November 21, 2012 Thanksgiving Dinner, One Day Early

November 21, 2012 Thanksgiving Dinner, One Day Early

We had decided to go to the Hot Springs on Thanksgiving Day and Suzette wanted to cook the turkey we had bought last weekend at Costco ($.99/lb.), so we could celebrate Thanksgiving Day with a turkey sandwich.  So we discussed what we wanted for dinner and decided to cook a Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday evening. 

On Wednesday morning I had listened to a discussion on NPR about Julia Child’s Thanksgiving meal cooking show and heard her say that she liked Brussels sprouts with turkey.  When I mentioned that to Suzette, Suzette said, “So do I.” So we put Brussels sprouts on the menu.”  The other thing I mentioned was that Julia Child liked a simple apple tart made with apple sauce and apricot preserves.  The apple tart description invoked the funniest line in the radio interview of the cooking personality when the interviewer asked the question, “Do you think it is possible to make the tart with canned apple sauce?”  After a long second of silence, the personality answered, “What do you think?”  I knew we had stewed a large pot of apples, so I looked in the Mastering the Art of French Cooking recipe index and found Julia Child’s apple tart recipe (Vol. 1, page 635) and decided we had everything we needed to prepare the tart.  Suzette said she would bring the food mill home from work so she could remove the skins from the apples and turn the stewed apples into apple sauce.       

Wednesday morning at 7:45 a.m. we heated the last of the shrimp enchiladas with tomatillo sauce and black beans and garnished it with a fried egg and discussed the menu and made a list of ingredients.

So at noon, I started shopping.  First, I went to Pastian’s to see if they had cheap white bread for the dressing.  I was worried that they would be cleaned out but was pleasantly surprised to see that they had Italian sub rolls, French Hard rolls and Italian bread sticks in the $.50 rack and bought all three packages of them.  Then I saw dozens of pies on the counter waiting for their customers and as I walked out of the store I saw one damages pecan pie in the refrigerated display case.  I asked how much it was and the attendant said $3.07.  I then asked how much were the pies in the boxes and she said $9.25.  So I bought the pecan pie with a bit of its crust missing.   And put that in the truck.

I then drove to Costco.  The parking lot was full at 12:30 but I found a space after gassing up.  I had my list and in short order I had purchased Brussels sprouts, eggs, Pecorino Romano cheese, cranberries and Xerox paper. 

After eating a hot dog for lunch, I drove to Sprouts grocery store at the corner of Academy and San Mateo and found the rest of the items that we had put on our list: string beans, tomatoes, white organic sweet potatoes, and oysters.  So by 2:00 p.m., I was through shopping and felt good about getting dinner ready within a reasonable period of time.  I was calling Suzette and telling her about my progress after each stop and at 2:00 she said she had one more stop and would be home by 3:00 and to start shopping the celery and onions for the oyster dressing.

I chopped all the celery and onions while watching European Champions League soccer matches with Willy and had started cleaning and cutting the Brussels sprouts into halves when Suzette arrived around 3:00 p.m. 

Cooking Thanksgiving Dinner seems to be in Suzette’s DNA.  The minute she walked in she said, “We need to get the turkey (20 lbs.) into the oven.” So she got out eggs and Willy started cutting nine of the Italian bread sticks into 1 inch chunks and Suzette started sautéing the onions and celery and placed the giblets into a pan with water and started it simmering to make stock.  I asked if she wanted any herbs for the dressing and we decided upon thyme and sage, so I went to the garden and picked two sprigs of sage and about 1 tsp. of thyme and chopped them and threw them into the sauté pan.  Suzette then mixed the bread, oysters, pinon nuts and sautéed vegetables in a large bowl and we stuffed the dressing into the neck and tail cavities and trussed the openings closed with a skewer and a bit of thread, threw about 1 Tbsp. of flour into an oven bag and put the turkey into the bag and put the bag into a large roasting pan uncovered breast side down into a 350˚ oven to cook. 

