rthstewart | Food coma approaches

Crossposts: http://rthstewart.livejournal.com/87636.html

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Food coma approaches

In addition to slogging away on Yuletide, I've begun the Thanksgiving prep. This year, I am departing from the seminal, outstanding 1994 Bon Appetit and branching out a little:
Vegetable stock (with not quite so many ingredients) (for the stuffing)
Epicurious turkey stock (for the gravy -- which is just a standard flour/roux)
The Bitten Word Tart Apple Chutney (this one made the dog drool)
Cranberry pear conserve (I had some for dinner)
Pioneer Woman stuffing (I'm making the cornbread tomorrow)
(This is the one I normally use and I really recommend it -- from that classic 1994 Bon Appetit)
Alton Brown Turkey
Pioneer Woman butternut squash puree which I have made before and is delicious.

I normally do the Cook's Illustrated Apple Pie with fool proof pie crust (vodka is the secret ingredient) but have been thinking about doing some sort of apple puff pastry thing.

I need to bake some cookies... Better Homes and Gardens has become one of my go-to places for cookies. ZOMG, so good. Also pecan tassies but with added chocolate which are a BIG favorite with the Mother and sister in law.
What about you?

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Two days after Thanksgiving we're moving my parents into assisted living. I've taken the week off to work on that. As a result, the baking will be limited to three pies: we're not even making our own bread this year. Brined turkey, stuffed with cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes & rutabaga, some kind of green vegetable, and at least three bottles of wine. That's about as simple as it gets in my extended family…

it all sounds lovely, especially the wine, but not the moving into assisted living. My thoughts to you all with that.

Mmmmmmmmm

I am not cooking at all for Thanksgiving, I am visiting family. :/ Which is excellent for seeing family and not doing the cooking, but sad for missing my mom's stuffing which is the best and which I have not learned how to cook yet.

Those cookies all look AMAZING, omg.

I made two of the cookie recipes this evening -- a butter cookie with salted caramel and chocolate. OMG. Best cookie ever. Happy Thanksgiving! So you are going home? or going somewhere else?

Omggggg that sounds AMAZING.

Visiting cousins! And my aunt and uncle. Which is super great, I don't see them very often and these are the cousins that are closest to me in age, making them also the only ones who don't have kids yet and are more or less in the same, ummm, life stage as me. So definitely excited. :)

I made an apple pie yesterday and froze it, so it should make it through security when we fly west. I stopped making crust from scratch years ago. Since Caroline's kitchen supplies are limited, we have to be very basic -- turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, some vegetable, cranberry sauce (in a can). A low-key Thanksgiving with minimal cooking, but at least we'll all be together.

Can you eat any of the things you make?

There was an article about what Thanksgiving food you'd be able to fly with -- I recall that pies were a yes and cranberry sauce was a no. I'm still undecided about the pie thing but I have a ton of Granny Smith apples, so... something.

It all sounds totally glorious!!! What a wonderful spicy-fragrant bounteous abundant time you'll be having!! This was a pleasure to read about -- thank you.

I am inspired by it to go and invent something to do with potatoes and onion and lots of cumin, for dinner (with added peas, because I've got them handy!). Probably to end up on rice, but maybe in pastry. (exits, deep in thought) : )

This is SO not American: "Probably to end up on rice, but maybe in pastry."

Americans for the most part reserve their pastry and crusts for sweet pies. You will see ethnic variations of the cover it/stuff it -- I just saw a pumpkin ravioli recipe that called for goyza won-ton wrappers) (Italian but borrowing from Asian ready-made products). There are also pirogi (Polish), tortillas, the occasional casserole covered with mashed potatoes (an English import of Shepherd's pie) and then there are the tamale pies which are usually a meat-bean-tomato-cumin spiced dish covered with a corn meal crust. But I don't know of Americans who routinely do anything with pastry except pie crusts -- usually sweet, but occasionally savory.

