Thanksgiving III: a 10kg turkey and a whole lot of other stuff...

In preparations of our Thanksgiving Dinner Garrett and I spent the entire day in his kitchen, chopping, cooking, baking while chatting, listening to music and drinking Champagne... Pretty much a perfect day in my books...

Garrett was responsible for the 10kg turkey he had bought from an organic farm in Germany the day before. To keep it moist he stuffed fresh cranberries under its skin. It worked! Personally I find turkey a bit boring and it tends to be a bit dry. But this one was amazing! We also filled it with stuffing I made inspired by a recipe I found on Epicurious (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chestnut-Prune-and-Pancetta-Stuffing-236422). The recipe uses chestnuts, prunes and pancetta. I also added some sausage meat. It was so good we couldn't stop picking it straight out of the turkey...

Garrett's 10kg Turkey

Stuffing

We couldn't quite decide what side dishes to make we had so many ideas, so we just made them all...
Gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans with fried onions, mashed potatoes, mashed butternut squash, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, kale with pinenuts...

Brussel sprouts

For the Brussels sprouts we friend onions, garlic,  bacon and parsley. The sprouts we cleaned and halved, mixed them with the onions, garlic,  bacon and parsley, put everything in oven proof dishes, poured some cream over everything and sprinkled Gruyere cheese on top. Then we baked the Brussel sprouts at 180 degrees until soft.

Sweet potato wedges

As the oven was occupied by a huge turkey we had to figure out a way to make other things without using it. So we cut the sweet potatoes in wedges and then briefly boiled them. We then fried them sprinkling brown sugar and drizzling honey on them.

Yorkshire Puddings

Finally we made Yorkshire Puddings, my favorite to go with roast dinners. And so easy to make - mix 500 ml milks with 3 eggs, 150 gr of flour and a pinch of salt. Leave to rest for half an hour. In the meantime pour a bit of oil in all the holes of a muffin tin and heat in the oven until piping hot. Pour a bit of batter into each hole of the muffin tin - not too much otherwise you'll get small, dense and uneatable puddings. Put back in the oven and don't open for 15 minutes - they should be big and fluffy and perfect.

I'm looking forward to next year's Thanksgiving! Until then I'll be cooking many a Sunday Lunch Roast!

Thanksgiving Pies II: Apple Cheddar Pie

The second pie I made for the big Thanksgiving Dinner was an Apple Cheddar Pie. The recipe again came from First Prize Pies.
Most important here is to keep the ingredients for the dough really cold and not to integrate them too much. This was quite hard to do - especially with the strips of dough to cover the pie. I had to roll the leftover pieces together a few times and eventually everything turned into a normal dough with no butter lumps left in it. Hence the crust wasn't quite as crunchy as I hoped.

 

Ice cold butter chopped into the dough so lumps remain

For the last fifteen minutes of baking I sprinkled a mild Cheddar, which I bought at The British Cheese Centre in in the Viadukt Markthalle, over the pie. The combination of the tart apples, brown sugar and salty cheese is amazing!!!

http://firstprizepies.com/

/http://markthalle.im-viadukt.ch/

/http://cheeseclub.ch/

Thanksgiving Pies I: S'mores Pie

My friend Garrett and I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner together this year. Garrett is partly American and I have family and friends that live in the US so we have both celebrated Thanksgiving many times before. Yet I'm still no expert and consulted a few friends before deciding what to cook.
I volunteered to make the pies (first time in my life) and asked my friend Allison of First Prize Pies for a couple of recipes. I made S'mores Pie and Apple Cheddar Pie and discovered that it is bloody hard to make a good pie!

The S'mores Pie was particularly difficult - it took forever to make the Graham Crackers for the crust and my chocolate filling was a strange consistency - maybe 'heavy cream' isn't quite the same thing in English and in German.

Making the Graham Crackers 

Runny, bubbly chocolate filling...

After trying and failing to make the marshmallows twice - maybe because it was impossible to find corn sirup in any shop in Zurich and none of the replacements I came up with worked - I began improvising: The chocolate filling didn't taste very chocolatey so I added chocolate chunks for cakes, which I found in my cupboard:

 

Instead of marshmallow I decided to make meringue. I spread it onto the pie, torched it with my new blow torch (hours of fun - wow, I'm such a geek!) and baked it briefly:

 

I really had little luck with the S'mores Pie. I decided to add some toasted Marshmallows on top of the pie (I admit, I was looking for an excuse to use my blow torch again), only to discover that they are highly flammable.

 

It took me fifteen minutes to put seven toasted but unburnt marshmallows on the pie. When I was finally done I walked out of the kitchen holding the pie proudly only to trip and send the whole thing flying down the corridor and splat onto the floor!

I'm happy to say that despite all hurdles and floor dirt the pie was gobbled up with great gusto in no time!

Check out First Prize Pies! http://firstprizepies.com/