It’s rare that I can blog about a true festivus gastronomicus on the Festivus Gastronomicus, but there’s no better way to describe the amazing Thanksgiving dinner we had last month. (Sorry for lagging on this)

Menu

Reference Turkey
Sausage Stuffing
Zesty Carrots
Squash Casserole
Cranberry Sauce with Orange Zest and Raspberries
Mashed Potatoes
Asparagus
Green Beans with Chipotle Butter
Sauteed Garlic Soup

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
Sweet Potato Pie
Apple Cranberry Pie

Thanksgiving is a big deal in my family because it means everyone gets to show off how well they can cook. In a French family, that means you’re gonna taste some amazing food and have to eat lots of it.

Not eating seconds obviously translates that you don’t appreciate your family members and you are a disrespectful person. Fortunately, the food is always crazy good. In 2003, I counted 15 different types of animal meat devoured in one sitting!

Needless to say the bar was set high. I was thankful to have good friends supporting the effort and Will, Crystal, and Will all pulled through with excellent dishes. For my part, I made the turkey, sausage stuffing, a squash casserole, and sauteed garlic soup.

To start everything off I began brewing chicken stock on Monday with frozen chicken carcasses I had in the freezer. I bought a 20 quart stock pot and cooked the hell out of that stock for nearly 8 hours. At the end of the night I had nearly 2 gallons of the tastiest stock I’ve ever made.

The extra large stock pot really helped; I didn’t have to skimp on anything. In fact I put some of everything in the kitchen in there.

When Jen came home and I told her that, she picked up a lemon on the counter and, thinking she was witty, said, “Well why don’t you put this in there?” At which point I directed her to the underside of the lemon so she could observe that I had in fact put some of that lemon in the stock. I literally used one of, or some of, everything edible in the house.

And for future reference: 2 gallons isn’t enough stock for a Turkey and all the other stuff I made. Sheesh.

Making the turkey is a big frickin’ responsibility, yo. When you write a food blog you not only carry the responsibility of making a good turkey for the family, your reputation is on the line. I knew I had better come through with a fantastic turkey that blows minds.

This was my first turkey so I needed a recipe to work from. I turned to an article I found on sfgate.com that had the perfect recipe. I knew the key was the brining so I went with the ‘Best Way Brined Turkey’ recipe from Chez Panisse and traveled to the North End to Polcari’s to make sure I had all the right ingredients. They totally had whole juniper berries.

I started the brine on Tuesday- the brine, not the brining. I put all the brining ingredients together in a jar and heated it up to a lukewarm temperature before putting it all in the fridge to sit until Wednesday.

I brined for about 24 hours or so, dried the turkey, LIGHTLY seasoned (there’s already plenty of flavor from the brine), and cooked it up. I basted compulsively and tented the top with tin foil when it started browning up.

The result was something I like to call the Reference Turkey. Someday you will look up Perfect Turkey on the Wikipedia and see this picture.

I will leave it to the people who tasted that tender bird to comment here and give testimony.

I’ll cover the squash casserole in another blog because I love to make it (and eat it) and I make it pretty often when I have to cook for a large group. I will say that this is the first time I made it with cheese and it was damn tasty. I’m on the way to actually being okay with cheese- I would never have guessed it.

Likewise with the garlic soup. I love this recipe and want to spend a whole entry on it. It’s super duper ultra flavorful and really easy to make. Sautee some garlic, cook in some stock for 1.5 hours, throw on some cilantro, melt some pepperjack cheese on top, and serve it up hot. Make sure you substitute thyme for cilantro when cooking for Crystal.

I procured many beautiful pounds of sausage meat from my butcher in the North End and stopped off at Calore Fruit for even more pounds of mushrooms. Thank god for the 20 quart stock pot!

The mushrooms were awesome too. Right when I walked in, a little old lady was admonishing the fruttivendolo for not putting the quality mushrooms out for people to buy. So he went in the back and brought out the secret stash for us to go through. How can I seriously go back to Stop and Shop after that?

Onions, breadcrumbs- courtesy of Tito’s French Bread (not recommended unless you’re cooking it into something), and pinion nuts (for texture) were added to the mushrooms and sausage meat and stirred up with chicken stock.

I popped the whole thing in the oven and let it cook. I forgot to take the foil off the top when I stuck it in the oven so the texture was a little moist, but the taste was perfect.

The whole thing came together beautifully when dinner time came around. I really enjoyed Crystal’s zesty carrots and funky cranberry sauce. Also, Will’s skin-on mashed potatoes reminded me of Keebler Tato Skins: awesome.

The only real problems with the dinner was that we couldn’t get the gravy to thicken and the prosecco was a “little corky.” Despite all our best attempts with flour and cornstarch, nothing happened. We finally decided it was better to have slightly less viscous gravy than to put that much flour in.

I was thankful that the turkey was such a success and continually thankful for the next week when I enjoyed the leftovers. I was also thankful that Jen got to taste all the thanksgiving goodness, albeit a couple days late. Be on the lookout folks, next year I’m cooking a goose.

• Festivus Gastronomicus Rating: Crapicus

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 12:06 am and is filed under Chez Moi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.