I’d only experienced the holiday once in the USA and really enjoyed the day and especially the meal.
A week or so ago the co-driver had a covid lockdown induced brain surge and decided to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for us.
Better to do that now than in the heat of late November.
We had to special order a turkey from our butcher as they are not a regular item on Australians’ shopping lists apart for maybe Christmas. Getting one that fitted in our oven was another consideration as generally our ovens are not as big as the ones over there. So we ended up with one around 4kg (9lbs) which is about as small as they get.
The bird was dry brined before it defrosted over 3 days in the fridge. Brining poultry, both dry and wet, is the latest cheffy trick to keep the flesh moist.
Corn bread muffins were also prepared. You can’t get corn meal easily here so that was substituted with polenta. But it seems they are virtually the same thing. Polenta is a dish made from corn meal, so apparently, we here mislabel the raw material.
The dressing (stuffing) was made from scratch. We generally can’t get that ready to go ‘in a box’ here apart from the USA Foods in Melbourne and they were out of stock. Australians usually make their own with bread and herbs and ‘stuff’ poultry in the cavity, so it’s unusual to have it on the side. But I like it much better the USA way…..more texture and flavour and it’s safer!
Then to finish off we had golden syrup puddings for dessert, the only Australian contribution.
We ate it all with a nice bottle of Tasmanian Pinot Noir given by friends for whom the co-driver had organised some sort of group mystery quilt exercise.
All the recipes used, including cooking method for the turkey, were from a Japanese born chef who lives in the northern beaches region of Sydney.
https://www.recipetineats.com/genius-easy-juicy-roast-turkey-dry-brined/
And it all turned out great!
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