a belated post on thanksgiving
I made my usual early start (5 a.m.) to cook down the list, pausing for a moment before I made the smashed potatoes in early afternoon.
Knowing I am mostly finished by that point, I always feel comforted. The clabbered milk (add a squeeze of lemon to whole milk and let it sit for five minutes to create buttermilk) I poured from a Mason jar went in before the butter to finish the dish.
My friend Tricia took some wonderful shots of the side dishes after she arrived with Kenyatta–
Image by Tricia Wang
and I’m relying on her images as our guest list grew from six the day before to fourteen an hour before (someone sat on a camping chair and some of us ate on palm leaf plates!), so I was slightly distracted.
There were roasted butternut squash and local apples with pepitas for crunch and sage:
Image by Tricia Wang
Also roasted brussel sprouts and pears with ginger and lemon zest–I’m very interested in combining fruits and veg with a dominant spice or herb in side dishes lately:
Image by Tricia Wang
If memory serves, a carrot-top pesto went on roasted cauliflower, I improvised a chard-quinoa dish, the usual cranberry-orange sauce was chilled, and everyone raved over the Thomas Keller leek bread pudding.
The turkey I did remember to document, as I want to remember this seventeen-pound beaut from Di Paolo at the Grand Army Farmers’ Market. This is a salt brine, oil rub, and little else that took about three hours in the oven:
For the dramatic dessert presentations, Kevin’s mother unmolded her tiramisu,
that we shared responsibility for whipping heavy cream for that she spread on top and sprinkled with chocolate chips before slicing.
And Francis, who is my good friend Solana’s cousin and a fabulous cook (it runs in their family),
cut into her two derby pies. I had a very hard time deciding whether I liked the traditional or the chocolate, and insisted on keeping the tiny remainder of one pie. We completed the bourbon theme with small-batch versions of bourbon vanilla gelato and of the spirit itself.
I looked around the crowded table at friends (I like this shot of Bre and Kio) and extended family,
laughing and learning about living in New York and I took notes from Linda on standing your ground as a feminist.
But the biggest lesson I learned this year (and I think it was Solana who articulated it best) is this: it takes generations eating together to make it truly feel like Thanksgiving.
For all recipes, see my Thanksgiving primer post.
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Posted by Kristen Taylor on Friday, January 7th, 2011, 12:26 pm * Filed in brooklyn, Entertaining, Food, holiday. * . Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
