Thanksgiving

I know, I know… my Thanksgiving post is late. But to be fair, my Thanksgiving was late: I had it on Friday.

It was tons of fun… and unlike last year, it went off without a hitch. (Wait… scratch that. I had to have my one disaster of the evening. I burned the candied walnuts, but my guests assured me that the baked brie did not suffer.)

Here was my menu:

Apéro

Baked Brie with Candied Walnuts and Caramelized Onions
Pâté, Boursin and Cornichons with Spicy Mustard and Fresh Baguette

Meal

Roasted Chickens (from the butcher… best decision I ever made)
Pioneer Woman’s Sweet Potato Casserole
Mashed Potatoes (mashed with milk, butter, crème fraîche, fromage frais salt and pepper, spread into a baking dish, topped with more butter and baked at the last minute to heat)
Cranberry Sauce
Double Corn Cornbread Muffins (I tossed in about a half teaspoon of salt… baking without salt just doesn’t seem right to me)
Pumpkin Tarte Tatin

Dessert

Pumpkin Pie (I used this recipe for the crust and replaced the spices with two teaspoons of Quatre Épices, a French spice blend that includes cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and nutmeg)
Tarte Tatin

This year’s Thanksgiving had a much better turnout, possibly due to the fact that there was no métro strike this year. The two winners were undoubtedly the baked brie and the pumpkin tarte tatin: I probably shouldn’t post some of the reactions on here because this is a family friendly blog, but suffice to say I think that people were happy.

This was the second year that the pumpkin tarte tatin was on the menu, and I made a few changes, increasing the amount of goat cheese and baking it like a typical tarte as opposed to upside down, which made the top even more delicious and caramelized.

The baked brie was a new addition, but it was a welcome one. After trying four different stores and coming up empty-handed on my search for phyllo pastry, I simply used a frozen pâte feuilleté, or quiche dough, which worked fine. I decided to use apricot jam, and, as I mentioned before, there were no candied walnuts, but the presence of caramelized onions more than made up for it in the opinion of my diners.

What did I like best? The fact that nothing had to be done last minute. I worked from noon until 8: I had a very specific schedule that involved at least an hour of planning, knowing when the oven would be free, when I would be able to pay attention to caramelized onions, and when I would have enough burners. It was a very well-made schedule, and I’m a tiny bit embarrassed about how proud I was of it.

But as soon as my guests arrived, I was free to sit with them and chat with nothing more to do than remove the dishes from the oven and put them on the table.

I think I’m getting the hang of this.

Ok… my minions helped.