Thanksgiving 2

 

Well, my tart made it across Tokyo on the trains (above), and tasted quite good.  My friend's apartment had a fantastic view of the city and the Sumida River, and with 15 people, the party was a lot of fun.

 

 

There were two turkeys, as only one 4 lb bird could fit into the convection at a time.

 

 

 

 The spread- mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli, stuffing, wild rice salad, tart, and turkey. Brownies and doughnuts for desert.

 

My plate of carbo-loaded Thanksgiving goodness. 

 

Spinach Mushroom Tart

 

Tonight I'm going to a Thanksgiving party at a friend's house, and I offered to bring something with leafy greens in it. One of the challenges of cooking abroad isn't necessarily finding things you like, or adapting your cooking, but rather I find the challenge to be in the moments when I'm trying to cook American-style food, or cook things that are easy to prepare at home. Enter the tart. Enter my oven.

In my apartment I have a combination microwave-toaster-convection oven. It is the size of a small American microwave. I also own one large pyrex measuring cup, and one pyrex pie pan, both of which I inherited from friends moving back to the States. My usual pie/tart crust is a Pate Brisee, and my usual method is made on a large marble board with a rolling pin- two things I don't have. Instead I found a recipe for an easy dough (click here), that consisted of cooking together water, oil, sugar, salt, and butter. The recipe said for about 15 minutes, but mine took more like 25. Add flour, mix, and it worked to create a crust! Magic. Meanwhile, I chopped a mixture of three mushrooms, some garlic, and onion. This is a Japan bonus- there is a great variety of mushrooms here that are very inexpensive.

 

 

The crust was pinched into the pie pan, and then I baked it for about 20 minutes, twice as long as the recipe said, but it looked good.

 

 

I sauteed the mushrooms, onion, and garlic together with some spinach and a liberal amount of basil and some sage. Unfortunately I couldn't find thyme in my neighborhood, and didn't take the time to go to an import grocer.

 

 

I mixed the veggies with an egg and some heavy cream, stirred in grated Parmesan, salt, and pepper, and baked for about 30 minutes. Voila! The apartment smells heavenly, and I now know a shortcut for tart or pie crust. I can't wait to see how it tastes!

 

Leftover Joy

Long after most of the Thanksgiving leftovers have gone, some of our Spiced Cranberries remain.

Each year this is true- we make one bag of berries worth of cranberries- which is plenty for the big day, plus too many to eat with leftovers. I'm a huge cranberry fan, but it's tough to figure out what to do with two cups of tart berry goodness, despite their long fridge life. Enter Joy the Baker.

Joy the Baker is a food blog that I like to follow. I enjoy her photography and witty humor, and after Monday night I completely worship her recipe for Cranberry Brie Grilled Cheese. I'm not a big fan of plain grilled cheese, as melty cheese is not my favorite texture, but this was fabulous. The brie was smooth and creamy, and the whole grain mustard and cranberries were the most heavenly accompaniment. I was hesitant to serve sandwiches for dinner, as they seem so casual, but with a big salad and a side of slow-cooker Potato Pesto Soup, this was one of the better dinners of our week.

Thanks

 Ah, Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday of all. A day of cooking and drinking, no commercialization, family and friends, and lots of food from scratch. We usually have a big to-do at our place, but this year we wanted to scale it back. We had seven adults, a toddler, and a baby, so a pretty easy meal.

One thing we did this year to mix it up was to skip our traditional Butternut Squash Ravioli. This is an amazing addition to the table, but making pasta, rolling out dough, cooking the filling (usually starting with roasting the squash), and making up tons of tiny ravioli can be very time consuming to say the least. With both of us swamped with work the weekend before the holiday and up to Wednesday evening, it felt overwhelming, so we skipped it this year. I'm thinking ravioli will make an appearance on our Christmas table instead.

What we had in place of ravioli was a tart, but a last minute one at that. I love tarts and went through a serious tart phase a few years ago, but I think my pâte brisée skills have improved since the mid-2000s. The tart and a bonus chocolate pie were actually the result of a baking error I made the night before Thanksgiving. In a rush to bake my pumpkin pie crust I didn't spend the time to seek out my pie weights, and tried to use dried couscous instead. Not a good idea....and I totally should have known better. The crust shrunk down without the proper weight, leaving not enough space for the pumpkin filling, and looked a bit funky around the edges. After a bit of sulking and panic late at night (the best pâte brisée takes a few hours of on and off refrigeration, even pre-chilling the flour) I decided to try the pumpkin pie again in the morning with a basic crust (meaning a lower flour-butter ratio). As a result I had two pâte brisée crusts that weren't beautiful to look at, but still tasted fantastic. Joe had the idea to make a chocolate pudding pie for the kiddo, a great and super easy solution. For the other crust, I decided to wing it with a tart. Tarts are kind of fussy, so this was a bold idea, but it worked out.

