Cooking Thanksgiving in France

[John Talbott]

I saw whole frozen cranberries at Picard this morning, however they were not with the other fruit but in the meat section for some reason.

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Wow, Felice, this is very great news. For all these years we've schlepped over crans for the hols. I'll go looking tmrw.

[John Talbott]

I just wanted to bump this up to see if anyone had any brilliant new ideas for Thanksgiving 2008 that haven't appeared in prior posts.

I'm reconsidering turkey d/t Pti's comment

I think turkey is insipid (except a well-roasted rôti the way my grandmother used to make  ). Also, I have this personal thing with huge roasting birds — they make me feel like I'm eating some kind of dinosaur. I'd probably have enjoyed the idea at age 7, but now it's a bit too late. My upper limit in size is a good capon.

I am also a bit suspicious of the common availabiility of turkey meat in France, and the relative rarity of free-range turkeys. I already loathe battery-raised chickens, so it's worse with larger birds (agh, battery-raised dinosaurs!) Sorry to be uttering my deep feelings so close to Thanksgiving.

and am torn between a gamey bird and capon-type.

[Dave Hatfield]

I just wanted to bump this up to see if anyone had any brilliant new ideas for Thanksgiving 2008 that haven't appeared in prior posts.

I'm reconsidering turkey d/t Pti's comment

I think turkey is insipid (except a well-roasted rôti the way my grandmother used to make  ). Also, I have this personal thing with huge roasting birds — they make me feel like I'm eating some kind of dinosaur. I'd probably have enjoyed the idea at age 7, but now it's a bit too late. My upper limit in size is a good capon.

I am also a bit suspicious of the common availabiility of turkey meat in France, and the relative rarity of free-range turkeys. I already loathe battery-raised chickens, so it's worse with larger birds (agh, battery-raised dinosaurs!) Sorry to be uttering my deep feelings so close to Thanksgiving.

and am torn between a gamey bird and capon-type.

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Can sort of understand about big birds, but I do like turkey. ORDER NOW! for Thanksgiving. I put something about this on my blog below the other day.

Also, last year I think I did a post on my way of keeping turkey moist & flavorful. The infamous 4 legged turkey. By the way I find the turkey's I get down here are all free range (I see them ranging at several farms around here.)

Capon's a good alternative. If I weren't being so traditional I'd opt for a monster standing rib roast. Usually around this time of year the Supermarkets have their pork sales. A nice big leg of pork, marinaded and baked ain't half bad.

Not brilliant, but suggestive perhaps. If I were trying to be a bit different I might be tempted to roast quail (boned) and serve them with slices of magret and alliade. GO from a big bird to a very small one.

[John Talbott]

Well, I just wanted to report that a small turkey rotisseried by my local guy was as good if not better than I'm used to the the USA. The one strange thing was that he only had 4 orders for birds yesterday (vs 27 in 1989 when I got my first one from him) but maybe everybody's celebrating this weekend.

[John Talbott]

I missed the article just before Thanksgiving by Raymond Sokolov in the WSJ, that gave Joel Robuchon's Roast Turkey recipe, but here it is.