Thanksgiving food notes

[topaz]

8/100: Butternut squash soup. Came out better than I expected, maybe due to sitting in the fridge overnight.  It's lovely but very delicate, which made it an odd companion at a table full of aggressively macho side dishes.  It will hold up well at the leftovers brunch tomorrow.  Some time I will make it again with fengshui's advice in mind.

9/100: Roast turkey. The book recommends brining for 4 hours and letting it air-dry for 8 hours.  Due to timing restrictions (didn't get started till midnight Wednesday) I brined it for about 8 hours and let it dry for 4.  Still it came out well.  I overcooked it a bit but it was not completely dry when it arrived at the table.  The roasted vegetables in the pan were, sadly, totally carbonized.  Notes for next time: if the bird is under 14 pounds, don't be afraid to check it early and often.

10/100: Giblet pan gravy.  Very tasty. keyne pointed out that this recipe is awfully cumbersome and not a huge improvement over making it from pan drippings.  She's right.  On the other hand, due to the aforementioned overcooked bird, we didn't actually have any useful pan drippings, so it's just as well I did this.

Other dishes at our table, not blessed by America's Test Kitchen:

Key lime pie, from the recipe on the key lime juice bottle: perfect.  And dead easy, too.  You can't get any more rock-stupid than this: egg yolks, lime juice, condensed milk, beat well, slosh into pie crust and throw in oven at 350.  Nice.

Pumpkin pie: every year we lose our recipe for lactose-free pumpkin pie and go hunting for another one.  This time I gave up and just substituted 10 oz Lactaid milk with 2 tsp. cornstarch for 12 oz condensed milk.  Texture was good but it wasn't quite as sweet or rich as I'd like.

Creamed spinach: from a randomly chosen recipe found on the net.  Not bad.  I used 2% milk and Greek yogurt in place of whole milk and sour cream.  Whole milk would have rounded it out better.  Maybe even a little half-and-half.

Mashed potatoes: made from potatoes.  Smart.

Dressing: from a bag, but what you gonna do?

Honey-wheat banana rolls: from an old DAK bread machine recipe book.  At the last minute I dumped them into mini-loaf pans instead of forming them into rolls.  I liked the result -- very Outbacky.

We used at least a pound and a half of butter.

thomasyan and brother brought a very nice bottle of Australian tokay (!) which we had with dessert.  Also some homemade pork dumplings (!!) which we completely forgot about in our madness.  We had homemade pork dumplings in our house and didn't even serve them.  I can't believe it.  They were both lovely dinner guests and extraordinarily tolerant of the circus acts which are our children.

After coffee and tea and pie and wine, we gave in to the kids' pleas and settled in to watch some Pink Panther from Netflix.  As the food coma started to descend, the brothers Yan took their leave of us for the drive back in to the city and we got the boys to bed.  Not bad.

Comments

[coastergalwdw.livejournal.com]

well, since to my palate the stuffing is the centerpiece of the meal, I opted for cornbread stuffing with mushrooms, carrots and cranberry. mmm.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Yes! And I should really point out here that keyne's suggestion to add sauteed mushrooms and the roasted pan vegetables to the stuffing was right on the money. Very nice.

[mizarchivist]

sweetmmeblue requested dairy-free pumpkin pie. I tried a block of soft tofu and cut out the eggs and condensed milk. She thought it was ok, I thought it had a weird after-taste. Maybe with more spices? At least the kids liked it. :)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I've done the tofu pumpkin pie thing before but found it hard to get a texture that pleased us. Although I think we may have had only firm tofu on hand last time? Anyway, fortunately for us it's not actually necessary to make it dairy-free, just lactose-free. :-)

One of the recipes Ellen found recommended using coconut milk! Which sounds really intriguing and I'd like to try it sometime.

[mizarchivist]

All she really wanted was no lactose, too- I was hoping that the tofu would make it the right density- it was close!

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Coconut milk is delicious with pumpkin. Add cardamom and fresh ginger to the spice mix if you can.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I find that tofu pies have a weird aftertaste too. :/ I've sworn not to do that again.

This coconut milk (http://www.piechef.com/recipes/pumpkin_lactose_free.html) version definitely looks worth trying soon, though.

[mizarchivist]

The only way to make good tofu pie is with chocolate. And booze. :) Then it's fantastic. I'll continue my dairy-free pumpkin experiments with your suggestions in mind- thanks!

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I should point out, for the record, that you substituted Lactaid for evaporated milk. The sweetened condensed milk goes in the other pie :-)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Evaporated, condensed. It's all a scam, I'm telling you.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

This kind of Tokay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqueur_Tokay), I take it?

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Yep, that sounds right!

[harimad.livejournal.com]

Dressing: from a bag, but what you gonna do?

Buy a loaf or two of Pepperidge Farm sandwich bread, 1.5 slices per person. You also need a lb or so of bacon, a large onion chopped, 1-2 stalks celery chopped, 1 to 1.5 lbs sliced mushrooms, and spices.

The Really Short Version:
- Cut bread into dice-sized pieces.
- Saute bacon, crumble.
- Saute everything else in bacon (first onion, then celery, then mushrooms till mushrooms are well done), season to taste.
- Toss bread, everything else, and some water or stock till it's a bit moist.
- Stuff bird[1], put rest in pan. Roast.

The bird stuffing comes out soggy but really tasty. The pan stuffing comes out crisp-ish but not as savory. IOW, something for everyone.


[1] For really easy stuffing removal, line the bird's cavity with cheesecloth, leaving the edges peeking out. This forms a bag that you fill with stuffing, and pull out of the bird when it's done.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

We sauteed mushrooms and added them to the bag o' dried Pepperidge Farm stuffing (cornbread -- we only do whole grains, not white bread), then tossed in the meager drippings and roasted vegetables from the pan and slid it into the oven for half an hour while the turkey was resting. The above method sounds like it would've taken a lot of extra time and stove/oven space we didn't have. :/

Maybe next year, with modifications.