I love eating food. I love cooking food. And I love talking about food. This is my tribute to the biggest meal I've ever made. This is my journal so I can be as self indulgent as I see fit.
Thanksgiving has come and gone. It was awesome. I cooked and ate so much food. Our families came over and hung out for the first time since our wedding. Everyone was on their best behavior and seemed to get along just fine. A bunch of folks even helped clean up which was really nice considering how long Kim and I had been working on the food and house up to that point. And everyone liked the food, or at least that's what they told me. We are raised to be polite at all times so I'll just have to go on faith, with a pinch of pride.
We had 17 folks over. Two more than we'd expected due to Kim's Aunt Sarah and my Uncle Tim showing up. We were more than happy to feed them. Tim was supposed to have Thanksgiving with Melody and her family, but her step-father, Cecil, died quite unexpectedly the night before so there wasn't going to be a meal. Melody told Tim to go ahead and drop by our place since we'd extended them an invitation earlier. He would have been sitting around his house doing nothing in particular so I'm glad he was able to get out. Sarah was a last minute addition to Kim's folks trip up to eat and collect Zoe. In addition to Tim and Sarah we had Boomunit (Kim, Zoe and myself); my sister, Jenna, her husband, Dave, and their kids, Briana, Jackson, and Kylee; Kim's mom, Becky, and step-father, Gary; my dad; my sister, Elisa, and her fiancee, James; and Kim's brother, Burt, and his wife, Terri.
We ended using every available bit of table space we had, but everyone had a seat and a decent amount of room. We have an old drop-leaf table that grandpa had left me which had been passed to him from his grandfather. It was over 175 years old and, I'm told, worth more than everything else in our house, but a table is a table so we unfolded that sucker and stuck it next to our much newer dining room table and on the end of that we put our breakfast nook/kitchen table. We supplemented our 10 dining chairs with a half dozen nice folding chairs that had belonged to grandma and been a staple of celebrations at her house. Zoe had her highchair. We didn't have to bust out any TV trays, which is good because we don't have any.
I wanted to have all of the food on the table(s) maybe because I thought it would make it easier to get to the food or maybe just because I like the aesthetic of it. Due to the heat of the food dished, most things were straight out of the oven, and the length of the centitable we ended up just walking around the table at the beginning of the meal. Next time we host we'll set the food up in in the kitchen and make folks get it buffet style there. Live and learn. Hopefully we'll have a kitchen island by then. We actually used up the bulk of our counter space prepping the meal. The table sure did look pretty though. Kimmy'd set it up real nice with everything lined up and lots of garnishes from the extra parsley we had. The pies were on the bakers rack which we'd moved to the kitchen.
This is where I talk a lot about the food. Just sayin'.
This is where I have to toot my horn, just a little. I think it's deserved because I worked my monkey ass off. The food was great. Kim and I have been tearing through the leftovers for the last 4 days and we're not sick of them yet. Kim's mom brought a baked ham and a German chocolate cake. Jenna brought two pumpkin pies and a chocolate chess pie. They were all very good. I made sure to eat some of everything. Elisa brought drinks and cool whip. Kim made a pomegranate cranberry sauce with fresh cranberries, pomegranate and orange zest. I too was delicious. I had some even though I don't particularly care for cranberry sauce. I made everything else. Kim helped me chop a few things for the stuffing, but she was pretty busy making sure the house was presentable so that's about all she could manage to do aside from the cranberry sauce. The rest was just a flurry of mixing bowls, baking dishes and utensils with some food shoved in there somehow.
The bulk of the recipes I used were from the Good Eats website. Alton Brown is my cooking hero. His instructions are very straightforward and his explanations of how the ingredients and heat interact with each other make it surprisingly simple to fix things if they go a little wonky, as they often tend to do in our kitchen. I've actually used his turkey recipe before to great success for the Thanksgiving after mom passed away. We had to divvy up the cooking that mom did so I offered to do the bird.
As a bit of an aside, I really appreciate all that my mother did in the kitchen more and more as I get older and take on more cooking responsibilities. I'm glad she taught us to cook for ourselves and the family. It has certainly served me and my little family well. Among the many regrets I have since her passing, one is never getting the chance to cook a major family celebration feast for her so she could relax and visit with her loved ones.
