amccomb

I stuff right before the turkey goes into the oven, and remove the stuffing right away. Then, as the turkey rests, I pop the stuffing in a casserole dish and put it back into the oven until it reaches 160 degrees. That way it's safe, and it tastes good.

I ended up using ludja's pear ice cream recipe, but with apples. I had planned on using pears, bought the pears, and discovered something new about my husband - he does not like pears! How have I gone for 7 years and not learned this? Have I always eaten ALL of our pear preserves and pear desserts? Anyway, I added a caramel swirl at the end, so we had caramel apple ice cream, and it was wonderful! I really want to try it with pure pear now!

Oo! Oo! That reminds me of one! This one was mine. Whoops. I found a recipe for rosemary shortbread that I thought sounded divine. Rosemary has that pine scent and mixed with buttery shortbread? Mmmm! Very Christmasy! Well, I made them, and *I* loved them, but when I put them on those cookie trays you refer to to bring to events, they always remained. I wondered out loud why, and my husband said they were like a disturbing mix of cookie and pizza. Oh well, I guess I won't make them again this year.

Mmmm..... Ok, so, how would I make pear ice cream? Would I poach the pears, then puree them and add them to a custard base? What ratio, do you think? Or would I leave the pears in chunks....that seems like they would end up like icy little pockets in the ice cream, though. I found this recipe on epicurious, maybe I could use this as my base: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/1285

So, my husband is making a gingerbread cake with mascarpone icing for my birthday this weekend, and I thought I would make ice cream to go with it. ANy ideas for flavors that would compliment? I want to try something new, and I've already done armagnac/honey, cinnamon, and pumpkin flavors.

Two years ago, at a work Thanskgiving potluck, the very first person to sign up said they would bring mac-n-cheese. I haven't normally had macaroni and cheese at Thanksgiving, but I have a few delicious recipes with a variety of cheeses that are really delicious (my favorite uses stilton and port), so I looked forward to trying it. The day rolls around, and she brought one of those HUGE disposable aluminum pans full of Kraft macaroni and cheese. I was disappointed, but what the heck. Beforehand, she tells me she realized she had no milk or butter at home, so she just used water to make 10 boxes of macaroni and cheese. Not only is it boxed mac-n-cheese, but the only redeeming ingrediants are left out? I didn't even try it (it was bright orange and gritty looking), but judging from the amount left, no one came back for seconds. Why not just bring something from a deli, or drinks, or something?

I, too, am interested in what I can prepare ahead. I have a dish that I would love to prepare the day before and either partially or fully bake the day before. Will that work with this recipe? http://www.emerils.com/recipes/by_name/cor...ce_pudding.html

So far, my only preparations have been to print out all of the recipes I plan on using (even the ones I've done many times before) and making a shopping list. Today I am making a house cleaning list and a "to-do" list that includes a minute by minute plan for the day before and day of. This weekend, I am making stock and gravy, much like yourself. I am also making pie crust and an apple and a pumpkin pie, which I am going to freeze and bake from the frozen state while we eat the actual dinner. (It will take several hours for us to be ready to eat dessert, anyway!) Monday, I am placing two online orders and one order with the butcher. Next weekend I am making danish dough for the post-Thanksgiving brunch and shaping it. I'll also make making cranberry orange jam, spiced rosemary plum jam, and maple, walnut and pear jam for the danish filling. Two or three days before, I'll make the cranberry sauce and cranberry relish and flavored butters. The day before, I will cut up everything I can and brine the turkey. The day of, I will assemble and bake everything! If only I had two ovens.... I wish I could make the mashed potatoes in advance, but they never seem as light and creamy after I reheat them.

I normally make a few flavored butters to serve with cornmeal scones, popovers, and sweet potato biscuits at Thanksgiving. In the past, I've done maple, cranberry, mixed herb, just sage... I'm thinking of trying a few different flavors this year. Any ideas?

These all sound wonderful, but maybe a bit heavy on the red meat with shortribs as the main course? I think polenta also sounds like a perfect side, but if you don't know if you would like the polenta, what about risotto of some sort? Or maybe a puree of root veggies, like parsnips and potatoes? I also think the charlottes sounds like a great idea. I was going to suggest somethiing fruity, maybe with pears, but apples would be great, too.

