Reveillon 2012

Uncork the Rose d'Anjou and put the bottle in a wine bucket.

Place a generous round of foie gras atop a bed of sautéed kale seasoned with a bit of four spice, salt, sherry, and a touch of beef stock for richness. Serve with individual French levain rounds.

Place the pommes Annette on a warmed plate.
Slice the chicken breasts on a diagonal, then overlap them on the pommes Annette.
Drizzle with the sauce (pan sauce made with a brunoise of shallots, sherry, pomegranate juice, a bit of beef stock, salt, butter and crème fraîche.
Garnish with pomegranate seeds.
Serve with slices of French levain bread.

Arrange some French cheeses on a platter: Camembert, Fourme d'Ambert, Petit Basque.

Pop the cork on the Asti. This wine is a little bit sweet, perhaps even sweeter than this rather tart pie.
Slice a piece of tarte tatin and plate it.

Enjoy.

Then, go to your friends' place and eat a pane con pavo.

Try not to explode.

Turkey Sausages

It's the day after Thanksgiving and not a creature is stirring. At least, not in the kitchen. Everything is pretty much ready to go. The sausages were made from the wings and thighs when the turkey was boned. We did make some garlic mashed potatoes and pita bread, but that stuff is easy.

Turkey sausages
ingredients

• Dark turkey meat, silver skin removed.
• Powdered milk (binder)
• Minced celery & parsley
• Lemon juice
• A bit of cider vinegar
• Fresh cranberries
• Salt
• Black pepper
• Duck fat. Use a lot to keep the sausages from getting too dry. Pork fat could also work.
• A trace of sage

Instructions

1. Get everything really, really cold. If you're using a meat grinder, put it in ice water for a while to chill. 
2. Season the meat, mix everything together and run it through the grinder.
3. Make a small patty and fry it. Taste to adjust seasonings. Adjust the spice mix as needed
4. Stuff hog casings with the sausage mix.
5. Preferably, hang in the refrigerator to let the casings dry out a bit overnight. If you can't do this, no big deal.

Grill the sausages and enjoy. I cooked the pita bread on the grill, too. Fast and easy.

Thanksgiving!

So, you were expecting photos of roast bird and apple pie? The bird looks like a big, skin-covered sausage when it comes out of the oven. Sliced, it's tender slabs of meat veined with green flavor-enhancing herbs. There was no cranberry sauce - the berries went into the rice, and were very happy there. No stuffing, either. Just tangy, sweet-sour yams that complimented the turkey and rice to perfection.

A thanksgiving menu

Food
Cranberry rice medley
Citrus-baked yams
Boneless turkey breast roast
Tangerine Dream cake
Sweet Potato Pie
Whole wheat country loaf au levain

Wine
Pinot Gris Reserve | Jean Albrecht '10
Grüner Veltliner | hugl '10

The turkey

• Bone the turkey, separating the breasts from the tenders. Reserve the drumsticks, use the thighs and wings for sausage meat, make stock with the neck & bones. Save as much skin as possible.
• Brine the turkey breasts with some rosemary sprigs overnight.
• Puree celery and parsley. Add lemon juice. Add room temperature butter and puree until you have a gooey mess with butter and herbs. Place this in a bowl and rub all over the turkey breasts and tenders.
• Place the reserved skin on a cutting board, place the breasts & tenders on top, pull the skin around over the meat and truss. We didn't have enough skin to completely cover the meat, but it's not a problem as long since the exposed meat will be placed on the bottom in the braising liquid.
• Place in a ceramic or other non-reactive baking dish, add whatever liquid is left from the celery/parsley/lemon mixture, then add some turkey stock made from the bones.
• Roast at 360° for about 90 minutes.
• Let rest, then carve. Done. Serve with some of the braising liquid and pomegranate seeds as a garnish.

The Rice
Simple. Salt. Brown rice. Wild rice. Fresh whole cranberries. Unsalted turkey stock.
Put all this in a pan and simmer for about an hour on very low heat. We used brown basmati. Don't use white rice since it needs a lot less time to cook than wild rice and will turn to mush.

The yams...
I'm not sure what's in these, except lemon juice and simple syrup flavored with nutmeg, lemon juice and zest. They're steamed, mashed, the syrup goes over the top and they're baked.

Tangerine Dream cake
The base is a dark chocolate wafer, then orange marmelade, then tangerine genoise flavored with simple syrup infused with pureed tangerine, orange and vanilla extract. Then tangerine Bavarian cream. Then another layer of the genoise. Cover the whole thing with chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream and garnish with tangerine wedges.

I didn't make the sweet potato pie (a friend brought it), so I can't say much about it except that it was excellent.