Thanksgiving Dinner

I made Thanksgiving for myself this year.   Not the first time.  Probably won't be the last.  I don't mind at all. I love cooking.  It's a relaxing day for me.  No pressure.  No worries.

So even though I'm alone, I still put on the full Thanksgiving spread.  Just a little pared down.  Here's my recipes for dinner.

Cranberry sauce

12 oz. fresh cranberries
1 cup orange juice
1/2-3/4 cup white sugar

Put all in a pan and heat to a rolling boil.  Reduce heat to a simmer and simmer until sauce thickens a bit.  Take off the heat, allow to cool and put in a serving dish.  Can be made ahead and chilled.

Sweet Potato Casserole

My favorite part of the meal.

3 whole sweet potatoes, peeled and boiled until soft
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup orange juice
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup white or brown sugar (optional)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Whip all with a beater.  Put in a casserole pan.  Cover with topping.  Bake at 350 degrees F for approximately 30 minutes or until thoroughly heated.

Pecan topping
3 tablespoons butter, melted in microwave
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup pecans
2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Mix sugar, flour and nuts with butter in a bowl and sprinkle over sweet potatoes.

Stuffing
I do not stuff my bird with stuffing while it roasts.  I make it separately and have never bothered to stuff the bird with it.  I serve it on the side.  I always use Pepperidge Farm sage stuffing and follow the directions on the package except that I also add one can of diced water chestnuts.  Mmmm.  That's good eating right there.

Turkey
I brine the turkey for approximately 24 hours.
Brine solution:
14-16 lb. turkey
1-2 gallons of water (whatever it takes to cover the bird)
1 cup salt
2 oranges, quartered
2 lemons, quartered
3 sprigs rosemary
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
handful of black pepper corns

To roast the turkey, I've been using Bobby Flay's Roasted Turkey Rubbed with Roasted Jalapeno-Sage-Orange Butter

2 cups orange juice
Zest of one orange, grated
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
3 jalapenos, roasted, peeled, seeded
1/4 cup fresh sage (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
Salt and pepper
and, of course, the turkey

Put the orange juice in a nonreactive pan and bring to a boil over high heat.   Reduce to about 1/2 cup.  Let cool to room temp.  Put the butter, cooled orange syrup, orange zest, japaleno and sage in a food processor and whip until smooth.  Scrape into a bowl.  Make this a day in advance and store it in the fridge.  Bring to room temp before using.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.  Remove the innards from the turkey and set aside.  Rinse the bird with cold water and pat dry. Rub the surface of the turkey with 1/2 of the butter.  Season the skin and the cavity liberally with salt and pepper.  Truss the turkey, put in a roasting bag, and place on a rack in a large roasting pan.

Roast the turkey for 30 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 375 degrees and continue to roast for 1.5 hours or until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F.  I usually buy a bird with a pop-up thermometer, so I use that as my signal that it's done.  Brush the remaining butter on the bird every 15 minutes.  Remove the turkey from the oven and let rest for 20 minutes before carving.  I generally watch the bird pretty closely and loosely cover the top of the bird if it is getting over browned.

I usually carve in an unceremonious manner.  First I remove the legs and thighs, then I remove both the breasts and pull off the wings.  I slice one of the breasts in thick slices and leave the remaining pieces whole.  I usually go for a thigh.  I like the dark meat.  No pun intended.

After dinner, I go back and start picking the carcass clean and put on a stock pot, dump in the carcass, some celery and carrots and usually a yellow onion, quartered, cover with water, and make some stock.  The stock comes in handy for the leftovers.

Broccoli Casserole

1 large head of broccoli (approximately 5 stems)
1 cup mayo
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/4 small onion, grated
2 eggs, beaten
Durkee French Fried Onions
1 cup grated cheddar cheese (optional)

Prepare the broccoli. Place broccoli in an oven- and microwave-safe bowl with approx. 2 tablespoons of water and microwave on high for 7-10 minutes.  Remove from microwave.  In a bowl, beat 2 whole eggs.  Add mayo, mushroom soup, cheese and onion to the eggs.  Spoon liquid mixture over broccoli and cover with dried onions.  I skip the cheese because I'm lactose intolerant, but it is very good in the dish.  Bake at 350 degrees F for approximately 50 minutes.

And there you have it.  My Thanksgiving dinner in a single post.   I wish you all the best Thanksgiving you can possible have.   Maybe one day, we'll enjoy Thanksgiving dinner together.

Spoonbread

Ahem.  I know.  I have neglected this blog in the worst way.  But really, I have an excuse.  I moved.  I got a new job.  I moved.  If I survive this year, it will be a miracle.

