Turkey Tales

For many years the Cool Water Ranch was the site of a wonderful Thanksgiving feast for 50 people. And ten years ago this lovely tradition ended, sputtering a few times, before completely dying. Last year we wound up going to a restaurant for the holiday meal. It was a fantastic choice. The Gloriette in Covington was the last Thanksgiving meal Tom had. I wish it could have been at The Cool Water Ranch, but fate had other ideas.

This year, ML and I were determined that we would not spend our first Thanksgiving as just “The Marys,” so we planned to go to the home of my DC sister for the holiday. Again, fate had other plans. She got a puppy just a week before and felt uncomfortable leaving him so soon. So our plans changed, leaving me here for the holiday. And that was an opportunity to try a Thanksgiving meal I have wanted to have for a while. We would still do a tiny version of our usual Thanksgiving feast, but I went to get the Turkey Plate at Trenasse, a favorite restaurant of ours in the Intercontinental Hotel. The Turkey Plate sounds wonderful, and I have thought about it for years. For $36, a feast is placed before you, consisting of confit of turkey leg, roasted turkey breast, macaroni and cheese, creamed spinach, dirty rice, hot sausage dressing, corn pudding, and Haricot verts. 

As it turns out, the famous Root Beer Glazed Ham can be made in smaller portions. I got only a third of a Chisesi ham, and it was perfect. I started it before heading across the lake to get the Turkey Plate from Trenasse, dropping it at ML’s to keep warm while she finished making the Fitzmorris family macaroni and cheese. The one omission on the Turkey Plate was sweet potatoes, so I dropped in at the house on the way home and brought everything to ML’s where the macaroni and cheese was being done. 

We got the expanded version of the Turkey Plate, which was a three-course menu that included a choice of the CBD salad, or the Fowl Gumbo, which my gumbo snob has declared the best in town. And a dessert was the third course, with a choice of Apple Pie, Bread Pudding or Beignets with Cafe au Lait. 

I was glad to try the CBD salad, and we munched on it while preparing the rest of the meal. It was a terrific salad with lots of mixed greens, heirloom vegetables crunchy English cucumbers and crispy carrots. I have never had this particular crunchy addition to a salad before and I loved it. All this was offset by a sweet dressing and together these contrasts were perfect.

We sliced into the ham first, curious how just a piece would work with the glaze. The bare side absorbed glaze from the bottom, making that part crusty as well. Sort of a bonus. I liked this so well I may start doing even a full size Chisesi ham this way.

The macaroni and cheese didn’t fare so well. It had gone from creamy to greasy, as the cream turned to clear grease. ML explained that the different cheese threw her. She just kept waiting for the crust to get dark. There seemed to be a run on the kind of cheese we use for macaroni and cheese. The Rouse's we use was out for days. Next time we will press on till we find it. (Cabot white Cheddar sharp and extra sharp, in case you wondered.)

We fared much better with the Turkey Plate, which hit all the right notes. The confit of turkey leg was braised beautifully, and was a nice contrast to the thicker slices of roast turkey breast. This came with a blonde and flavorful turkey gravy. I’m not so much a white meat turkey person, but the turkey breast was a little thick for my taste, but still tender and flavorful.

The macaroni and cheese looked like it had been pan-seared. It was on the drier side, which is exactly the style of macaroni and cheese that we like. Had I known it would be like this I wouldn’t have made the Cool Water Ranch version. The corn pudding was soft and corny, exactly as a corn pudding should be. Corn pudding didn’t appear much before ten years ago, but I have since wondered where this has been all my life. I think there is no such thing as a bad corn pudding, but this one was better than most.

I also very much liked what was a pretty spicy and very Cajun dirty rice, but we thought the star on this plate was the creamed spinach. ML and I get this side everywhere we see it, and we wished there had been a few more servings of this one on the plate. It was sensational, even with a touch of Herbsaint.

The sweet potatoes I brought from home were done in my favorite style, with Indian spices providing flavor and health benefits. I used to mash these with a butter sauce that included curry, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger and cumin, but I have switched to include my bone broth which is mostly a vegetable broth.

