Tag: thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Dinner – The Pie

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

Apologies for the delay in wrapping up Thanksgiving Week here.  I managed to catch a killer cold from my Wife and I’ve spent the last couple days convalescing with my “Man-Cold”.

I was going to tackle the turkey to wrap up the week, but in all honesty, that wasn’t my purview with our dinner, so I’ll leave you with this.  Break out the olive oil and rub down the bird.  Don’t go crazy with the seasoning.  Salt and pepper will work just fine.  Cut up some slices of butter and pull the skin up from the bird and place those dollops of butter underneath.  That’s about it really.  Bake as per the directions on the bird itself, you’ll want to make an aluminum foil tent over the bird for about 2/3rd of your cooking time.  And that’s all the advice I can give on that front besides this: don’t try to eat the whole bird in one sitting.  I learned my lesson the hard way this year.  😦

Okay, with that said, let’s break down the big finish of Thanksgiving Week on the blog, and why not wrap it up with the big finish to dinner itself?  Pumpkin Pie!  I actually made this up the afternoon before our big feed.  It holds well in the refrigerator.  All you’ll really need to do on the big day is whip up some whipped cream (don’t you even DARE think about using pre-fab cream in a can!).  Okay, fine, do what you do.  There’s no judgement here.

First up is the crust.  If you’re ever doing a standard fruit pie, you’ll want to do a blind bake on this.  As pumpkin pie has a much longer bake time than most, you can just whack it all into the oven at the same time if you like.

Basic Pie Crust

This should make enough for a 10″ pie crust. If you want to put a lid on your pie, just double the recipe.

  • 1 1/4 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter (very cold)
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 3 to 4 (if not more) tbsp ice water

Put some water and ice cubes in a cup.

Mix flour, salt and sugar.  Cut the butter into 1/2 inch cube and then combine with a pastry cutter, fork or two knives until the flour/butter mixture is crumbly.  Don’t overwork it too much, you don’t want the butter to melt.

Slowly add water until dough forms a ball.  Don’t get it too wet.  Knead once or twice on a floured surface, then wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour until ready to use.

After an hour, on floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8″ thick.  Fit into pie plate and trim off excess with knife.  Back in the fridge it goes for 30 minutes.

Take a fork and prick the bottom of the pie a bit.  You’ll want a fair number of little holes scattered across the dough (stops the pie from rising or bubbling away from the bottom of the plate).

Okay.  As we’re making pumpkin pie,  I’ll cut that recipe short as you won’t do any of the blind baking that’s required for that one.  Instead, we now default to the pumpkin pie recipe.

Point of note: I’m not a big pumpkin pie fan.  There aren’t many I have ever come across that I’ve enjoyed, but THIS one I like.  It’s going to feel pretty soupy when you’re making it, but it WILL thicken up just nicely in the oven.

Pumpkin Pie Filling

This will very nicely fill a 10″ pie

  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp ginger
  • 1/4 tsp cloves
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 12 fl oz can of evaporated milk (350ml for us Canadians)
  • 1 3/4 cups + 2 tbsp of pumpkin puree
  • 1 tbsp flour

Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees F.

Combine the dry ingredients in a small bowl.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs lightly.  Stir in the pumpkin puree and the dry ingredients from the small bowl.

Gradually stir in the evaporated milk.

Pour into your unbaked pie shell.  This will be a very runny soup at the moment, that’s fine.

Cover the pie with foil and bake at 425 for 15 minutes.  Remove the foil and reduce heat to 350 degrees, you’ll want to bake for another 40-50 minutes or until you can stick a knife in the centre and have it come out clean.

If you’re baking this on the big day, cool for a couple minutes, add your whipped cream and enjoy!  Otherwise, cool on a rack for a good hour or more, then put some plastic wrap up against the filling and chuck it all into the fridge overnight.

I don’t think I rolled my dough thin enough when I was making it as it didn’t give me enough excess to really get a crust up and over the edge of the pie plate.  My dough was also pretty crumbly.  In the ‘add water’ phase, the 3 to 4 tbsp is a suggestion.  It will really depend on the humidity where you are.  I put in 5 tbsp and should have done a bit more I think to really give me a solid dough to work with.  It felt dry to me, I really should have trusted my instincts on that front.  That said, it all worked out and tasted great, so that’s just me being self-critical and learning for next time.

Happy Thanksgiving!

-g

Thanksgiving Dinner – The Dressing

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Dressing?  Stuffing?  What do YOU call it?  I just call it “delicious” and a definite MUST for any big family feed.

Now, just as a point of order, if I disappear mysteriously after posting this recipe, you’d be wise to look at my Mother-In-Law as the prime suspect.  It’s her recipe and I’m divulging family secrets, but seriously, this is such a simple recipe and it is SO GOOD.

The worst thing you can wind up with is a flavourless stuffing that’s dry as sawdust and adds nothing to the turkey experience.  This one is moist, full of flavour, and much like the potato recipe I shared yesterday, I should have just gone ahead and doubled it.  I like it that much.

Note 1: the following was just enough stuffing to fill a 12 pound turkey.  You’ll want to adjust accordingly if you’re roasting a bigger bird.  Or learn from my mistake and double it from the get-go.  Leftovers of this are not a bad thing.

