Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Not only was this Thanksgiving my first-ever Thanksgiving away from the cozy comforts of my aunt's home, but it was the first one I ever threw by myself!
Well, not entirely by myself -- I certainly had a lot of help with the cooking. I hosted about 25 people (consisting mostly of the foreign teacher population of Jiujiang) at my apartment for a proper fourth-Thursday-in-November feast. Thanks to the multi-ethnic crowd, we had some non-traditional contributions (moussaka, curry).
No turkeys could be had here, but thanks to the assistance of my Chinese colleague, I was able to procure four chickens from the market. And by that, I indeed mean that I picked out four LIVE chickens and had them killed. I was going to take photos, but my camera batteries failed me. Most people probably wouldn't want to see that anyway.
Cooking was quite an adventure, as I don't have an oven. Most Chinese don't have ovens -- it's just not an appliance involved in how they cook. Thankfully, some of my friends here had purchased toaster-oven-sized contraptions which could be easily transported. I spent Wednesday evening roasting my chickens one by one in the ovens.
More feast photos after the jump...
Clockwise from the upper-left hand corner: garlic mashed potatoes (contributed by a British teacher -- whatta sport, celebrating Thanksgiving!); sweet potato casserole with marshmallows -- this was heavenly, as the Memphis-based chef had enhanced the sweet potato puree with cinammon and nutmeg; coleslaw (another southern contribution); and lemon-butter green beans (cooked by me, from this Nigella Lawson recipe - scroll down the page to view the complete recipe).
More food: white gravy (again, a southern specialty -- I wasn't going to argue the merits of brown vs. white, though for the record, I'm all about brown gravy); oven-roasted potatoes (from the Brit); brown bread, which I hauled all the way from Nanjing last Monday; and my macaroni and cheese.
I made this macaroni and cheese using a 1994 recipe from Gourmet that I found in the epicurious database. Now, mac and cheese is not even a dish that I am accustomed to at Thanksgiving (actually, I don't think I've ever had it on Thanksgiving). But I recently experienced a windfall of cheese, and felt it would be a nice, homey, comfort-food-compliment to Thanksgiving dinner. And it was!!! I got many compliments on it.
Let's see it up close, shall we?
The recipe calls for cheddar; mine featured a mixture of sharp cheddar, mild cheddar, edam and aged parmesean. I think the quality of mac and cheese is all about the quality and sharpness of the cheese you use. Bland cheese = bland mac and cheese.
For dessert, there was glorious apple pie, pumpkin pie and brownies. It was truly a fabulous feast. Sharing it with so many others really made it feel like Thanksgiving. I hope everyone else's holidays were as wonderful.
Posted by Astrid at November 26, 2004 04:48 AM