But now back to the point of this post.  Spoonbread.  What the heck is spoonbread.  Before I sallied up to the booth and had a sample this evening, I didn't know either.  It's not quite a sweet bread.  It's not savory either.  It's rather a bit like Yorkshire pudding.  Interesting, a bit weird.  Worth a try anyway.

3 cups whole milk
1 cup plain cornmeal
1 T baking powder
3 large eggs
4 T butter
1 t salt

Scald the milk, stir in cornmeal, and bring JUST to a boil, making mush.  Remove from heat; stir in butter until melted.  Allow to cool.

Beat eggs to a froth with salt and baking powder.  Add to cornmeal mixture.  Beat with a hand mixer for 2-4 minutes.  Pour into a pre-heated, buttered baking dish.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes or until nicely browned.

"Best when served immediately with butter, honey or sorghum on top."

For those of you who have never had sorghum, it's like molasses on steroids.  I can't imagine eating it drizzled on top of anything.  Wow. Bittersweet sticky stuff.

Venison roast and cheesy polenta

I'm the first to be straight up with you.  I'm not a fan of salt.  Sure, I'll shake a little on popcorn.  Maybe on fried chicken.  But that's about it.  Salt started getting a bad rap about the time I was in junior high school, and my junior high school answer to bad health news was to stop using salt altogether.  It has literally been decades since I was a regular salt user. Before I became interested in cooking, my salt shaker would gather dust on the shelf.  I think I carried the same one-pound Morton salt container through four different moves.

Saffron rice

Sorry I haven't been posting.  Believe it or not, I've been eating out of my freezer for weeks now due to high work demands.  Oh well, clearing out the old so I have room for the new.  Bek and Matt let me partner with them and a few other families on a chicken ranching endeavor.  Last Saturday we harvested our crop!  I promise I will post on that soon, but for now I'd like to tell you about the first dish I made with one of our chickens.


It was a six-pound chicken, by the way.  That's a lot of chicken.  I deboned the breasts and they weighed a pound each!  That's three meals worth of meat from just one breast!  Owing to the large size of this chicken, I only used half the chicken (and the wing I mostly fed to Scout).  But the rest of this wonderful, savory dish is mine.  All mine I tell ya.

Saffron chicken and rice.

It is golden and delicious. Sweet with a subtle flavor that reminds you of something that you can't quite put your finger on.  I came upon this recipe recently and remembered that I had some saffron in my spice cabinet.  Yes, it was several years old, but maybe it would still do the trick.  (Spoiler alert:  use your saffron in a timely manner.  What are you waiting on?  You paid a fortune for it, use it while it's still fresh!)

So with chicken and saffron in hand, I embarked.

I'm not going to repost the chicken recipe, since I followed the recipe for Saffron Chicken from Kalyn's Kitchen nearly exactly.  Except that I used a cup and a half of chicken broth and allowed it to reduce for added flavor.

For the saffron rice, I would have liked a long-grain rice like jasmine, but I only had botan.  So botan is was.  It is really very simple.

Put a half cup of water in the microwave and heat to boiling.  Remove it from the microwave and add about 1/8 teaspoon of saffron threads.  I used Spanish saffron but you can also use Indian saffron.  I steeped the saffron in the boiling water for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, I put a teaspoon of butter in a pan on the stove to melt.  When melted, I added a cup and a half of rice.  Ok, so I didn't wait until the butter had melted.  Sue me.  In any event, it was on high and as soon as the butter melted, I stirred the rice around and coated every piece in lovely butter molecules of tastiness.

I went back to the microwave and heated to boiling one and a half cups of water with one vegetable bullion cube.  (You could also just use vegetable or chicken broth.) When that was boiling, I added the vegetable broth and the steeped saffron water to the rice.  It began to boil immediately.  I stirred the dish once well, covered it and set the flame to low.  I set the timer for 20 minutes.  Twenty minutes later, I had lovely saffron rice from heaven.  Finally, I thawed some frozen peas (thawed, not cooked!) and added them to the finished rice as a kind of quickie pilaf.

Serve with the chicken, onions, and fresh parsley and you have a dish sure to make any man swoon.  I promise a picture tomorrow.  I meant to take a picture, but I couldn't stop eating my dinner long enough to focus.  :-)

Ho hum Vegetable Lasagna and Kick Ass Eggplant Dip

I made a Weight Watchers recipe of roasted vegetable lasagna for New Year's Day at Bek's.  Spoiler alert:  I'm not impressed.