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The Rest of the Feast

Well, everyone knows about the turkey at our Thanksgiving dinner, but people wanted to know all the other dishes, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention everyone who contributed; I did not do the entire dinner myself.

When we sent out the invites, we told people they could offer to bring some special dish, get assigned a random dish, or just help in the kitchen. Virtually everyone brought something; it was amazing. This of course meant we had too much food, but is there really such a thing at Thanksgiving?

So here's the full menu.

Appetizers

Brandy Alexanders - a tradition from Brett and Royce's childhood. Well, maybe not childhood, but these had everyone grabbing seconds, thirds, fourths, whatever they could manage. Melissa was much dismayed that there were no leftovers for these.
Pastilles - another tradition from Brett and Royce's childhood. They're a Puerto Rican specialty, which seemed to have some relationship to tamales: meat and bananas boiled inside of a wrapper, which might have been a corn husk, but I wasn't paying attention.
Arancini - Mandy brought these fried risotto balls, and this might have been one of the few instances where there wasn't enough of a dish (even though there was plenty); they were delicious and got eaten fast and furiously
Mushroom paté - Ingrid's appetizer was definitely a contender for best presentation. The paté was placed on a square plate, off-center, with crackers on the rest. The whole thing was sprinkled with diced bell peppers of various hues. I might be misremembering it, but I do know it was spectacular-looking, and delicious as well.

Main course (other than the turkey)

Butternut squash soup - Melissa's mom Kathy made this, and it had a really nice spin on it; apples and horseradish. This worked really nicely. In fact, I could've used more horseradish in mine. That's a combination I'll keep in mind.
Mashed potatoes - My mom Jacqui brought these, which she called "healthy potatoes" because they only had a pound of butter in them, or something like that. Maybe it's genetic.
Leek & Mushroom Stuffing - having claimed all the dishes related to the bird, I ended up plotting the stuffing, though Brett and Chris and Royce did most of the actual work. I lifted it more or less straight out of last year's November Bon Appétit, because it sounded delicious (3 different typesof mushrooms!) and was already vegetarian. Despite that, we made half of it "meaty" with the addition of turkey liver. The bread was day-old sourdough that I made just for the purpose, though Melissa and I sampled some the night before to make sure it wasn't poisonous.
Cranberry sauce with Orange - Chris's simple addition to the basic cranberry sauce recipe worked really nicely. He put whole slices of orange in, as well as zest. There weren't many leftovers of this, let me tell you. He also made sure to bring "classic" cranberry sauce, for those who love the sight of it oozing out of the can.
Spinach Timbales - Ingrid is amazing. Not just an appetizer but a veggie dish as well. And another yummy one. This is the kind of thing that happens when you invite a bunch of food obsessives to a potluck dinner. I highly reccommend it.
Spanakopita - Joanne Kalogeras. Think she might be Greek? You know, it was a good thing she brought it, because otherwise I don't think there would have been enough butter in the various dishes. But a liberal application of butter between each sheet of phyllo made up for any deficiencies. Spanakopita is just one of those things which people should eat more often. Really.
Rolls - In addition to all bird-related things, I said I'd fill in any holes in the menu, and we were lacking rolls. Again, though, I merely planned it. Dave on kitchen duty did all the work. I had never tried the recipe before, so didn't know how big the rolls would actually be. 24 rolls for 18 people sounded reasonable. No. Now I know to plan about 3-4 per person, though I think Dave would have probably flung up his hands in despair if he had to make 54 rolls.
Broccoli & "grain dish" - Melissa brought two dishes, and was even planning a third, but the counters were groaning with the weight of all that food by that point, so we opted not to do it. The "grain dish" is a recipe our friends Pavel & Kathleen told us about wherein 3 different grains and lentils are simmered, covered, for an hour. Melissa used chicken stock, and added mushrooms. Kathleen is sensitive to onions in food, and there was no easy way for me to not put any onions in the stuffing, so Melissa wanted to make sure Kathleen had something stuffing-y to eat.

Cheese
Mitch had come up with the idea of getting some cheeses, and I was going to swing by the Cheese Board on Wednesday, but Fate relieved me of that errand. We went to a cheese tasting event earlier that week (which eventually I'll write up), and as part of that event we each got to take home about 3 pounds of cheese. Voilà! A cheese course!

To go with the cheese, I made sourdough bread, the two loaves pictured at the top of this entry in fact. Always a harsh critic of my own food, I nonetheless can accept that those are some pretty nice-looking loaves.

Redwood Hill Farms Buchere. A nice young chèvre.
Mt. Diablo - the producers of this cheese are in Tracy and they were originally calling it Tallegiano, because it is very much akin to Italy's fabulous Tallegio. But this was causing too much confusion, so they changed the name to Mt. Diablo
The last cheese was a cheddar, and I didn't get the name. But it's the only American cheddar produced in the style of an English farmhouse cheddar, specifically the fact that it's "bandaged" or wrapped in cheesecloth while aging. This cheddar is great, and I've been using it to top various dishes since then.

Dessert

Pumpkin pie - or perhaps I should say pumpkin pies. Pavel and Kathleen brought three pumpkin pies. They were suddenly faced with a glut of pumpkin flesh (yes, that's right; three pumpkin pies made with fresh pumpkin), and the three pies, evidently, made a small dent in their supply. Pavel's playing around with pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin ravioli, and anything else he can think of to do with pumpkin purée. I should mention that I used to think I didn't like pumpkin pie until I had Pavel's last year. Now I am very selective about pumpkin pie consumption.
Apple pie - My mom's husband Joel brought the apple pie, though I have a suspicion that my mom actually made it. Something about the way she talked about rolling out the pastry dough, making the lattice top, that kind of thing.
Honey-vanilla ice cream - Mitch got their ice cream maker way back when, but hasn't really used it much. Until recently. Mitch has been going crazy with it, but judging from the honey ice cream, I'm guessing it doesn't stay around the house very long, so perhaps that is for the best. She used a huckleberry-infused honey, and we all roused ourselves out of our eating stupor to wolf down as much as possible.

Wines
I can't even begin to tabulate all the wines. I certainly didn't write any of them down. I brought two bottles of a rosé champagne that came highly reccommended (I agree with the champagne and turkey pairing, by the way). Brett brought an Oregon Riesling, which was the first time I smelled petrol in a Riesling, a standard flavor note, oddly, for quality expressions of the grape. My mom and Joel brought a number of French wines. Joanne brought a great Zinfandel, and one other one that escapes me, and the list goes on and on.

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