Reasons to be Thankful: Thanksgiving

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I have reasons to be thankful, even if I am a desperado.

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On the plate – Front to back, anti-clockwise: Roasted Brown Butter Sweet Potatoes, Pitanga Jam with red chilli flakes, Redcurrant and Kumquat jelly, Deep-fried, breaded green beans, Chicken and Gravy

Desperate to be American, in part…..purely to eat Turkey, or Turducken. Ok….we’ll have to settle on chicken. I am thankful for food on our table. Simple, fancy, tasty and homemade. Eaten with people to love. That I love. Thanksgiving on the third Sunday in November.

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I hope a bottle of ketchup is traditional at your table, as on mine!

Desperate to celebrate Thanksgiving and to be thankful, even if my chicken isn’t stuffed but merely wet-rubbed in a ‘not-so-traditional’ rub of soy and fish sauce. And a most delicious gravy from pan drippings.
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Desperate for homemade red sauce, even if it is made from Pitanga cherries and not cranberries, even if they could be cousins.

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Desperate for sweet potatoes, and thankful for wonderful friends and colleagues who know my love for food and encourage me. Challenge me. Whether it is to simply make roasted potatoes, crafty layer cakes, fashion out great-tasting ice-cream cakes or share what I know and love of food. I am thankful.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Recipe: Adapted from a recipe by Emily C on Food52 -Brown Butter, spiced sweet potatoes. 

Desperate for deep-fried, breaded green beans, and thankful for the success of the recipe. Finally. Thinking someday I’ll have to have this ‘green bean casserole’ with Campbell’s Mushroom soup. This casserole that polarises people.

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My recipe: On Food52

Most of all, I am desperate to make pumpkin pie. Something I can’t quite work out. How do you stuff pureed pumpkin into a pie. This pie though gives me a great, great excuse…..to try out my revolutionary stove-top pie crust, where the pie dough is cooked on the hob, a riff on Paula Caillat’s oven-cooked pie crust. Making this pie crust, has revolutionalised my pies. No need for the fear of ‘making leathery, tough pastry’, of leaving it to rest for fear of overworking the gluten. No need to worry……

The results are outstanding. A pastry base that remains crisp, flaky and down right buttery. Days later. Even after reheating. No eggwashing of the base. No…no….no….no.

Instead of using all-purpose flour alone, I ground up some oats and pecans and subbed some of the flour in the recipe. Most of all ( a repeat, I know), I made this in a pot, on the hob!

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My recipe: inspired by Paula Caillat’s oven-cooked pastry for the crust, and Meta Given’s recipe for the filling

Isnt that reason enough to be thankful?

And so, I celebrate with all my American friends, my brothers and sisters ‘Happy Thanksgiving’. I so wish I could sit at your table, and feast on a slice of Turkey.

Till then, have a good one!

_DSC0461[wpurp-searchable-recipe]Reasons to be Thankful: Thanksgiving – – – [/wpurp-searchable-recipe]

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