Nine Courses, Ten Bottles of Wine, and One Broken Chair
Friday, November 23, 2012 at 3:03PM This year's Thanksgiving has been quite an experience. It was the first time that Brad and I held a formal nine course dinner at our home. Let's just say, the number of forks we needed to eat all this food with exceeded the number of forks we own... and we own a lot of forks (48).
The menu was a bit unorthodox. The traditional turkey dinner was preceeded by a few non-Thanksgiving but still very seasonal courses and little amuse bouches.
We started off with champagne and soon moved onto Riesling which paired perfectly with the little amuse bouche Brad whipped out using beets, carrots, and goat cheese.
The bubli bouche was followed by an appetizer -- a foie gras au torchon which I made with Emil earlier. Emil's wine choice, a rose, paired perfectly with the foie.
The foie dish was followed by my famous cheesy leek soup (it's really my mom's recipe but shhhh). Paired with a glass of pinot. The soup was the winning dish of the evening. Notice that I almost forgot to take a photo of the soup (I took few spoons before I realized I need to photograph it)... that's how good it was.
In the meantime, Lucy, the gray furrus, was trying to pull down the turkey from the counter. She eventually succeeded, but thankfully it was AFTER we served the turkey dinner.
Emil and Brad carefully selected the right wine to match every course.
The next unexpected amuse bouche came out of the oven shortly after. It was hard to tell what it was but it tasted like cheese fritata with whole cloves of roasted garlic. It was a heavy hitter.
Everyone seemed to be having fun.
Another popular amuse bouche slash bubli bouche -- a shrimp and cinnamon apple skewer.
Lucy continued on her quest to eat all the food on the counter.
A small salad of arugula, seared turkey liver, shallots, and pomegranate.
The leftover pomegranate made a great addition to our fall harvest bowl.
In the meantime, Lucy plotted her next "counter" attack (no pun intended).
And she succeeded! Brad made a mistake and left a mushroom mac and cheese cooling in the guest room. The muffin pan had twelve slots. Lucy incorrectly assumed one must be for her.
Brad's mom (the lady with the nice hair) seemed to enjoy the evening as well.
Emil brought a nice glass decanter for the anticipated red wine pairings.
One more little intermezzo to cleanse the palate before the turkey dinner -- a lemon sorbet with blueberry sauce and blackberry.
Emil's (well, now mine) decanter in action.
Voila! A traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner. On the plate, clockwise from top: mashed potatoes, evil mac and cheese, turkey with gravy, maple whipped sweet potatoes with hazelnut shallot parsley brown butter, Brad's evil stuffing, and some cranberry sauce.
Hazelnut shallot parsley brown butter in detail:
After seven hours (!!!) and one false fire alarm we finally moved onto the dessert -- Julie's famous pumpkin pie!
And to top things off, Brad and I broke a chair together when we both sat on it at the same time. Hey, that's a perfect excuse to buy more Eames wire chairs!
I hereby declare to the best of my knowledge that this Thanksgiving extravaganza was a success!
Reader Comments (2)
As always, a beautiful post. Thanks for sharing.
Wow, what a beautiful Thanksgiving meal! Congratulations on pulling it off!