I've decided to try making danish for a post-Thanksgiving brunch in a few weeks. Can I shape them and then freeze them? Or bake them and freeze and top with a filling later? I'm definitely going to try the recipe from Baking with Julia. Would you say this is a difficult recipe to master? Do I need to practice a few times before subjecting guests to it? For the fillings, do I just use jams? Or is there something special about danish fillings? What about the cream cheese fillings you see at times - any recipes? Is it just sweetened cream cheese, or more like cheesecake batter or something else entirely? Seasonal fillings I'm thinking of are cranberry orange, rosemary plum, maple walnut pear, pumpkin cream cheese...

I like both ideas! However, I know my friends and family are not fish fans. What else could I stuff the pate choux with? Any ideas for the crepes? What about for a "dessert" that doesn't require individual attention like crepes might?

Every year, I make a big brunch on the morning after Thanksgiving and on Christmas morning. Normally, I make an egg dish some sort, potatoes of some sort, something sweet...sometimes a fruit salad or scones, and always biscuits and gravy. I prefer things I can make ahead, so I tend to do strata-type dishes for the egg dish and things like coffee cake, sweet potato cinnamon rolls, or bread pudding for the sweets. For the potatoes, I've done different hashes and potatoes roasted in duck fat (which I think I'll do ahead this year). Does anyone have any festive, delicious, impressive ideas that are easy to do or make ahead? What about drink ideas beyond coffee, cocoa, and OJ? We've done mimosas and bloody marys, too. Yum!

I'm not finished reading this thread, but I had to post a link to my favorite recipe, which is meatless and has chestnuts. I loooove it! But I think it might improve with sausage. It's got wild rice, chestnuts, and fennel bulb. http://content1.williams-sonoma.com/recipe...579F3048F7374B2 Then I had to post a link to the OTHER favorite, to which I always add wild boar sausage: It has pears, dried fruit, pecans, and sauternes. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/107294 I had to edit this to add that I bake the wild rice, fennel, and chestnut stuffing in the turkey, and remove it while the turkey is resting and pop it back into the oven to crisp up the top a bit. Mmmm.....

I have heard that there is an enzyme in fresh pineapple, kiwi, mango, and a few other fruits that mess with gelatin. Maybe that's why they are a little different?

I've been wondering about peanut butter, too. I thought I read farther upstream in this thread that fat will keep the mixture from whipping up well, so you will end up with flatter, denser marshmallows. My thought was to go ahead and whip up plain marshmallows, but then fold in the peanut butter at the end. I still haven't tried this, though! Keep us posted!

I just started to, but I'm not sure which cuts of meat are really cheap. Are pretty much all the meats in the braising thread really cheap? I suppose I could make a list of possible meats and then go to the store to see what the prices are, but I was hoping to make my whole shopping list BEFORE going to the store, so I don't have to think on my feet about what else to buy to go with the meat I pick.

I've seen a few threads on budget meals, so I've got some ideas, but I'm now looking for cheap cuts of meat that I can just throw in a pot and braise all day. I figure for the first meal, I would serve the meat with a side and veggie, then throw a bunch in with rice or beans or pasta for another meal, and then throw the scraps in a soup. I know buying whole turkeys or chickens are cheaper than buying the parts and are good for long, slow cooking. What are some other cheap, high yield cuts of meat? How do I cook them and what do I do with them afterwards? I'm on a tight budget, so I can't really add a bottle of wine or anything like that - mostly water, canned tomatoes, or stock from my freezer. Also, I want to avoid organ meat. I don't trust myself to make something tasty with them, and my husband would refuse to eat it if he knew what it was! I just wish produce wasn't so darn expensive! $3 for a single red pepper? $3 for enough spinach for one person? Yikes! Looks like I might be stuck with mostly root veggies and onions for awhile.

After thinkng about this for awhile, I'm torn. I love the idea of ginger, of maple, of brandy, of cardamom, and of walnuts. However, I'm sure if I add ALL of those, the flavors will get lost. What would be a good combo of flavors? I was originally thinking of maple and walnuts, but I really feel like I NEED to add brandy, so brandy is a must, and I think some sort of nut for contrast is a must, and then I want to add another layer of spice. What should I do? Also, I've been thinking of making it a custard pie, but I'm torn on that, too. Plus, I don't have a tried and true recipe, and I don't want to mess up the Thanksgiving pie!

I do own RLB's The Pie And Pastry Bible, but I really haven't worked much from it. I make sour cream and cream cheese crusts for other pastries............and I find it hard to imagine I'd like those for fruit pies. But I don't know. I'll give her recipe a try as soon as I find an opening in my menus and report back. ← Did you ever try the cream cheese crust? I was thinking of using it for a pumpkin pie, but I am searching for the best cream cheese crust recipe before jumping in.

