Thanksgiving Spread

This year, my husband and I hosted Thanksgiving for his side of the family. It was a delicious good time. The fellas did all the cooking, and I just kicked back and enjoyed myself. Not only was everything amazing, it was also all gluten-free. Here's what my husband made:

• Chicken Liver Pate
• Turkey
• Cornbread Stuffing
• Baked Whole Sweet Potatoes
• Broccoli
• Squash Pies
• Poached Pears

Chicken Liver Pate

This pate. It is amazing. You should try it. My husband prepared it the day before and put it in the fridge until go time.

The Turkey

In my husband's own words:

Brining or salting is the trick. Brining plumps the meat, but salting gives more intense turkey flavor. Both make for moist meat. I brined this year, but salting is also great.

I bought the turkey from a local farm, so it was fresh, never frozen. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a frozen turkey, but I endeavored to use mostly local ingredients.

24 hours before cooking, I submersed it in brine. I used a 4% salt brine. I boiled fennel, Sichuan peppercorn, and black peppercorn in a small amount of water to add a little flavor to the brine. Truth be told, the flavor proteins can't penetrate the meat, so the spices don't do a lot. Plain saltwater would be fine. Keep the turkey and brine cold. I kept it outside and added more ice and salt occasionally.

An hour before cooking, I pulled the turkey out, patted it dry, and trussed it. I then roasted it without stuffing at 350F. It took around 13 minutes per pound. I think it's best to pull it out around 155-160F at the center. The USDA recommends 165F, but really, 12 minutes at 150F is enough time to drive salmonella down to undetectable levels. This year's turkey hit 165, but that was an accident because I wasn't watching the time.

The same technique works well with any poultry, but you can cut down the brining times for smaller birds. A hour or two is enough to make a delicious duck or chicken.

Ingredients

• Turkey, 1.5 lbs * number of guests (we had a ~20lb bird)
• Salt
• Water
• Whatever spices you like, e.g. fennel and Sichuan peppercorns

Preparation: 1 day advanced prep + 13min per pound day-of (~4.5 hours for 20lb bird)

Advanced Prep

Submerge the turkey in a giant vat of 4% by weight salt brine and store in a chilly place. Boil the spices in a small amount of water, and add it to the brine. Brine for a day or two.

Final Prep

Pat dry and truss. Roast at 350F for ~13min per pound. Aim for an internal temperature of 155-160F. Carve and enjoy.

Cornbread Stuffing

Ingredients

• 5lb Duck
• Wild rice
• Chicken broth
• 3 bulbs Celery root
• Cornbread, Southern style
• 8 tsp duck fat
• 2 cups corn meal, stone ground
• 4 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2/3 cup boiling water
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 5 small Onions
• 1/2 lb Shiitake mushrooms, fresh
• Rubbed sage
• Salt

Preparation: 1-2 days advanced prep + 2 hours day-of

Advanced Prep

Brine the duck in 4% by weight salt water for ~1hr. Roast at 350F until cooked (150-160F internal temperature). Save the fat and drippings. Allow the fat to cool and separate. Carve the duck and shred the meat for use in the stuffing. Save the carcass for broth.

Use the Cook's Illlustrated baking book's Southern style corn bread. Make a double recipe. Since we had duck fat, we used that instead of bacon drippings. Grease a 10 inch skillet with duck fat, warm in oven at 450F. Mix 2/3 of the cornmeal with all the sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix the remaining 1/3 cornmeal with the boiling water, and stir to make a "stiff mush". Gradually whisk in buttermilk, eggs, and -- when oven and skillet are hot -- the dry mix until "just moistened". Stir in the molten duck fat from the skillet into the mixture, then pour the whole thing back in the skillet. Bake until golden brown, ~20min. Pop it out onto a wire rack and let it sit and dry out overnight.

Cook the wild rice in chicken broth until tender. If you're very patient and planned ahead, boil the carcass down into duck broth and use that instead of store-bought broth.

Cut the celery root into small cubes and slowly fry them on low in the duck fat. They should be tender and golden when done.

