Xan, Catherine, Kathleen, Jenny: Chicago Thanksgiving!

After a disappointing turnout of zero physical guests last year -- although Linden and Chris did join us digitally via Skype! -- we were excited for Mom and Kathleen's visit to Chicago for Thanksgiving 2014.  We had a great time and made too much food, which is the point of course.

After years of dissatisfaction, I decided to go ahead and separate the dark and white meat. I did an especially fine job of encasing the breast in bacon this time. In fact I attained 100% bacon coverage:

However, the oven temp was a bit too low and the bacon did not render and brown enough. It was still good though!

Meanwhile, the dark meat was braised in wine and stock:

Elsewhere, Kathleen and Catherine worked on the braiding of the herb bread:

As you can see, they have both contracted an acute case of PaulaDeenitis, also known as The Orange Horror. That's what happens when you sneak sweet potato biscuit after sweet potato biscuit before dinner, even though it is expressly forbidden:

"I only ate three!"

Here is a full plate:

Turkey breast with gravy, turkey thigh, stuffing, brussels sprouts, roast potatoes, sweet potato biscuits, herb bread, salad.

There was also some caramelized pumpkin soup:

And finally, pie!

It looks like I've been thoroughly shut out of the pie-making decisions at Thanksgiving time, although I anticipate this changing soon. As you can see, the King of Pies is clearly absent. Apple pie is good, but pecan pie will always be the best. That is an objective fact. Furthermore, I'm not a big fan of pumpkin pie, although apparently this was the best pumpkin pie anyone had ever had.  As you can see from its extra-deep orangeness, it is a Paula Deen recipe, which also means it is the worst pumpkin pie anyone has ever had.  This pie has butter and half-and-half and cream cheese and whipped cream. I am now completely surrounded by orange people, and they're orangening more with every slice. In fact I can hear them in the other room right now, eating pumpkin pie for breakfast. I give them a week, tops.  After that, I will be making all the pie decisions!

Xan: Warming up with an afternoon snack

We'll get to Thanksgiving proper, but first, I wanted to share a new recipe.  Yesterday we took a short break from our feast preparations to enjoy some Pumpkin Pie Mini-Churros (I would add "of Great Deliciousness"  but it's obviously redundant).  I adapted this from a regular churro recipe by adding canned pumpkin puree to the batter and putting pumpkin pie spice into the sugar mixture, but you could just as easily leave the pumpkin out and use cinnamon instead of pumpkin pie spice.

I make mini-churro spirals. Why mini? Because I only have a tiny star icing nozzle, not a giant churro-sized one.  Also, mini-churros take very little oil.  But, you can make these any size you want; regular churros would be awesome! (They will require more like 5-10 minutes to cook).  If you don’t have any nozzles, or for that matter icing bags, just use a Ziploc bag and cut a hole in a corner. 

Oh yes, and why spirals? Because mini-churros are so thin, spirals are a nice way of making each churro more substantial for the eater.  Also, the compactness of the spirals speeds up the process considerably.  If your goal was just to cook all the batter as fast as possible, you would start in the center of the pan and squeeze out a single tight spiral that took up the whole surface area of the oil.  Besides the perfectly-solved packing problem, there is a fixed cost component to each churro (terminating it and restarting a new one takes time, which adds up), and this way you’d only have to pay it once per batch.  But…don’t try to make one big spiral.  Not a good idea.  Mini-spirals walk the line between efficiency and feasibility.  Plus, they’re pretty.

But you can do it however you want.

Xan’s Pumpkin Pie Mini-Churros

Adapted from regular churros recipe in Mark Bittman’s The Best Recipes in the World (p 655).

Ingredients

Oil for frying

1 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice

1/2 cup sugar plus 1 TBS sugar

1 stick butter

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup flour

3 eggs

1/2 cup canned pumpkin (or…mashed sweet potatoes?)

Instructions:

1.      Put about 2/3rds inches of oil in a cast iron skillet and heat to about 350 F (the temperature is not critical and I don’t actually measure it).  Mix the spice and sugar together on a large plate.

2.      Combine the remaining sugar, butter, salt, and 1 cup water in a saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil.  Turn the heat to low and add the flour all at once.  Stir constantly until the mixture forms a ball, about 30 seconds.  Remove from the heat and beat in the eggs one at a time, stirring until smooth after each addition.  Mix in the pumpkin pie filling.

3.      Spoon the dough into a pastry bag with a star tip.  Squeeze dough into the hot oil in tight spirals, using a fork to cut off the stream at the end of each spiral.  Cook as many as will fit comfortably at once, turning as they brown, for a total of 1-3 minutes each. (They are done when brown as in the picture).

4.      Remove the churros from the oil and drain them on paper towels, then immediately roll them in the sugar mixture.  Serve immediately!