Green beans are not nearly as desirable to me as Haricot Verts, and I have only recently been turned on to the merits of green beans as a really desirable vegetable. I have written much about the deft touch Asians have with vegetables, particularly green `beans. This is high praise, but the Haricot verts on this Turkey Plate were approaching that lofty status of goodness. They were sweet-spot tender with a buttery coating, fresh, and delicious.

The half Chisesi ham turned out much better than expected. The bottom that had been sliced was bare underneath. I almost turned it to treat it like a side, but it never moved from where it started. What was funny about it was that the glaze had cooked underneath it as well by seeping under. I liked the way it turned out so much I might do it that way again, even with a whole ham. The Fitzmorris family macaroni and cheese was a little sub par, but we reconstituted it with more cream. And it was ultra everything.

Turkey gumbo was not something I grew up eating.  My eldest sister’s mother-in-law introduced her to it, and it wasn’t till I married Tom that it crossed my path again.  It came from Cajun country where they made meals from nothing, a compliment Tom’s uncles frequently bestowed on his mom. “Aline can make a meal out of nothing” they always said.

Tom loved his mother’s gumbo, and so did our family. Both kids eat it everywhere, and they always looked forward to it post-Thanksgiving. Particularly ML. And she was quite satisfied with the Fowl Gumbo from Trenasse, but I wanted to make the Cool Water Ranch version of gumbo too. The Turkey Plate from Trenasse was made with confit of turkey leg and roast turkey breast, so there were no bones for gumbo. I went down to Notorious P.I.G. to get their Big Poppa Leg to boil for stock. It was really dark and crusty, and I had to remove some of this before making it. After it was done I thought maybe that step was a mistake because I think that’s where all the flavor was. But we use Savoie’s andouille, and there is never a lack of flavor punch there. It had all the spicy notes we wanted. But we did have to add some salt. I was delighted with all the tender shreds of dark meat turkey these turkey legs provided. And then I had to match that with andouille, and we wound up with too much meat in the gumbo.

A few years ago I discovered that grilling boudin and removing the casing makes a better rice base for Turkey gumbo than plain rice. That turned out not to be the case here, because there was no Manda boudin at Rouse’s, forcing us to get other kinds. I am not a fan of all things Manda, but I find their boudin exceptional as a store bought product. Besides the flavor, I like the rice component more than in other brands. It has more definition. The two brands we tried today had little flavor or rice definition. The Savoie’s boudin had some of the Savoie spice, but the Richard’s didn’t make a statement at all, providing the better backdrop for this hefty gumbo. Together, ML declared it all too much. It would have been much better had we used the plain rice this time. Our disappointment might also have to do with the fact that our gumbo followed the Fowl Gumbo from Trenasse on Thanksgiving Day, and that is a hard act to follow.

When I was a little girl my mother cut my hair. She had a problem getting the bangs straight. Every time she would “fix” them, one side was shorter the opposite way. I believe that one time I had bangs an inch long, because one side always came up short. I use this metaphor to explain the weekend of eating. On Thanksgiving Day we made macaroni and cheese the Cool Water Ranch way, and ML used some potatoes she had to make mashed potatoes. We had to buy a little more cream to fix the macaroni and cheese, and we had all these mashed potatoes left over.

I went to the store to get more cream, and cheese, and ground beef. The ground beef became Shepherd’s Pie, and the extra cream became Pots de Crème. So every time we had extra something, we used it in something new, which then became extra stuff. Like the one-side-too-long bangs that had to be fixed.

The Shepherd’s Pie was actually fantastic. The meat mixture was my usual ground meat and all the vegetables you can think of, sauteed together. We used peas, corn, and carrots at the base. I chopped carrots as in a brunoise, which is a challenge for someone as careless as I am.  The meat mixture had lots of chopped fresh spinach and some chopped fresh kale, as well as grape tomatoes, garlic, onions, and bell peppers.

ML was better in repurposing the cream, making one of my very favorites desserts, Pots de Crème. She is so much better at making desserts and following directions. This came out beautifully. We finished off the cream by whipping some to top the pots. This was luscious. Rich, dense, and dark chocolate, the intensity needed whipped cream to diminish it. But together, this was sensational

It’s a good thing it was only a three day weekend. We had to stop eating. Our two person Thanksgiving was very nice after all. I hope yours was too.