Kids Dish

Okay, I know I’m cheating, but I never got a chance to recap Thanksgiving dinner over the weekend. Dinner went really well. On Wednesday I prepared the brine for the turkey (kosher salt and brown sugar dissolved in water with whole coriander seeds, whole black peppercorns, thyme sprigs, rosemary sprigs and a few sage leaves) and placed the turkey in a huge ziploc bag in a cooler lined with trash bags in case of leaks. My refrigerator is a stupid side by side model (HATE side by side) so I don’t actually have room to accommodate a brining turkey before a holiday so a cooler has to suffice. Once the turkey was properly submerged it needed to be rotated every few hours so it brined evenly. I left it breast side down overnight.

After the turkey was safely in the cooler I started the rest of my tasks. I started the dough for the rolls and set it out for the first rise. Next I started the pie dough, a recipe that called for vodka. I’ve never made pie dough before. Honestly, I’ve never made it because I don’t love pie. I’ll eat it if it’s the only thing around, but I’ll take cake over pie any day. The only reason I made a pie was because I still had a dozen apples left from my CSA share and no one volunteered to bring a pie. For some reason even though I don’t love pie, it doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving without one.

Once the pie dough was refrigerated I peeled and cut the sweet potatoes. I ignored the part of the recipe where it tells you to steam the sweet potatoes first since I knew I’d be reheating them in the oven the next day and didn’t want them to be too soggy. I made the glaze for the sweet potatoes but it took much longer to thicken than the recipe said it would. I don’t know if I didn’t have the heat up high enough or if it was because I increased the recipe. When it seemed thick enough I poured it over the sweet potatoes (a mixture of yams and sweet potatoes, I discovered once I peeled them) and put them in the oven to bake. While the sweet potatoes cooked I blanched the green beans, plunged them into ice cold water, drained them and put them in a large ziploc bag with paper towels.

I cut the herbs from my garden- chives, rosemary and thyme- and made herb butter for the turkey by combining chopped herbs with softened butter. I put the mixture in a small ziploc bag and smooshed it down to the bottom so it would form a log.

The sweet potatoes were done, but they never really seemed glazed. The glaze seemed too runny and saucy. I didn’t know what to do, so I poured out the glaze and set it aside, figuring I’d try to thicken it up the next day before reheating.

The bread, which took forever to rise, finally rose enough, so I punched it down, formed it into dinner rolls and set it to the side to rise again. After about an hour it had risen enough so I baked it and sampled one to make sure I liked the recipe enough to actually serve the rolls. I did and decided that I was pretty much done with cooking for the day.

This is getting way too long, so I’ll finish my recap tomorrow.