Thanksgiving!

Owen's 1st Thanksgiving

As you are no doubt aware, Thanksgiving is pretty much only celebrated by Americans (unless you're Canadian, in which case you celebrate it in October). That means that in the UK there's no holiday for us this week, so we make our turkey on Saturday.

The first year we were here we didn't really celebrate. I think that was the first time in my life that I hadn't had Thanksgiving turkey, and I missed it so much I decided to take the plunge the next year and roast my own turkey (in a tiny oven) for the first time ever (not only had I never roasted a turkey before, I'd never even roasted a chicken, and the thought of handling a raw turkey...eew...). Luckily no one got food poisoning and most of it was eaten, so I guess I did alright.

I have since become a seasoned turkey (and chicken) roasting veteran and every year we invite our friends (American and otherwise) to a potluck-style Thanksgiving dinner. I'm responsible for the turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, all of which I'll be making more or less the same way I do every year sometime between now and Saturday afternoon. I'm always torn between trying one of the many awesome looking new recipes I've seen or being traditional. There are a few of our friends that would be very upset if I didn't make things the way I always have, so I've decided that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

We are always terrible about remembering to take photos (the one above was of Owen's first - I can't find any from last year), but since this is Claire's first Thanksgiving, I'm going to try to remember to get a few. And, I know it's a bit late for anyone needing recipes for this year, but I'm also going to try to take pictures of all the food I make and share some of my (I mean Food Network's, Epicurious, my mom's and Sean's mom's) secrets.

Leftover makeover

I suppose this isn't any more of a makeover of a leftover than it is an easy dish to make with a rotisserie chicken, but I seem to always make this when there's leftover roast (or grilled) chicken in the fridge, so there you go.

Basically, this is a Waldorf salad with chicken and some dried fruit added. Although I made it with leftover grilled chicken in the pictures here, it's a great fall meal with leftover roast chicken (I make mine more or less like this Ina Garten recipe, but don't add the carrot, onion and fennel to the bottom of the roasting pan and usually just make roasted vegetables separately). I've never tried this on Owen, but if you're planning to make it for toddlers, be careful about the nuts, as they can be a choking hazard. Slivered almonds would probably be OK, but I'd steer clear of big chunks of walnuts or pecans!

This is pretty good for something that takes all of about 5 minutes to throw together. It's even better with oven-baked sweet potato fries sprinkled with smoked paprika (my new favorite spice - yum). Since these photos came from a summer version, back when I didn't want to turn the oven on, we had it with broccoli slaw (I make it with half broccoli and half cauliflower) and tomato/cucumber salad, which is simply sliced or chopped cucumber, tomato and red onion dressed with equal amounts of extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar and some salt and pepper.

Not sure this is the most appetizing photo, but I promise it tastes good!

  
"Waldorf" chicken salad 

Salad:

Leftover chicken – grilled, roasted, whatever. In this case I used the meat from 1 thigh and 2 legs

1 small apple, diced (I used a Gala)

2 stalks celery, chopped

Handful raisins (about 1/4 c), or golden raisins, or dried cranberries – any dried fruit really

Handful chopped nuts (also about 1/4 c), this time I used flaked almonds, but I usually use walnuts. Pecans would also be nice, but they're (sadly) harder to come by in London 

Dressing:

Mayo, about 1/4 c for this amount of “stuff”

Plain yogurt, also about 1/4 c

Wholegrain mustard, about 2 teaspoons (but depends on how “mustardy” you want it)

Salt and pepper to taste

Few leaves of fresh thyme, optional (I often add this when I have some left from my roast chicken); parsley would be good too I'm sure

Mix salad ingredients together in a bowl. Just throw all the dressing ingredients on top and mix well - no sense in dirtying another bowl in my opinion! Add a bit more mayo or yogurt if it seems too dry. Serve on (or with) bread of your choosing. I typically use pita, but that's just me.

Blackberry lime galette

This is woefully out of date, and I don't even have any pictures of it, but it goes with my last food-related post, so I just wanted to finish it up and be done with it. For what it's worth, I'm sure this galette could easily be made more seasonal - apple and orange anyone?

