THANKSGIVING

I love thanksgiving so much I manage to have it twice each year. Usually a traditional one and the other less formal. This year my parents came out for a few days with my sister. I brined a turkey with turkey stock I made weeks earlier. Unfortunately the turkey got overcooked and any benefits were lost. :-( The usual suspects were found hanging around the turkey: mashed potatoes with roasted garlic and bacon, stuffing with sage, and turkey stock, gravy and cranberry compote. I wanted to do something different with the sweet potatoes so I made biscuits with them using a recipe I found on food network. They had a great orange color and were delicious, but didn't quite rise, a never ending problem with my biscuits. I found a recipe for that looked amazing so I made that as well; it was all we hoped for. Desert was a pumpkin creme brulee also from the food network website. I was made very similar to a pumpkin pie but then strained for a smooth custard. The whole thing was quite satisfactory.

Tonight we decided to give the old bird a rest and roast a leg of lamb. Using the same recipe from the post "leg of lame? NO!" but tweaked a little. It's an amazing roast rubbed with a garlic-rosemary-anchovy paste and roasted to a nice rare and served with a parsley mint pesto.

This meal was mostly planned by Steph while I was stressing the details of my parents visit. It included a classic oyster-cornbread stuffing, recipe courtesy of food and wine. It was a little wet from too much stock, but still very tasty. We planned on doing a deep fried okra, but decided it was better for tomorrow. The best part I owe entirely to Steph because I would not have made it without her insistence. It's her favorite so it wouldn't have been thanksgiving without: Green bean casserole. It was actually incredibly simple with a disproportionately delicious yield. I took the ramekins leftover from the creme brulee and filled them with a mixture of raw green beans cut into 1" pieces and grated fontina cheese, poured over some leftover cream of mushroom, topped with a little more fontina and baked until the cheese got some nice color on top. The individual casserole idea originally started out as a cute way of serving a revamped classic but evolved into necessity with all of our oven dishes in use at the same time. I would definitely make these again. My advice is make the mushroom soup, you won't be dissapointed. Then if you like, make the little casseroles if you're in a pinch, it'll turn out, trust me.

For desert we had another unforgetable classic: pumpkin pie. I wanted to make the crust but steph insisted on buying some. Another excellent thanksgiving for the books. Thanks everyone!