And the meat pie is a staple quick/junk food right across Australia! A non-junk-food meat-and-vegie pie was homemade from scratch in this very house just a few days back. :)

(With the potato-cumin, I was thinking something more samosa-inspired, though.)

The Irish of the family were discussing savory pies this evening. I've got a Better Homes and Garden recipe involving savory crostata I've been meaning to try. To you buy the pastry pre-made or make it from scratch? Do you use butter? vegetable shortening? or lard? I'm very interested in these regional differences.

Well, if it's a plain short-crust pastry, I make it, but puff pastry I buy, frozen (Borg's! Which is barely available interstate, so I can't imagine it's in North America.)
For the short-crust pastry, I use butter -- about four ounces, which I think equals one stick (?), to one cup plain flour and one cup self-raising. Recipe from: the ancient and reliable but unadventurous Presbyterian Women's Missionary Union Cookery Book. :)

Sounds delectable! Thanksgiving with the in-laws for me this year, which usually means I offer to make things and am turned down, and then everyone else contributes and I'm left feeling like a jerk. So this year I didn't offer; I simply told them I was bringing rolls (from the More with Less cookbook, a family favorite) and squash gratin, which has parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs and is DIVINE. I'm kind of stoked, actually!

I'm also bringing maple-nutmeg cookies and a snack mix, but that's for Friday, which is when we will exchange Christmas gifts. :-)

I am so glad you reminded me of the maple-nutmeg cookie recipe! I was thinking of doing cookies while Grandma is visiting and those might be a great option. And good idea to just Bring something. The squash gratin sounds great. I saw an awesome one on BHG that had spinach in it which I thought would be a great vegetarian option, but it also had loads of cream and cheese and I thought it would just be too heavy, even for the vegetarians given that we are having vegetarian stuffing, two vegetables, and mashed potatoes. Oh, and bread.

This all sounds very appetising. I won't be marking Thanksgiving, but you've reminded me that I've several pumpkins sitting in the garage, which could very usefully be turned into pie at some point.

you'll have to share what you do with an English pumpkin pie recipe. I'm VERY curious about the whole thing!

adaese's case, it usually involves American pumpkin pie spice :-)

Not an English recipe, I have several US cookbooks, at varying levels of anglicization. This particular recipe, when I first read it, had me reeling in shock at the amount of sugar in one form or another - sugar from the pumpkins, and condensed milk, and just plain sugar. I normally substitute thick cream for the condensed milk, so it ends up not too sweet for my palate, and will probably leave any Americans reeling in shock at the amount of saturated fat in one form or another. We all have our little vices!

Edited 2012-11-20 17:11 (UTC)

I relayed this story this evening. Everyone was all EWWWWW to the all the cream and "what's wrong with sugar?" The family is very, very fond of hard candy. There was also an extended discussion of the Irish opinion of English food, cooking, and meat pastries.

Oh, cornbread stuffing is the only kind of stuffing in our family, there is no other. I hope you enjoy it.

We're not hosting dinner this year, so I only have to make some squash and some sweet potatoes to bring along. The squash, just roasted like the Pioneer Woman link except I don't claim it makes your eyes roll back in your head. And the sweet potatoes, with brown sugar and pecans on top from my husband's grandma's recipe except I usually cut down on the brown sugar a bit because they are already sweet, good grief.

I'm also making gumbo z'herbes from an Emeril recipe for the next day, because we're spending the whole weekend with the fam.

I loved her visuals of the two squash leaned up against one another. One part of the family was from the Midwest and had one of those sweet potato recipes -- canned orange vegetable, orange juice, brown sugar, marshmallows and rum extract. My poor mother, bless her, didn't realize there was a difference between rum out of the liquor cabinet and rum extract and exploded three casseroles adding a 1/4 cup of rum extract. The fumes were unbelievable and she and my sister were scraping goo out of the oven right until the guests arrived. I wasn't home at the time.

