The Final Blessing: Thanksgiving Desserts
Someone will almost always bring a pumpkin pie and/ or a mincemeat pie. There are variations, but it is always safe to use the recipe on the back of the canned pumpkin can for reliably good pumpkin pie, and by the end of a wonderful dinner, a lot of men just want good-ole-pumpkin pie, nothing fancy, you know, the way Mom used to make it. So go ahead, make one of the plain old pumpkin pies for him.
Libby’s Pumpkin Pie Recipe
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 large eggs
1 (15 oz) can Libby’s 100% Pure Pumpkin
1 can Carnation Evaporated milk (12 oz)
1 Unbaked 9-inch deep dish pie shell
Mis sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves in a small bowl. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Stir in canned pumpkin and sugar spice mixture. Gradually stir in evaporated milk. Pour into pie shell. Bake in preheated 425 F (220 C) oven 40 – 50 minutes or intil knife inserted near center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 2 hours and then serve or refrigerate.
Pumpkin Cheesecake Roll
This is a little more challenging, and you have to have a jelly-roll pan. Once you have done one of these roll things, though, you know it’s a whole lot easier than it looks. Yayyyyy.
This is a great Thanksgiving or Christmas dessert when you are sick of the same-old same-old desserts. Plus, one of these old fashioned rolled desserts always looks really fancy!
Cake:
Powdered sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup chopped walnuts
Filling:
1 package cream cheese
1 cup sifted powdered sugar
6 Tablespoons softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
Powdered sugar
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 15” x 10” jelly roll pan. Line with waxed paper, grease and flour paper (there is a reason!) Sprinkle a flat tea towel or dish cloth (flat woven, not terry cloth) with powdered sugar.
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt in small bowl. Beat eggs and sugar in a larger mixer bowl until thick. Beat in pumpkin, stir in the flour mixture. Spread evenly in prepared jelly roll pan, sprinkle with chopped nuts.
Bake 13 – 15 minutes or until top of cake springs back when touched. Immediately loosen and turn cake out of pan onto prepared tea-towel. Carefully peel off paper. Roll up cake and towel together, starting with narrow end. Cool on wire rack.
Beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter and vanilla in samll mixer bowel until smooth. Carefully unroll cake, remove towel, and spread cream cheese mixture over cake. Roll cake back up again (it will want to be in the rolled position after cooling that way) Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.
Soused Apple Cake
From Quail Country: The Junior League of Albany, Georgia.
If you don’t have brandy, don’t bother with this one – the brandy give it the punch, even though all the alcohol cooks off during baking. Kids hate this cake, adults love it.
4 cups cooking apple 2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup raisins 2 teaspoons baking soda
brandy 1 teaspoon nutmeg (grate it fresh, it matters!)
2 cups sugar 1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup salad oil 1/4 teaspoon mace
2 eggs 1 cup chopped pecans
2 cups flour whipped cream
Peel, core and finely chop apples; put into a bowl with raisins and cover with brandy, and soak overnight. Drain apples and raisins, set aside.
Combine sugar, salad oil and eggs. Set aside. Sift together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and mace. Add to oil mixture. Mix in apples, pecans and raisins. Mix well and pour into an oiled 9 x 13 baking dish. Cook in 325 degree oven for 1 hour.
Cut into squares, serve topped with sweetened whipped cream. Yield 15 – 20 servings.
** I use a tiny bit of ground cloves instead of mace. I also have used all sorts of whiskeys and brandies, but my favorite remains calvados or . . . rum! It is one of my favorite recipes.
Pecan Pie
When I saw pecans during Ramadan, I bought them up, da*n the expense. Pecans! This recipe is also from Quail Country, by the Junior League of Albany, GA. It is permanently marked in my cookbook!
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1 9-inch deep dish pastryt shell, unbaked
Beat eggs slightly; add sugar, corn syrup, salt and vanilla. Blend well, but do not overbeat; add butter. Stir in pecans. Pour into pastry shell. Bake in preheated 350 F (180 C) oven about 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Six servings.
OK, that (above) is the fail-proof recipe.
To me, it comes out very flat and thin, so I double the recipe and cook it in a French tart pan (large round glass or ceramic cooking pan with fluted straight edges), and then cut thin slices. This is very rich, very sweet.
