt the butter and toss the corn flakes in, coating all of them. Spread over top of the casserole, finally sprinkling cinnamon to you taste. Bake at 350 for an hour, or until a knife comes out clean after stabbing. Cool and serve with either sugar and/or sour cream dalloped on top. It can be served as a side dish or dessert.

Nayan made a stuffing, which has now become a side dish in many homes, not even having been stuffed into anything. Although I don't have the exact recipe in front of me, she does something different in that the mixture is buzzed in a food processor to make it almost like dense quiche consistency, rather than chunks falling in a big mound. I like it that way.

I fried up some sweet potatoes in shoestring form, a nice middle ground between mashed sweet potatoes with the sickly sweet glaze of brown sugar and melted marshmallows, and french fries.

Finally, I rounded off the meal with a homemade pumpkin pie. If you want the recipe, read the can, it's right there. Baking and desserts are something I haven't heartily dove into, and who better to know pumpkin pie than Libby's, the producer of pumpkin filler. I did add some extra maple syrup to the mix to give it a rich, New England flavor.

Finally, I made a saffron cream sauce with nutmeg for the pumpkin ravioli. I didn't like it, honestly, the ravioli was purchased frozen and was sweet instead of savory. Had I known, I would have made a sauce that countered the sweetness a bit, instead, it was just too sweet.

Overall, not an overwhelming amount of food, and plenty of leftovers for the long weekend. But wait, we also had to celebrate Nayan's birthday, so that is to be discussed soon.