Sunday, November 30, 2008

Happy thanksgiving

We co-hosted thanksgiving dinner with Choon Ping and Pei-Sun this year since they are renovating their house. Preparation work started on Wednesday night. We made some cranberry sauce, corn bread (both for eating, and also for the stuffing), pumpkin pie, and also brined the turkey. The brine solution is a super saturated solution with brown sugar and salt, with some herbs and oranges. The brine is suppose to help keep the turkey really moist and flavorful while it gets roasted on Thursday.

On Thursday morning, we cooked the stuffing (corn bread, fennel, and italian sausages), and let the mixture cool down before stuffing it in the turkey. Then Pei-Sun cooked her famous honey glazed ham. We then have to wash the turkey off of all the brining solution, and dried the turkey before putting it in the oven for 4 hours at 325F. We basted the turkey every hour with chicken stock and turkey stock. For side dishes, we have a green bean casserole. This year we had a fancier version - we started off with fresh green beans and mushrooms instead of canned beans. We also made some mashed potatoes, and very delicious gravy to accompany the potatoes from the drippings from the turkey. The Pilsbury Doughboy also helped out with some buttery cresent rolls.

We finally had an excuse to open the gigantic bottle of champagne our caterer for our wedding gave us. Farzad had quite a blast drinking his bubblies... Other non alcohol drinkers enjoyed some sparkling apple cider that Farzad brought over, or home made lemonade using lemons from Choon Ping and Pei-Sun's lemon tree.

After dinner we had some wonderful desserts - Cammy brought over an apple pie, Donald and Sandy brought a tiramisu, and the pumpkin pie with cool whip. Yum! Everyone was pretty stuffed. Later we played a game of Pictionary, and of course, no surprise there, the girls won :)

Choonping is carving the turkey.

Look how plum and juicy the turkey is:

The sweet and flavorful ham:

Choon Ping all pooped out after the party:

1 comment:

riviera said...

Hasn't been to any Thanksgiving party yet :( Poor us.
The ham looks yummy yummy!
Just from your description, the turkey already sound delicious. No wonder Meeku loves it.
Evolution of cats have intensified. Mow Mow has also been enjoying roasted pork at home!
They are coming.....