When I made the tomato and goat's cheese tart I figured there was a chance I’d have leftover tart dough, so bought berries to be prepared. I chose blackberries simply because they were on sale and looked nice. I'd love to say I picked them myself or even that they came from our Farmers' Market, but no, these were straight from Tesco. Oh well. I was trying to figure out what I could add to them to give the pie that something extra and saw a lime in the fridge. I was sure I’d seen that combination somewhere. Sure enough, I had but not in a pie. According to Google, blackberries seem to go well with lime in a pie situation, but most use them on top of a key lime pie/lime tart sort of thing, or part of cheesecake. I figured there was nothing to lose by trying a bit of lime zest and juice with the berries, and sure enough I was right.

Blackberry lime galette
I used another blackberry galette recipe for guidance on amounts of sugar and cornstarch, and the dough as already mentioned was from the David Lebovitz tomato and goat's cheese tart recipe.

Leftover tart dough (this was about 11-12 inches in diameter when rolled out)
Just under 1 1/2 cups blackberries
Zest of 1/2 lime
Juice of 1/4 lime
1 1/2 Tablespoons sugar (I like mine quit tart; if you’re into sweeter things, go for more)
2 teaspoons cornstarch (I read a few things on using cornstarch vs flour for thickening, and got the sense that, when it comes to pies cornstarch is better. If you prefer flour, supposedly you need to use twice as much.)
milk (or egg wash; I really hate wasting an egg for this purpose though)
Raw/demerara sugar (about 1/2 Tablespoon)

Roll out your dough so that it's roughly 1/8-1/4 inch thick. You're going for rustic, so no need to make a perfect circle. Transfer to a baking sheet lined with a Silpat mat (or if you don't have one, I am sure parchment or just spraying the sheet with cooking spray would be fine). Gently mix blackberries, lime juice and zest, 1 1/2 T sugar and cornstarch and pile onto the middle of the dough, leaving about a 1 inch border. Fold the edges of the dough over the filling, brush exposed dough with milk (or egg wash) and sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake at 175 C (350 F) for about 30 min, or until the crust is golden.

Word of warning: steamed lime juice is apparently bad on the eyes – be careful when opening the oven the first time!!

Tomato and goat’s cheese tart

Today, a recipe because, well, it's been a while since I've done a food post, and this one just won't be the same once summer is over and in-season tomatoes are a distant memory. This also reminds me that I need to tell you about my patio "garden"; I'll try to do that soon.

I love quiches, but I also like the idea of a savory tart that doesn’t use 6-8 eggs and a cup of heavy cream on top of an ultra-buttery pastry. So, a couple of recent recipes have gone right to the top of my “to cook soon” list. The first skips the pastry but includes eggs; it uses thinly sliced potatoes as the crust. I’ve had a few issues with getting the baking time right on this (it took about 30 minutes more than the recipe said last time I made it) and with the potatoes burning on the edges, but once I get it right, I’ll try to remember to share my version with you.

The second has the pastry, but skips the eggs (ok, the pastry itself does include 1 egg and the filling does have a lot of cheese in it, but whatever, it’s healthy I’m sure…) It’s adapted from David Lebovitz, one of many food blogs I enjoy reading regularly.

Which 'wich?

There are a zillion sandwich recipes out there. Most of them are pretty silly. As Deb from Smitten Kitchen (my favorite food blog, as noted previously) once wrote, “…who needs a recipe for slapping things between two pieces of bread?”
 

Recently I’ve found myself in a sandwich rut. I'm home pretty much every day for lunch now, and sandwiches are my go-to thing. However, there's only so much ham/cheddar/mustard and tuna salad a person can eat. I started by at least adding lettuce and tomato to most sandwiches, and sometimes cucumber (especially with tuna) or even avocado. However, even that got boring after a while.

Fro yo, yo.

I’m not sure when the frozen yogurt “craze” hit the US, but I just know I used to eat TCBY (apparently they go back to 1981) in my hometown when I was in like 5th grade. I guess it’s the whole Pinkberry thing in the US (which apparently started in 2005), but I have no idea why it took so long to catch on here. Two fro yo places have finally opened in our area in the last year, and they’ve been cropping up all over London in the last 2 or so. One apparent difference about the UK is that the shops I’ve tried have plain/natural yogurt, which is awesome. Even “original” Pinkberry has sugar as the second ingredient. Does plain fro yo exist in the US anywhere? If not, it should!