I second the idea for browsing Kente cloth online. There are also several black and white patterns, or you could just borrow the geometric pattern from the cloth and make it black and white. I think the idea of decorating with long grasses is great, too.

I can not WAIT to try these out! This weekend, I tried a buckwheat honey and armagnac custard ice cream, and while the flavor was great, it never really thickened up in the ice cream maker. I'm guessing either the freezer bowl was not cold enough (although I froze it until there were no sloshing sounds, like the directions said), or I added too much liquor. It finally froze in the deep freeze, but it had ice crystals, which I was not happy with. I want to try it again, but I am anxious to try the other flavors, too! I am thinking about a cinnamon or ginger (both fresh ginger and candied) for this weekend, or maybe pear with a ripple of homemade cranberry jam, or pear with maple and walnuts...the possibilites just go on and on! I also really like spiced plum or sour cherries with rosemary (I make jam with those flavors), but I'm not sure how they would work in ice cream. I was also considering a marscapone fig custard with a ribbon of ruby port syrup. What I need is self-control! My husband and I both tend to eat ice cream until it's gone - no saving it in the freezer for a few weeks for us!

So, I've always used the recipe on the Libby's canned pumpkin. It tastes ok, just like every other pumpkin pie. What I want to do this year, though, is something different. Nothing TOO different that people are going to freak out about, but something that's gonna make people say Wow, this is a GREAT pumpkin pie. So, still fairly traditional, but with a secret something that really makes it stand out. Any ideas?

I made my first ice cream ever yesterday in a cuisinart ice cream maker I got for $14 on E-bay. Despite the fact I was making an apple pie and wanted to make something to go with it, I started with peanut butter ice cream. Man, my husband was so excited by it. He ate some after dinner, then as a midnight snack, and then this morning for breakfast! Now it's gone and he's forbidden me from making it again until we have people helping us eat it. Here is what I did: 1 cup of cream 1 cup of whole milk 1/2 cup of sugar pinch of salt 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter 1 tsp vanilla I combined everything but the vanilla and whisked over medium heat until the peanut butter was melted and thoroughly incorporated. I removed it from the heat, added in the vanilla, and chilled that in the fridge. When it was cold, I poured it in my ice cream maker. When it was almost done, I added in some chunks and shaved pieces of valrhona dark chocolate - probably a bar and a half. I won't do that again, though because I felt like some of the subtle flavors of the chocolate were lost. Then in to the freezer for a couple of hours. I quickly washed the freezer bowl and added it to the freezer as well. Later, I whipped up a custard base with honey and armagnac to go with the pie (apple with honey and dates and cardamom), which tasted lovely but never solidified. I'm guessing I used too much liquor (about 1/3 cup), but it could be that the freezer bowl did not get thoroughly chilled the second time around. I shook it and there was no sloshing, which is when the directions say it's ready, but it was only in for a couple of hours after the peanut butter ice cream was done. Here is the recipe for that, which I will try again with more egg yolks and less armagnac. 1/2 cup buckwheat honey 1 cup 2% milk 1 cup half & half 1/2 cup heavy cream 3 yolks pinch salt 3 T. sugar 1/3 cup armagnac 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste Simmered milks and honey for a couple of minutes. Whisked the yolks, salt & sugar together. Tempered with warm milk. Returned to cream mixture and whisked over medium heat until thickened. Strained, added vanilla bean paste and armagnac into the mix. Chilled and added to ice cream machine. I threw it in the freezer even thought it never thickened in the machine and it did eventually freeze, but had ice crystals. Tasted really nice, though!

Is this the place that serves the foie gras burger? If so, we went there maybe a year ago for lunch, and first of all, that burger was amazing, but I wish my husband and I had split it. Second, we got the dessert trio, which I expected to be small tastes of signiture desserts - instead they were three full sized desserts! Amazing, at that. Third, I mentioned we had read about his place on egullet, and he got very excited and kept telling us how much he appreciated us coming. Before we left, he packed us a to-go box for our ride home that contained all of the leftover fresh pastries from that morning, and the threw in a couple of extra chocolate sea salt truffles, as well. He and the waitress waved to us as we left. It was like leaving my grandma's house. We had a great experience there, and want to go back in November. This story just confirms what I thought about this place - very generous people who love what they do.