Ah, Thanksgiving- or as I like to call it, “Eat Your Weight Day.” A happy excuse to think up a great menu and spend half a week in the kitchen. Some families eat the same thing every year but we like to change it up. Obviously there are the staples- turkey, cranberries, stuffing -but we tweak things here and there because variety, as they say, is the spice of life.
This year our lovely turkey was drenched with an Ina Garten herb butter, swimming in white wine and surrounded by a company of apples and oranges. It was done two and a half hours early. An hour before anyone got to the house. So much for package cook times. Don’t worry, we reheated and it was absolutely scrumptious. We don’t like to limit ourselves to just turkey, so we also had a grilled leg of lamb with a Turkish marinade. I don’t eat a whole lot of red meat and haven’t had lamb in forever and I must say, it was fantastic.
Instead of mashed potatoes this year we went in a different direction. I mashed up some parsnips with thyme, salt, pepper and butter. They were a great and slightly healthier alternative to a classic mash.
The one consistent recipe we have is for my mom’s incredible cranberry sauce. Everyone wants that recipe. When I lived in London and I made Thanksgiving dinner I called her for that recipe. This year a neighbor from our lake house in Michigan called her for it. It’s basically fresh cranberries, oranges, zest, sugar and spice, and this year she added apples. It’s out of this world and it’s not Thanksgiving without it.
My sister found a great recipe for sweet potato gratin with thyme and some cayenne pepper that gave it a nice kick. The top was crunchy with panko, parmesan and chopped walnuts (because I forgot to buy pecans- whoops). I’m glad I got the leftovers because it was even better the next day.
We took a shortcut on the bread and got some flaky buttermilk biscuits. I doctored them up with some fresh rosemary, pepper and sea salt. I’ll definitely do that again. They were really easy and really good.
My aunt brought these amazing stuffing dumplings she makes using some kind of magic. I request them every year because I love them more than it’s normal to love a food item. Unfortunately they went so fast I didn’t have an opportunity to photograph them. You can thank my brother for that. There were sugar snap peas too, but I don’t like those so I ignored them in favor of something really important: dessert.
I was in charge of desserts, naturally, and decided that instead of a couple big things we should have several bite-sized options. The most obvious choice were these pumpkin pie bites from Bakerella. I’ve made them three times since she posted the recipe. They’re quick, easy and deeelicous.
Carrying on the bite-sized theme were these mini pumpkin layer cakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting and a little slice of crystallized ginger on the tops. They were almost too cute to eat… almost.
And last, but certainly not least, were the slightly less bite-sized pumpkin custard profiteroles with maple bourbon caramel sauce. I did use a different recipe for the puffs than is on Epicurious because I feel like the egg wash made them fall and brown way too quickly. Luckily I have a great standby pate a choux recipe that I whipped up after the first ones disappointed me. My custard didn’t look very pumpkiny but it tasted great.
I think it’s important to note here that the sauce is extremely bourbon-y. That pleased me greatly because I am a bourbon enthusiast, but if you’re not I’d suggest using half of what the recipe calls for. God these were good.
Well, there you have it- or most of it anyway. Apologies to any food I missed. (Except the sugar snap peas. I just don’t like you!)
Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go work out for a couple days.