Note 2: you can buy a bag of bread cubes at most grocery stores.  I just bought a loaf of white bread and it out for a few days.  I saw the local Safeway had ‘dressing flavoured’ bread available, but I went with white as we’ll be adding our own spices to the mix and I didn’t want to over-do it.  Remember to keep your slices separated so they dry out nicely.  You can also expedite the process by putting them in the oven at the lowest temperature for about 5-7 minutes on each side.  You don’t want to make toast, you just want to suck out the moisture.

Nana’s Turkey Dressing

  • 4 cups dry white bread cubes
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 4 tbsp melted butter
  • 2 tbsp dried parsley
  • 1 med onion, chopped (pieces should be about double the size of ‘diced’)
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 2 tsp poultry seasoning
  • 1/2 cup chicken/turkey broth

That’s it!  If you’re sticking it inside the bird, you want the bread cubes to be DRY dry.  Stuff the bird, put in the oven and roast as you normally would a turkey (remember if you stuff you bird you need to ADD some cook time to the process).

If you’re not going to stuff the bird and you want to do this ‘on the side’, you can bake the dressing in a covered casserole dish at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or so.  If going this method, you’ll want a bit more moisture in the bread – so don’t use DRY dry cubes.  You could probably get away with chopping up some bread slices you’ve left out overnight.

It’s quick and easy and full of flavour, what more do you want?  Some people would take the turkey neck and put that in the casserole dish for a little more flavour.  You do you.  If you’re doing that of course, even if you’re not going to eat the neck afterwards, I’d recommend using a meat thermometer and making sure that it got to the proper cooking temperature.  I get super cautious when dealing with poultry and temps.  I got served raw chicken at a restaurant once – it didn’t end well.

Thanksgiving Dinner – The Potatoes

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Well, first of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow Canadians this past weekend.  Aside from some tight defensive battles in the CFL (Go Stamps!) we also saw the Riders clinch a playoff spot and me demolish enough turkey to conceive a food baby that turned out to be triplets. (In other words, I ate WAY too much turkey dinner…but in my defense, this is the first year that I handled the bulk of the prep for the big feed, and it turned out pretty good.

First up?  The taters.  Now, these are no ordinary mashed potatoes.  These are creamy, cheesy (yes, cheesy) whipped potatoes that you can actually prep up a few days prior to the feast so you can really limit the amount of work (and dishes) you’ll require on the big day.  I have to give my Wife’s aunt Connie a big shoutout.  She brought these to a family gathering potluck over a decade ago and they’ve been in our rotation ever since.  Well, at least whenever we have the time and ambition to ‘fancy’ things up a bit.  It’s well worth the time and effort, and honestly, I forgot how fast they disappear so my best advice is to take the recipe and just go ahead and double it right away.

Without further adieu…start softening that cream cheese, here we go!

Creamy Oven-Mashed Potatoes

  • 5 lb red potatoes
  • 8 oz cream cheese, softened (1 brick of Philly)
  • 1 cup sour cream (1 250ml tub…the small ones)
  • 1 tsp onion salt
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • 2 tbsp margarine or butter

Directions:

Peel the potatoes.  Chop them up into quarters, or smaller even if you want to minimize the boiling time.  Toss them into your biggest pot filled with water.  Boil until you can stick a fork in ’em and have them relatively break apart.  Drain all the water out.

Mash the potatoes with a hand mixer.  Soften your cream cheese and add all the rest of the ingredients in (with the exception of the margarine/butter – keep that aside for now).  Take a hand mixer and whip up the mixture.  It should essentially become a white smooth paste – the goal is to get all the lumps out, you want these to be fluffy.

Spray down a casserole dish with cooking spray (it will save you TONS of scrubbing when doing the dishes later).  Put all the potato mixture into the dish.  If you’re cooking right away, take the margarine/butter and dot it over the top, I dust a bit o paprika over the top as well like you might do with a shepherd’s pie.  Cover your dish and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

That’s if you’re baking right away.  If you are prepping these in advance…you can just cover and freeze in the dish and they’ll be ready to bake whenever you need them.  You’ll then take the dish out to thaw before putting in the stove.  You’ll want to add about 15 minutes to your cooktime as well.  If the potatoes are looking watery, just cook them uncovered and that will take care of some of that excess moisture.

You can also prep this the day before, toss them in the fridge and bake them the next day.  Again, you’ll want to put on the counter and bring up to room temperature before you bake, as well as add a bit of extra time to the proceedings.  Just hold off on putting the margarine/butter on top until you’re about to put in the oven.

Now, remember when I said you should just go ahead and double the recipe right away?  I really meant that.  These potatoes are delicious, and the best part is they keep really well.  Once you’ve baked them, you can keep them in the fridge for about a week and divvy them up with your leftovers.  They don’t NEED gravy, but it doesn’t hurt.

One thing I also like is you don’t have to be TOO fussy with the cooking temp.  If you have a turkey or other dish baking in the oven at 325 or 375, you’re fine tossing these in and adjusting your cook time accordingly (add a few minutes if you’re lower than 350, subtract a few if you’re hotter…)  They’re pretty much fool-proof which works just great for this amateur cook.

If you’re back-timing the whole process?  I made these up the afternoon before the big feed and whacked them in the fridge overnight when I took the turkey out of the fridge where it had been thawing for about 24 hours and put it in cold water in the sink to finish thawing overnight.

Tomorrow?  The stuffing!