The rest of the menu

Menu:
My traditional spiced cider, slow cooked in a crock pot for hours so it smells up the house. TIP: don't leave it cooking for 24 hours or you evaporate every spec of liquid until it becomes a hollowed, honeycombed, burned crust of a mess. This morning, the house did not smell like sweet cider and spices - it smelled like burnt molasses.

Baked Goat Cheese Salad - served before the rest of the meal

Mom brought her famous mashed potatoes. I swear they are different every time she makes them, but they are famous for never failing to be awesome.

Skillet Green Beans
The "Quick Green Bean Casserole" recipe.
A non-trivial dish that was worth the effort. Beats the pants off French's dried onion, green bean, cream of mushroom soup casserole. I DON'T recommend having more than one dish on the menu that must be "served immediately". Our salad and beans collided in the kitchen. Since it has a creamy sauce, I suspect the re-heated leftovers will not be as good. We'll see.
From Cook's Illustrated Nov/Dec 2003
Rating: great

Cornbread and Sausage Stuffing
Though, technically, it's "stuffing" when it's in the bird, and "dressing" when it's not cooked in the bird...
Called for the same classic herbs and flavorings as the bread stuffing, plus milk with the chicken broth, sausage and homemade cornbread instead of white bread. I *really* enjoyed this dressing. Big bonus: the entire thing can be prepped the day ahead, just short of baking. There is a spicy variant I wanted to try with hot peppers and spicy sausage, but it was the wrong audience for this dish - some other time I hope.
From Cook's Illustrated Nov/Dec 2000
Rating: great

Cranberry Sauce with Star Anise and Port
Yuuummmy. Star anise is a beautiful looking spice when it's intact. And the bag I special ordered (not found in most supermarkets...) smells sooooo good. In my opinion, port infused with anything is a winner! Now I have to find ways to use the other 15 star anise still left in the bag.
The downside - the sauce did not go well with the spice rub - a bad combo. Better suited for traditionally basted turkey.
From Fine Cooking November 2003
Rating: great

And turkey, with bread stuffing and gravy made from the turkey drippings - all good this year, but not great. Seems we need to work on the basics.

For dessert, Grandma brought a homemade apple pie (great, though she thought too sweet) made with apples from Apple Hill, and a pumpkin pie from Bel Aire (good). She also brought Cool Whip-French Vanilla - a WAY better flavor over plain Cool Whip, which is somewhat artificial (though I still like it).


Quote of the evening:

"I'm so full, my watch is too tight." -J.T.'s mom

The Salad

This morning we were reminiscing over our favorite salads. I realized how the salad course of a meal has become mundane in the name of convenience - bagged salad, bottled dressings, typical, boring, salad-bar ingredients. When was the last time you said, "Wow, that was a really great salad!" (Don't get me wrong - I love bagged salad - one of the best inventions.)

Our favorite salads:

The beet salad from Easter.

Mandarin Salad from "Betty Crocker's Best Loved Recipes" (an excellent book). The salad has mandarin orange slices, toasted-sugared-sliced almonds, and a home made sweet-sour vinaigrette. Sometimes I use my mango vinegar. I typically take this to potlucks and it always goes over well.

And now, Baked Goat Cheese salad, served last night.

Like the beets, I was attracted to the recipe because it sounded good, despite my general dislike for goat cheese. I figure if something I normally don't like is attractive, it has a good chance of tasting rich and sophisticated. The results changed my view of goat cheese forever. Dramatic, huh?

The main ingredient of this simple salad was a golf ball of chevre goat cheese, rolled in chives and thyme, dipped in egg with Dijon mustard, then rolled in Melba toast crumbs. The final blob was formed into a 1" high cylinder, frozen, then baked in a hot, hot oven. Sounds silly, but the end result was fabulous. Serve on a bed of greens with a simple vinaigrette of Dijon, olive oil, red wine vinegar and shallots, and wa-lah!

A variant is to serve it with apples, walnuts and dried cherries, with cider vinegar instead of red wine vinegar. I bought the ingredients for this variation, but in the time-crunched end, we went with the simplified version.

Today we bought more cheese to use up the leftover herbs and Melba crumbs. :)

Salad with Herbed Baked Goat Cheese and Vinaigrette, from Cook's Illustrated Nov/Dec 2003
Rating: excellent!

The Turkey

The turkey is deserving of its own entry. J.T. is the turkey man - he owns the turkey, start to finish. Traditionally, we stuff the bird with, uh, stuffing - bread stuffing with celery, thyme, onion, sage, garlic. Then salt the outside, and baste it with its own juices while it cooks for 3-4 hours. And we cook it upside down so the breast meat doesn't overcook. Getting moist white meat is the ultimate goal. With about a half hour left, J.T. flips it right-side-up to brown the top. There are other scientific steps made throughout the process, but I don't know all those secrets.

This year we did two things different. We brined the turkey and used a dry spice rub. We had huge success brining some chicken breasts before so we were eager to try it.

The result? Well, the turkey managed to overcook a little, so the white meat was drier than desired, negating some of the effect from brining. And the spice rub made no notable difference; we won't bother with that again. But overall, success. It finished 30-45 minutes early, which had a rippling effect on the rest of the dishes that suddenly got moved up in the schedule. My theory on finishing earlier than expected was the oven door was never opened to check the temperature (remote thermometer) or to baste (basting would wash the spice rub off).

A number of Cook's Illustrated sources tell you how to cook a turkey. I can recommend the "The Cook's Bible" by Christopher Kimball.

Spice Rub, from Cook's Illustrated, Nov/Dec 2003
Rating: okay
Bread Stuffing, a guide for making your own recipe, from Fine Cooking, November 2001
We did the "Classic Bread Stuffing" recipe suggestion.
Rating: good

Still picking away at the party leftovers. The leftovers are starting to show their age so we have to hurry... Last night we ate the other steak, rubbed with kosher salt, ground pepper, cumin and cayanne, then quickly pan fried. Then we managed to use a huge hunk of blue cheese to make a blue cheese pasta sauce. It tasted like, uh, blue cheese. For the amount of effort put into the sauce, I expected a bit more. The surprise came from the sauteed tomatoes in olive oil, and added basil. They weren't cherry tomatoes - something else, but just as small. Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised with the sauteed tomatoes which took a mere 5 minutes to make start to finish.

Speaking of tomatoes, we like growing them, but we havn't the last couple years, I guess because it's too much work. :) We hate the cages you have to set up. I just noticed some tomato cages that set up like a big corkscrew. I wonder if they're any good?

Quick (not) Gorgonzola (blue cheese) Pasta Sauce, from Fine Cooking magazine March 2002
Rating: good
Sauteed Cherry Tomatoes, from "Perfect Vegetables" by the editors of Cook's Illustrated
Rating: excellent