Once again I’ve resorted to writing my blog during the internet-less evening and posting it the next day, so that’s why it might seem strange if I mention “yesterday” as being Thanksgiving… which, by the way, was almost perfect. I really couldn’t have been happier with the way the dinner turned out. I owe a huge thank you to my mom and to Steve Wildey for being such awesome chefs, and to Justin for sharing Steve’s recipes with me; and also to Françoise, the English teacher who hosted the dinner and let me invade her kitchen to cook for two days, but I doubt she reads my blog!
Unfortunately I can’t post pictures yet because I am a dumbass and forgot my camera at Françoise’s house, but I should have it back on Monday and will upload then. This dinner was really a two-week-long project, between picking recipes, preparing the intimidatingly long shopping list, tracking down ingredients, and the actual cooking itself.
On Wednesday morning, Claire very kindly drove me to Carrefour so I could try to track down the last of the ingredients on my list, and I learned definitively that brown sugar, molasses (which I guess are kind of similar), corn syrup, cranberries, and wild rice don’t seem to exist in
It took about six hours of nonstop cooking, but I knocked out the pecan pie, wild rice and goat cheese stuffing, fennel and rosemary mashed potatoes (not pictured, having already been put in the fridge), and sweet potato soufflé, which left only the turkey and gravy for Thursday. I was able to multitask and work on a couple recipes at a time without forgetting anything or setting the kitchen on fire, so I count that a great success! I had to make quite a few modifications to the recipe to allow for the (non)existence of certain ingredients in France, but maple syrup made for a surprisingly effective replacement for molasses, corn syrup, and brown sugar, and regular French potatoes worked just fine in place of Yukon Gold ones.
I wound up staying the night at Françoise’s, because by the time I’d finished cleaning up after myself it was close to dinner and bedtime for her kids. Staying at her house also gave me a wonderful opportunity to catch up on Dexter and Chuck online… oh, the joys of having the internet in the evening. Perhaps one day in the far distant future I too shall be so fortunate.
Bright and early Thursday morning I had an 8:00am class and had hoped to start brining the turkey beforehand. It was then that I made the gut-twisting discovery that since I hadn’t specified anything to the butcher, they had left the head on the turkey (though it was ever so delicately twisted under one wing), and the heart and lungs were still FULLY ATTACHED on the inside… though I guess I should be thankful they’d at least plucked it and taken out the rest of the innards.
So needless to say, brining the turkey had to wait until after that first class. I’ll do my best to spare you the gory details – and gory they were – but let’s just say that it took me and my 3 € Ikea knives a solid 20 minutes to decapitate the damn bony creature, and then I also had its feet and tail to remove. Next came the exquisitely delicate procedure of sticking both my hand and a chef’s knife inside a 6-pound turkey with the goal of extricating the organs while not removing my fingers. Okay, so maybe I didn’t spare you the gory details… but at least I didn’t take pictures!
Lacking a pot big enough to accommodate both turkey and brine, I had purchased a cheapo bucket from Carrefour that worked just fine; and lacking a fridge big enough to hold said bucket, I stuck it outside in the hovering-above-freezing weather to keep cool. I boiled the freshly liberated giblets (what an ugly word that is, and it’s not much prettier in French, either: les abats) in chicken stock and white wine with some vegetables for two hours to make a broth for the gravy, then took a break from cooking to go to class.
Side note: all that work for the gravy turned out to be for naught, since I wound up spilling it all over my feet between Françoise’s car and house and didn’t even realize it til I got inside, wondered why my toes were wet, and saw the empty container. Perhaps trying to carry the turkey, gravy, measuring cups, recipes and my bag all at once was not such a smart idea… but hey, if every Thanksgiving dinner has to have its moment of crisis, then I count myself lucky that mine was so minor. I was able to whip up some replacement gravy with bouillon, white wine, flour, and pan drippings, which was functional but probably not nearly as flavorful as the one now adorning my boots.
When I got back from class, Fanny was making bread for the dinner, so I decided to postpone cooking the turkey until I got to Françoise’s house. That actually worked out much better in the end since it was such a small bird and didn’t take very long to roast, and it also had more time to brine that afternoon. Instead of it being ready to eat at 5:00 but having to wait until 7:00 when everyone else showed up, it was just coming out of the oven at 7:00 and gave us time to enjoy an apéritif while its juices settled and the other dishes were warming up in the oven.
More than anything else, the turkey was really my main cause for concern. Having never cooked one before or paid much attention while Mom was cooking one (I blame being dehydrated and comatose after running the half marathon for the past two years for my lack of Thanksgiving prep knowledge!), I didn’t know how to tell the difference between burning and roasting, and I wasn’t sure if I’d correctly modified the cooking times for a 12-16 pound turkey to accommodate my tiny little 6-pounder.
We actually didn’t eat until closer to 8:30 – such is the nature of French dinner parties! – but finally I put my foot down and ordered everyone à table, since it didn’t make sense to keep reheating things over and over.
And then, the moment of truth… how were the French (and German!) people going to react to Thanksgiving dinner? How was I going to react to my own cooking, for that matter? Was anyone going to die of salmonella?
Miraculously, everything turned out wonderfully, and everyone seemed to genuinely enjoy the meal. It was the first Thanksgiving for all of them, so perhaps it worked to my benefit that they had no basis of comparison :) Apparently I broke the stereotype that Americans can’t cook or don’t have much knowledge of what constitutes fine cuisine, so I was happy to have succeeded in that respect. Françoise commented that she had been a little apprehensive when I had first started cooking the day before, but that I’d really exceeded expectations. It made me feel really proud when everybody went back for seconds. They all seemed to like the sweet potato soufflé the most, so I hope you don’t mind that I’m sharing the recipe, Mom, though it’s certainly a bit different in its translated-for-French-ingredients incarnation!
The pecan pie was also well received, though by that point I think we were all too stuffed to really appreciate it (confession: I am thoroughly appreciating a slice of leftover pie as I’m writing now; and no, there is nothing wrong and everything right about eating pie… alone... in Feurs... on a Friday night..... maaaaybe I’ll have another slice).
We wound up staying until shortly after midnight – I felt bad about having to keep telling my family to call back later, and I felt really bad for Lilian and for Fanny, who had class starting at 8:00 this morning! I also feel silly for forgetting my camera as well as the book I’m reading and the flowers that Claire, Fanny, and Pascal brought, but in a fullbellysleepy haze, laden down with leftovers, I admit I was no longer fully functional.
It was a really wonderful evening though, and I’m really glad to have done it. I’m afraid now my family will no longer accept the excuse of me being too tired or not knowing how to help cook Thanksgiving dinner in the future!
As for the rest of my weekend, tomorrow night the American exchange student invited me to a Thanksgiving dinner at her host family's house, but aside from that I'm in for a solitary weekend in Feurs. Plenty of time to go running (I didn't run at ALL this week!), read, and plan lessons... sometimes it's nice to lay low for the weekend.
--
On another note, it snowed today in Feurs! Snow in November... so weird. I guess this means there's a lot more to come, and I probably won't be so excited about it when it's up to my knees, but for now it's very pretty. Fanny very generously let me play around with her digital SLR since I didn't have my camera, so figuring out how it works while she's out of town visiting friends may be another weekend project for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment