[Sca-cooks] Report on Thanksgiving experiments...OP

[Elaine Koogler]

As I indicated in an earlier message, my husband and I tried some new 
things this year for Thanksgiving and, with one possible exception, were 
a howling success. 

Brining the turkey was very successful.  We made the brine early 
yesterday and let it sit outside to chill while we went shopping.  Last 
night we put the bird in the brine and let it stay overnight.  About 
midmorning we took it out to drain, then cooked it as Alton Brown 
described on his Thanksgiving show.  We cooked it at 500 for a half 
hour, took it out, put a pre-made aluminum foil "breastplate" on it to 
protect the breast, lowered the temp to 350 and cooked for another 2 1/2 
hours (a 10# bird).  Inside the cavity we put a mixure of apples, 
cinnamon, rosemary, sage and onion that had been microwaved together.  
The turkey was very moist and had a wonderful flavor.

I made two kinds of sauces with cranberries...one a chutney, which 
turned out to be one of the best cranberry "things" I've ever eaten.  
The other, a tart cranberry "dip" was good, but a little too tart for my 
taste.  We may try adding a little more Splenda before using it again.

We also made a cornbread-corn pudding dish.  It called for creamed corn, 
cornmeal, cubed stale french bread, cream, eggs, rosemary, thyme, pepper 
and unsalted butter (oh, and kosher salt).  We served this hot with 
butter...dynamite!

Finally we had a pear-apple salad with sugared walnuts on a bed of 
greens.  We actually did the walnuts with Splenda!  Worked very well.  
The dressing was the expensive part...Cuisine Perel grapeseed walnut 
oil, CP anjou pear vinegar and a pear-apple-walnut jam.  This was a 
perfect foil for the rest of the meal. 

We used to take a weekend every so often and cook stuff we'd never tried 
before...we have fun working in the kitchen together!  However, Phillip 
has been on the road so much that we just haven't had the time or the 
inclination to do this...he usually arrives home on Friday night, and 
flies out again on Sunday.  He only wants to collapse on Saturday!  So 
this was a very special time for us...and, fortunately, it all worked 
out very well.

So...what'd the rest of you do??

Kiri