Thanksgiving: The final prep

Thanksgiving Day. Michael got out of bed at 5:00 to take the bread dough out of the oven so that it could start to come to temperature and rise. He came back to bed, though, and we officially started the rest of the prep at the somewhat more leisurely hour of 8:00.

First, Michael baked the rolls for dinner...

...while I worked on making two butter-crust butternut squash tarts. What I love about this tart crust recipe is that you don't have to roll anything out. Because the dough is mostly butter, it's really forgiving, so I could just load chunks of it into the tart pan and pat it out until it filled the bottom and climbed up the sides.

While the crusts were baking, I assembled the filling: butternut squash cubes, sage, a few eggs, half-and-half, salt and pepper. I filled the tart crusts when they were about halfway done, then returned the whole thing to the oven to let the filling set while the crust finished baking.

We'd done pretty well with getting things ready to go in advance, so there were only two main cooking projects left for Thanksgiving morning. One was making the cornmeal blini, for which we employed a makeshift chinois (aka a wire-mesh strainer plus a wooden spoon) to smooth out the batter.

The other big task was making our amuses-bouches: puff pastry wedges filled with cranberry-quince chutney, goat cheese, and honey. We set up an assembly-line system for cutting the puff pastry into squares, filling it, folding it, and sealing the edges.

These baked for about 20 minutes per tray, and it was fun to watch them start to puff up and wiggle around on the baking sheet like little (edible!) Pac-Mans.

Finally, two other small tasks to finish out our meal. I was insistent on using crisped Brussels sprouts leaves to garnish the tart --- Lord knows why, since it's a ton of work for not much return, but that was kind of the name of the game anyway. And it was fun to deconstruct the little heads of cabbage, right off the stalk.

We'd added a palate-cleansing granita to our menu at the last minute, to come before the onion soup. I'd never made a granita before, but it's dead simple: Make a flavorful liquid. Freeze and scrape the ice crystals.

What I'm most proud of about this menu item is that it has exactly one ingredient: apple cider. That's it. Probably we could have added a squeeze of citrus in there, or a drop of sugar, but we got good cider and just wanted to use it as-is. Plus, I'm tickled by the idea of serving something that has only one ingredient.

Just to riff on this theme a little more: It's always been funny to me how people are so impressed by dishes that have tons of exotic ingredients and fancy techniques and show-off plating and the like. Liquid nitrogen! Scrollwork! Açai berries! More is better! But really, some of the absolute best things that I've ever eaten have had very few ingredients and require pretty much no complicated techniques at all. Think about the onion soup, or a perfectly cooked egg --- or bread, for that matter. It has exactly four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, and salt. Couldn't be simpler. And while I do love me some liquid-nitrogen-frozen-açai berries, I like to try to push the limits in the other direction, to see how much I can do with just a little.

So that was it for the prep. We managed to finish everything around 3:00, which miraculously gave us enough time to have a shower and even to put our feet up before getting everything ready to serve. Go team!

Unfortunately, I didn't have the presence of mind in the middle of service to take pictures of all of the food before it went out, but that's probably just as well. The point was to have fun and enjoy ourselves, which, believe me, we did. So what if it's not preserved for posterity; at least everyone had a good meal.