Anyways, this year's turkey was also pretty decent. I bought a digital thermometer with a probe on a wire that I could put in the oven and leave there with the readout on the counter. I set it to 161°F with the probe in the breast and I didn't lose any of the cooking heat by opening the oven to check the temperature. The turkey was a 21 lb. beast we'd bought the week prior and been defrosting for almost as long in the fridge. The night before I brined it in a brand new 5 gallon bucket with allspice berries, black peppercorns, candied ginger, kosher salt, brown sugar, and vegetable stock. The salt loosens the muscle fibers in the meat so that they aren't able to constrict as much and push out the water. It makes it so much juicier than even a bag roasted turkey can manage. I also made sure to cover the breast with foil after the initial 30 minute 500°F blast to keep the white meat just a little behind the dark meat, which needed to reach about 180°F to be done, so that it didn't dry out. I stuffed the bird with an apple, onion, cinnamon, fresh sage and fresh rosemary. It only took an additional 2½ hours to roast and then I put it in our stand alone roaster to rest while I made gravy from the drippings. Dave was kind enough to carve the turkey for us as I had neither the time nor the expertise.
The gravy, also an Alton Brown recipe labeled "Best Gravy Ever", was made right in the roasting pan that I'd just pulled the turkey out of. It took up two burners on the stove, but it really was worth it. I got to use my new fat separator that I'd bought at Southern Season courtesy of a gift card from one of my docs. The bird was so big and juicy that there was too much of the drippings for the little separator to hold (over four cups) after I'd deglazed the pan with some red wine and chicken stock. I used about a cup of the fat and threw the rest out, then threw some flour in the pan and and made a big clumpy mess. I was a bit worried at first, but I added the liquid back in and it mixed in nicely. I had to up the flour a bit to make sure it was thick enough, but there were no lumps and the whole thing only took about 20 minutes, a large chunk of which was waiting for the fat to cool and separate. The only thing I forgot to do was add the fresh herbs, but luckily Kim still had the sage and rosemary out from when we'd stuffed the turkey earlier. I had her mince some up and toss them into the cooling gravy. I think it's actually better to do it that was so the flavor of the herbs is stronger.
Another Good Eats recipe that turned out better than expected was the green bean casserole. In order to make it I had to buy an onion slicer, also a Southern Season gift card purchase. The recipes called for homemade onion strings so I simply had to give it a go. Besides, I'd wanted a slicer for quite a while now. I baked the double batch of green bean casserole in two of our cast iron skillets. One was decidedly smaller than the other so I had to just guess at the ratios of ingredients. I was afraid that if I did this one ahead of time the onion strings would wilt, but I had very little choice as I had to have the mashed potatoes and gravy going right after the turkey with the other dishes heating up. I ended up making this Thursday morning and reheating it with everything else. I didn't cover it with foil to keep the condensation to a minimum and it turned out just fine. The green beans were still crispy because I blanched them. The onions were still crunchy.
Mashed potatoes. Not a big deal. They were the last thing I made before serving lunch. As per Kimmy's request, I kept the seasoning (aka garlic) to a minimum. I only used salt, pepper, butter and cream. I used little Yukon potatoes so they turned out yellowish.
The stuffing for the turkey was made the night before. It was one of the few, non-Good Eats recipes. I don't like to cook the stuffing in the bird because you never know what kind of bird flu is lurking in there waiting to get soaked up by the bread. Kim had found a stuffing that called for turkey sausage, an apple, cranberries, celery, an onion, chicken stock, two kinds of bread and a whole host of fresh and dried herbs. I flipped the ratios on the bread to have more wheat than white and omitted the turkey liver. I never was a fan of liver and I didn't think anyone would miss it. I also doubled the chicken stock since it wasn't going to be cooked in the bird and I wanted it to still be moist. Kimmy absolutely loved the stuffing. I also made Stovetop stuffing since Kim said that's what Burt always preferred. It was nice to have extra stuffing too since the homemade batch only would serve about 8-10 folks. The Stovetop only took about 8 minutes. So I made it with the mashed potatoes at the last minute.
I wanted a sweet potato something but I was never a fan of the marshmallow mush that frequented many a Thanksgiving prior so I found a recipe that was sweet, but left the yams intact. It was called "Keyshawn's Mom's Candied Yams". I made this the night before as well and Kimmy and I spent half the night singing, "Keyshawn's mom has got it goin' on." We still do every time we bust them out of the fridge. It was as simple as it was decadent. For a double batch I used 6 lbs. of potatoes, 4 sticks of butter, 2 cups of sugar and 2 cups of brown sugar. Peel, chop, dump everything in a huge pot and cook for about 20 minutes. That was it. The chunks were fork tender and not mushy. "Keyshawn's mom has got it goin' on..."
