Two warnings: 1) I am my own worst critic, and 2) I was rather too busy in the kitchen to take many photos.
Hello! Happy Friday, the day after US Thanksgiving. A day for many to shop, though I just walked back from picking up lattes at Amara, and Old Pasadena was not exactly hopping, not yet. A day to recover for others. A day for me to get to work on Christmas cards! And a day to blog about dinner yesterday.
Look, after many years of not really doing well and asking Merp to take over turkey duty when she was with us, I found a recipe that works for me for the most part. I had that bird in the oven at 5:35, and I basted regularly. Looks great, right?
It was overcooked, alas. It came apart beautifully, but that meat was dry as anything.
Sigh. On the plus side, I felt like a made a good gravy this year thanks to pan juices, a roux, and a stock that I had made and then enriched with the giblets. I do love me some gravy!
It was a nice dinner, though. Van and Olive were there, of course, and Van brought his late husband's young cousin, Heath. It was good to include Heath while his wife was back in Texas with family, and it's always nice to include Van's loving memories of Doug and Doug's family. I hope we meet Nicole one day, too. We also invited Stephen, who is always welcome company, and Paul came up from the desert with his dog, Voltaire. Six men, two dogs - not a packed house, but plenty for us. I made them all cocktails and sent them to the living room to stay out of my hair, and at a reasonable time, got dinner on the table.
Here's a run down - no photos, alas:
- Turkey and gravy
- Dressing (since I didn't cook it in the bird, so it's not stuffing - I love being pedantic!)
- Brussels sprouts - a new recipe for them, made with pancetta and in a balsamic glaze. The dish went over well, but I would dial back the balsamic in the future, use a bigger cut for the pancetta (it was a packaged dice that I felt got lost in the glaze), and cook the sprouts less.
- Carrots, steamed and buttered and sprinkled with fresh dill
- Roasted white onions
- Roasted delicata squash - I love this squash because of the colour of the skin, which I leave on. I drizzled with a light dressing made with pomegranate molasses before roasting.
- Roasted (see a theme here?) slices of Japanese sweet potatoes. I am not fond of the overly sugary sweet potato concoctions that are usually on offer, and don't get me started on marshmallows!
- Cranberry relish - a recipe from when I worked at the restaurant (and a relish we served with pork), consisting of four ingredients placed in a food processor, no cooking. People enjoyed that one a lot. My confession: I have never liked cranberry with turkey.
- Buttermilk and chive mashed potatoes
- Cloverleaf rolls - my first time with this recipe, and while I will make them again, I will make them day of, not a day before then reheat. I think they suffered for that. I also think I needed to let them rise more. They were ok.
I feel like I am forgetting something savoury. Ah well. That's plenty, right?
Van, Conrad, and I picked up apple and pumpkin pies from Jennifer's on Tuesday, and we had them ready for dessert. But Stephen has a gluten intolerance, and I wanted him to have dessert, too. I found a pumpkin parfait recipe, and then spruced it up (it would have been too much bland sweetness otherwise) by layering in a cranberry caramel sauce that I made.
I was pleased with the dessert for the most part, but it's another I would make closer to serving if I were to do it again.
Heath brought Champagne, and we all toasted with that. The others went with some red wine, but I decided I would open a white, a BC white, and enjoy that. Folks left by around 9:30, and I hope a good time was had. I got back into the kitchen and back to work, and with Conrad helping out, we had everything clean before 11!
Oh, sure, there's a dishwasher full of dishes to be emptied and a load of dishtowels and such in the drier from last night as well, but we'll get those done at some point! On to Christmas cards here shortly....
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