Be Careful, The Plate Is Hot!
I suggested a topic on holiday dinner talk. “How about housing bubble discussions at the holiday table?”
A reply, “I won’t touch that with a 50 ft. turkey leg. My in-laws are children of a developer, and I am still the crazy, family idiot.”
Another said, “Looking forward to a couple of days with a finance professor — should be great fun!”
One looks at what’s on the table. “How about a culinary themed thread on the top ten recipes for leftover turkey. Gobble-gobble-gobble.”
A reply, “Turkey corn and black bean chili.”
One had this, “First time ever, we bought the smallest turkey we could find, just to avoid left-overs. Next year we’ll decide if we like having, or prefer not having, left over turkey for days.”
A reply, “I’ve never had much luck with very small turkeys. Maybe I cooked them wrong but they were tough compared to the bigger ones. All the turkeys in Brazil are small but they don’t have Thanksgiving either.”
Another leftover tip, “Turkey ’shepherd’s’ pie: (super-easy, tastes great- sometimes better than the original meal). Put a layer of turkey on the bottom of a deep casserole dish, add some gravy. Then add a layer of stuffing, and add some gravy. Cap this completely with mashed potatoes. You can freeze it at this point.”
“Heat in oven at 350 until the top is golden-brown and it’s heated through. (Leftover turkey also goes great with mole sauce and blue corn tortillas.)”
“Here’s a local favorite, Kentucky’s contribution to the open-faced sandwich world. Good if you have both leftover turkey and ham. (Twain once defined ‘eternity’ as ‘two people and a ham’):
The Hot Brown
Put a piece of white toast on an oven-safe plate (but wait- there’s more!)
Put a thin slice of ham on it (country ham is, of course, better)
Put a layer of turkey on next.
Cover it completely with white sauce (traditionally), or a cheddar cheese sauce (any type of cheese soup works well, too, I sometimes just heat milk or cream and shredded cheddar and a few dashes of hot sauce in the microwave and mix it up as it melts)
Put a few tomato slices on top of the sauce-covered sammich.
Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
Put it under a broiler until it’s Hot, bubbly, and Brown.
Put two strips of crisp cooked bacon crossways on top and serve.”
“Cook it til it’s lightly browned, not completely brown, I should add. And be careful, amigo, the plate is hot!”
And another, “Goose stuffed with black walnuts and brandied figs here. Potato wedges roasted in the goose fat. Pungent greens with pomegranate seeds and my last two tomatoes. Pumpkin pecan pie for dessert. All ingredients home grown. (Yay.)”
‘Leftover carcass goes into the stock pot for flageolets with hot Italian sausage, wilted greens, and confit of the goose leg meat. (Yum.)”
More, “We have a new tradition of ordering a smoked turkey from a local barbecue joint. They run 10-12 lbs, so not too big. While I do miss the cooked-in-the-bird stuffing, the smoked meat is to die for. All the leftovers get eaten without any fussing over casseroles etc.”
Then this, “I’ve got a commercial pressure smoker that I’ll be using on the bird this year. Very fast and delicious! Happy thanksgiving HBB. My favorite holiday.”
And finally, “Given near panic over the twin debt crises in the U.S. and the eurozone, that seems like the metaphorically perfect choice of cooking instrument for this year’s Thanksgiving dinner.”
I am thankful for my friends and family, of course, but I am especially thankful for this little digital corner of the world that keeps me grounded.
Thanks, Ben, and Happy Thanksgiving to all!
What, no vegetarians out there? I admit it’s tough to put something together on turkey day without meat. Years ago there was this wheat roast turkey substitute that was good, but I haven’t been able to find it lately. So it’s tofurky, which with all the fixins, can still be a feast.
Ben, I’m not vegetarian but I have a lot of vegetarian friends who are coming over so except for one item (which gets made in two different ways), here’s the “mostly vegetarian” Thanksgiving at my place:
Acorn Squash stuffed with wild mushrooms
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Pear, chanterelles & prosciutto stuffing
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Fingerling potatoes with figs & thyme
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Brussel sprouts with pomegranate vinegar, black walnuts & pomegranates
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Pears poached in red wine with stilton
I am all in on the Brussel sprouts..Love them
Happy Thanksgiving everyone…
Brussel sprouts are the pure victory of technique over nature.
Made properly, they are simply divine.
In every one I’ve tasted, nature won.
Then you haven’t seen it done right!
I’ve had the fussiest children lick my plates clean. The parents are befuddled.
