Operation Thanksgiving A Success!

End result: Universally declared as delectable!

I'm pretty happy with the whole affair. The gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce were basically identical to what I remember from home. I take this as fairly miraculous since I made the stuffing from scratch minus a few key ingredients the recipe called for (who cares about poultry seasoning anyway?). I was afraid the gravy wouldn't happen until Ellen swooped in with her culinary expertise and whipped up something amazing with some spare spices and the scrawny turkey neck. And thank you, Dad, for the simple mashed potato recipe, a guaranteed hit in a potato-obsessed country.

The turkey had a good flavor, but appeared to be all dark meat. Huh. Maybe that's what happens when you buy a 10-lb bird? Or maybe I shouldn't expect a lot out of a turkey I found in a Danish Føtex, especially since (as many Danes reminded me today) turkey is native to North America, not Denmark.

The dinner rolls were tasty, but boring. No crescent rolls to be found in Denmark.

Finally, the pie. With such high hopes, it only turned out to be alright. My first slight issue was with separating the eggs. My arm was still tired from wrestling with pumpkins, so the first egg I tried to separate into whites and yolks splattered into a yellow & clear mess. Oops. Double oops since I had exactly the number of eggs the recipe required, so there was no room for error. Luckily it landed in one of my bowls, so I salvaged as much of the yoke as I could and then threw out the remaining bit. Time to try again. The five other eggs went smoothly, and I just figured one less egg white wouldn't cause the pie too much pain. My second slightly bigger issue was with beating the egg whites with sugar--the chiffon part of Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. I got careless and started adding the sugar before the eggs were light and fluffy. Not so bad, you say? Well, it turns out that adding the sugar too early turns the egg whites into a sort-of fluffy but mostly soupy goo. Still, the gooey "chiffon" still livened up the cooked pumpkin filling and I was feeling pretty optimistic. I didn't notice the other two issues until I cut into the pie to serve. It turns out that the gelatin we haphazardly picked in the supermarket was an utter failure. Each piece of pie flattened into an unattractive pile of brown gloop as soon as it was served. Secondly, the pie crust was an odd sort of pastry dough that looked normal but tasted slippery and flat. Hmm. But despite the unfortunate presentation, the filling tasted great!! My favorite feedback of the night: "This pie tastes like the essence of Christmas." If that's not a compliment, I don't know what is.

Overall, it was a wonderfully "hyggelig" (pleasant, cozy) evening. Our guests left in a contented state of fullness, all congratulating me on the great meal. Ellen even requested all my recipes, and Jimmi was inspired by the bread stuffing to alter his own stuffing recipe for the traditional Christmas lunch. Also, I happily understood a fair bit of the conversation in Danish, and that helped me feel more like a part of the family. So here goes: I'm thankful to have two families that will always be there for me, and more specifically, that have both aided me in my eternal quest to eat pumpkin chiffon pie. :D Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

The Turkey

Undeniably the most stressful part of preparing a Thanksgiving feast is The Turkey. First, you must find the perfect turkey. In Denmark, it's difficult enough just to find a whole turkey, let alone a particularly beautiful one. Second, you face a difficult decision: to baste or not to baste. Some websites call for it, some don't, and some recommend buying a self-basting turkey. (This concept makes me chuckle, because I only imagine the turkey wing automatically extending to self-baste in a motion akin to a self-cleaning litterbox.) In the end, I took the easy way out and made a tent of aluminum foil that reflected a lot of the steam and juices back onto the turkey breast. I think my host mom took care of most of the seasoning when she dumped half the salt-shaker on the bird when my back was turned. Third, perhaps the toughest of all, is how to judge when the turkey is done. This caused me much anxiety. My host mom kept cracking semi-serious jokes about how the turkey wouldn't be ready to eat in less than six hours if we set the oven at anything less than 250˚C. For those of you who don't bake in C, that's almost 500˚F!!! I allowed her to turn up the oven for 10 minutes just to raise the oven temperature, then I took it back down to the recommended range. Luckily, I soon had back-up in the turkey department. Family friend Ellen came over and taught me the poke-and-squeeze technique for checking if the turkey is done cooking (stick with a skewer or knife deep into the breast, press hard with a fork next to the hole, and watch the juice that bubbles up for blood). With her help, I managed to get the turkey out of the oven and ready to serve a mere 45 minutes after the proposed dinner time. Not bad for an amateur Thanksgiving chef!

3:21 Pumpkin Pie

I love Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. It is worth this trouble.

This is what I had to tell myself over the 3 hours I spent making pumpkin puree, a pre-made delicacy that is unavailable in stores here. Yesterday I followed every lead I knew of for the ready-made kind--going to the famed Fredericksberg SuperBest for the American aisle (fail) and to Magasin for the pumpkin-in-a-jar that another DIS student said was a sure bet (turns out it was pickled pumpkin: fail). After aimless wandering through random supermarkets, I finally broke down and bought three cantalope-sized cooking pumpkins. Word to the wise: Pumpkins are damn hard. My arm ached after chopping, scooping out, and peeling those suckers. Afterwards, I stuck 'em in the oven at 160˚C for 1.5 hours. Waiting. Waiting. Then Avan (my host mom) and I went through every blending apparatus in the house to finally settle on a tiny version of a food processor that I think we use for grinding spices for tea. Voila! Pumpkin puree. Commence the actual cooking of the pumpkin filling.

A Danish Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a pretty odd holiday when you think about it. It's not about presents, like Christmas. It's not entirely about family, although that's a huge part of it. It's about food. A LOT of food. I've tried to express to my host family the importance of QUANTITY at Thanksgiving. You have to eat like you're going to be fasting for the next 40 days. You have to dress appropriately so you can pack it in. Half the fun is waiting for the turkey thermometer to pop. So imagine the effort I put into making sure this Thanksgiving dinner, my first in a foreign country, is as close to my traditional one as possible. If I have to eat my own body weight in food, it better be good.

Here's how it will go down: I'm cooking for 8, including myself. Some family friends are coming, as well as my host sister Sine and her boyfriend Jimmi. Cooking started at 10 this morning. I first tackled the all-important cranberry sauce. We went to three different grocery stores yesterday in our effort to find cranberries, and eventually stumbled across a magical tower of fresh (!!!) boxes of cranberries. I bought 1 kilo--you can never have enough cranberry sauce--and found a familiar-looking recipe online, provided by Ocean Spray: 3 cups water, 3 cups sugar, and that 1 kilo in the pot. The only slight hiccup I experienced was when the concoction boiled into such a frenzy that it started to rise, rise, rise, almost foaming all over the glittering black stovetop. I quickly turned the heat down and stirred frantically: my first save of the day. Uh oh, I hope I don't have a limited number of "get out of jail free" cards in this adventure.

Next stop: Pumpkin pie. From real pumpkins. Stay tuned.