Thanksgiving countdown

Thanksgiving is 5 days away. I find that the only way to survive the marathon cook fest and entertaining while working full-time, and without accumulating any extra strands of grey hair, is to plan plan plan. If I make lists and prep ahead of time, then come Thursday, I can actually enjoy my time in the kitchen.

MENU
First on the to-do list—menu planning. Finalising a menu for Thanksgiving is fairly easy since the centrepiece is usually always a turkey or a roast of some sort. The trick is to choose side dishes that are standards in your repertoire and are easy to pull off, along with one or two surprising dishes that allow you to flex your culinary muscles and truly wow your dinner guests.

Here is my menu for Thursday:

First course: 

Roasted Beets and Goat Cheese on Buttered Brioche

Main course:

Spice-and-Buttermilk-brined Roast Turkey
Gravy
Moulded Cranberry Sauce
Sage Sausage, Cranberry, and Pine nut Stuffing
Creamy Mashed Potatoes
Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta 
Green Beans with Almonds and Champagne-Mustard Glaze 

Dessert:

Caramel Apple Pie 
Maple Pear Upside-Down Cake 

CHECKLIST
With a finite amount on time on hand, I always make a day-by-day checklist divided into things to buy and things to make/ to do. I usually have one big shopping excursion on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, where I procure most of my ingredients. But I save some things like flowers for the table and deli meats for hors d’oeuvres till the day before Thanksgiving, for optimum freshness.

I also itemise all my prep-work in the checklist, and divide the work as evenly as possible over 3-4 days. If you’re lucky enough to have two ovens, then you can multi-task more easily on d-day. But if you’re like me and have to juggle all the dishes on one stovetop and oven, then it is essential to make a lot of things ahead of time and refrigerate them till ready to use—like making the cranberry sauce and the dough for pie crusts, blanching green beans, toasting nuts, rendering bacon and pancetta, etc.

One year I tried to heroically bake the dessert early on Thanksgiving morning. But I ended-up delaying the whole day so much that the turkey didn’t get to the table till well after sundown. I’ve learnt my lesson now, and will finish baking both my dessert items on Thanksgiving-eve.

So, come Thursday, if all my pre-planning yields me a spare 30 mins or so, I’ll enjoy every one of those spare moments lingering over an early glass of bubbly!

Red Chard with Tomatoes and Blackened Chillis

We’ve had our first snow fall in New York already, even though it is still October! This means that the farmer’s market will soon be devoid of all fresh leafy produce. So as a last hurrah to the vestiges of warm weather, I cooked-up two bunches of glorious red-tinged chard, accented with beefy steak tomatoes and smoky blackened chillis. Until April . . . .

Ingredients
1 tbsp Vegetable Oil
6–8 whole Dried Red Chillis
2 tbsp Olive Oil
6 cloves Garlic, finely minced
2 lbs [1 kgs] Red Chard, washed and cut into 2-inch strips, including stalks
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
Salt (to taste)
1 tsp freshly ground Black Pepper

1. Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet or frying pan over high heat. When the oil is smoking, add chillis and sauté briskly for 1 min until they are blackened. Remove chillis to a small bowl. When they are cool to touch, using your hands, crush the whole chillis roughly into small pieces and set aside. 
2. Add olive oil to same pan and heat. Add garlic and stir for 1 min until lightly golden. Add chard in batches and stir briskly until the leaves are wilted. Add tomatoes, salt, and pepper, lower heat, and continue cooking till the tomatoes have softened, about 5 mins. Turn off heat. 
3. Sprinkle with crushed chillis and stir gently. Let the flavours steep for 15 mins before serving.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Rosemary and Pine nuts

Here is another quick roasted side dish recipe that is the same simple technique as my roasted brussels sprouts, eggplant and root vegetables. Like all those recipes, this is very easy to tweak and update with different aromatics—I came up with the garlic and rosemary combination at the spur-of-the-moment for Christmas dinner last week and refined it further tonight by adding the musky crunch of toasted pine nuts.

Ingredients 

¼ cup Pine nuts
3 lbs [1½ kg] Sweet Potatoes (peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes)
4 cloves Garlic (finely minced)
Sea Salt (to taste)
1 tsp freshly ground Black Pepper
1½ tbsp fresh Rosemary (finely chopped)
4 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1. In a large skillet or frying pan, toast pine nuts over medium heat until lightly golden. Remove to a bowl and set aside.
2. Pre-heat oven to 450º F (230ºC).
3. Put sweet potatoes on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle with garlic, sea salt, black pepper and rosemary, drizzle with olive oil, and using your hands, toss well to mix.
4. Roast in the oven for 30 mins, then stir the sweet potatoes with a large spoon to ensure that they caramelise evenly. Continue roasting for another 15 mins.
5. Remove sweet potatoes from oven, add pine nuts and toss gently. Sserve immediately.

Green Beans with Almonds and Champagne-Mustard Glaze

Like the roasted brussels sprouts recipe that I posted yesterday, this is another low-hassle side dish recipe that is a great accompaniment to elaborate meals. The best part of this recipe is that you can serve it fresh and warm straight from the stovetop, or make it ahead of time and put out as a cold salad.

Ingredients 

2 lbs [1 kg] fresh Green Beans (trimmed)
4 tbsp Butter
2-3 cloves Garlic, finely chopped
4 tbsp English mustard (like Colman’s), or Dijon mustard
1 tsp Thyme (finely chopped)
Salt (to taste)
1 tsp freshly ground Black pepper
2 tsp freshly squeezed Lemon Juice
½ cup Champagne, or dry White Wine
1/3 cup slivered almonds (lightly toasted)

1. Cook the green beans in a large pot of boiling water for 5-6 mins until just crisp-tender. Drain the beans and transfer them to a large bowl of ice water, to cool them completely and to retain the vibrant, green colour. Drain the beans well. You can prepare the beans up this point a day ahead and store in the fridge.
2. Melt the butter in a large skillet or frying pan over high heat. Add garlic and cook for 2 mins, then whisk in the mustard, thyme, salt and pepper and let sizzle for 2-3 mins. Deglaze the pan with lemon juice and champagne and let bubble briskly for 3-4 mins until the alcohol has evaporated and the liquid has reduced in half.
3. Add green beans and toss well until heated through, about 5 mins. Sprinkle with almonds and mix well. Transfer to a serving dish and serve warm, or let cool and serve as a cold salad.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta

In preparation for big, year-end dinners, I thought I’d share a few of my favourite and trusted side dishes. This brussels sprouts recipe plays a steady role in my fall-winter roasting repertoire and is a star player in my Thanksgiving line-call. It’s less a recipe per se and more a technique that you can doctor with any combination of your favourite herbs and savoury meats (bacon, sausage, ham). In this variation, the salty and crunchy bite of the pancetta enhances the sweet muskiness of the golden, caramelised sprouts beautifully.

Ingredients 

4 oz [100 gm] Pancetta (diced)
2 lbs [1 kg] Brussels Sprouts (cut in half vertically)
Sea Salt (to taste)
1 tsp freshly ground Black Pepper
1 tbsp fresh Thyme (finely chopped)
4 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1. In a large skillet or frying pan, render pancetta over high heat until crisp and golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and set to drain on a paper-lined plate.
2. Pre-heat oven to 450º F (230ºC).
3. Put brussels sprouts and pancetta on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt, black pepper and thyme, drizzle with olive oil, and using your hands, toss well to mix.
4. Roast in the oven for 30 mins, then stir the sprouts with a large spoon to ensure that the brussels sprouts caramelise evenly. Continue roasting for another 15 mins. Remove from oven and serve immediately.