Anyway, if your kids aren’t old enough to figure out that chocolate yogurt is an option, or that you can get it topped with Oreos instead of fruit, this makes for a super-healthy snack - the small natural at Frae is I think 85 calories, fat free, organic and with all the protein/calcium of normal yogurt. And of course it’s good for adults too. I made the mistake of actually telling Owen it was yogurt, but like ice cream. He was kind of confused, but then he tasted it. Unfortunately the neighborhood gelato shop still has these places beat because they have a shelf of toys and books for kids. Oh well.

If you live in London and want to try British fro yo out, Frog is perfect if you’re on the go (it’s a really tiny shop with nowhere to sit except a small bench outside on the street) and Frae is probably better if you’re looking to eat-in, which is kind of essential when a 7-10 minute walk in 80 degree heat is standing between the shop and your dining room or the shop and your nearest park. Frae’s still small, but there are several tables, and conveniently they're all just at kid-height.

Grilled s’mores, British style

Lessons learned: (1) Burned digestive biscuits (the closest thing we’ve got to a graham cracker in the UK unless you want to pay £6 ($9.15 at today's exchange rate, people) for a box of Honey Maids) don’t taste very good. Indirect heat is key. (2) While Cadbury’s is a superior substitute for Hershey’s (which you can apparently also purchase here at exorbitant prices), Sainsbury’s marshmallows (especially the pink ones that have raspberry flavoring) are far inferior to Jet-puffed. (3) You CAN roast a marshmallow indoors over your gas stove.

This was the first time Owen had ever experienced s'mores. He was begging for "just marshmallow" as we were trying to make them, but once he tried the whole gooey mess, he was asking for "s'more" for days. What kid wouldn't love this (in moderation, of course)?

I hate to put down a "recipe" for this, but I've been grilling things for a long time, and somehow never came up with the idea myself, so here it is...

Grilled (or indoor) s'mores

Adapted from a NY Times article by Mark Bittman: 101 Fast Recipes for Grilling, item number 99

Digestive biscuits (or graham crackers of course)

Chocolate bars (as I said, we used Cadbury’s milk chocolate, but I bet dark would be good too, and I suspect pretty much anything would be better than Hershey’s)

Marshmallows

Grilled version: Put digestive biscuits on a piece of foil, top with chocolate and marshmallows and another cracker (if desired – we made our open-faced because digestives are just a bit thicker than grahams). Grill over low/indirect heat until the chocolate and marshmallow begin to melt; be careful to watch the bottom of your cookie so that it doesn’t burn!

Inside version: Place marshmallows on a metal skewer (or a wire coat-hanger if you’re feeling old school campfire-y; just please be sure it isn’t coated with plastic!). Roast on low heat over your gas stove burner. Assemble s’mores.

Beat the heat

Let's get this party started with some food. I have an arsenal of recipes I like to make when it's just too hot to cook. Unfortunately, it is apparently next to impossible to forecast the weather in London more than about an hour in advance, so my attempts to plan cool recipes for hot days and vice versa keep being thwarted. In any case, my take on the classic Cobb salad was still tasty, even though it was only about 70 degrees the day I made it.

 Hmmm...looks like something from the lab...

I’m sure plenty of people would argue that my version isn’t a classic Cobb, but it still tastes awesome, so who cares. I made some small adaptations from a recipe I found on Smitten Kitchen, which, in case you don't already know, is just about the best food blog ever. (And her baby is just about the cutest baby ever, you know, except for my two.) I can assure you there will be many more Smitten shout-outs to come on this blog. The most significant changes were that I mixed up the lettuces I used, and I left out the chicken and the chives. Why? I intended to include some leftover grilled chicken, but we ate it all up the night before (in a recipe I like to call "Waldorf" chicken salad, which I may post later). I hate using iceberg lettuce and am not a huge watercress fan, hence the lettuce adaptations. As for the chives, I plain didn’t see it on the original ingredient list when I made my shopping list, so oh well.