thanksgiving 101

wow. apparently i wrote this blog last year at thanksgiving and i never posted it. i realized it when one of the guests at said thanksgiving asked me for the recipe for green bean casserole from scratch and i was pretty sure i wrote about it and i did except that i never posted it. which makes me wonder how many other gems are out there laying emily dickinson like….

so this year [i was talking about 2009] found me hosting thanksgiving at my home. i have done thanksgiving previously – once on the spur of the moment when some friends and i realized That Day that we had no plans – and a more planned thanksgiving a while back. this year i decided that i would make everything from scratch.* and that it would be good. i remember this one year i went to thanksgiving at a godforsaken frostbitten joyless household where everything was served pureed or mashed (the turkey was surprisingly spared). no it wasn’t a home for the elderly, although considering the atmosphere, it may as well have been. worse than that, they brought the turkeys out of the oven, displayed their dark golden goodness, and then promptly threw all the skin away because it was “bad for you”. bad for you? eff you. thanksgiving is bad for us gimme some skin.

anyway so in order to make dinner for 6 (which turned into 8) from scratch, one must plan ahead. first, you need to get your shit together with respect to what you’re going to serve. i thought out of the box and hit on “turkey” for thanksgiving. when i ordered my turkey from bristol farms i had no idea that i had ordered the rolls royce of turkeys: a mary’s free range heritage turkey. i realized that fact when i was at the checkout and exclaimed, wtf, did this turkey grow up in bel air and go to harvard? the answer was yes. i was going to eat the turkey which was just as well educated as supreme court justice clarence thomas.

aside from ordering a turkey in july, i scoured my cookbooks and the interwebs for recipes i thought would be magically delicious. this is the final menu:

turkey
cornbread and sausage* stuffing
sweet potato fluff [special request from k doll]
cranberry sauce
cranberry jelly
gravy
green bean casserole
apple pie
pecan pie

the only things i had an actual recipe for were the pies, and the cranberry jelly. and since the jelly basically didn’t 100% gel, i’m not going to direct you to that recipe. it did taste good, but it was a fail in terms of appearance. the cranberry sauce was something of a fiasco as well. i started to make it (russ parson’s mom’s recipe, from the LA times) and realized i didn’t have any of the requisite spices (allspice, cloves, cinnamon) because i apparently threw them all out in a fit of getting rid of all outdated spices. so instead of those, i used nutmeg, cardamon, and ground cinnamon. at first i thought it was gross, but the second day the flavors mellowed and it tasted good, albeit not like a typical cranberry sauce. so there really is no recipe for it, other than i boiled a bag of cranberries with some random spices.

the sweet potato fluff is a homey southern dish, with mashed sweet potatoes topped with brown sugar and pecans. basically you mash sweet potatoes, mix in a couple beaten eggs, some flour, and top with the mix. look up some recipes for more detail.

i came up with my own stuffing recipe after looking at a whole bunch. i sauteed about 2 onions and a head of celery, both diced fine. when those were soft, i added the pork sausage and kept breaking it up to keep the chunks small. when the sausage lost color, i put on a couple tablespoons of poultry seasoning (which is ground sage, thyme, rosemary, and pepper). then i added my cornbread [home made] and some regular bread cubes as well. after mixing that up thoroughly, i added about 4 cups of chicken stock [home made], or basically enough to moisten everything. test for salt and pepper. this needs to be baked about 30-45 minutes at 350 to get a crispy top. at first i took it out too soon, but second helpings were perfect.

my coup de grace, however, was the home made green bean casserole. this is the stuff that, if made the regular way, is one can campbell’s cream of sodium i mean mushroom, two cans limp green beans, and a half a can of revolting but irresistible french fried onions. it is cooked to a sickening glop of cream, fat and salt, with only a slight hint of vegetable.

believe it or not, i love green bean casserole. like kraft mac n cheese, it has a certain je ne sais quoi which gives it a mouthfeel and taste that says, welcome home. that, and … mom can’t cook.

anyway obviously i figured that in order to make green bean casserole from scratch, i’d have to break it up into its component parts: cream of mushroom soup, green beans, and french friend onions. at first i felt daunted, as i thought for sure all cream of anything soups were strictly the domain of the campbell’s people and could not be replicated in a home kitchen. surely they put some secret spices or ingredients in it which made it so addictive. ground money? crack? i did not know.

i made cream of mushroom soup thusly. i took a typical package of button mushrooms and diced them fine. then i sauteed the finely diced mushrooms in approximately half a stick of butter (remember – it’s not that much when you figure it’s for 8 people! as opposed to for one desperate and lonely woman sitting on her couch eating it directly out of the casserole dish with a spoon…). sweat the mushrooms till soft. then, add about 4 tablespoons of flour and mix to make a roux-like paste. cook that for a few minutes, and then add about 2 cups low fat milk. whisk this to prevent lumps, and cook until the milk turns thick like a heavy cream. then add 2 cups chicken stock made from chickens you have lovingly decapitated yourself. let this mixture thicken till like heavy cream again. if you want to serve this as soup, salt and pepa it. otherwise, relax, as there will be enough salt from the french fried onions to make it seem like lot’s wife fell into the casserole.

the french friend onions were also much easier than i thought. i remember the first time i made this dish (my mom’s 50th birthday). i got the recipe from this american girl who specifically wrote “durkee’s french fried onions”. i was utterly perplexed by what a “french fried onion” was supposed to be, or where i could find it in the grocery store. i asked a clerk, finally, in the same way you’d ask a stoner where they kept the pot. i think he laughed at me. anyway, all these are, as it turns out, is little bits of deep fried onion rings. except that most of the time onion rings are thick – these are deliberately very thin sliced. i dipped the onion slices in seasoned flour (lawry’s seasoned salt, tony chachere’s and pepper) then buttermilk, then back into the flour. fry in oil in small batches until deep gold.

all you have to do with the green beans is boil them until they’re limp.

then, assemble just like any other green bean casserole. namely, mix the soup and beans, with half the onions (oh yes. i fried one entire onion) and then top with the remaining onions.

i’ll say this, as good as this is from canned, it’s exponentially good from scratch. one guest remarked that she HATED green bean casserole… until now. thanks! [hello, carmen!]

as for the turkey, i will say that a free range heritage turkey is amazing. i basically hate turkey, because it’s boring tasting, and usually dry. this bird (over 19 lbs) was moist, even after sticking it back in the oven. free range turkeys have a lot of fat under the skin, almost like a duck. the dark meat is really dark and flavorful. everything was much much flavorful. if you like dark meat, you’ll love a free range heritage turkey. the only thing i did to the turkey is salt and pepa, and top it with a cheesecloth soaked in oil and butter. at some point i covered all exposed parts with foil. by that time, however, i had been drinking wine for hours, so things get iffy. i did make an amazing gravy out of the pan drippings, despite that. i remember dumping most of the oil, and then making a roux with some wondra, then wisking the shit out of everything and adding water. i ran it through a sieve to get the big bits of dripping out of the gravy. it was awsum.

there were not many leftovers from this dinner, which was pretty good, considering the amount of food. you may notice the absence of mashed potatoes. that’s because i totally forgot about them until it was too late, and by then it was too late. oh well.

*the only thing i did not make from scratch was the pork sausage used in the stuffing. i would have, but i realized i just didn’t have the time. me bad.