Feast: Appetizers And Starters
Oh, you mean I have to post more than once in order for this to constitute a comeback? Well then.
As I mentioned earlier, I was a scheduling maven for this project. I got things done not just on time, but ahead of time. I even had a day off somewhere in there. Everything was just as relaxed as could be . . . except Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. I had to work on Wednesday, which was, of course, my busiest cooking day. Luckily, my maternal sous chef picked up my slack, and all the tedious chopping and time-consuming steaming were done for me. My dad had even done the last of the grocery shopping . . . or so I thought.
I had left smoked salmon off of my list for him, planning to pick it up myself. Of course, I forgot, and only realized that I had forgotten at around midnight. Panicking, I called my brother, who was enjoying a night out with a friend from home. I begged him to stop at a 24-hour grocery store for me and, prince that he is, he agreed.
Of course, that grocery store didn’t have smoked salmon, and I returned to my panic. Luckily, I got another reprieve: another grocery store would be open on Thanksgiving morning. My dad went out first thing and returned with the salmon, which I chopped up and turned into smoked salmon tartare, as per Dean Fearing’s recipe in Food & Wine.
And the stress, it was worth it. Those little smoked salmon bites were seriously good. Although, how could they not have been? The tartare is pretty much everything I love mixed together: smoked salmon, capers, cilantro, garlic . . . With the exception of sour cream and maybe anchovies, I would eagerly eat each one of the ingredients with a spoon. No wonder the result was so good.
I paired the smoked salmon tartare with Todd English’s ricotta toast points, which I found in New York Magazine. My idea was that they would provide a lighter alternative to the tartare’s pungency. Instead, the strong flavors of the salmon overpowered the ricotta, making it seem dull and bland. So no, they didn’t go very well together. After we had gobbled up the tartare bites, however, the toast points turned out to be tasty and refreshing. Next time, I’d serve them with something milder and sweeter, like baked brie.
A better example of my excellent planning were the apple-pancetta buttermilk biscuits. I mixed them up, stamped them out, and froze them a week ahead of time. Wednesday night, I stuck them in the fridge to thaw, and with virtually no last minute scramble on Thanksgiving, we had hot, fresh, buttery, flaky biscuits.
I’m pretty proud of these, actually. I knew I wanted to make biscuits to use in the stuffing (more on that later), and I figured that, while I’m baking, I might as well make some for the table as well. My first stop was the baking bible — or rather, the Baking Handbook. I made one batch of buttermilk biscuits following Martha Stewart’s recipe straight, and the bit of extra dough that I baked on its own was certainly delicious. However. Far be it from me to question Martha, but I have to say that my adaptation in the next batch was a definite improvement. The sweetness of the apples and the saltiness of the pancetta combined for one of those perfectly addictive flavors, perfectly suited to the fluffy biscuits.
The mussel-and-spinach bisque was another adaptation, from Marsha Kiesel’s recipe in Food & Wine. The major change was switching in some coconut milk for cream, which ended up being a delicious idea that really brought out the briny flavor of the mussels and the perfume of saffron.
I couldn’t make the soup ahead of time, but as it was the only thing I had to make from start to finish on Thanksgiving, I wasn’t in any rush. Probably the trickiest thing was managing the mussels, but I figured it out with the help of a little internet research. My dad had picked them up the day before and they lived overnight in a cocoon of wet newspaper in the fridge. In the morning, I covered them in cold water for half an hour to let them spit out some sand. I then scrubbed them under a running tap, ripping out the beards and tossing any wide open mussels. After they steamed, I went through them again, now tossing the closed shells. I then picked the strange little mussel bodies out of their shells and set them aside until the rest of the soup was ready to serve.
My only initial hesitation in choosing the mussel bisque was my mom. She loves the taste of mussels, but is squicked out by the texture and the idea that it’s “the whole body! Everything is in it!” This turned out to be rather easily solved. I ladled out her spinach and mussel broth first, then added the mussels back into the soup for everybody else.
The bisque turned out to be a great starter for an otherwise seafood-free meal: simple but elegant. I wanted to avoid last year’s mistake, which was a shrimp and crab bisque that was both profoundly tasty and so filling that my diners had difficulty continuing on. Considering the massive amounts of food on the table, I didn’t want to blow my wad so early.
I made similar adjustments for my brother’s delicate palate when it came to the lovely, autumnal salad, which I got from Dave Lieberman on Leite’s Culinaria.
It’s really his loss though, since it’s all the delicious components that make this salad what it is. I had to make some adjustments to the kind of screwy original recipe, which I’ve detailed below, but the end result was perfectly balanced. The tangy sweetness of the maple dressing echoed the flavor of the butternut squash, which was so caramelized that my mom had trouble believing it hadn’t been doctored with sugar. The spicy leeks and salty feta kept the salad from going into candy territory, and the toasted pecans punctuated it with richness. Since the holiday, I’ve used the leftovers as meals in themselves, which have proved very satisfying.
So. All this, and the meal hasn’t even really started yet! This is a marathon, not a sprint, so keep holding on for more holiday goodness.
