food prep

In theory, we've got turkey breast coming via Coupang unless Coupang once again decides to cancel on us by belatedly claiming the meat is out of stock. Plan B is chicken Cordon Bleu if things go sideways. Meanwhile, I had a ton of sides to prep. I managed to get through the prepping of most of them; dinner rolls and dessert (pumpkin pie) will be purchased Wednesday night from Costco. I still need to make the stuffing and the gravy. I have two not-so-secret ingredients to raise my gravy game this time: Better Than Bouillon and Gravy Master. Which to choose? (I actually bought these components for a totally different reason: they can be used to flavor vegan burger patties.) Here's a rundown of what I've done thus far:

top to bottom: cranberry sauce, creamed corn, mashed taters, sweet potato, green beans with shrooms and bacon

The cranberry sauce is special this year: with no SSG Food Market from which to buy fresh cranberries, I had to scrounge around for a cranberry-sauce recipe that uses dried cranberries. I was amazed at how well this worked out. I guess dried fruit has little to no pectin, so the thickener in this recipe is just good old cornstarch. I also couldn't find cranberry juice locally (and I'm not going to Costco for just one single ingredient), so I simulated cranberry juice with a combination of grape juice and apple juice. Instead of the fresh-squeezed juice of an orange, I used a bit of bottled orange juice, and instead of orange zest, I used a sprinkle of sumac, which has citrus-y notes. Worked out great.

a closer look at the cranberry sauce

The creamed corn is from my "Creamed Corn Like No Other" recipe. Good and solid:

There's a combination of heavy cream, Béchamel, and grated Parm in there.

I didn't use a ricer for my two mashes—regular potato and sweet potato. I just felt lazy about breaking out the ricer, I guess. A potato masher leaves you with an inferior texture, but the result is still more than edible. I wish my grocery sold huge potatoes—russets or Yukon Gold. Instead, all my local grocery has is those dinky potatoes. Again, I miss SSG: they used to sell large, respectable spuds.

the mash

My store sells both the gray-fleshed Korean goguma (sweet potato) and an orange-fleshed variety. I picked the latter to be consistent with the American tradition. I also candied some nuts and unsubtly plopped them on top. I like the resultant riot of color. I had originally tried a candying recipe that involved a lot of spices along with the brown sugar; the taste wasn't to my liking, so I tried again with nothing but brown sugar and a pinch of salt. Much better.

sweet-potato "casserole" topped with candied pecans and cashews

I had originally opted to make a peas-and-mushrooms dish, and I finally cracked open a Korean-brand bag of peas that had been sitting in my freezer for a long time. These peas had come via Coupang, but they proved to be horrible: hard and mealy after boiling. Ideally, your peas should be soft but with a bit of firmness, not almost as hard as little pebbles. And incredibly, after I boiled the peas for almost twenty minutes, they were still the same hard consistency. Determined to soften them, I boiled them for another 35 minutes, but there was still no change. I don't think I've ever encountered a bean or a pea that retains its hardness after nearly an hour of boiling. The whole effort proved to be a waste of time, so I visited my grocery, half-remembering that I had seen a bag of frozen green beans. I wasn't wrong: I bought the green beans and went back up to my apartment, where I pan-fried some bacon and mushrooms, boiled the green beans, tossed the green beans in with the bacon and shrooms, added butter, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, et voilà.

This will probably be everyone's least favorite dish, but at least it looks good.

I haven't made the stuffing yet; I got lazy on Saturday and didn't bother. But I started making the stuffing, baking croutons, boiling and crumbling chestnuts, and making American breakfast sausage to crumble into the stuffing. In the morning, I'll prep the celery and mushroom and onion (dried-onion flakes). I've also got raisins at the ready, and while I'm not normally a savory-custard guy when I make stuffing, I tried the custard thing a year or two ago and liked it, so I'll be doing that again this year. My stuffing usually comes out awesome, and I tend to think it's the best of the many Thanksgiving dishes. We'll see how this one comes out.

I am, I admit, a wee bit worried about the raisins, though. I got a pack from the grocery store in the building where I work (my building's grocery didn't have raisins for whatever reason), and when I experimentally bit down on some raisins, one seemed to have some sort of grit or a super-hard stem that went down into the recesses of one of my molars, causing a flare-up of pain. So now, I'm wondering whether to see the dentist about maybe pulling another tooth. That molar never felt as if it had had a cavity in it before; I'm thinking that the grit-or-whatever may have damaged the tooth. There's been no major pain since, but I'm currently afraid to chew any food on the left side of my mouth. More news later as this develops.

Anyway, here's the homemade sausage:

And here are the croutons (made with Roman-meal bread*):

croutons drizzled with olive oil and dusted with salt, pepper, sage, thyme, and onion powder

The croutons might not be enough, in which case I have a bag of panko at the ready.

It's been a weekend of cooking, and I go slowly when I cook, so this took all day. Maybe I should take some cooking classes to learn how to be a more efficient and effective cook.

The full prep is almost done; I have only a few more things to take care of: make the stuffing and gravy, buy the pumpkin pie (make whipped cream for the pie?), ham, and dinner rolls, and transport the food to the office in batches so as not to be loaded down. Busy week ahead.

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*Is "Roman meal" a brand name or an actual type of bread? The bread package said "Roman meal" in Korean, which doesn't clear things up. I vaguely remember a wheat bread with the brand name of "Roman Meal" from my childhood.