I wanted to do at least another side dish that was maybe non-traditional Thanksgiving fare, and that I really liked since I was doing the cooking. I picked baked macaroni and cheese (wonder of wonders, another Good Eats recipe). As with the other recipes, it's pretty simple. The only oddity was that it called for a goodly amount of mustard powder, but I guess with all of the milk and cheese you needed something with a kick just to show up on the palate. I made a double batch Wednesday night and topped it with Panko. Yum.
The pies were made on Monday night since I knew they'd eat up a chunk of time on their own and they could keep for a few days. Pies had become my thing for the holidays since Mom passed. After we'd all moved out she would make a whole bunch of pies so that we could each take one home with us at the end of the day. So I decided to take it to the limit. I would bake upwards of 15 pies every Thanksgiving making sure that everyone got a whole pie to take home and everyone else still had the opportunity to try a bit of each kind. I would make about 5 or 6 different kinds of pies each year and, oddly enough, not a single fruit pie. I'm going to have to start branching out. Anyways, this year I asked Jenna to help make some this year. She brought three, as I'd mentioned earlier, two pumpkins and a chocolate chess pie. I couldn't completely give up the pie racket so I made three of my own as well, a pecan pie and two coconut custard pies (my favorite).
The pecan pie recipe was a Momma Dip's recipe. It is pretty similar to the candies yams in that it called for gracious amounts of sugar and butter. The only trick I've learned regarding this one is to make sure the sugar/karo syrup/butter mixture is plenty cooled before adding the eggs. There's nothing quite like scrambled egg pecan pied. This takes forever and usually results in me burning my fingers repeatedly to check the mixture. It's hot and very sticky and I never learn. This is Jame's favorite kind of pie so I always send the rest home with him.
I decided to make the coconut custard pie this year with a fresh coconut as opposed to the flaked sugary stuff I usually buy. I knew the sugar content would change so I passed on my usual recipe for one that actually called for fresh coconut. I had the coconut left over from when I'd baked one of Zoe's birthday cakes. Yes, I tend to over kill things. I made a coconut cake that took me 6 hours to make (yup, another Good Eats concoction) and it was delicious. I'd thought I would need more coconut than that recipe had called for, but by the time I'd cooked, shelled, peeled and grated 2 of the 3 I'd gotten I had more than enough for the cake. My leftover coconut still had a fair amount of coconut water in it which is a sign of it's freshness/edibility. I repeated the coconut splitting, grating ordeal and used the resulting mess to make my first fresh coconut custard pies. They turned out great, not too sweet which can easily happen with the sweetened, flaked kind since I tend to double the amount of coconut any recipe calls for. My only regret is that I didn't bake the pie shell ahead of time. It made quite a mess getting it out of the pie tins. Next time I'll make my own crusts with coconut milk. Also I spilled the filling in the oven so the house smelled like smoke for a few days afterwards.
Everything else was basically heat and eat. We had little corn on the cob, one of Zoe's favorites. I'd like to have done them on the grill with the husks and garlic butter like we usually do, but time was at a premium and we were out of propane, so we just got the frozen kind you boil. We also had 3 different kinds of rolls that I popped it the oven at the last minute.
So with all of that food and double batches of most if it, we filled the entire middle of the 3 tables. I told folks to get there around noon and that we'd be eating at 1:00. I actually had everything ready and hot on the table by 1:10 which was pretty darned good planning and orchestrating for a first go at Thanksgiving. It required a lot of bustling around the kitchen and ordering folks around, including my mother-in-law!, grabbing things out of the oven, juggling kitchen utensils, prepping last minute ingredients, and setting the table. I was polite about it, but Kim said I was acting like a general in the kitchen. Regardless, everyone seemed to be happy to help. Yay for crazy times. Huzzah!
Alright, to prove it all happened in really real life and not just in my head here's a picture of the family and the final spread:
Hopefully I won't have to do this again for another two years.
Once the meal was all said and done I just slumped over in my chair and stared at my last piece of pie for about 30 minutes while Kim's mom, Jenna, Dave and Briana cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes and put the leftovers up. I don't know how they found all of the tupperware to put it away, but they did. Kim's folks then took Zoe up to VA and my folks hung out a bit longer then made their way out. I did another load of dishes, moved the tables back then Kim and I collapsed on the couch like depowered meat puppets. Good times.
'kay bye,
Jeremy
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