Thanksgiving 2010 Wrap Up

That's your idea of Thanksgiving dinner?!

As always it was a year of eyes writing checks tummies couldn't cash.  We split Thanksgiving with both our families, and even tried to design menus that would allow us to enjoy both meals.  Alas, it was still too much, too fast.  Even with a few hours in between feeding times, Nicole couldn't get halfway through the second dinner, while I managed a serving of dessert #2 before throwing the spoon down.

We made a good effort and we were grateful to have a lot of family around and two takes on the holiday meal.  First off at Nicole's was turkey with all the fixins.  While I won't waver from my opinions expressed in the pre-TG post, I admit the bird smelled real nice while it was roasting away.  Beyond that I got my fill mostly on the sides, with a bit of dark meat thrown in so I could say I had my requisite protein for the sitting.

Nicole made a smooth and earthy potato and celery root soup, pureed, for an appetizer at her family's get together, and we gilded the lily on this one with some truffle olive oil at the finish.  I am fundamentally opposed to truffle oil because I don't think there's such a thing in the true sense, but I will admit that if I closed my eyes and pretended, it did enhance the dish, which was already a very good start to the celebration.

For my part, I spent most of the day before the 25th breaking down ducklings for all the usable meat and a good portion of the rich fat I could get.  It was intended for a duck ragu to be served with fresh fettuccine, but I found that two 5 lb. ducklings only yielded a couple to a few pounds of meat.  After running back out for some mature duck breasts I had plenty with which to make the rich sauce.

Duck has a layer of solid, high quality fat around its lean muscle, and the two separate very cleanly and easily.  However, the fat renders very quickly and is useful for texture and flavor in the meat sauce, so most of it should be included.  I did probably throw away a few pounds of it nonetheless.  I felt like I should have saved the discarded portion and used it another time to make french fries, but I had to stick to the game plan.

With that the focal point of my family's meal, we decided we'd have a soup course first.  Roasted butternut squash soup has become almost a tradition, served with polenta croutons.  It's a beautifully simple recipe of only a handful of ingredients, the oven roasting concentrating the sweetness and flavor before being pureed smooth with homemade vegetable stock.

A soup followed by a rich pasta dish should be enough (especially after turkey, stuffing, casserole, mashes, etc.only a few hours before), but I felt leaving out some sides would make it a little austere for this occasion.  So I chose Brussels sprouts sauteed with American bacon (rather than pancetta as originally intended).  The Brussels are blanched to soften, then blackened on high heat with abundant bacon in it's rendered fat.  The salt and smokiness cut some of the richness and density of the Brussels, so I'm glad I went with it rather than unsmoked Pancetta.

Additionally I felt some kind of potato, mashed or not, was needed, so I also made mashed sweet potatoes with vanilla bean.  I roasted the potatoes whole in the oven rather than boiling (on the same principle as the squash) and then mashed them with just butter and the fresh vanilla.  The potatoes are the perfect sweetness with nothing added, the vanilla adding complexity that makes you wonder if it's dessert time while just a hint of salt rounds it out.

As I alluded to in the pre-TG post, dessert was not my department for this meal, so we stuck with the tried and true trio of pies; apple, pumpkin and super sweet pecan, which did me in.  Ginger ice cream was a new addition though (not homemade), and it offered a degree of palette refreshment and cleansing, a nice finish to the cornucopia. 

The conclusion was that even with the break between meals at each house and the break from tradition in the second sitting, it was too much.  The duck pasta would be a good choice for a Christmas meal, for instance. A simple pasta with vegetable would have done fine for Thanksgiving #2, or literally some salad with shrimp.  But then it would be just like a weeknight meal, which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place.

Recipes to follow...