Thanksgiving Side Dishes – Branching Out
Sometimes Thanksgiving food gets a little old. We have stopped doing mashed potatoes altogether, because no-one in this calorie conscious age wants to waste their calories on potatoes and gravy, not when there is roquefort dressing and pecan pie to consider! So here are some relatively low calorie additions we have made in recent years, trying to substitute rich taste for fat.
Balsamic roasted Sweet Potatoes
(Oh, so easy!)
Scrub sweet potatoes and take off any growths, etc. Leave skin on and cut into circles about 1″ thick (2.24 cm) Spray a baking pan with olive oil, and lay sweet potato rounds in the pan – they don’t have to be flat. Sprinkle with sea salt (yes! it matters!)
Make up a mixture of about 1 cup olive oil to 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar, and sprinkle about half of this mixture over the sweet potatoes. Put them in the oven about two hours before the turkey is finished roasting, and after the first hour, every fifteen minutes or so, when you baste the turkey with turkey juices, baste the sweet potatoes with the balsamic vinegar and olive oil solution. The roasting concentrates the sweet flavor, which is complemented by the vinegar.
Green Beans
It’s the French in me. I gotta have the green beans.
Fresh green beans are best – make sure to take off the strings, and I like to cut off the little ends, too. Bring a pot of water to a boil, pop the beans in and WATCH closely! As soon as they turn bright green – about one minute – take them off the heat, and maybe one minute later, pour out all the water. Put 2 Tablespoons of butter in the pot with the green beans. Sprinkle a little sea salt over them. That’s it. They’re good, just like that.
Thanksgiving Spinach
If you can get your hands on fresh spinach, that is the best. In a very tall pot, sautee about five cloves of finely chopped garlic in really good olive oil (about 1/4 cup), turn the heat down, add just a little water and add a whole lot of fresh spinach. Put the lid on. Give it maybe five minutes to steam down, then open the pot, add a little sea salt, and stir so that the spinach glistens and the garlic is mixed well into the spinach. Oh! So simple. So delicious!
*If I knew, really knew the way Kuwaitis and Qatteris know, how to make machboos, I would serve Machboos with the Thanksgiving meal. It would be perfect.
More Side Dishes – Salads to Give Thanks For
For me, the cranberry salad is mandatory – but not for you! If you want to give it a try, the Sultan Center has cranberries in the frozen section. Frozen is good enough. I have even made this with jellied whole cranberries from a can, but that is sheer desperation.
Mom’s Cranberry Salad
I must have given this recipe to nearly 100 people by now – it never fails to make a big hit. In Tunis, and in Amman, where fresh cranberries were no where to be found, whole cranberry sauce dissolved down worked wonderfully. It’s amazing what you can do when you are motivated! Note – I use raspberry or cherry or strawberry jello instead of lemon, because I like it to be red for the holidays.
1 1/2 C cranberries (wash, pick over and cook until soft
1 1/2 C water
add 1 Cup sugar and boil one minute
add 1 small pkg lemon jello (I use raspberry or cherry or strawberry because I like red)
When all is dissolved, add juice of one No. 1 can of pineapple (Mom’s recipe says a #1 can – use one of the small cans.) When cool, add diced pineapple from can, and 1/2 cup finely diced celery and 1/4 cup chopped walnuts. Refrigerate until firm.
One small buffet mold.
(This recipe is from the 1950’s. I double everything, Pour into mold for the holidays, or into a crystal bowl from which it can be served without having to unmold)
Mom’s Roquefort Dressing
This recipe is so BAD for you. So much salt! So much fat! So incredibly rich and delicious, and so simple to make. They have REAL French Roquefort right now at the Sultan Center. No, I do not work for the Sultan Center. Momma says if it isn’t real Roquefort, don’t bother.)
1 pint sour cream
1/2 teaspoon each:
garlic salt
celery salt
pepper
paprika (red powdered paprika, best from Hungary)
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 Tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 lb Roquefort cheese
Mix all ingredients together except Roquefort, then carefully fold in cheese. Serve with green salad, but in a separate serving bowl so guests can control how much or how little they want to use! This is also good as a dip with fresh raw vegetables. Oh, so rich!
The Turkey: Centerpiece of the Meal
I imagine it is possible to have Thanksgiving without a turkey, but I have never, never in my life seen one. Wherever we are, by hook or by crook, we find a turkey.