Final Prep

By this point, it should be ~24 hours later, and you should have the following ingredients:

• 1 1/2 quarts wild rice cooked in chicken broth (cooked volume)
• 1 1/2 quarts cooked diced celery root (cooked volume)
• 1 10" skillet of southern style corn bread, let stale overnight and chopped small
• 5 small fried chopped onions
• Meat of 3/4 of a roasted duck, chopped small (we ate some of the duck)
• 1/2 lb of shiitake caps, chopped and fried
• rubbed sage and salt to taste

Chop up the onions and shiitake mushrooms into small pieces, roughly the size of a fingernail, and fry them in duck fat. This can also be done in advance, but it's fairly quick to do day-of.

Chop the cornbread into small cubes.

Mix up everything except the corn bread, and heat it on the stove until steaming hot. Don't let it stick or burn. Add the cornbread, and stir it up. Throw it in the oven in a casserole and let it bake for a while.

This produces an exceptionally moist and flavorful gluten-free stuffing.

Baked Whole Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

• Sweet potatoes

Preparation: ~1-2 hours

Trim off the bad bits of the sweet potatoes. Wrap in aluminum foil. Bake at 325F until soft, about 1-2 hours. Overcooking them doesn't matter very much -- they just caramelize more.

Broccoli

Ingredients

• Broccoli
• Salt

Preparation: ~30 minutes

Chop the broccoli into bite-size pieces. Stir fry in hot oil until tender. Salt to taste.

Squash Pies

My husband used the Joy of Cooking pumpkin (or squash) pie recipe. He used red kuri squash, and eyeballed the spices, but the JoC recipe is solid even without these modifications.

Ingredients

• 2 cups cooked squash
• 1 1/2 cups cream
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp cloves
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 pie crust of your choice (husband made a gluten free crust this year)

Preparation: ~90min

Mix all ingredients (except the pie crust) until blended smooth. Pour into the pie shell. Bake at 425F for 15 minutes, then reduce to 350F for 45 minutes.

Poached Pears

These poached pears. Good lord, they are delicious. The poaching liquid indicated in the recipe is good for many more pears than the recipe indicates. My husband did 8 pears in that volume of liquid, and could have done more. He also used a more acidic wine base, which helps keep the pears from oxidizing and turning funny colors. No need to increase the amount of sugar in the recipe though. My husband prepared it the day before and put it in the fridge until go time.

Pressure Cooker Beef

A while ago, my husband and I bought an entire cow. We shared half of it with our friends, and kept the other half for ourselves. We've eaten a lot of the easy, choice bits -- the ribeyes, the tenderloins, the various roasts and stew meats -- and now we have a giant pile of shins, shanks, and short ribs.

Yesterday, I took advantage of working from home to pull out a pair of shin bones (with meat) and a package of short ribs. I doused them liberally with soy sauce and cooking rice wine, and added just a splash of vinegar. Then I forgot about it for the afternoon.

When my husband came home, I tossed the lot into a pressure cooker, added water until the meat was just barely covered, and put it on the stove. Once it got up to pressure, we let it cook for about 30 minutes. It took another 10-15 minutes to depressurize afterward. While we waited, the husband made rice in the rice cooker, and stir fried some Chinese watercress with soy sauce.

The total time between application of heat and shoving food into face was about 50 minutes, so not exactly a quick meal, but it was pretty darn simple.

Ingredients:

• a pile of tough beef that would take forever to cook until tender
• a liberal dose of soy sauce
• a liberal dose of cooking rice wine
• a splash of black rice vinegar
• ginger slices to taste
• salt to taste

Preparation (5 minutes):

• Put beef in a large bowl or leak-proof ziplock.
• Pour in all your liquid marinade stuff (soy, wine, vinegar).
• Let it sit for as long as you want, as long as it's more or less defrosted at cooking time.

Cooking (45-50 minutes):

• Toss your marinated beef, plus the marinade, into a pressure cooker.
• Add water until beef is just submerged.
• CAREFULLY lock the pressure cooker lid and make sure it is secure.
• Cook on high until at pressure.
• Simmer at high enough heat to just maintain pressure. The vent should hiss sporadically.
• Let it go for 30 minutes.
• Turn off the heat, remove from stove, and let the pot cool. 
• CAREFULLY depressurize and remove pot lid.
• Serve.

We use Fagor's 8-quart pressure cooker, which has an awesome lid with built-in vent, and a knob that can switch from atmospheric pressure to low or high pressures (both are above atmospheric pressure). For the above recipe, I cooked the beef on the high pressure setting. To bring the pot back down to atmospheric pressure, we wait until the vent stops hissing, then turn the pressure knob down to the next setting. Repeat until the pot can be safely opened.