Yo, brussels sprouts are only good if you eat them within a few days of picking. Remember, if you get them from the grocery store, then they are already a few days old when you buy them. If they’re fresh, then you can steam them and eat them plain or with butter sauce.
“Fingerling potatoes with figs & thyme”
Now there’s an odd combo. Have you had this before?
I love Brussels Sprouts too. I think I got a great recipe for them from you, Pussycat. One where you strip each leaf off, and saute them with lemon, garlic, and anchovies, then add them to pasta? It’s great. I’m trying to get a Brussels sprouts patch going in my garden- they’re perennials, if you can get them established.
I’m thankful Ben hasn’t kicked me off the site for being a sissy Keynesian deadbeat-lover. So here’s some vegetarian Thanksgiving advice. If you fry very thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms until they’re crisp, they taste a lot like bacon. Add some onions and celery, saute them in the butter you just fried the shrooms in,add some Bell’s Seasoning (the best stuffing spice-herb blend) and some stale white bread cubes, moisten the whole thing with milk, and put it in the oven at 350 till it gets toasty on top and ’sets’, then you’ve got the centerpiece of a great Thanksgiving meal: stuffing. Add some cranberry relish (made with fresh cranberries and diced fresh pineapple and an orange and lemon slice) some good rolls and butter, some limas, carrots, corn, etc…maybe a broccoli casserole and some sweet potatoes and you’ve got a feast worthy of the day. Who needs turkey with all that? (Well, I do, but I’m weak.)
Happy Thanksgiving all. I’m starting to cook my meal, so I’ll keep you updated as I go, whether you all like it or not…
Step one- Make bacon, then saute onions and celery in the delicious grease.
Sounds odd but it isn’t.
The dried mission figs are first plumped in tea for a few hours (to give them texture via the tannins.)
The whole complex is roasted with fingerling potatoes in their jackets, olive oil, thyme and whole cloves of garlic.
Never lasts very long. First to run out.
“Never lasts very long. First to run out.”
Sounds interesting. I’ll try it next year when I can get fresh figs and my fingerlings come in. I’m also trying to get some fig trees going in my garden, but for now I have access to a friend’s.
Step 2- Blanche broccoli for Broccoli Casserole (I don’t care if it’s white trash, it’s good)
Pour glass of riesling to make sure it’s an adequate wine. (Hey it’s a holiday!)
Added Bell’s Seasonings to onions, celery and bacon, then added cubed stale baguettes (2), moistened with chicken stock and milk, stuffed turkey (14 pounder) with it, stuck it in 325 oven, put extra dressing in a separate dish to cook, poured second glass of riesling to confirm opinion that it’s pretty darn good.
So far, so good…
Stuffing is prepped. Freakin’ delicious even if I say so myself.
Acorn squashes have been par-roasted and stuffed. Last minute bake left.
Pears are a reducin’ in the wine.
Two more dishes to go.
Using the oven optimally is the biggest challenge.
Just did:
My tasty, easy relish:
(Tastes better if you make it the day before but I’m a procrastinator.)
Boil 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, 1 cross-slice orange, one cross-slice lemon, til sugar dissolves, add 12 oz frozen/fresh cranberries, equal amount diced fresh (or canned, in a pinch) pineapple, return to boil until cranberries all pop. Set aside to cool and refrigerate.
Also have store-bought turkey stock simmering with a turkey neck and giblets and a bay leaf for gravy.
Riesling is suprelatvie!
Roasting, roasting, roasting.
That’s the veggies.
This one is for you, Ben!
Hey Faster:
You should use the pan drippings from your potatoes and figs to make a cream sauce (with white wine and salt), and then serve that to be poured over stuff if people want it.
Curses! I got distracted (darn you Bacchus!), and over browned/ burned both my auxiliary dressing and my suc. Both are salvageable, I think. I know the dressing is, I just picked off the burned bits on top. The suc remains to be seen. Good thing I’ve got a large pot of gravy going on the stovetop.
Now to harvest a pumpkin for dessert. I grew ‘fairytale’ pumpkins this year, supposedly very tasty. We shall see…
Maybe it’s time for a pumpkin ale. Tis the season.
Sucs burning your sucs.
Turkey- done, resting. Broccoli casserole, in oven. Potatoes boiling, to be mashed. Pecan-sweet potato casserole, in oven. Pumpkin ale, being drunk.
The feast is taking shape. Beautiful sunny day. Life is good.
I think pinot noir is the perfect Thanksgiving wine. Beaujolais nouveau a close second. Looks like I’ll be drinking a carmenere, though, so we’ll see how that goes.