The irony is that it doesn’t even matter if you like turkey that much – and turkey can be tough and dry if overcooked – it is tradition. You can skip other things, but if you don’t have a turkey, you probably should at least have a paper turkey in the center of your table, something, anything, that will satisfy the need for “rightness” as in “this isn’t right!” if there is no turkey.
The good news is that left over turkey makes great sandwiches, filling for burritos, makes great sweet n’ sour, makes great turkey-noodle soup, cassarols – there are a lot of uses for cooked, left over turkey. If that doesn’t appeal to you, buy a bunch of those wonderful tin trays with lids at the supermarkets and send all your guests home with leftovers!
Your turkey will come with instructions. I usually thaw mine in the refrigerator – it takes up space that on Thanksgiving Day, when take the turkey out to cook, there is space for things I need to store for dinner. Space in the refrigerator will be a very good thing (says Martha).
Be sure to take out the innards. If you are going to make gravy, this is what most people use. You slow simmer the neck and gizzards in about a litre of water. You can pull meat off, and be sure to get all the bones out. That stock will be part of the gravy later on.
Your turkey roasting pan should have sides at least 10 cm (4 inches) high, because of all the turkey juice that leaks out. HINT: Spray that pan liberally with oil – it will be easier to clean down the road, trust me on this. I have a wonderful kitchen gadget that you put olive oil in and pump, and it sprays pure olive oil just like one of those store-bought sprays full of chemicals.
Spray the pan. Spray the turkey. Place the turkey in the pan, breast side up. (I have cooked them upside down and they were OK, too.) Put strips of fatty bacon over the top of the turkey.
Now here is the great secret: Put your turkey in a paper bag, tray and all, and staple shut. If you are using a meat thermometer, put it in the turkey right through the paper bag, it’s OK. Put the turkey in the oven at the temperature it says in your instructions that came with the turkey. (Usually around 180 C.) Every 30 minutes or so, spray that bag with water, like with the sprayer you use to spray clothes that need ironing.
When the turkey has an hour of cooking left, tear off that paper bag and begin basting, which is dripping the turkey juices back over the turkey. Baste every 15 minutes or so.
The house should smell wonderful by now. The turkey needs to come out of the oven about half an hour before serving. It needs to sit for 10 minutes and then someone needs to carve it, i.e. cut slices of it for serving. Often the big turkey wings are put on the plate of sliced turkey and some young man will eat the turkey right off the bone.
The Feast of Thanksgiving
This coming Thursday, the fourth Thursday in November, is the American Thanksgiving. Although it has a religious context – giving thanks for all we have been given – it is not a church holiday, but a secular one.
A group of people fled England (we call them the Pilgrims) seeking a place where they could practice their particular and very fundamental religion without persecution. They landed in a new country and established a colony. A good many of them died in the first year – from starvation, from minor ailments like ear infections that went untreated and became more serious illnesses. At the end of the harvest, the following year, they gave a great feast to celebrate those who had survived.
Honored guests were the Native Americans, who had welcomed the newcomers, showed them berries and forms of wildlife good for gathering and hunting, and without whom the Pilgrims could not have survived. At the table were foods never seen in the old world – turkey, corn, cranberries, possibly potatoes. . .
Wherever we are in the world, we take this 4th Thursday in November to give thanks, and to feast, preferably with family and friends.
My nieces, Little Diamond and Sparkling Diamond grew up going to the local soup kitchen on Thanksgiving with their parents to serve the poor and homeless their Thanksgiving meal. Many of us have special church services that day. Most of us spend a good part of the day in the kitchen!
We have so much to be thankful for this year. Although my parents are old, I have been able to go back and help them several times this year. The next generation of our family has (mostly) finished school and all have jobs they love doing. We shifted our tent successfully to another country this year, and are having a great time getting to know Kuwait. We have found a church here and are thankful to be able to worship freely. Through another friend, we met a family here we dearly love, and we will spend Thanksgiving with them. I am sure it will be a mountain of food.
I will be fixing my Mom’s cranberry salad, cornbread stuffing for my husband-of-Souther-origins, a pumpkin pie, and some balsamic roasted sweet-potatoes (the potatoes are tradition, the balsamic is not) and a few other dishes. We try to balance the traditional with something new from time to time. We will break open one of the fruitcakes to serve with the other desserts. Mom’s Fruitcake Recipe
You will know where people will be gathering and feasting by the delicious aroma of roasting turkey as you take advantage of this gorgeous weather to go out walking . . . We give thanks for the beautiful weather, too.
