Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I consider myself to be richly blessed and thank God for my blessings regularly. Having a nationally recognized holiday to do so is wonderful. In my family, I have taken over Thanksgiving responsibilities in the last few years and relish the opportunity to cook up a feast. And a feast it truly is.
This year our menu was as follows:
Appetizers:
Baked Salmon
Roasted Shrimp Cocktail
Pickled tomatoes (store-bought)
Hummus (store-bought)
Smoked fish (store-bought)
Goat cheese bruschetta
Seafood Salad
Roasted Red Pepper Salad
Roasted Asparagus

Main course:
Vegetable Soup
Mashed potatoes
Turkey

Dessert:
Spice cake
Puff Pastry “strips”
Meringue cake (store-bought)

The turkey I’ve made in the last 5-7 years has always been moist as a result of both brining and baking it in a bag. However, this year it was absolutely superb. Please don’t think that I’m boasting. I did absolutely nothing differently from years past. The difference is in the turkey itself. I ordered a turkey at a farmers market earlier this year through Rueggseger Farms. The turkey was never frozen, it was “harvested” on Tuesday morning and we took delivery in the evening. It was astonishingly fresh and well-cleaned and absolutely lip-smacking when cooked.

Additional Recipes will be coming soon.

Puff Pastry Dessert

Puff Pastry Dessert

Writing this blog entry takes longer than it takes to make this delicious dessert. I saw this on FoodNetwork, but there was no oven temperature and no duration listed, so I’ve been experimenting for a few weeks. It was a hit at work when I brought them in. Here is what I came up with (mostly inspired by Sunny Anderson’s recipe on FoodNetwork).

Ingredients for Dessert

Ingredients:
1 sheet of puff pastry (I used two)
2-4 tablespoons of fruit jam (I use apricot and strawberry; one for each sheet)
1 egg for the egg wash
Powdered sugar (optional)

Steps:
Thaw the dough according the packaging
Microwave the fruit jam for about 20 seconds

1. Open the dough and straighten it out (if you bought the same dough as I did, it will be folded into 3, like a piece of paper).
2. Spread the jam evenly, so as not to have too many clumps
3. Roll the opposite ends of the dough so they meet in the middle (start from the sides that are opposite the lines folding).  Flip the dough with the seam down.
4. Cut into 12-15 pieces.  If you cut it into 15 pieces, chances are that they pieces will fall and won’t look pretty and they will ooze.
5. Brush with the egg wash
6. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the cut pieces on parchment paper and place into the oven for about 15 minutes. Space them a few inches apart.  If they’re too close, like in the picture, they’ll get stuck together when they puff up.  Not really pretty but still tasty.
7. When cool, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Spread Jam on Dough

Rolling Dough - Step 3

Rolled Dough with Jam - Step 3

Too Close and Too Thin

Not too pretty

Scrumptious!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Spread

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, in large part because I love all the cooking.  Most people dread all the cooking, but I even take Wednesday off so I can make a few “spares”, just in case something doesn’t turn out and people still leave with overstuffed bellies.  I still love the holiday, despite the mandatory family squabbling.  But without further delay, here is the menu I’m planning (and yes, I take help where I can):

Appetizers:

• Chicken wings (not a Thanksgiving staple, but I love them and they seem to go over pretty well with the family).  See above
• Seafood puffs (puff pastry stuffed with seafood, store bought, and I hope they’re good).
• Smoked Salmon and Goat Cheese Pizza Bites
• Smoked Mackerel (this can be found in most Russian food stores; ask for “skumbria”)
• Baked Asparagus with Cheese
• Shrimp with sauce

Whole fish

Fish in pieces

 

 

 

 

Salads:

• Seafood salad
• Olivie? (a French salad, and every cook in former USSR has her/his own twist on it. This one is a maybe since I don’t like peeling potatoes or cutting cooked potatoes.) I decided not to make it this time.
• Egg salad and mushroom

Turkey

Main Course:

• Turkey (DUH!)

• Baked potatoes (my family is averse to mashed potatoes with skins and I am averse to pealing potatoes)
• Stuffing (of the StoveTop variety. My family will accept no other.)

Dessert:

Zephyr in Chocolate

• I bought two pies at Sweet Pies of Door County and we’ll have that. They’re yummy, try one.
• I also bought a Russian-style dessert called Zephyr in Chocolate. I’m not exactly sure what’s in it, but it seems a marshmallow-type substance covered in dark chocolate.

Recipes and pictures for all these to follow.