*DYING* That is a FANTASTIC sweet potato story. I've never cooked with a liquor extract, but I can see myself doing something like that.

I don't actually like the canned sweet potatoes much, or adding marshmallows. In fact when we first got married I told my husband sweet potatoes were gross, because I'd really only seen the canned kind. I was surprised to discover they're really not gross, and they're now one of my favorite vegetables. Sweet potato fries, mmmm.

My mother overcame horrendous obstacles to accomplish many wonderful things. Cooking, however, was never one of them.

One of my old teachers swears by the fool proof pie crust, but I have not yet convinced my mother to supply me with vodka. *g*

Oh, that butternut squash puree recipe just reminded me of a butternut squash curry soup I had this summer which was DIVINE. Now I have to go home and find butternut squashes to cook. And curry. Must have curry.

Thanks for the reminder!

LOVE squash soup. Whole Foods makes a great one and I've got some homemade stuff in my freezer. Yum. There's a lot of science to the vodka in the pie crust as it provides the moisture, evaporates quickly, and is tasteless. I've found it very useful.

Oh, yes, the vodka is very scientific. I'm not surprised at all to find that it comes from Cook's Illustrated!

And speaking of savory pastries—one year my grandfather made spanikopita for Thanksgiving dinner. But then, we've always been slightly non-traditional about our meals.

Look at this. I have broken Internet for a few days, and in the meantime a recipefest breaks out. Yum. I'm so going off to try some of your links. Oh, and in answer to your earlier question, life is mostly too short to make pastry from scratch. We have reasonable shop bought alternatives, so I mostly go with that. Enjoy your epic foodfest :-)

Edited 2012-11-21 19:22 (UTC)

She's alive! She's alive!!!

Wild rice stuffing has become a recent personal favorite, though my recipe is in constant flux. Goes well with turkey in its many incarnations, though.

But today my mind is occupied with a different bird: pigeons. Have you read the news about the WWII carrier pigeon discovered in someone's chimney? Apparently sent from a British unit in France around D-day, its message is seemingly indecipherable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/europe/code-found-on-pigeon-baffles-british-cryptographers.html

And I thought, well of course no one can figure it out! It was obviously written in Rat & Crow. Quite selfishly, I wondered if you might save the British cryptoghraphers some trouble and tell us what the message really said? And perhaps what Susan thinks of it coming to light now?

At any rate, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones! God bless,
~Syrena

Ahem. so, Syrena, you may not come back here, but if you do, I'll have you know the following is occurring:

Mum insisted she would always know if her brothers or sister died.

The caller ID on the landline said Peter Pevensie. Oh bother. Uncle Peter probably wasn’t wearing his hearing aid. Julia decided to let the machine get it just as her mobile pinged with a text from Lucy, and another on top of it from her cousin, Helen. Both had links to news articles. About homing pigeons?

“Unidentified wireless caller,” Mum said reading her mobile. Leaning on her cane she pressed the speaker button. “Hello, Edmund.”

“Su, it’s me!” Uncle Peter was shouting into the phone, which in turn was shouting into the answering machine. “Have you seen the news about the dead carrier pigeon in the chimney? The GCHQ are flummoxed. I’m emailing you a link, not from the Sun, though.”

Uncle Peter hated the Sun. They all did.

TSG AU, everyone lives, and still living, November 2012.

LOVE!!!!

Oh, thank you Ruth! Oh, how Susan and Edmund would chortle (and likely despair) over that. Too bad they had to use such unreliable birds; why HQ never signed off on using intelligent birds like crows must still be a sore point for Susan. Some people have no imagination.

And Edmund would bring up the inevitable comparisons to Peter and Lucy's hapless attempts at rat and crow missives... And speaking of inevitable comparisons, my traitorous mind is comparing Peter and Trumpkin. Because of course Peter hasn't lost his Magnificent voice with age.

And of course Lucy has fully embraced the latest technology and is dextrously sending texts. Love it!
~Syrena

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Food coma approaches

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