Six days later.

You'd think I would have rushed to the computer after my final bite of mashed potato last Thursday to regale you all with tales of my intrepid Cheftiness. I mean, I thought I would have. Such excitement no woman or beast could contain! My first soup-to-nuts Thanksgiving! But no. I had zero inclination to recap. And I didn't even really eat that much. I owe both of these conditions to sensory overload. After all that shopping, cooking, cleaning, stirring, and hand-wringing, I ran out of steam.

But all things considered, it was a delicious meal and as sensible it may be to scale it back next time, I'm not sure I'd be able to resist a yearly opportunity for such a festive meal. I guess the moral of the story is: next time, if you want to cook enough food to feed an army, invite more people.

Here's a little photoblog of my Thanksgiving.

First course, butternut squash soup with a swirl of cider cream and toasted pumpkin seeds. I liked having a little taste before diving into the main event. Soup will become a staple for Thanksgivings to come. Shout out to my brilliant older sister for the suggestion!



Here's a shot of the apple pie and the two sauces I made to serve with the turkey. I think I achieved perfection with this pie crust. It had a nice subtley buttery flavor and was both tender and flaky. Unfortunately Megnut beat me to the punch in claiming crust nirvana. Now I have to try the recipe she recommends and compare. Can Crisco really make that big a difference?


I made a cranberry-persimmon sauce and a kind of butternut squash relish. The cranberry sauce was good, a little on the tart side, but the flavor improved tenfold by the day after Thanksgiving. Giving the persimmon a little time to bloom with the cranberries gave the sauce a welcome note of sweetness and spice. I wasn't sure how the squash relish would be. The recipe called for golden raisins, but I used currants, and it was made with a reduction of sugar, white wine, and dry mustard. It was really wonderful, sweet but not overpoweringly so and cut with that mustardy bite. This would be just as delicious with any roasted meat and would probably also be a nice match with cheese or as a topping for a salad.

And here's the whole meal. Per my last post, brining was not fun, but I do think I tasted the difference. The white meat wasn't dry at all, even though I was fairly certain the breast had been overcooked. I made a pomegranate gravy that was OK, but it was a lot of work (it required pomegranate caramel. Caramel? It would have been wise for me to prepare this ahead of time.) and I think a little too sweet for my taste. Everything else was pretty straight up--yukon gold mashed potatoes, green beans with cippolini onions, and sage-rosemary stuffing with figs & walnuts.



Needless to say, the only thing that's been working overtime in the kitchen this week has been the microwave. But I'm gearing up for some cookie and perhaps bread-baking this weekend, so stay tuned.

Never again

Barring the outside chance that the turkey I eat tomorrow is the most flavorful and succulent I've ever had, let it be known throughout the land that I will never brine a turkey again. Man. It's not worse than apple butter, but it's up there. And blast you, brining bag! Early evidence indicates you are not, in fact, leakproof.

Ingenuity

You know how when you make muffins or a cake, the recipe tells you test it for doneness with a toothpick or cake tester? Tell me the truth: does anyone ever have toothpicks lying around? I never do (and what is a cake tester, anyway? I've never seen one.) Typically I'll just use a butter knife and deal with the divot in the surface of the cake. I'm not that fussy. Cake is cake. But! I caught a few minutes of Nigella Lawson a few weekends ago, she was making this ridiculous four-chocolate loaf cake and she said, 'Just poke it with a piece of uncooked spaghetti.' Genius! Finally, a use for the whole-wheat spaghetti taking up space in my pantry.

A Very Chefty Thanksgiving.

Here's what I'm thinking for a menu. Let's hope I can pull it off! I expect I'll be eating leftovers until Christmas. Recipes courtesy of a few years' worth of magazines, my aunt Marguerite, and--maybe--you.

Butternut squash soup

Brined & roasted turkey, with giblet gravy
Mashed potatoes
Creamed leeks
Marguerite's stuffing
Cranberry-persimmon sauce

Apple pie, with pumpkin spice ice cream*

*I haven't found a recipe for this ice cream yet. Anyone ever made pumpkin ice cream? I've made a squash custard base before, but it didn't make a terrific ice cream, so if you've got the wisdom of experience on your side I'd welcome some tips.

