Thanksgiving dinner—a memo for next year

I hope that those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a wonderful time last Thursday—we certainly did. My parents were visiting from France, and we prepared our first ever traditional Thanksgiving dinner together. We usually jump on the occasion of a 4-day weekend to travel around the US, but staying home with family and cooking all day was actually quite enjoyable (as always!).

We prepared no fewer than 8 dishes from scratch, using recipes we had never tried before, with lots of unfamiliar ingredients and techniques. Quite a challenge... But everything turned out great. Before I forget, let me write down what we cooked. This will come in handy a year from now... Or sooner...

We started with dessert, using this butternut squash pie recipe from High Ground Organics farm, but with orange kabocha squash, heavy whipping cream, and this pie crust. I had roasted the squash and taken a ball of pie dough out of the freezer the night before, and was ready to go in the morning.

Before lunch I had also made corn bread, half of which got used in the stuffing, and the other half served with the appetizer.

I used the Southern Corn Bread recipe from Joy of Cooking (75th anniversary edition, page 632). It was really fun to see the batter start cooking as soon as I poured it in the hot pyrex dish. It smelled delicious too!

The stuffing recipe also came from Joy of Cooking: Bread Stuffing with Giblets (page 534). I replaced the chopped nuts with a jar of chestnuts, cut in 2–3 pieces each, and chose the "sausage meat" option (using mild Italian sausage). We followed Alton Brown's advice and didn't actually stuff the turkey, but baked the stuffing (or is it dressing in that case?) separately.

Alton Brown also provided the secrets to a delicious turkey roast. We brined a 13-lbs all-natural, free range turkey (from Diestel Ranch) in our biggest cooler for 24 hours (after thawing it for about a day in the fridge), then roasted it for about 2.5 hours.

We replaced allspice berries with cinnamon and nutmeg in the brine (just because we didn't have any allspice).

My friend Susyn had sent me her cranberry relish and candied yam recipes, which her mother and grandmother had passed on to her. I felt very honored to be given such treasures. 

The relish was simply a raw mix of cranberries and navel oranges, with a little bit of brown sugar. It was amazingly refreshing.

The yams were boiled then sliced and covered with a sauce made of caramelized navel orange zest, juice, and brown sugar.

Susyn had said "yams, not sweet potatoes," but I couldn't resist the temptation to try different types of yams. From left to right in the upper left corner picture: Japanese yam, Hannah yam, Jewel yam, and Garnet yam. (In the lower right corner picture: Hannah, Jewel, Garnet, Japanese.) I believe that Garnet yam is the most traditional one. 

The last side dish was Brussels sprouts. We found our inspiration in Jerry James Stone's recipe on KQED's Bay Area Bites. Instead of baking the tiny cabbages on skewers, we simply steamed them in a pressure cooker for a few minutes, then sautéed them in a pan with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and pine nuts, and added freshly grated parmesan cheese at the last minute.

The appetizer was a radicchio salad with pecan nuts and a honey vinaigrette dressing. This was Pierre's invention, and a very fresh and light start to a copious dinner. 

There was one bit of Frenchness in this meal... Did you see the wine bottle? It was a 1999 Gevrey-Chambertin (from Côte d'Or, near Burgundy), which we had bought at the château several years ago, during a vacation there with my parents. There wasn't a better occasion than this family reunion in our country of adoption to open this little gem.

I accidentally made my best crepes ever

It was last weekend, a few days after la Chandeleur, the French "crepe day." I had made the batter around 4pm on Saturday, thinking that we would have the crepes for dinner that evening. Since the batter needs a couple hours of rest at room temperature, I left it on the kitchen counter while we visited our new friends, a family we met through preschool. But kids and parents alike had such a good time that we decided to end the day at the restaurant all together. I figured that the crepes could wait another day. On the way back from dinner, I put the bowl of batter in the fridge until Sunday's lunch. And what a lunch we had!

Making crepes is a bit like making jam, as far as I'm concerned: as simple as the recipe might be, something always goes wrong, and I never know what it is. Crepes end up being too thick, jam overcooks... It's an art much more than it is a science. Successes always seem like miracles. 

On Saturday, although I always prepare the batter with a wooden spoon and a manual whisk (and a fair amount of elbow grease), I decided to try using my shiny but seldom used stand mixer for a change. I weighed the flour into the mixing bowl, pushed the flour to the sides and added the beaten eggs in the center, then mixed a bit with a wooden spoon (see, I can't help it), letting the flour fall in little by little. I added the milk, oil, and salt. Then off to the mixer, on slow rotation, with the wire whip attachment (rather than the flat beater). After a minute or two, the batter was homogeneous. I then slowly poured in a bottle of beer and let the mixer do its magic for another couple of minutes. I covered the bowl of batter with a sheet of paper towel and let it stand at room temperature for roughly 5 hours, then in the fridge for another 15 hours or so. Did the extra night of fermentation do the trick? Was the mechanical whisking more efficient than the manual? Did I use more liquid than usual? Was it wiser to use a paper towel than a kitchen cloth? I don't really know.

When I took the bowl out of the fridge, the batter was quite liquid—something my cookbook said I didn't want. But the crepes ended up being perfect : thin and fluffy. They reminded me of the marvelous crepes I devoured in Brittany as a kid. (Brittany is where crepes originated. Bretons make their crepes very thin, almost like dentelle (lace), another of their renowned specialties.) But they also had that subtle fermented taste of South-Indian dosas (which are made of fermented rice and lentil flour). A great combination.

After a few savory crepes filled with French ham, mushrooms (sautéed in butter) and grated Emmentaler, I spread another one with redcurrant jelly, which I just happened to find in a gourmet store. This long forgotten taste brought me right back to my grandmother's house. She had several bushes of redcurrants in her backyard, and we would help her harvest les groseilles every year. She would make the most delicious jelly, in a giant copper pan (bassine a confiture), and covered each jar with a paper soaked in paraffin wax for better preservation, so we could enjoy the jelly all year round.

What a pleasure to accidentally make crepes that would remind me of such fond memories.

For 12 large crepes, 2 hours to 1 day in advance:

• 250 grams flour 
• 3 whole eggs, beaten
• 1/4 liter whole milk
• 3 tablespoons sunflower oil
• 2 or 3 pinches (about 1/2 teaspoon) salt
• 11.2 oz (one bottle, about 1/3 liter) Kronenbourg 1664 beer, a pale lager from Alsace, or any other mild-tasting beer

1. Mix all the ingredients slowly, in the order of the above list, until obtaining a smooth and runny (but not totally liquid) batter. 
2. Let the batter rest at room temperature for at least 2 hours, covered with a paper or kitchen towel, then optionally in the fridge for up to a day.
3. Heat up a large flat non-stick pan (ideally a crepe pan, but a frying pan does the job too) on medium-high heat. 
4. Carefully wipe the whole pan with a paper towel on which you have poured a little bit of high-heat resistant oil, such as sunflower oil.
5. Once the pan is hot, pour one laddle of batter in the center of the pan and quickly tilt the pan in a circular motion to cover the whole pan with batter. (The first crepe never looks good...)
6. When the edges of the crepe start lifting up or change color (it should take a minute or less), flip the crepe with a long spatula. Cook the second side for another 20 seconds to one minute.
7. Stack the crepes on a plate, or eat them as soon as they are ready.

I gave some filling ideas in this earlier post.