November 2016 - Giving Thanks

​The scents of pumpkin
And cinnamon waft over
Birds of paradise.

​Everyone has a reason to be thankful. If you have good food to eat, good health and the ability to pay your bills on time, you are especially fortunate. Most of the people on earth cannot claim all three of these blessings. However, the gift of life is itself a blessing, and many other gifts, such as wisdom, patience, kindness, peace of mind, a sense of humor, the ability to appreciate the beauty of nature, art, music and friendship and especially love are treasures for which we need to be forever grateful. For this reason, Thanksgiving is a holiday truly to be treasured.
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​Once a year we pause to give thanks, and the symbolic focus of our gratitude is an enormous traditional meal shared with family and friends. For one day we stop worrying about calories and cholesterol, suspend any grudges we may have against our various relatives and share food and friendship with generous hearts. I love Thanksgiving for its simplicity. Nobody goes over the top with decorations or gift giving. There are no special songs to sing or places to go other than the dining room, and of course the satellite tables for the children.
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​Almost every family serves the same meal every year, and even though we don’t normally eat red Jello with miniature marshmallows, somehow Aunt Juanita’s special red gelatin, molded and surrounded with celery stalks filled with peanut butter, seems really tasty on Thanksgiving. Most of these family menus do contain a few quirky items that have somehow become part of a shared multi-generational tradition. My mother-in-law, Misae, was a great cook and always had a perfectly roasted turkey on the table, but the high point of the Higashi family Thanksgiving meal was her green bean casserole, made with frozen green beans, Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and canned onion rings.
 

​My family’s Thanksgiving oddity was boiled eggs in the turkey gravy. This was something my mother, Betty Murdock, always served, and nobody was sure where this custom originated. One year my nephew Mike had the audacity to question the culinary value of eggs in the gravy. His aunts and uncles, including me, shut that little whipper-snapper up quick and fast with a passionate defense of the beauty of a boiled egg, placed in the hole in the middle of a pile of mashed potatoes and covered with gravy. That boy learned his lesson!

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​I would like to share our family’s traditional Thanksgiving menu with you. As our mother grew older, we all helped out by bringing a special dish to lighten the load on her. Later, Wayne and I hosted Thanksgiving for several years at our home in Los Gatos, California. It was during this era that Wayne discovered Turducken. This outrageous invention, a whole boned turkey stuffed with a whole boned chicken which itself is stuffed with a whole boned duck, became a huge hit, and fortunately we were able to order the prepared but uncooked Turducken at the local meat market. I have been a vegetarian for more than twenty years, the only vegetarian in either of our extended families. I try not to preach on the subject, and am not fussy. However, cooking meat can trigger a bit of a panic attack, as I don’t want to over-cook, under-cook or generally mess up the meat I am cooking for the people I love.
 

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​Turducken is especially nerve wracking, as it needs to be roasted for about fifteen hours at a very low temperature, and it is difficult to discern when it is done. I use a meat thermometer, which doesn’t seem to move for hours on end, and by Thanksgiving morning, after roasting it all night, I’m in a tizzy that the Turducken may not be done by the time the guests arrive. Somehow it has always worked out; everybody loves the Turducken, and there is plenty for our friends and family to take home with them. Sending food home is part of our family’s tradition, and my sister-in-law Joyce has been known to show up with her own Tupperware.
         

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​Our menu includes five desserts, six if you include the divine home-made Apple Gelatin, which can be served with the meat along with the Cranberry Ginger Sauce, and later placed on the dessert table where it would pair beautifully with the Gosby House Gingerbread. Other dessert offerings include Pumpkin Praline Pie, Chocolate Pecan Tart, the fabulous Sticky Date Pudding with Caramel Sauce and classic Iced Chocolate Brownies. We are pretty sure that no one at the original Thanksgiving celebration had ever heard of chocolate, as Montezuma’s gift to the world had not yet found its way to Massachusetts. However, we include chocolate in our Thanksgiving feast for friends and family members who cannot face a major holiday, or indeed even an ordinary day, without chocolate. You know who you are, and we are there for you!

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Several of the items on our traditional Thanksgiving menu also appear in one of our Afternoon Tea menus on our website myteaplanner.com. I will indicate where those recipes can be found, just in case you are ready to add a new dish to your traditional family Thanksgiving menu. The weekend after Thanksgiving Day, you might want to host an Afternoon Tea for friends and family members who are still in town for the holiday. Check out our November Post-Thanksgiving Tea on myteaplanner.com. Many of the items on the menu make use of Thanksgiving leftovers, like turkey, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls and gingerbread. The Gingerbread Trifle is especially yummy, and if you haven’t made a trifle for a while, take a look at Kathleen’s September 2016 Blog, Cakes and Tea, where she teaches you how to make Pastry Cream and how to construct a Trifle. This way you can keep Thanksgiving going for the whole weekend.

Murdock-Higashi Family Thanksgiving Menu
 
Turducken
Mashed Potatoes
Turducken Gravy with Boiled Eggs
Cranberry Ginger Sauce (recipe follows)
Sage Bread Stuffing (use a package and add extra ingredients)
Wild Rice Dressing (recipe follows)
Steamed White Rice (for the Higashi side of the family)
Creamed Peas (made from scratch by Kathleen’s dad, Rudy)
Sweet Potato Casserole (made by Kathleen brother, Peter)
Macaroni and Cheese (made by cousin Richard’s wife, Connie)
Dinner Rolls and Fresh Bread (provided by my brother, John)
Apple Gelatin (August Family Reunion Tea, myteaplanner.com)
Gosby House Gingerbread (California Tea, myteaplanner.com)
Sticky Date Pudding with Caramel Sauce (A Tea for Our Elders, myteaplanner.com)
Pumpkin Praline Pie (recipe follows)
Chocolate Pecan Tart (Kathleen’s Blog, Cakes and Tea, August, 2016)
Iced Chocolate Brownies (An American Southern Tea, myteaplanner.com)
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Cranberry Ginger Sauce

​Many of us grew up eating jellied cranberry sauce from a can on Thanksgiving, but today it is easy to find fresh cranberries at the grocery store and simple to make your own cranberry sauce. My favorite home-made cranberry sauce includes orange juice, orange zest and chopped candied ginger. This zippy tasting sauce can be made a couple of days before Thanksgiving and refrigerated. Leftover sauce is delicious on vanilla ice cream for a festive Cranberry Sundae. Or add some to the Gingerbread Trifle at your Post-Thanksgiving Tea.
 
1 bag (12-16) ounces fresh cranberries, washed
grated zest of 2 oranges
1 cup fresh orange juice (from 2-3 oranges)
1 cup sugar
¼ cup finely chopped candied ginger
 
Special equipment: large sauce pan, wooden spoon, citrus grater, citrus juicer, one-quart glass jar with tightly fitting lid, decorative crystal bowl with spoon and saucer for serving.
 
Makes: about 3 cups
 

1. Place the rinsed cranberries in a large sauce pan, and add the orange zest, orange juice, sugar and chopped candied ginger. Bring to a boil over medium heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries have started to pop, about 4 minutes.
2. Stir and mash the cranberries with the back of a wooden spoon. Taste the mixture and add up to ¼ cup more sugar, a little at a time, if it tastes too tart. Cool to room temperature; then transfer to a large glass jar with a tightly fitting lid and refrigerate until ready to serve.
3. To serve, pour some of the Cranberry Ginger Sauce into a decorative crystal bowl, and place the bowl on an attractive saucer with a silver soup or jelly spoon. The saucer under the serving bowl will help prevent the Cranberry Ginger Sauce from dripping onto your best holiday tablecloth.

 

Wild Rice Dressing

Sage Bread Stuffing is one of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes. Sometimes the dressing, also called stuffing, is baked inside the turkey and comes out moist with turkey juices. This does not necessarily work with a Turducken. When we have purchased prepared Turducken, some meat shops put layers of stuffing between the birds that are placed inside each other. Others do not. In any case, there is not much room for stuffing if the birds are already stuffed with another bird. But we still need our holiday dressing. You can make your own and bake it, moistened with chicken broth, in a casserole dish. I take the easy route and buy prepared stuffing mix, which is just dried bread cubes with a few spices added. To this basic mix, I add a large chopped onion and two stalks of chopped celery sautéed in plenty of butter along with about four finely minced sage leaves and a cup or so of sliced fresh mushrooms. I add freshly ground pepper and follow the package directions for the amount of chicken broth to add to the mix. My mother always added oysters to the dressing, and apparently oysters were on the menu of the first Thanksgiving.
 
While I do believe that Sage Bread Stuffing is a key component of the Thanksgiving table, I like this recipe for Wild Rice Dressing even better. Although it takes a while to prepare, it is easy to make and has a very authentic, historic quality with the inclusion of wild rice, familiar to Native Americans, as well as cranberries, herbs and nuts. Why not serve both? If oven space is limited on Thanksgiving, you can prepare the Wild Rice Dressing a day early and store it in the refrigerator in a covered casserole, bring it to room temperature, and rewarm it for about half an hour at 350° F while the Turducken is resting and you are making the gravy.
 
1 pound (16 ounces) wild rice
6 cups of chicken broth (use canned broth for convenience)
2 onions, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
¼ cup flat leaf parsley, stems removed and leaves chopped
4 fresh sage leaves, finely minced
½ cup (1 stick) butter, plus more for buttering the casserole dish
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup dried cranberries
½ cup toasted slivered almonds
 
Preheat oven to 350° F (After the rice is cooked)
 
Special equipment: large cooking pot with lid, wooden spoon, skillet, knife, cutting board, 2-quart casserole with lid
 
Makes: about 12 servings
 

1. Place the wild rice in a cooking pot and add the chicken broth. Bring to a boil on medium high heat. When the mixture starts to boil, turn the heat down to low, cover the pot and simmer for about 1 hour. Check to see if the rice is fully cooked. When the rice is done, remove from the heat and let the rice steam for another 10-20 minutes with the lid on.
2. While the rice cooks, melt the butter in a large skillet and add the chopped onions and celery. Sautee, the vegetables, stirring with a wooden spoon to prevent burning, until the onions begin to wilt and turn golden. Add the parsley and sage, stirring, and continue to stir fry until all of the vegetables are cooked, 10-20 minutes, total.
3. Stir the cooked wild rice and add the cooked vegetables and herbs. Add the cranberries, slivered almonds, salt and pepper, and stir with the wooden spoon until all of the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Butter the inside of a 2-quart casserole dish and spoon the rice mixture into the casserole. Cover and bake for about 1 hour. Serve immediately or at warm room temperature.

​Pumpkin Praline Pie

​Pumpkin Pie is an American gem, as necessary for the Thanksgiving dinner as Turkey and Cranberry Sauce. After all, we are pretending to replicate that first Thanksgiving meal shared in 1621 in Plymouth Colony between the Wampanoag native people and the recently arrived immigrant refugees of English ancestry. This first Thanksgiving would have included food that was available in what is now Massachusetts, where wild turkeys, venison, cranberries, pumpkins, squash, corn, walnuts and a lot of shell fish were readily available, though historians suggest that the colonists had not actually gotten around to making cranberry sauce by 1621. Today, it is the spirit of the event, if not the exact menu, that we re-live in our Thanksgiving gatherings, and that includes Pumpkin Pie!
 
For years, I have been making a Southern version of Pumpkin Pie that includes a thin layer of crunchy pecan or almond praline under the spicy pumpkin custard, and my family members have never complained about the historic inaccuracy of this really delicious pie. This recipe makes two nine-inch pies, enough for everyone in the family to have a slice.
 
1 package refrigerated pie crusts, such as Pillsbury
 
For the praline layer:
 
6 tablespoons butter, softened
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup toasted and chopped almonds or pecans
 
For the pumpkin custard:
 
4 large eggs
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin
1 can (12 ounces) evaporated milk
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
 
To serve with the pies: 1 pint chilled whipping cream, combined with 4 tablespoons powdered sugar and beaten until soft peaks form
 
Preheat oven to 450° F for the praline pie crust layer and 350° F for the pumpkin custard layer
 
Special equipment: medium sized mixing bowl, large mixing bowl, electric mixer, 2 nine-inch pie plates, 2 eight-inch pie plates or tart pans, wire rack, rubber spatula, medium sized decorative bowl and spoon for serving the whipped cream
 
Makes: 2 nine-inch pies, about 16 servings
 

1. Make the praline layer: In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the butter and brown sugar and beat with an electric mixer until creamy. Stir in the toasted, chopped almonds. Set aside.
2. Prepare the pie crusts according to the package directions, and flute the edges to make an attractive rim. Press half of the praline mixture onto the bottom of each pie crust, using your fingers to make an even layer on both crusts. Place an 8” tart pan or pie plate over the praline layer of each pie crust to prevent the crust from collapsing during baking. Bake the praline-covered crusts at 450°F for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool on wire racks for 10 minutes. Carefully remove the 8” tart pans covering the praline layer. Lower the oven temperature to 350° F.
3. Make the pumpkin custard: In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs lightly; stir in the pumpkin, granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt and pumpkin pie spice. Beat briefly, just to combine. With the mixer on low, slowly beat in the evaporated milk. Scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
4. Slowly and carefully, pour the custard over the praline layers in the two cooled pie crusts, dividing the custard evenly between the two pies. Bake the pies for 50 minutes until the centers are set but still soft. Do not overbake, as the custard will continue to set as it cools.
5. Cool the pies on wire racks until they reach room temperature and serve immediately with chilled, softly whipped cream. If you cannot serve the pies immediately, refrigerate them until time for dessert. Whip the cream immediately before serving the pies. Place the whipped cream in a separate, decorative bowl, and let the guests serve themselves.