Text 31794, 104 rader
Skriven 2009-12-04 10:32:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: the party food 468
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Some of the appetizers cleverly incorporated leftover T-day
meal elements. There was a dip served with pretzels and apple
slices that looked like a caramel sauce but turned out to
be pumpkin with pie spices, whirled with cream; also turkey
meatballs with stuffing and cranberry sauce in the mix.

A creamy artichoke dip (obviously not leftover) was reputed to
be excellent.

My favorite (but few others') was very pale, nearly raw skewers
of beef with raifort sauce. Somehow raw beef squicks people out.
This was filet, very lean and tender and suitable for an
upscale party that had been publicized by the yuppie newspaper
of the millennium. It constituted the bulk of my meal.

A number of the usual cheesy and crackery and cruddity things,
including celery stuffed with a mixture of blue and cream
cheese, which Rosemary wickedly tried to foist on me (I passed).

That was the appetizer table. The Allphins didn't show up with
their tray of shrimp. Ken Newman's sweet-potato red-pepper soup
came out in little plastic cups: it was surprisingly good.

The main dish room was true to the tradition, featuring all
things turkey, including substantial leftovers of a roast one
and a smoked one; this latter was kind of comically overdone,
the wings shiny ebony black, the white meat shreddy like
excelsior. I found one of the spoon meats, the little oval
muscle that nestles at the junction of the thigh and the back;
this is one of the most sought-after pieces of every bird in
every culture that has any culinary sense: it was barely edible.

The regular turkey (trimmings only), which came with a jug of
brown gravy, was pretty good. There were also turkey taquitos,
empanadas, and crepes (taquitos and empanadas pretty much the
same, the former fried and the latter baked, with a meat, corn,
and peppers filling; I got there too late for a crepe) and a
turkey Waldorf-like salad with curry (Rosemary described what
she wanted, and I made it).

Many kinds of stuffing, all nearly identical, none having the
sausage or giblets that make stuffing worth eating, so I didn't
bother; five cranberry sauces - one classic whole-berry, two orange
(one whole-berry, one raw chopped), one canned whole-berry, and
one canned jellied with the circumferential can marks still visible.

Three Brussels sprout dishes, of which I had none.

Green beans amandine.

Several butternut squash or sweet potato things (we provided
butternut beaten with sour cream and nutmeg); several regular
potato things, roast, mashed, o'rotten. I didn't have any of these.

Salads - green and pasta. Certainly nobody eats pasta salad at
Thanksgiving? Much less gourmet arugula mix.

There was a cheese lasagne too for the vegetarians among us.

On the main-dish table was a big plate of blueberry muffins:
these, in addition to being out of place, looked weird, with
purple blotches and greenish-blue blotches. Someone investigated
and tore one open: it appears that the cook had taken regular
muffin mix of an off brand (hence the greenish blotches) and
stirred some real berries in (hence the purple ones). These did
not go over well - that one was the only one taken - so in
response to a suggestion that this fact might hurt some feelings,
somebody in fact took a handful and hid them in the kitchen.

I spent much of my time when I wasn't stuffing my face or fetching
drinks for Rosemary (one of several hawt grannies) or Josie (the
hawt great-granny) talking to this amusing person from the Getty
Museum. Much more entertaining than the financial and political
types. She was kind of cute, too.

Dessert: various pies and cakes, mostly changes rung on the
pumpkin, nuts, and cranberries themes. I had a couple of chocolate-
dipped macaroons and called it a night, not having overeaten or
overdrunk and somewhat proud of myself for that.

Oh, yes, I fixed the coffee dispenser, to which the kitchen help
clucked and told me I must be as smart as an engineer (last year,
it took an engineer to fix that same urn). The help were very
(very) cute, and it is a reflection of my age and debilitated
state that I didn't look twice at them but confined my attentions
to great-grannies and such.

Sauce raifort aux noix
cat: French
yield: about 3 cups

250 g grated horseradish
250 g skinned and chopped walnuts
15 g sugar
3 dl double cream
1 pn salt

Mix together in a basin.

Source: Escoffier

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