I had the 10 course dinner at Moto in Chicago, joined by Karen, Mike and Bronwyn of the Exploratorium. The food is fun and irreverent, more art than craft, the foodie equivalent of special effects. This is my first experience of a restaurant based on the techniques of molecular gastronomy.
We had eighteen people for Thanksgiving — a big feast for family and friends. It’s a lot of work to organize and prepare but then the dinner goes by so fast. It’s wonderful having everyone together, year after year.
I wanted to write down the menu for my own keeping.
Cheese — I made a crottin-style cheese from goat milk but this turned out more like a brie. Very tasty. Others brought cheese as well. I also put out this year’s quince paste with manchego cheese.
I warmed mini-sausage links in a homemade chili catsup.
Hard cider. The first batch of hard cider was on tap. It has a distinctive sweet-sour taste, which everyone enjoyed.
Turkey. The featured dish, of course, was an eighteen-pound organic Willie Bird Turkey cooked outside in the Big Green Egg. I did not brine the bird but applied a herb-salt rub and filled it with cornbread stuffing. The turkey took about five hours to cook at 275-300 degrees. I ended up deciding by time over temperature, which is not necessarily a good thing. The temperature gauge was reading 150 but I felt it was done. (The suggested reading is 170-190.) I let the turkey sit for twenty minutes before removing the stuffing and starting to carve. It was done perfectly — the white breast meat was very moist.
Kiwi-rye stuffing (vegetarian). A week earlier we bought kiwis at a farmer’s market in Davis, and they had a recipe for dressing. Nancy made this dressing, adding apples and diced rye bread, left over from a loaf I made earlier in the week.
Cornbread stuffing (cooked w/ bird). This was a simple stuffing, made from prepared bread crumbs. I added fennel, sprigs of rosemary and sage leaves.
Kale. I picked literally all the kale in my garden and prepared it. I braised it in batches and then put in a casserole with sauteed mushrooms and topped with romano cheese. I kept it warm in the oven. Kale is good in that you don’t have to treat it delicately like spinach.
Green beans. My own green beans are gone (except for a few that I pickled and canned). I braised several pounds of green beans and served them very plainly.
Corn pudding. A tribute to Southern cooking, I made this corn pudding with frozen corn and diced peppers from the garden. I thought the dish turned out well.
Roasted julienned parsnips and carrots. I love parsnips, and along with the kale are the new dishes this year. I found a hand-tool for making julienne strips. I ended up with very thin strips of carrots and parsnips, over which I drizzled oil and sprinkled salt and pepper. I roasted them in the oven, flipping them over to get them to dry out a bit. Everyone liked them, as they are kind of crunchy like fries or chips but have a lot more flavor.
Purple mashed potatoes. I had saved purple potatoes from the summer. I made mashed potatoes but I didn’t have enough of just purple potatoes so I made both white and purple variations.
Buttermilk mashed potatoes. I bought a five-pound bag of potatoes and mashed them with buttermilk and threw in diced chives from the garden. I like the slightly sour taste that buttermilk adds.
Hubbard squash. I had three hubbard squash from the garden. I cut them in half and baked them and then cut them into cubes. I made this the night before and heated the squash in a casserole, adding a little bit of butter and sprinkled cinammon on top.
Little Lemon Biscuits. This recipe comes from Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.” Glenda helped me make these light, yeasted biscuits. They didn’t rise as much as I’d like but they were good.
Cranberry sauce. Making your own cranberry sauce from a bag of cranberries couldn’t be easier. The result is more flavorful than canned, and you can vary the ratio of sweet to sour.
Salad. The salad was greenleaf lettuce cut into strips (Argentine-style) with diced persimmons, pomegranate, and fennel root, which are ripe in the garden now.
Ben solved the problem of too much food by stacking in layers.
Apple Pies. Nancy made two apple pies from the apples in our orchard. She threw in a couple of slices of quince, which I could taste. She made these pies in advance and froze them.
Pumpkin Pies. Glenda made two pumpkin pies and served them with whipped cream.
I should mention that we had such beautiful weather. We spent some time outside and got a nice group photo of everyone.
We have a lot to be grateful for, but especially for the leftovers.
