Sunday, November 21, 2010

One Frau, One Oven, One Mission

I come from a large extended family of many cooks. A typical Thanksgiving meal might consist of 3 or four meats (turkey, duck, ham, and some type of roast) and enough sides to feed a small army. With 6 or seven people cooking, you end up with a lot of dishes. The first holiday I spent away from home posed a bit of a problem. How could I fix at least a good portion of our favorite dishes without taking off work the day before? And how would I get it all to be done at the right time? Would I have to spend the entire day on the kitchen?

First I decided that this meal would not be for the lunch hour. I love my family but I won’t get up at 4 am to start cooking for anybody. It's questionable that I would get up at 4 am to escape a house fire. We would eat mid afternoon or later.

Our Thanksgiving is admittedly low-brow and very ‘southern.’

Turkey
Gravy-two kinds: giblet & brown
Stuffin’ Muffins’
Green bean casserole- Classic Hausfrau
Succotash
Mashed potatoes
Cranberry sauce
Sweet potato pie
One or two other favorite desserts-in rotation, often pretzel pie, dutch apple, or cream cheese pie

The trick to pulling this off is to spend a little time each night leading up to the holiday doing whatever you can to make things easier on Thursday. Do some prep (chop, dice, cook pie fillings) and cook things that will keep nicely, perhaps even improve when left overnight (cranberry sauce, succotash, pies, vegetables for stuffing).

My biggest peeve is to shop when everyone else is shopping. So I usually shop Sunday night or Monday. No later or you will end up in a fist fight with other raging Fraus.

Shopping list- By Store section
Meat-Bacon (I use at least 2 lbs), turkey, chicken liver (if you make giblet gravy), salami, cold cuts for Thursday lunch snacks
Produce- garlic, celery, onion, scallions, portabella mushrooms, yukon gold potatoes, bagged cranberries
Dairy- eggs, butter, heavy cream/whipping cream, sliced cheese for Thursday snacks
Dry goods-Chicken Stock/Broth, crackers/breads for snack tray, corn starch, several loaves of dense, hearty bread (stuffing), onion,cream of mushrooms soup, French's onions, canned green beans, whatever bread/rolls you are serving.
Frozen corn, green beans, & lima beans
Apple cider
The following is a schedule rather than a collection of recipes. Fill in your family favorites or new ones from a cookbook. And if you have helpers...delegate, delegate, delegate.
Monday Night: 1.5 hr (mostly shopping)
  • Shop if you haven’t already
  • If your turkey is frozen, place in bottom of fridge on a cookie sheet
  • Dice hearty bread and spread on  cookie sheets to dry out; you can also toast in the over on  low heat, if you prefer.
Tuesday Night: 1 hr depending on your pie/dessert prep
  • Cook any pie fillings- for me that means 'Microwave sweet potatoes, whole'
  • Boil two dozen eggs-we like to snack before our afternoon meal, deviled eggs, summer sausage, cheese, veggies, dip, etc. Prepare everything but the deviled eggs now so its ready Thursday morning.
  • Boil 2 C cranberries, 1/2 to 1 C sugar, lemon/orange zest, 1C cider/water/juice until the cranberries pop, refrigerate
Wednesday night 1.5 hr
  • If you are brining, prepare your white-trash turkey bath
  • Prepare deviled eggs
  • Prepare/bake your pies
  • Peel potatoes and store in fridge just covered with water
  • Dice 5 yellow onions, 10 green onions, 5 cloves garlic, 2 bunches of celery
  • Caramelize onions, celery, garlic in butter
  • Cook succotash- saute a little bacon & onion, add frozen vegetables, simmer until veggies are done
Thursday Morning: 3-4 hr-mostly turkey time
  • Roast turkey according to whatever recipe you are following
  • Slow cook bacon-reserving drippings
  • Simmer giblet/turkey neck for an hour or so, skimming periodically
  • Prepare stuffing- We do stuffin' muffins' round here. Caramelize mushrooms, adding some of yesterdays onion/celery saute from yesterday. Mix coarse dry breadcrumbs, saute mixture, and bacon   adding enough stock/melted butter to moisten just slightly. Pack into buttered muffin tins and bake until tops are starting to get dry. maybe 30 minutes or so after the bird is out of the oven. 
  • Mix green bean casserole-mushroom soup, green beans, onions-ready to go in oven
  •  One hour before turkey is done put yukon potatoes to boil-drain, add butter, cream, S&P.
  •  Giblet gravy- Remove grody stuff from simmered stock (neck, heart, gizzard) add extra liver, diced celery, scallions to broth, simmer 15 minutes. Thicken with corn starch slurry (add cold water to a few Tbs starch), boil 3 minutes, remove from heat. Add chopped boiled egg, dash of cream if you want.
  •  After turkey is done, pull to rest, cover with foil
  • IMMEDIATELY put green beans & stuffing into oven. They’ll be done in ½ hr.
  •  Remove turkey to serving platter. Scrape bottom of pan, add scallions, garlic, stock and simmer for 15 minutes. Season w/ salt/pepper to taste. Puree any veggies from roasting the turkey into this.
  • If you are serving additional rolls/bread, you can warm them after the stuffing/beans are out of the oven.
It sounds like more work than it is. But I think you'll find it's not so bad. You'll have time to drink some wine, nibble your antipasto platter, and suck some sweetened condensed milk out of the can while no one is looking. And unless you invite them, you don't have deal with difficult relatives. And you don't have to share the the leftovers.

Questions? Post to the FB page. I'll try to answer asap.

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