Warning: Food post.
This is my first year hosting Thanksgiving (which is Thursday for those of you who aren’t feasting that day), and even though it’ll only be five people (me, Eileen, my parents, and a good friend), it must be done well. I have finalized the menu (though I started cooking some of it on Monday) and present it here for no reason other than that I haven’t made a post about food in a couple weeks, and I’m doing a lot of cooking this week:
- Homemade cheddar crackers - 2 types: black pepper and caraway seed. (They’re really mainly butter and cheese, baked. They rock.)
- Carrot and ginger soup
- Escarole, baby lettuce, and shaved fennel salad
- Roasted turkey w/ gravy made from its drippings, of course. This one will be coming fresh from a farm.
- Chestnut and sausage stuffing
- Cranberry conserve with apples, walnuts, and orange zest
- Green beans with pancetta
- Mashed potatoes with white truffle oil
- Root vegetable, leek, and gruyere gratin
- Creamy pearl onions
- Pan roasted Belgian endives
- Apple pie
- Macadamia-coconut tart
And, on the beverage side, champagne, followed by wine, followed by port.
A feastin’ we will go….a feastin’ we will go…..
6 comments
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November 22nd, 2006 at 4:39 am
Chrissie
Mmm. We don’t have Thanksgiving here, nor do I eat turkey (been vegetarian for 10 years) , but that list makes me want to drop by (in a cloak of invisibility or something) and steal a few bites
The soup, crackers, gratin, endives and macadamia-coconut tart sound especially delicious. 
Ah well! I’m going home this weekend for other reasons, mebbe I should say “I’m cooking, ’cause this man whose online game I play made me really hungry.”
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:16 am
Pentharian
What is it about Pentad members being ridiculously good cooks?
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:34 am
Sulka Haro
Looks good!
With endives, make sure you get a batch that’s not gotten any light. The leaf-green that starts to form in the vegetable when it’s exposed to light in a store makes it taste bitter. The “almost white, a hint of yellow” color has the proper mild sweet taste.
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:36 am
Matt
Thanks for the tip Sulka! I knew that the almost white endives are the way to go, but I never knew the science behind it. Very cool.
November 23rd, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Rico
Have an excellent holiday, Matt. I’m curious about your choices of wine actually. Care to share?
November 23rd, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Matt
Thanks Rico! It was an excellent dinner, although we had about 3x as much food as we actually needed. It was the most food I’ve ever made at once, and my estimating skills are clearly not up to par.
In any case, I’m a little embarassed to say what wines we had (aside from the champagne, which we supplied), but I’ll emphasize that my Dad brought them. I couldn’t afford to drink wines like this, but he’s a collector and bought them when they were released 17+ years ago. We had:
* Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin (champagne)
* Clos Richemont Chardonnay (http://www.cellarnotes.net/vincent_darnat.html)
* 1989 Cheval Blanc. I’ve had more than a few of the wines considered among the greatest in the world, but I have to say, I am not sure I’ve had a wine better than this.
* 1986 Opus One. Also very very good, obviously, but not the equal of the Cheval Blanc.
I’m still drinking some of the Opus One as I write this. Yuuum.
–matt