The Hollow Leg Diner: Mexican Thanksgiving Dinner

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, I started thinking about what we were going to make. Lupe and I planned on going to her parents house for Thanksgiving dinner. This has been the standard practice for the last several years. Lupe cooks the turkey, her sister Carmen makes the ham, mashed potatoes and biscuits, I make the stuffing, a sweet potato dish and usually a sweet potato pie. The other cooking and set-up tasks are divided amongst the rest of her sisters. In the past, Carmen made her dishes at her house, I made mine at my mom's and then we brought everything to the dinner. That isn't really an option now, so the logistics are a little more complicated. Fortunately, there are three fridges at Lupe's parents house now. We are still short on cooking space, but we aren't lacking for cold storage. Adding to the logistics burden this year, I was cooking my dishes at home in San Diego and then driving up just before dinner. This sounds like a guaranteed cold meal, but I managed to work things out. I had three casserole dishes of stuffing that came out of the oven and went almost directly into the back of the Escape. along with the sweet potato, they were covered with multiple layers of PolarTech blankets for heat retention. When I arrived in Long Beach, the casserole dishes were still very hot to the touch. We really didn't even need to reheat the stuffing. I'm going to have to remember that trick for the future.

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Dinner went off with nary a hitch. Lupe did a great job on the turkey, as usual. She did a 22.5lb. bird this time. There was turkey and ham aplenty. In addition to the usual suspects, Luis' wife brought a bunch of tamales.

I'm glad that we had the tamales, as I was trying to steer us towards a more Mexican-themed dinner menu. Too many traditionalists to make any significant changes in this year's menu. I'll just work on some dishes for next year and try to sway them towards a new direction. I previewed a couple of Mexican twists on traditional Thanksgiving dishes this year. I'm just trying to get my foot in the door and open up some new possibilities.

Most successful of the new dishes was the chorizo cornbread stuffing. I used freshly baked and partially dried cornbread in this stuffing. This gave the stuffing a wonderfully moist texture without the heaviness that you sometimes get when you have to rehydrate totally dried bread with water and melted butter or margarine. It was a little loose, but it wasn't dry and crumbly like some stuffing gets. I browned a mix of beef and Salvadoran pork chorizo in a large cast iron skillet. After the chorizo was browned, I removed it from the pan and added the veg for a quick sweat. I didn't want to lose all the texture, so I didn't keep it in the pan for long. The veg was a mix of white onion, green onion, red and yellow bell pepper, celery and chile (pasilla, jalapeno & manzano). I wanted a lot of chile flavor and texture without making the stuffing unbearably hot. To get this result, I carefully removed all the seed and veins from the chiles. The end result was a very flavorful stuffing that had some heat, but not enough to overpower the dish. I used a mix of chicken stock and melted butter to get just the right amount of moisture.

In addition to the stuffing, I called on an old favorite of mine for a little more spice; camotes chipotle. I cooked a ton of sweet potato and then mashed it as you would for mashed potatoes. I used some butter, cream, salt and pepper for the standard mashed potatoes. To this I added about four chipotle en adobo. I also put a couple of spoons of the adobo sauce in with the potatoes for good measure. The heat of the chipotle balances the sweetness of the camotes very nicely. I'll go easy on the chipotle if I'm going to serve this to a large gathering with a lot of kids. When I make it at home I usually crank up the spicy; putting half a can of the chipotle en adobo into the mix. Believe it or not, I got this idea from Alton Brown.

I've been working on a few twists to Thanksgiving food that I'd like to try out next year. I did a simple Thanksgiving dinner menu a couple of weeks ago as sort of a dry run. I roasted a whole chicken instead of doing a turkey. The chicken was marinated in a mixture of orange juice, cider vinegar, chile (ancho and morita-toasted and ground), Mexican oregano, cinnamon, cumin, salt and pepper. After a couple hours in the marinade I removed the chicken and patted it dry. I rubbed the skin with some chipotle adobo sauce, dusted it with smoked paprika, a little more chile powder and some sea salt. The body cavity got loosely stuffed with onion and lime wedges for a little moisture and flavor. I didn't sear the chicken on the stove top before roasting. I've done this in the past with good results, but I didn't want the chile to burn on the surface this time. I just put the chicken in a 425 oven for the first few minutes and then dropped the tem to 325 for the remainder of the cooking time. I think I'm going to modify this a little the next time I do it. I'm going to make a compound butter with the chile and a little oregano. The butter will go under the skin. I've done this several times before and the results have always been tasty.

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As the chicken was resting, I made a spicy gravy in the roasting pan. Other tahn a little salt, I didn't have to season the gravy at all. It had all the spicy chile flavor from the chicken. I made a roux from the pan fat and then used chicken stock for the body. A little cream was added for some richness to offset the heat. Plated the chicken with chipotle sweet potato and chorizo stuffing. End result: yummy Mexigiving Dinner.

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Another idea that I've been playing around with is braised turkey thigh. Just before Thanksgiving, Northgate had all sorts of fresh turkey; whole, breasts, drumsticks, thighs, thighs with drumsticks and even packages of necks. I couldn't resist. There was no way I was walking out of there without some turkey thighs. I bought two trays for a total of about a dozen thighs. As much as I wanted to try these out for Thanksgiving, Lupe (affectionately know as the Wet Blanket) had to rain on my parade with her logic and reason. So we were already planning on having a 22lb bird, two hams and tamales. Big deal. This is Thanksgiving. You're supposed to have lots of food and eat yourself into a coma. The Wet Blanket put her foot down and I had to bow to reason. Damn that reason and logic. Its hard to have fun cooking when you have to deal with that. After much grumbling, I broke out the vacuum sealer and packed up the thighs for the freezer. We really weren't interested in turkey for a week or so after Thanksgiving. When I got back from my road trip to Lori's house I found that there wasn't much in the fridge. Time for turkey. I seasoned up the thighs and gve them a quick sear in the pan. I added some diced white onion and garlic for a quick sweat.

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I deglazed with some chicken stock and then added a can of chipotle salsa and some roasted tomatoes. I sprinkled sliced red onion and yellow pepper over the top of the thighs, covered and placed in a 350 oven. When the thighs were moist and tender I removed them from the braising liquid. The pan went back on the stove top with some additional chicken stock and chipotle salsa. We added a couple of diced chayote squash, brought to a high simmer and covered. When the squash was nearly done, I uncovered the pan and reduced the sauce until it was nice and thick. The chayote and sauce were served over white rice. Nyum num num.