Meal’s not for another hour or so though. Gotta let that turkey rest, and the casseroles cook.
‘with stilton’
That sounds really good! One thing I’ve started to do for holiday meals is set out a cheese platter. Usually something sour like stilton, a soft cheese or two, and an aged cheese. With this I like fruit like quality grapes, figs, etc. Some flat bread and an assortment of olives. This is besides the main meals.
One part I have to have about this; let the cheese sit out for a long time. It doesn’t taste like real cheese unless it’s been room temp for many hours, preferably overnight. (I wouldn’t even refrigerate cheese except it scares away some people.)
The pears (firm ones like Bosc) are poached in an entire bottle of wine with sugar, cinnamon, tons of whole black peppercorns, and lemon zest.
They are pulled out, the liquid reduced to a sticky mass, and poured over each pear.
Great after a heavy meal preferably with blue cheese.
I forgot to mention the chocolate. Slabs of chocolate. Some friend started putting the cheese on the chocolate one year and I’ve been hooked ever since.
” Pears poached in red wine with stilton”
Is the Stilton actually in the red wine reduction, or served on the side? It being in the reduction sounds intriguing, I’ve had excellent savory sauces like that. I’ll have to try that.
Served on the side.
Oh yeah, the chocolate but that’s kinda assumed around my house.
I’m not a big dessert fan but I’m a major chocolate fiend!!!
You have to have home-made fruit preserves with your cheese and coffee for breakie on any slow morning. Today I have whole-grape preserves, plum jam, strawberry jam, and caramel-lime sauce with my cheeses. The coffee pulls them together perfectly.
My husband made a delicious pumpkin butter to go on crackers. OMG, pumpkin anything is just divine. I bet chocolate with pumpkin would be great!
I did an hour on my treadmill tonight to burn off my carb comma. I didn’t want to wake up with a carb hangover.
Madness! all of this…. sheer culinary madness!
A cheap meal.
For a toast sandwich, take a very thin slice of bread and toast it. Once cold place it between two slices of bread, also sliced very thinly. Butter optional. Salt and pepper to taste.
Promoted by Victorian domestic goddess Isabella Beeton, this recipe comes from her 150-year-old Book of Household Management. Now the Royal Society of Chemistry wants to revive the dish to help the country through hard times.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15760897
A jam sandwich is even cheaper.
You take two pieces of bread, and you jam them together.
Bon apetit!
Here’s an interesting thing I recently learned about old-timey cooking:
There was a time in this country when our forebears did not all have sugar available, especially during the Civil War. No beets, no sugar cane, so what to do? Some of them found a way of reducing watermelon into syrup or butter, and they would use that in their baked goods, coffee, etc.
You can try it at home. It takes a whole giant watermelon and a lot of cooking fuel to reduce it down to like a pint of butter and a cup of syrup. It also makes your whole house smell like pungent cut grass combined with corn husks.
The things people will do for sugar!
They used sorghum around here. It’s pretty tasty, kind of like molasses.
Wife made turkey alfredo with fettucini alfredo, broccoli, and onion.
To call it leftovers would be an insult!
You lucky man! (Course my kinfolk are lucky, too, thanks to the barbecued swordfish I served them tonight…)
To our American friends, relatives, and HBB participants - we wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.
Well……ok……..I made a 2 gallon supply of Chili con Carne with American Lawry’s Chili seasoning and some hot Chile Molido from NM.
(I hope that counts) Happy Thanksgiving!
“I hope that counts”
A big pot of chili is the gift that keeps giving! To you and yours! And of course it counts, if you drink a lot of beer with it. What’s the local brew down there?
Happy Thanksgiving!
What’s the local brew down there (Rio)?
All light pilsners (because it’s so hot) And Brazilians do not tolerate beer that is not ice cold. Brands: Skol, Antartica, Brama, Itipava, etc. Happy Thanksgiving!
It’s all done. Let the games begin.
I told people to come by 3pm. It’s 3:14 and there’s nary the one of them. Oh well!
Yeah, just pulled my turkey out. It’s beautiful…*sniff*. Sucs looks alright too.
You never said what your main dish was.
We managed to find a small (7 lb.) turkey this year. Last year we had a 12 pounder for Christmas and were still eating it at Twelfth Night. I like leftovers, but not for the full 12 days of Christmas.
There are some really interesting recipes here. Sorry I don’t have any of my own to add but I’ll definitely be trying some of these. I’m having a 13 pounder this year for 11 people so I hope I won’t have too much left over.
I resisted over eating!
Happy turkey day everyone!
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