I asked Suzette what wine she wanted to drink with dinner and she said she didn’t care and that I should pick, so I went to the basement and put three bottles of wine into the fridge to chill. We ended up drinking a 2008 Sonoma County Roussanne from Wellington Vineyards with its strong minerality (it is one the main grapes used to make Rhône wines liked Chateauneuf de Pape) and a white 2011 Domaine Langlois-Chateau we bought in Saumur this summer (100% chenin blanc

Then we turned our attention to dessert.  Suzette then milled all the apples and ended up with enough apple sauce to make two apple tarts, while I cored, peeled and sliced five apples into 1/8 inch thick slices and dossed them with lemon juice which was one of the ingredients of the tart (either cinnamon or lemon or orange juice is added to the apple sauce to flavor it). I turned out that we had twice as many apple slices as we needed so we have enough for another tart.  When Suzette put the apple sauce into a pot so we could cook it down into a guppy consistency so it sticks to a spoon (Julia’s words, not mine) I zested the peel of two oranges and one lemon into the apple sauce and Suzette added a bit of cinnamon and we started cooking and stirring the apples sauce for about 1 hour until it thickened and became guppy. 

After the apple sauce began to cook, Suzette started the cranberry sauce and Willy peeled the white sweet potatoes.   Suzette was on autopilot by now, she put about 1 ¼ lb. of cranberries into an enameled medium sized sauce pan and then measured about ¾ cup of sugar into the pan. When I noticed that the cranberries had no liquid in them and they were starting to pop and I became afraid they would scorch, I squeezed that juice of the two oranges I had zested into a glass and Suzette put it into the cranberries.  Then she cut the potatoes lengthwise and boiled them to soften them.  Then she got out a large skillet and put butter and olive oil into it and put the sweet potatoes in so they would be ready to sauté.  She then heated a pot of water and while the Brussels sprouts were blanching, Suzette went to the fridge in the garage and found a bag of pecans and chopped ½ cup of them and I shredded 1 cup of the fresh Pecorino Romano cheese.  When the Brussels sprouts had softened, Willy tossed them with the cheese and pecans.    Suzette said to shred ½ cup and next time I will shred only ½ cup, because the cheese overpowered the flavor of the pecans and the Brussels sprouts a bit.

So by about 5:30 p.m. we had finished all of the prep for the meal except for the pastry for the tart, which Suzette made and then we just had to wait for the food to cook.  So we watched the news until about 7:00 p.m. because Suzette had figured that the turkey needed to cook until about 7:30 p.m.  At 7:00 we went back into the kitchen and Suzette constructed the tart, so that it could go into the heated oven when the turkey came out.  We stuck Willy’s fancy electronic food thermometer into the turkey at 7:30 and the internal temp read 185˚, so we removed the turkey from the oven and placed the tart into the oven.  I called our invited guest, my client and friend, Aaron Lohmann, and he said he would arrive in ½ hour.

So Willy, who worked as a cook in a big fancy restaurant in Vancouver this summer took two large forks and lifted the turkey while I removed the cooking bag and then we removed the turkey from the roasting pan and placed the turkey on a cutting board.   We then removed the dressing from the two cavities to a bowl and Suzette removed as much fat as she could from the cooking liquids in the bottom of the roasting pan and made gravy by stirring some hot turkey stock with flour and adding the turkey stock/flour mixture to the pan drippings and adjusting with stock and thickening it with some milk until it reached a smooth consistency.  

We put the cranberry sauce in a bowl and turned on the heat on the sweet potatoes.  Then Suzette placed the apple tart into the oven at 375˚ and set the timer for thirty minutes.  

At a few minutes before 8:00, we placed two TV tables beside the round table in front of the fire place and placing the food on them, I uncorked the Roussanne and we poured a small amount into our glasses and sat and talked until Aaron arrived.  Then we poured more Roussane and ate at our fabulous Thanksgiving dinner.  After we drank the Roussane, we opened the Saumur and the moment I tasted the wine I was instantly taken back to the warm days of summer and the tasting room at Langlois-Chateau where we had eaten a picnic lunch on the Chateau’s patio with one of their lovely wines. ).  The combination of fruitiness, slight sweetness, and minerality of the chenin blanc is so wonderful that I am amazed how few people know about it.   It was the second bottle and we drank it with the apple tart and its fruitiness was great with the fresh fruit tart.

Willy and Suzette were kind enough to clean up the kitchen while Aaron and I talked after the meal.  Finally when Suzette announced that she was going to bed we checked the time and saw that it was 11:00 p.m. and we decided to end our wonderful Thanksgiving evening.

Bon Appétit