Alison's last minute rustic mushroom tart:

One pâte brisée shell (the internet has a million versions, none of which I used, but this one is interesting)

16 oz mushrooms, I used half baby portabellas and half button

1 large shallot
2 cloves garlic
1 egg
Heavy cream- about 1/4 cup- I winged it on this one too
1/8 cup grated Parmesan (or so, again, I used up what I had)
Generous amount of thyme, dash of basil, dash of oregano
Fresh ground salt and pepper
Olive oil
Fresh parsley (about 2 tbsp)

Simple as can be- sautee the garlic and shallot in olive oil in a pan, add the mushrooms, sautee until they start to release their juices, adding a generous amount of thyme (maybe 1/2 a tsp), basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Cool. Add the mushroom mix to the prepared tart shell. Mix together the cream and beaten egg and pour into the shell. Top with cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Top with parsley. Tart perfection!

 Other dishes at our table were our Spiced Cranberries, A standard stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, Joe's veggie gravy, roasted Brussels sprouts, and our favorite centerpiece, Tofu Roulade (from the Chicago Diner cookbook). We realized that we only had recipes for the roulade and the cranberries, everything else was invented (fun!).

 The croissants were brought by friends, and came from the always fantastic Wheatfields Bakery in Lawrence.

 There was a non-natural not-from-scratch addition to our table this year- cubes. As Joe and I were preparing for our meal, we were reminiscing about the holidays of our childhood. My Dad's family meals always included this bizarre better-living-through-chemistry-era concoction called cubes. Frozen cubes (literally from the ice cube tray) that consisted of canned fruit cocktail, Miracle Whip (I kid you not), and cream. They were usually served with dinner as a side, often next to the cranberries. As a child, these things freaked me out, but my Dad and his siblings loved them. I had never eaten one, but thought I'd wing it as a surprise, which was also part of my Thanksgiving morning grocery run (we do not stock fruit cocktail or Miracle Whip in our house). I guessed at the recipe (and didn't know about the cream, turns out the internet does not know about cubes), and they turned out not too bad. We added whipped cream once I learned about the cream part, which took off the bite of the Miracle Whip. My Dad ate about six of them (!), so I'm guessing they weren't too far from the originals, heehee.

I have so much to be thankful for this year, most of all being surrounded by such great friends and family and having such bounty in our lives. I hope you had a great holiday, and the leftovers are treating you well!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving

Just like the pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone. We had a simple meal of Rosemary Grilled Salmon, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, and Greenbeans with Mushrooms and celebrated the holiday the weekend before. Thanks to the thoughtfulness of my parents, who shipped us a can of pumpkin (organic at that!) and a jar of pumpkin pie spice, we had a tasty pie for dessert. Actually, we had two pies, as the pie pans available at our local housewares shop are significantly smaller than American pie pans. On the actual holiday we enjoyed a quick weeknight meal of Rotini with Pumpkin-Sage Cream Sauce. This year was certainly no match for the large gatherings of friends and family that we have hosted in past years, but it was nice to celebrate nonetheless.
Perhaps the strangest part of being abroad for the holiday was going to work on Thursday morning. I have been overseas for other holidays, but as Thanksgiving is my favorite, it was a little bit sad. As I was walking to work though, my Ipod came through for me and played some upbeat and distinctly American music. Some days I feel like that thing can read my mind...
On Friday morning, as our family and friends were gathering for the holiday I was again walking to work. The weather was pleasant and I was thinking of all the things I am thankful for this year- the health of our family and friends, the opportunity to live abroad, how great it is to live in the internet age when we can video chat with our family and our pets half-way around the world, books, travel, education, the fact that I don't live in poverty like so many people on this planet.
The rest of our weekend was relatively uneventful. We ate dinner out on Friday and tried fugu (poisonous blowfish, ok that was kinda exciting), we spent Saturday doing housechores, grocery shopping, studying, and reading, and on Sunday we spent the afternoon in Kobe doing some holiday shopping. I feel so grateful to be as fortunate as I am, that my weekends consist of questions like where to eat on Friday night, what PBS program to watch on the internet, or how late to stay up reading and not where will I find clean water, where will my next meal come from, or how can I heat my home. I hope that this Thanksgiving season life finds you well, that the pies were delicious, and that you have much to be thankful for.