Entering Thanksgiving week. I serve as chef and host. Fewer guests than a year ago, just four. None able to assist. Dinner set for 2:30PM on Thanksgiving Day.
As with other centerpiece dinners, I crafted a menu by making a grid of food courses. While I usually tap my cookbook collection and search for recipes online through a variety of keywords, this year's meal comes entirely from cyberspace.
- French Bread for Motzi
- Kasha Knishes for Appetizer
- Butternut Squash Soup
- Cucumber Salad
- Roasted Half-Turkey Breast
- Crock Pot Stuffing
- Mediterranean Sweet Potatoes
- Vegetable to be Determined
- Citrus Cranberry Relish
- Apple Strudel from Puff Pastry
- Sparkling Cider
All recipes printed. Shopping list assembled with acquisition in three stages. I've been to Trader Joe's for staples best purchased there: olive oil, eggs, butternut squash, turkey breast. Shop-Rite supplies most other needs. My current pantry holdings have been inventoried against the recipe ingredients. Sprouts has the most appealing produce offerings, though at a slight premium to other places. And sometimes they have gourmet coffee beans reduced, which I can grind to my needs on their grinder.
Meeting the dinner time deadline takes serial execution, multiple coordinated steps. Shopping is under control. Two essential items, the turkey and puff pastry, need removal from the freezer to thaw. Figure Monday to prepare Thursday. Most of my dining room creations, Seder, special birthdays, Mother's Day. Shabbos guests, all get served as late suppers. I need those late afternoons for special touches. Thanksgiving needs completion by mid-afternoon. That means doing as much as possible in advance. I set each printed recipe around the perimeter of the dining room table. A few days in advance, I take out all non-perishable ingredients, placing them with the recipe for which they are most essential. I try to take out the measuring devices, cups and spoons, to put on the table, along with the cooking implements that will be needed. Five of the eleven items require the oven, so timing and bundling what can be baked together provides its own challenge. Knish filling can be made the night before, as can the dough. Then assemble in the morning until ready for baking. The soup ingredients can be roasted the night before, then measured and assembled. Make salad
By Thursday morning, early in the morning, I want to be assembling and heating. Bread starts early as it needs time to rise. Knish filling and dough can be made the night before, leaving me time to wash the mixer in anticipation of needing it early in the morning for bread. That means my sink needs conversion to fleishig on Wednesday afternoon. Then while bread rising, assemble the knishes, baking them either with the bread or with the turkey, depending on the oven temperature needed.
Ingredients for the soup can be prepped the night before, assembled in the morning then cooked on the stove top where it will keep on a simmer indefinitely. Cucumber salad needs marinating. Best made the night before or very early Thursday. Certainly, the components should be cut the evening before.
Turkey poses a challenge. It is very easy to make. Some celery and carrots around the perimeter of the bake pan, dry off the bird, oil it with olive oil, season with some type of poultry mix and black pepper. Pop into oven for 90 minutes and set timer. It will need to rest for about a half hour. So to serve at 3PM it will need to go into the oven at about 12:30PM. Other baking must work around that, including the bread and knishes and sweet potatoes. The strudel, however, assembles and bakes early in the morning.
I do not know which vegetable to make. It is virtually always boiled for a few minutes, except beets which need roasting for about an hour. I am the only one who likes beets, so I'll look for something green. Sweet potatoes need some assembly. Prep vegetables the night before.
Stuffing has to start the night before, as the bread needs cubing and drying in the oven. Prep other ingredients like vegetables that will need inclusion. All into the crockpot early in the morning. Cook on high for an hour, then reduce to low and benign neglect until needed.
Cranberries are easy to make. Citrus, sugar, water, berries. Boil until popped. Put lid on saucepan, then into refrigerator.
So that's the food. An elegant, infrequent dinner involves more than food. It requires presentation. Each table setting with fleishig utensils, dishes, cloth napkins, and stemware. Each food item attractively displayed. Platters, tureens, salad bowls, salad -tongs, and other serving implements. Set out in advance, which limits how I might use the dining table for preparation.
And when all is completed, cleanup. It typically takes me until Sunday to restore my kitchen to its pre-Thanksgiving condition. Leftovers go in part to the guests, in part to microwavable containers. Shabbos follows Thanksgiving. The dining table needs to be repurposed, as does much but not all of the food. Then my wife's birthday gets a special dinner the following week. Cleanup in a steady efficient way takes some attention.
While the process of planning, execution, and restoration evolves over weeks, each component boosts my assessment of my own capacity. I can begin with an idea, organize steps, visualize a final coherent event, and experience its glories. No better satisfaction. A process adaptable to creating many other forms of personal accomplishment.
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