We're supposed to eat turkey or something

We celebrated this year's Thanksgiving with our wonderful friends the M family. Yesterday's dinner menu included:

• Roast Turkey (Traditions must be observed)
• Catherine M's Chestnut Stuffing 
• Green beens with lemon
• My dad's Pommes Anna
• My brother's Ginger Cranberry Sauce
• Cornbread
• Hazelnut and Fuyu Persimmon Salad
• Pumpkin Pie
• Sara M's Maple Pots de Crème

I read Bon Appetit Magazine, and in their Thanksgiving issue this year they found issue with using stuffing as stuffing because it prevents the bird from cooking or some other nonsense. They even decided to call their stuffing recipes "dressing" to discourage putting them inside turkeys. This name change doesn't even make any sense because, at least in my experience, dressing is a flavorful sauce. I do not believe that bread mixed with various vegetables/meats fall in that category.
In any case, if your stuffing is hot when you put it in the turkey, it isn't going to prevent the turkey from cooking, and the turkey juices will make the stuffing that much better.

Enough ranting. For the potatoes, my dad found a recipe in that same Bon Appetit magazine for "Mini Herbed Pommes Anna" , which are basically cakes of potato slices layered with butter and herbs. This recipe turned out delicious, and it can be easily made into advance, so I recommend it to anyone who needs a showstopper side.

My brother is the family cranberry expert, and he found a recipe for ginger-lemon cranberry sauce. The sauce came out strong and savory, not as sweet as more classic recipes. The ginger complemented the the rich gravy quite well. 

I made the Hazelnut/Persimmon salad and the pumpkin pie. For the salad, I first toasted some hazelnuts in the oven at 400F for 10-15 minutes (stirring them often). According to Catherine M's instructions, we peeled the hazelnuts by rubbing them in a dish towel.

We then sliced up some fuyu persimmons (the ones with rounded bottoms: they're not astringent) into a cider vinegar-olive oil-mustard-black pepper vinaigrette and added some mixed greens and arugula. The sweetness of the persimmon was nicely complemented by the tartness of the vinegar and the bitterness of the arugula.

For the pumpkin pie, I used Cook's Illustrated recipe, which can be found here http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/11/cooks-illustrated-pumpkin-pie-recipe.html . I really like this recipe because it combines canned pumpkin with fresh sweet potato to give a complex flavor. Compared to the pumpkin pie from the dining hall I had eaten last week, this pie tasted full and complete.

Thanksgiving Dinner

I am back at school from a very nice Thanksgiving break. Food at home is so much better than food in college. For thanksgiving dinner my family had a turkey (prepared by my dad)

 

but it looks tastier cooked.

 

We rubbed the turkey with herb butter and stuffed it with chestnut stuffing that my mom and I made.

We based the stuffing off of this recipe from Epicurious, but we also sautéed the turkey's liver and heart and added it to the stuffing along with some chicken broth. And, like every year, we decided to cook the turkey with stuffing in it because in my family's opinion, it makes the stuffing taste so much better.

To compliment this, I made Brussels sprouts with bacon and my brother made cranberry sauce.

 

To prepare, the Brussels spourts, I first steamed the halved sprouts in a pressure cooker for 7 minutes and fried some cubes of thick bacon. Then I added the sprouts to the bacon and let them caramelize for a bit.

My brother's cranberry sauce was actually Cook's Illustrated's Cranberry Chutney with Appple and Crystallized Ginger. It had all of those ingredients as well as cider vinegar and brown sugar.

Since we don't have much family in the US, we celebrate thanksgiving with another French family. Our guests brought more delicious foods including corn bread, green beans sautéed in garlic, delicious apple tart.

And so we had a belly-happifying Thanksgiving meal!

New Plan! And Cailles en Sarcophages!

So, it has been a very long time since I have last blogged, and as I don't have enough time these days to write full recipes (second semester seniorness is a lie), I have decided to take a picture of some interesting food I see/eat and write about it every day or every other day! Sounds fun? Yes! Unfortunately my camera is having some issues at the moment, but I don't think it is anything some duct tape and new batteries can't fix! (hopefully) Until I get around to fixing it, I will be hitchhiking off of other people's cameras.

First Interesting Food: Cailles en Sarcophages from Le Festin de Babette


My dad had been talking for a long time about making this dish: quails stuffed with truffles and foie gras and then wrapped in puff pastry. And on Wednesday he finally did make it!

It should be noted that instead of truffles, we used regular mushrooms and truffle oil. Also, the puff pastry crust was baked empty and sliced open, and the baked and stuffed quails were set inside a few minutes before serving.

During dinner we discussed what tweaks could make this better, and concluded on an extra pan seared slice of foie gras on the side.

This was all in all a delicious dish, so thank you Dad and Brother!

photo cred: my dad

The Thanksgiving Chronicles: Part 1 Turkey Tail stock and Pumpkin pie filling

It's Thanksgiving (tomorrow)! The wonderful American celebration of eating one's weight in food!
Anyways, in my family, the cooking started today to maximize stove-top space efficiency.

Turkey Stock:
This is my first time making stock! Hopefully it will turn out well.
Originally, we were going to use turkey necks, but the store only had tails. Raw turkey tails look quite unappetizing, but flavor is flavor. I put the tails on a baking sheet with 4 peeled carrots, 3 not-peeled onions, and 3 stalks of celery.

I roasted all of it for 45 minutes at 450F.

And then flipped over the tails and vegetables to roast them 20 more minutes.

I put everything in a large stockpot half filled with water, making sure to scrape as much flavor as possible off of the baking sheet. I added another celery branch for my mom (she loves celery) as well as some fresh thyme and parsley and about a tablespoon of ground pepper. I only added a little salt because a lot water will evaporate, and so it is safer to add salt once the desired concentration of flavor is achieved.

At 6pm, the stock has been simmering for 5.5 hours. As I am at high altitude, the stock should cook longer because water boils at a lower temperature.


I also made the pumpkin pie filling and crust. The filling is according to Cook's Illustrated recipe, and the crust is my usual pâte brisée.

Pumpkin pie filling:
Cream, milk, eggs, and vanilla

Interestingly, this recipe uses a combination of canned pumpkin and canned "yams" (see my post on sweet potatoes vs. yams). It also cooks both vegetables on the stove with sugar and maple syrup to remove water and caramelize the naturally and unnaturally present sugars.

Then the pumpkin and cream mixtures are combined to form a delicious custard.

I will cook the pie crust tomorrow to save the bottom from sogginess.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve to all of you!

Confit de Canard

More pics here

Never heard of it? It's French! It was invented as a way to preserve duck meat. It is similar to canned peaches if you replace the peaches with duck thighs and the syrup with duck fat. Are disgusted already? Well, don't be, it's delicious! My parents bring cans back from France sometimes, and my mother cooks it wonderfully.
The duck is lifted out of the fat and either roasted in the oven or in a pan on the stove. My mother usually uses the oven, but tonight she used the stove. We found the problem with the stove is that the duck sticks to the bottom of the skillet. Traditionally, the duck is accompanied with potatoes pan fried in part of the duck fat! This adds a deep flavor to otherwise bland potatoes. To cook the potatoes, first boil them for 10 minutes, slice them up, and then pan fry them.
Complemented by a simple salad, this dish is perfect for cold weather or just an evening of indulgence. Read more on Wikipedia! Be a wikinerd!