Thanksgiving menus

Neighbors are joining us for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, which also happens to be my husband's birthday.  That means he gets to choose the menu and no static of any kind from me.  He's going to try an oyster-bread-cornbread stuffing this year, while reprising a number of brined-turkey and brussels-sprouts dishes that he likes, and probably a wonderful little seafood-in-bordellaise thing in puff pastries.

He doesn't care about cranberry relish, but I decided to think of the others.  My own favorite recipe has a lot of peppers and grapefruit chunks and jicama and nuts and sambal oelek and Chinese five-spice; unfortunately no one but me much likes it, though I can eat it with every meal for a week.  Instead I tried an Anthony Bourdain uncooked relish that's simply raw cranberries and an orange pulsed in a food processor, with sugar added to taste. Three ingredients, no cooking. five minutes, delicious. I'm sold.


I was also planning a Caesar salad until I found that the grocery store has combed its shelves and removed every trace of Romaine, answering the frantic call of the CDC this week.  I was prepared to buy up a lot of Romaine packages marked with skulls-and-crossbones and 90%-off stickers, but the store chain's managers weren't born yesterday: cheaper to put the product on a bonfire than contend with lawsuits in the face of an unambiguous (indeed hysterical) recall notice.  We switched on the fly to an old favorite with spinach leaves, oranges, green olives, and candied toasted pecans.

We've been lazy this fall and haven't put in our usual winter greens crops.  Time to get moving on that, before the CDC loses its mind completely.

7 comments:

Grim said...

I am roasting a bacon-wrapped, buttered duck. There will also be side dishes.

E Hines said...

Hamburger-centric burritos. I've already set the hamburger for the next several days.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

ooooo! Duck! I love duck. That's a good idea for Christmas dinner.

Grim said...

The duck came out well. I mixed salt and smoked paprika into the butter, painted it, wrapped it in bacon, and then painted the bacon as well. I think I would have liked it better if I'd cooked it at a lower temperature for longer, though. Maybe 180 overnight, instead of 375 for 2.5 hours.

Texan99 said...

Was it a domestic duck? They're so fatty that you can almost treat them like a steak. The wild ones are a little trickier. I do love a nice Muscovy duck. Even the breast meat is good.

We had a lot of sides, and neighbors brought even more, so now my fridge is groaning with leftovers. I'm passionately fond of turkey tetrazzini and turkey soup.

Grim said...

It was domestic. You're right that it was quite fatty naturally, and probably didn't need the exotic preparation. But Thanksgiving is a feast, after all.

What was left of it was turned into a kind of Brunswick stew, along with some ground chuck, beans, corn, and so forth. That went over at least as well as the duck itself had done.

Texan99 said...

Here the leftovers, for me at least, are all about the tetrazzini.