We're again going up to see friends for Thanksgiving, who live about a half hour away. They're cooking the turkey and mashed potatoes and one cranberry sauce; we're cooking everything else and bringing the wine.
The real art of the whole enterprise of domestic economy is kitchen management. This gets, I believe, to the heart of the successful big holiday dinner. Having the kitchen organized, getting your ingredients prepped in the right order, rotating things in the oven, and timing everything to come out at just the right time, that is so much more important than mere recipes. I wish I had a magic bullet to make this all work, but I believe a lot of this is just intuition garnered from experience. (Oh, like the time we had our dishwasher break and the sink clog up halfway through the cooking in a galley kitchen. We ended up eating the pie for dinner and the turkey for dessert.)
That said, for something as complicated as Thanksgiving -- especially when we have to do much of the prep work "offsite", as it were, before dinner -- some planning is in order. I don't necessarily go so far as a schedule per se, but I do write down what we need to do in the order that it needs doing, because it sure helps you avoid forgetting things.
So, bearing in mind that we're splitting our part of the cooking into two halves -- before we leave to go to our Thanksgiving house, and after we get there (but before dinner, and certainly before the bourbon and wine have had a chance to kick in) -- here is our part of the menu and the approximate schedule, with notes. I write it here because I have to write it somewhere!!
Wednesday afternoon:
Bake sweet potatoes. Spice with a little salt and pepper, and just a touch of nutmeg. Cover and store in fridge.
Bake the pumpkin for the fresh pumpkin meat for the pumpkin pie, strain and puree and reserve in the fridge for tomorrow. (Start as soon after the sweet potatoes are done as is practicable, or do at the same time.)
Wednesday evening:
Make the braised cabbage and put in the fridge.
Make the traditional cranberry sauce and refrigerate.
Make the three pie crusts.
Make the cranberry-apricot pie (our own recipe to follow in a separate post).
Thursday morning:
Bake the Bourbonated Pecan Pie (requires 450 oven). (our recipe follows in a separate post).
Prep the green beans with leeks and dill as follows:
- french cut, then blanche the green beans and store in an airtight container.
- dice the dill and store in another container.
- slice the leeks and store in another container.
Bake the Pumpkin pie.
Thursday afternoon just before leaving:
Prep salad:
- clean and tear salad leaves (butter, escarole, red leaf) and pre-mix leaves, and bag them
- make champagne vinaigrette
Prep acorn squash with bacon:
- cut squashes into halves and clean (cut away bottom to make lie flat)
- put in one 1/2 T pat of butter into each squash, diced half slice of bacon, 1 T brown sugar
- cover with aluminum foil
Pack into car:
- whipping cream
- three pies
- cranberry sauce
- sweet potatoes
- braised cabbage
- green bean dish ingredients (beans, leeks, dill)
- salad ingredients (lettuce, dressing, pine nuts, goat cheese)
- glass baking dish with acorn squash
- wine
- extra pie serving utensils
- wife, kids, etc.
Immediately upon arrival (one hour prior to dinner):
- put into the oven with the turkey the acorn squash
- open wine and start drinking it
20 minutes before dinner:
- put braised cabbage into dutch oven on stovetop and warm on medium-low heat
10 minutes before dinner:
- put sweet potatoes into oven or microwave, as available
- combine salad ingredients onto salad plates
- in a hot skillet and 1 T EVO, cook leeks and dill together, add S&P
- toss in green beans, stir until warm
5 minutes before dinner:
- remove acorn squashes
After dinner:
- whip up whipping cream
So, that's the plan. Enjoy it now, because, as they say, the instant the cooking starts, the plan gets thrown out the door.
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