Thanksgiving 2014
After a multi-year break, we did Thanksgiving again this year.
Here's what we had:
- Roasted Turkey: salted and buttered, started breast down at 250C for 30 minutes, flipped and finished at 180C; roasted on a rack over carrots, potato, celery root, onion and a bit of water
- Gravy from heavily reduced roasting pan drippings + chicken stock. Thickened with potato starch
- Mashed potatoes made in advance and then held at 65C in a ziploc bag in a water bath
- Mashed sweet potatoes: potatoes started for 3 hours at 65C in the sous vide, then roasted for an hour, then peeled and cut into chunks. Finished in a pot with butter and salt. This prep worked well, and the sous vide step definitely makes a difference (we tested that) but the potatoes should have been roasted longer so that they cooked further at that stage; it took way to long to finish the potatoes in the pot.
- Stuffing: ruchbrot, leek, mushroom, veggie stock, thyme, sage.
- Roasted green beans
- Apple-celery-quinoa salad (from "Plenty More")
- Green salad
- Roasted apple sauce: I've been making this lately starting with boskops and then adding chunks of pinova later. The boskops make a nice tart sauce while the pinovas remain somewhat firm and add a nice aromatic sweetness
- Snacks:
- Mixed olives with chili-garlic oil
- Mixed olives with preserved lemons
- Roasted almonds with salt and cumin
- Honey-roasted pecans with salt and chipotle (these are one of my new favorites)
- Dates with bacon
- Desserts (our friends brought these):
- Chocolate-pecan pie
- Apple hand pies
- Pumpkin pie
- Chocolate mousse
Needless to say, no one went hungry. ;-)
