Thanksgiving is one of the best holidays, in my opinion. It beautifully combines FOod, family, and sweater weather; i love everything about it. BUt there are still a few things that I feel must happen for this holiday to be complete.
I have been known to have fancy taste every once in a while, and that is, honestly, not my fault. Blame my dad for giving ribeye to a six-year-old, or my mom for giving smoked salmon and truffle cheese to a seven-year-old. And a couple of years ago, I got to finally join in on a tradition they’ve practiced every year on Thanksgiving Eve: the fancy pre-Thanksgiving dinner.
Every year on the night before Thanksgiving, we have a night of fancy food, eating items that are fancier than anything else I eat during the entire year. We order Petrossian caviar, get smoked salmon at Central Market, make bellinis to accompany the caviar, and prepare creme fraiche, red onions, boiled eggs, capers, and lemon zest to go on the salmon. We make it a whole production. My mom and aunt will drink champagne while they eat, really leaning into the poshness of it all. For me, this is a quintessential Thanksgiving tradition, and I look forward to it every year.
Now, I want to talk about some of the actual dishes we serve, because that’s almost better than the caviar. First of all, none of us is cooking a turkey, period. It takes too much time and effort and doesn’t really feel worth it in the end. We used to buy a pork loin stuffed with boudin from H-E-B as our main meat, but my brother and I don’t really like pork loin, so that tradition faded pretty quickly. The one that we have adopted has been going on for a few years now. It involves ordering a smoked turkey from a local BBQ place and then just serving that after we heat it up slowly in the oven. It is delicious and so much better than anything we could’ve made at home.
The next item, which my mom makes only once or twice a year if we’re lucky, is truffle mac and cheese. I know, I know, I’m really spoiled and fancy, whatever. This dish has two types of truffle cheese and then a third, non-truffle cheese to bring everything together. It has truffle salt, truffle zest, truffle… well, that’s the end of the truffle additions, but the element that I think ties the whole dish together is the breadcrumbs. I am a firm believer in the power of breadcrumbs on mac and cheese, especially on this mac and cheese. I’m usually in charge of the breadcrumbs because they’re a must-have for me. I toast them lightly on a pan with some butter and seasonings, cover half of the mac and cheese with them (just in case people don’t like breadcrumbs), broil the mac and cheese in the oven for a bit, and then voila! You have perfect truffle mac and cheese.
Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the wonderful newer additions my aunts have made to our Thanksgiving dinner. First of all, one of my aunts last year made homemade dinner rolls, a process that took 48 hours, and let me tell you, every single hour was worth it. She also made a green bean casserole (or cornbread casserole; I actually can’t remember what it was called), which I’ll admit I was a little suspicious of at first, but oh my goodness, it was so good. I brought some Thanksgiving leftovers back to college, and I was kicking myself that I didn’t pack more of that casserole. It tasted like I wanted to go back home and have Thanksgiving all over again. One of my other aunts made Sichuan pork green beans, which were amazing and actually changed my life because I never liked green beans until I tried these; now, I like them and order green beans at random restaurants and have even learned to like those southern green beans with bacon that are kind of mushy, but somehow, I still like them. It’s honestly been such a change, and I’m really grateful for it. Another green on our table is bacon brussels sprouts. They’re so simple and so, so good. Those have been on our table since we were making pork loin instead of buying turkey, so it’s been quite a few years.
We eat our Thanksgiving meal pretty early in the afternoon, think 2:00/3:00 pm, just so we have time to rest and digest before going on a nice walk around the neighborhood while the sun is still out. That means, by the time we get back home, clean, and our extended family has all left, it’s usually just about 7:30 pm, which means we can watch a Christmas movie and change into comfy clothes and still go to bed at a reasonable time.
The day after Thanksgiving must be the day we decorate for Christmas. We’ll put on last year’s Christmas pajamas, drink our coffee with eggnog, play Norah Jones’s and Diana Krall’s Christmas albums, and cook some mulling spices on the stove. I love this time of year: the weather outside starts getting a little frightful (barely though, in Texas), and the fireplace inside is nice and delightful.