Impromptu Thanksgiving Menu 11/09

Thanksgiving this year was a right psychology experiment.  The night before I had decided loosely on a Mexican theme for our small 'n' casual 4-person dinner, made a very basic grocery list for the morning and felt comfortable with my expectation of a small and relatively effortless bout of cooking for yours truly.  Then what did I go and do?  I put the lack of pressure to good use by cooking for 7 hours straight and improvising the following:

Starters

Thai Peanut Hummus Yes, terribly Mexican of me.

I threw 2 cans of Goya chick peas into the Cuisinart with 2 TB of natural peanut butter, olive oil, a good bit of chili oil (I believe in red oil), one jalapeño chili cut into a few rather oddly shaped chunks, a rather serious amount of lime juice, lime zest and a dash each of soy sauce and fish sauce.  Pretty authentic flavor considering it's probably something that's bound to pop up on Rachel Ray's show any minute now...super duper!!!  <---irony.


Main Course

Braised Chicken Thighs with warm corn tortillas

I promised myself I would NOT allow myself to rip open any of my beloved Goya seasoning packets (¡Sazón!) to braise my dark meat on holidays.  I thwarted my addictive tendencies by first searing the chicken thighs to a crisp in my big enameled stew pot (her name is "Bigg'n") then setting them aside while I fried the living hell out of a small red onion, 8 whole garlic cloves, one finely diced red chile, a splash of lime juice, 4 whole PEELED tomatoes (I detest nothing more than those bullshit little rolled up tomato skins in my finished dish.  Abhorrent.), about a TB of butter and a healthy 1/4 cup of a nice pungent olive oil.  Ah, and salt and pepper of course.  After I fried the above together adequately, I placed the thighs back into the pot, poured in just enough chicken stock to cover them, then popped on the lid and let the stank develop for upwards of 90 minutes.  Then I turned the heat up with the lid off and evaporated the excess liquid to concentrate the flavor and make it a bit more taco-friendly.

The corn tortillas were artisanal and simply warmed for a spell in a 350º oven.

Black Bean Salsa with a little red oil.  I believe in red oil.

Yeah, as a matter of fact I am aware how hackneyed black bean salsa is.  I know what you're thinking, "Sandra Dee is probably semi-homemaking this on her next 'cooking' show".  It's just damn good.  The secret I think is that after you chop the onion, pepper, tomato and herbs to mix in with the black beans, you whisk up some lime juice, big salt and red chili oil until you get a nice vinaigrette going.  I drank a little of it after I made it, I won't lie to you.

Sliced Avocado with a squeeze o' lime and big, fat salt

Sour Cream with grapefruit

You simply mix together a decent brand of full-fat sour cream with both the fresh juice of a grapefruit and the zest.

Dinner itself went quite well, particularly when I made the executive decision to accompany it with tequila, lime and ginger ale mixed in very large glasses with lots of ice and big, fat multicolored sugar on the rim.  Family conflict?  Really?  More on the proceeding scratch desserts in the next post...