The preparations for my favorite meal of the year have begun. Yesterday, after a 7:00 am trip to Fairway, I finalized the menu for our Thanksgiving feast, made my shopping list for later in the week, and got to work on two things that can be done several days in advance: turkey stock and cranberry sauce. Fairway is a mad house on an average day, and in the days leading up to Thanksgiving or a snow storm, shopping there can inspire a nervous breakdown. Early morning or late at night is the only way to go.
First item: turkey stock from this 2008 New York Times recipe for turkey gravy from scratch. I won't recite the entire process, but it started with over 6 pounds of buttered turkey legs and wings roasting in the oven for two hours,
followed by 6 hours of simmering those parts in water on the stove.
I now have two quarts of rich brown turkey stock and at least 1/2 a cup of turkey fat, which hopefully will make for some delicious gravy on Thursday.
Next up, the cranberry sauce. I have made Ina Garten's Cranberry Fruit Conserve for the last few years. It's very easy and texturally appealing with chunks of walnuts and raisins.
That recipe is on page 225 of "Barefoot Contessa Parties!" and may be in some of her other books, too. I find that her recipe calls for FAR too much sugar. So I only used about 1/2 a cup of sugar instead of the 1 3/4 cups she recommends. Then I added two packs of Splenda to achieve the desired sweetness, in honor of my mom with diabetes.
I plan to shop for the remaining items LATE on Monday night and spend Wednesday afternoon cooking most of the sides for our feast with my sister's help - she's coming home on Tuesday - including apple chestnut stuffing, the shallot portion of mashed potatoes with caramelized shallots, creamed spinach, and my single favorite Thanksgiving side of all time: orange-flavored sweet potatoes with an oatmeal cookie topping. I am going to have to improvise the topping this year since Archway, the brand that had made the oatmeal cookies my Aunt Marisol or I have historically used for this recipe, has gone under and I can't find any other oatmeal cookies that don't have raisin paste in them.
My problem is always the same: NOT ENOUGH GRAVY when we make from scratch. My mom solves this problem (I think) in typical ungifted chef fashion - with a can of cream of mushroom soup and gravy master. How can you make the drippings yield enough gravy to provide everyone with seconds and thirds?!
ReplyDeleteThe gravy recipe from the Times yielded almost a cup of turkey fat. Then they suggest mixing some of that turkey fat with flour at a one-to-one ratio (e.g., cook four tablespoons of flour in four tablespoons of turkey fat) and stir in the turkey stock until you end up with gravy. No drippings required from the turkey you cook on Thanksgiving, though I am sure they will only make your gravy more delicious.
ReplyDeleteI made that gravy last year - excellent!
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