Friday, January 22, 2010

Mme Diat: A Pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving

Happy 2010 everyone, I'm truly sorry for taking so long to get back to the blog. The winter months were littered with more birthdays, parties, holidays, and events than I could even fit into my already packed schedule. Blogging was a welcome break that I didn't have much time for. Even now, I'm writing on my lunch break at work. So to get everyone up to speed, I will re-cap some of the cooking mishaps, victories, and learning experiences that I had closing out 2009.

Thanksgiving 2009 #1:
To start, I say Thanksgiving #1 because I had 3 this year. It was like the marathon of Thanksgivings for me. Three weeks, three turkeys, and three families [so to speak]. Thanksgiving #1 was the second annual holiday event co-hosted with Mme. Pépin. As Mme. Pépin and I begin planning for Thanksgiving up to 3 months in advance, I had time to work out a menu that would challenge me.

It was more than assumed that I would be cooking the turkey because of the two of us, I was the only one who could handle prep of the raw bird. To free up our oven for the afternoon I decided it would be interesting to grill the turkey. I decided on this recipe from Martha Stewart to season the bird. I wanted to make sure that since I was grilling, the skin was infused with as many herbs as I could find. We used a charcoal grill and cooked the bird for about 6 hours. It turned out absolutely magnificent.

I was also in charge of the sweet potatoes and a dessert. To get away from just mashing all of our starches I picked this great southern recipe from Martha Stewart for the potatoes. I peeled and sliced them, which was much harder than I expected. I then put them in the oven to bake. After that I took them out, spinkled butter, brown sugar, pecans, and some cayenne pepper on them and popped them back into the oven for a few minutes. The result was absolutely phenomenal and everyone loved them.

As for the dessert, I was dead set on hand making a pumpkin pie but there wasn't a sweet pumpkin for miles. I must have checked at about 5 different stores and I couldn't find one. Why I couldn't a week before Thanksgiving I will never know. So I settled, begrudgingly by the way, for the canned pumpkin puree. They say that there's seasoning in it and it's "Pie Ready" but I was not about to believe that. I added my own spices [from this recipe], made the crust, and baked it. As an aside, I've been experimenting with pie crusts lately. I want to find the best crust for every pie and so far I've been impressed time and time again with Pate Brisee's crust. It's easy and just great. As for the pie, it turned out absolutely amazing. Though, I don't want to make a habit of using the canned puree.

All in all, Thanksgiving #1 was a hit. For the turkey, I would absolutely recommend grilling. The bird was so moist and flavorful. If you want to try something different and free up some oven space, don't be afraid to grill. You won't regret it.

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