I'd also like to include some kind of light palate cleanser in here, either for the start of the meal or to have in between dinner and dessert. Not sure what it would be, though. Sorbet? Turkey consomme? Ha. Consomme. No way.

Apple butter: Don't try this at home.

This fall, it seems like everywhere I go (virtually, that is) people are raving about apple butter and cooking up there own batches at home. I wondered what the all fuss was about. I mean, it's basically applesauce, right? I figured I'd give it a try and see what I was missing.

After roughly twelve hours, a few gallons of boiling water, and an impossibly sticky saucepan, I came to the conclusion that all the effort involved in making apple butter was not entirely worth the end result.

I followed a pretty standard recipe--peeled apples boiled in cider then pureed, seasoned with a mix of white and brown sugar and my favorite apple spice mix (cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, orange zest, star anise), and then cooked on the stovetop (some recipes recommended putting it in the oven) for what seemed like an eternity until it became a dark, rich caramel color. I added my own twist by including a good-sized knob of peeled ginger with the apples. What I ended up with was a tangy, sweet, melt-in-your-mouth...applesauce. Folks, you heard it hear first: the "butter" of "apple butter" is a complete misnomer.

All that aside, though, it was pretty damn tasty. What ruined it for me was the canning. Oh, the canning. This is really a labor of love. In my first go-round, I scrubbed the cans and lids, dried them, then heated the cans in the oven. When the butter was ready, I filled the hot jars, screwed the lids on tight, then boiled them for ten minutes. After boiling, I took them out and waited. Waited and waited and waited for that mythic ping that is supposed to sound when the air releases from the can and indicates that your can is sealed and ready for safe storage.

The ping never came.

Another sign that the can has sealed properly is a concave lid. If the lid is bent, that means the seal has formed and your canning was a success. I couldn't tell if the lid was down. It looked the same as it did screwed onto an empty jar. What to do?

That's right, princess. Can them again.

So I opened up the jars, emptied my apple butter into a saucepan to reheat, and got to work on sterilizing a new set of jars. This time, I scrubbed them, boiled them empty, and then kept the jars hot in the oven. Again, I filled them (just to within 1/4" of the top of the jar, mind you), and boiled the jars for ten minutes. A wiser cook than me, schooled in the ways of apple-buttery, recommended I turn the jars on their heads upon removing them from the water. That I did, and guess what happened? My lids were concave and my jars were sealed. Still no ping! But I did some more research and learned that sometimes the ping happens while the jars are boiling, so nothing to fear there.

Exhausting, right? It's too bad, really, because before this butter-making I was entertaining some pretty ambitious ideas for making blueberry preserves (you remember the blueberries) and giving them away as Christmas presents.

I think this holiday season I may just get more creative with cookies.

New favorite vegetable.

Romanesco broccoli.



First of all, I love how its shaped with all these pointy little turrets. Such a cheeky little plant! Its flavor is a lot more subtle than regular broccoli, and it doesn't smell horrible when you cook it. It also seems to be a lot less fibrous. That's three wins in my book.

I cut off the florets and chopped up the stalks of a small head and tossed them in the steamer. After about 6 or 7 minutes, they had a nice crunch and the color had blossomed to a lovely lime green. I tossed the broccoli with a small pat of butter, some lemon zest and juice, and salt. After a few bites I wondered how they would taste with a sprinkle of toasted pumpkin seeds. Delicious!

Got to get back to dinner now, I'm working on a big pot of stew with chicken sausage, kale, buttercup squash and white beans. Will report back on that later.

The Chefty who cried wolf.

The second half of October was stressful, lots of changes at work and not a small amount of uncertainty about my future there. Things are beginning to normalize, though, and I'm a lot busier than I have been since I started nearly a year ago. I like the surge of industry and the sense of accomplishment that comes with that. But it's still not cooking. I continue to keep my eyes on that prize, and I'll probably be using this blog over the next few months to sort out my thoughts on the right path ahead. I hope you'll bear with me! Don't worry, I plan to do a lot of cooking in the meantime, particularly with the holidays on the horizon. This will be my first time making Thanksgiving dinner, start to finish, and I will be pulling out all the stops! Granted, I'm cooking for a very small group, but no matter--that just means I'll have lots of opportunities for fun leftover creations.