TiT, Part III: The Rest of the Roast

During the couple weeks it took to assemble the essential hardware (oven) and software (turkey boob), I had been debating with myself over the menu for Dao's first American Thanksgiving Day feast . In the end it all came down to logistics. As in: How many stores will I have to wander into to find that crucial ingredient? (For instance, Chinese celery is sold in every market, but to make real stuffing you've got to have the European version.) As in: How much is that specialized item going to cost (e.g. pie plate or an oven big enough to cook a stuffed turkey or enough pecans for a pie)? As in: How much time and is it gonna take to make that? Or to clean up after it?

I grudgingly settled on the bare basics: turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole and ... some kind of dessert.

My first choice would have been pecan pie with pumpkin pie as the runner-up. But based on logistical difficulty alone, I decided that I wasn't willing to make pie crust. And if I wasn't gonna make pie crust, I wasn't gonna make pie. My compromise with reality was to try the custard part of the pie without the pie. Pecans were out because of price. That left pumpkin ... or did it?

My family comes from the northern and western states, going all the way back to their original immigration. For this reason we tend to think of the quintessential winter holiday pie as pumpkin pie. If your people came from the South, you're likely to think of sweet potato pie instead. I've seen this debate in action and once was a Yankee in my affiliations, but with age has come if not wisdom then perhaps indifference: both pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie are delicious but taste so much alike that I see no point in arguing.

While we're on the subject, a slight detour: North and South alike will bake their sweet potatoes (which we erroneously label as "yams") in caramel with mini marshmallows on top. Mysteriously this dish is served with the turkey despite being even sweeter than pumpkin pie. For me this was always one of those unappetizing bowls of goo I was forced to take a little tiny bit of just to taste it and be polite. But candied sweet potatoes are part of the tradition of my people, so I at least had to consider before rejecting them.

Back to dessert. Hard squash and sweet potatoes are both readily available in markets throughout Thailand. The hard squash are called pumpkin but look to me like a small Hubbard, green and bumpy, not orange and smooth. Buying a whole one would be excessive, and who knows how long ago the vendors cut them into the pieces they sell. The perfect solution struck me as breaking with tradition by eschewing pumpkin and sneaking the sweet potatoes into dessert: crustless sweet potato pie. Understanding that the oven was too small to bake two things at once, I opted to experiment with a slow-cooker custard recipe.


First we baked the potatoes.




Then we peeled 'em. Then mashed 'em. Then beat them into a sweet egg and milk mixture with spices.







Finally we poured the mixture into cheap foil baking pans, wrapped one of them in foil, and set it into the slow cooker with foil handles sticking up to aid extraction.




Once the sweet potatoes were out of the way, it was time for the turkey. We made an herb butter using salt, cracked mixed peppercorns, dried thyme and marjoram. And then spread the butter over the tied and spitted breast and set it up to spin.


Next: Look Ma, No-Cans!