Mom’s Fruit Cake Recipe
Wooo Hooooooo! The fruitcakes are in the oven, and already the house smells wonderful. I’ve been making these cakes since I got married. I don’t think I have missed a year, but I may have. I grew up smelling these delicious cakes every winter. I don’t think my Mom makes them every year any more. I wish I were close enough to pop one into her refrigerator for their holidays.
Mom’s Fruit Cake
Even people who think they HATE fruit cake like this fruit cake. It has a secret ingredient – chocolate!
This is the original recipe. I remember cutting the dates and prunes with scissors when I was little; now you can buy dates and prunes without pits and chop them in the food processor – a piece of cake!
1 cup boiling water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup lard or butter
1 T. cinnamon
1 t. cloves
3 Tablespoons chocolate powder
1/4 cup jelly
1 cup seeded raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup candied citron
1/2 cup cut prunes
1/2 cup cut dates
Put all in a pan on stove and bring to a boil. Boil for three minutes. Let cool. Add:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Flavor with lemon
Bake at 350° in loaf pans for one hour. Makes 2 normal bread loaf sized cakes.
My variations: I put in about three times the fruit, the difference primarily in the candied citron – I prefer using whole candied cherries, because they are so pretty when the loafs are cut. This recipe doubles, or quadruples with no problems.
Pans: Mom used to line all the pans with brown paper and grease the paper. I grease the pans, then dust with more of the chocolate powder. Use a good quality chocolate, not cocoa. When the cakes come out of the oven, let them cool for ten minutes, loosen them with a knife, then they will shake out easily. Let continue to cool until they are totally cool, then wrap in plastic wrap, with several layers, then foil, then seal in a sealable plastic bag. Let them age a couple months in a corner of your refrigerator. I make mine around Halloween, and serve the first one at Thanksgiving.
I never make these the same any two years in a row. This is the first year, ever, that I won’t be using any brandy – alcohol in Kuwait being against the law. Yeh, I have some friends who laugh and say “you can get it anywhere!” but we made a decision to obey the law. Only rarely do I regret it . . . sigh . . .fruitcakes really need brandy.
Update: If you are in a country where brandy is available, and if you want to use brandy, here is how to use it in this recipe. You know how raisins get all dried out and taste yucky in fruitcakes? The night before you intend to make the fruitcakes, take all the raisins you intend to use (depending on how many fruitcakes you intend to make) and put them in a glass container. Pour brandy over them, to cover. Microwave just to the boiling point. Let stand in the microwave overnight.
The next day, you can drain that brandy and use it in a stew or something, and in the meanwhile, you now have plump, juicy raisins to use in your fruitcake, and just a hint of brandy flavor. Yummmm!
Shell’s Seafood Pasta
Where my parents live is not a lot like Kuwait, but is alike in one wonderful way – Seafood! I grew up on the water. Shrimp and crab, oysters, clams – all were cheap and plentiful.
I would like to tell you that this is my original recipe, but it isn’t. It is served at a chain of restaurants in Florida called Shells. If you get a chance to go there, go! Everything is delicious, and the prices are reasonable. This is not your white tablecloth kind of restaurant; it is a down-home kind of place, full of families and children, and truly delicious food.
SHELLS SEAFOOD PASTA
Ingredients:
1 lb. Linguini, cooked and drained
1 oz. Butter
4 oz. Mussel meat
6 oz. Chopped clams
10 oz. Scallops, raw
12 oz. Peeled shrimp, raw
4 oz. Olive oil
4 oz. White wine
8 cloves Garlic, finely chopped
2 dashes Soy Sauce
16 oz. Heavy cream
Salt & pepper to taste
Directions:
1. Cook linguini in salted water with butter until al dente; drain and set aside
2. Combine olive oil, white wine, garlic, soy sauce, and cream in a sauce pan and bring to a boil.
3. Add cooked linguini and drained seafood mix. Sautee, stirring gently, for about 10 minutes, until seafood is done and sauce has creamy consistency. Serve in warm serving dishes with shredded parmigiana reggiano. Garnish with chopped parsley, if desired.
(You don’t have to use scallops – use chunks of grouper (hammour) or whatever white fish is plentiful. Substitute a fish stock for the white wine.)
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