My Ultimate Gourmet Magazine Thanksgiving Dinner, 2008 Edition
by Kitchen Maus
on November 07, 2008
If you're a longtime Al Dente reader, you may remember my Gourmet magazine Thanksgiving post last November. Dedicated readers will also know that I love Gourmet and look forward to their multiple Thanksgiving menus each year. This year they again put together four complete Turkey-Day meals, all of which sound delectable as planned. But, as I'm a bit of a mix-and-matcher, if I were planning the menu, here are the dishes I'd be serving up from those four menus:
- Carrot-fennel soup
- Roast turkey with black-truffle butter and white-wine gravy
- Chestnut, leek, and apple stuffing
- Cranberry, quince, and pearl-onion compote
- Skillet corn bread
- Sweet-potato coconut purée
- Moscatel-glazed parsnips
- Haricots verts with bacon and chestnuts
- Pumpkin tart with anise-seed crust
- Lattice apple pie with Mexican brown sugar and rum ice cream
Happy eating!
--KitchenMaus
HopeSew on November 07, 2008 at 09:09 PM
You've got a wee typo on 'haricots,' assuming the recipe makes more than one bean. Seeing French here just made me laugh anyway. My dog Phydeaux enjoyed it too. :)
LadyNaava on November 08, 2008 at 02:54 PM
Most of thos recipes aren't mainstream enough for the average family with the exception of the pie. =-( Anise and Truffles? I... Don't think so.
Ah well, maybe next year.
susanna in alabama on November 11, 2008 at 02:24 PM
I am against the flavor of licorice, so I am very suspicious of anise and fennel. I have tasted some dishes where they added a nice note, but as a primary flavor...no. And sweet potato casserole must have a brown sugar and pecan topping to make the Thanksgiving cut. Your menu sounds like fun to cook for you, but a bit adventurous for the average sort (either cooking or eating). I enjoy trying new things, but not at Thanksgiving (you're right, it's the tradition).
My mom is on probation for serving a Thanksgiving dinner without mashed potatoes, without sufficient gravy, and with a store-bought cooked turkey the last time it was her turn. My brother the traditionalist is requiring her to discuss the menu with him and he must sign off. We all help cook, of course, but we live a good distance away so it would be too late to correct things if she got a gourmet bug a week before Thanksgiving. Ditto Christmas. So we have to keep a close watch on her. A person has to have *something* to cling to in this crazy chaotic post-modern world.