A Disastrous Thanksgiving Meal.

I realise that the US Thanksgiving holiday was almost 2 weeks ago, and this post is long overdue. It would be easy for me to say I've been busy finishing up uni for the year, returning to work and just generally getting back in control of my life. But in truth, I think I'm embarassed about what a disaster my 3rd attempt of cooking a thanksgiving meal turned out to be and was simply dragging my feet about posting up the disastrous result.

So, to begin my quest to find a turkey was a complete disaster. I was in the middle of exams, and did not take into account that fresh turkeys will not be available until closer to Christmas. There were literally no turkeys available at my local grocer's. There was a sign telling me I could place an order for Christmas but that didn't help me in the slightest. This should have dissuaded me from pursuing this dream to make a traditional thanksgiving meal...but alas it didn't.

Instead I used the only whole chicken available to me, and it turned out to be the tiniest chicken I have ever cooked with. It was so incredibly small that I actually felt bad eating it... and considering turkeys are about 10 times the size of this chicken, it was really sad to even be calling it a turkey substitute.

At this point I was so upset about not having a turkey that I cheated and instead of making a potato side dish out of real potatoes I made mini-potatoes.

Because the chicken was so tiny, it was near impossible for it to produce sufficient amounts of fat/drippings to be turned into a gravy. So I supplied bottles of different ready-made sauces instead. I skipped making stuffing as well as cranberry sauce (though this is because it is so hard to source frozen cranberries!!).

The only thing that turned out was the pie. I took the recipe for Cranberry and Blueberry pie from the 2010 Thanksgiving issue of Bon Appetit and substituting raspberries for the filling (again, the reason being frozen cranberries are not easy to find).

The dough is a standard pie crust recipe (available here). To make the filling that I made (which varies slightly to the original Bon Appetit recipe - is as follows:

Ingredients

Approx. 3 1/2 cups of frozen (not thawed) Raspberries (or any other frozen berry combination you like)

1 1/4 cups of sugar (I actually put 3/4 cups of sugar because I didn't want it to be too sweet, so do whatever you like - it's a really flexible kind of recipe)

About 3 tablespoons of corn flour (though this may vary depending on how thick you want to make the filling)

About 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and some grated lemon zest

*The original Bon Appetit recipe includes adding cinnamon, but this doesn't go with ALL berries. I also left it out in my variation due to dietary requirements of my family members.

Method

Place everything into a pot and boil over medium heat (which the magazine said is approx. 15 mins - I found it did not in fact take that long).

Also remember to stir it constantly, as it's like making a jam and if it boils too quickly it will stick/burn to the sides of you pan, which is a complete pain to clean (trust me, I speak from past experience).

Once it's come to a boil, and thickened to a consistency you like, leave it to cool in a glass or ceramic bowl.

Then to assemble the pie - line a pie dish with crust (the standard size is a 12-inch dish, but you can use whatever you have it generally works), place cooled filling in centre and then you can either cover it completely with more crust or make a lattice top.

Brush dough with fresh cream, or milk, or butter - generally anything dairy to help it stick.

Bake for approx. 1 hour or until golden. Leave to cool a bit.

Bon appetit!