Taken sometime between Thanksgiving dinner and dessert! From left to right: Justin, Jess, Shann, myself, Kelly, Steph, and Marie. (Photo by Marie)
Shann and I are hosting five of our friends over this Thanksgiving weekend. Marie and Kelly got in from Wellesley on Tuesday night, Justin from Yale and Steph from Cornell on Wednesday morning...and Jess finallytrucked in from Harvard late Wednesday evening. How we managed to fit everyone in our tiny LES spot is beyond amazing, but we're just thankful that it all worked out nicely. Whew!
We did quite a bit of eating/munching/shopping in the last few days, but I'll save that for the next post and dive head on into The Day of The Dinner.
11am: Shann wakes up first, "OMG, THE TURKEY NEEDS TO GO IN THE OVEN IN EXACTLY AN HOUR!!!"
Everyone wakes up, grumbles, mumbles. I hear mutterings from Kelly and Jess, "ooh, the lamb thingy from Kebab House was sooo good last night." "NyQil? DayQil?" "beeehh, need to showeeeer." Apparently, they didn't return from their 'evening adventures' till the wee hours of the morning...
11:30am: Steph, Shann and Justin get to work on the turkey. Everyone else brushes their teeth, gets dressed.
12pm: Kelly and I set off to Pinisi to pick up pies!!! Yah, we LOVE PIES! :) This was Kelly's very first visit to Pinisi, so we hung out there a bit, chatting with Andy and his wife. Man, they must be exhausted! They didn't leave till past near midnight yesterday and got back to bakery at 3am this morning to start baking pies. Now that's what you call dedication.
Hehe, she looks ready for a bite!
While waiting for our pies to be wrapped up, Kelly and I sat at the counter and shared a slice of Pinisi's signature red velvet cake. I've written about this cake a few times here :) Hehe, we completely neglected to consider how much food was going to be eaten throughout the day while consuming this cake!
Andy's wife packed our pies with great care, a smile on her face the whole time. That's a pecan pie hiding in the bottom box, and pumpkin on top. You know what is the most fun about bakery visits? Watching the baker tie the boxes with white (blue & white, in this case!) string, quickly manuvering back and forth till the boxes are secured together, a fast whip of the hand, the bow is formed, viola!
Awwww, pumpkin pie, so delish! The filling is your ordinary pumpkin pie, but they always gets the crust just magnificent, crisp all the way through, I've never encountered a soggy bottom at Pinisi
...And here's the pecan pie! =) We heated this up in the oven and topped the individual slices with vanilla ice cream.
Right before leaving the bakery, Andy insisted on throwing in a few extra treats for us. He's such a great guy and fantastic baker! Since he knows anything that ends in 'pudding' is my favourite dessert, he packed in a little cup of pumpkin cr�me brulee...
...two trays of challah-brioche bread pudding! Can you say beautiful? :)
It was surprisingly warm out today, so Kelly and I took the cr�me brulee to a bench (saving the bread pudding for post dinner! :) outside and dug in with great enthusiasm. It's more akin to pudding than a classic cr�me brulee, much softer than the norm. Aside from lacking a proper crisp caramelized crust, the spiced pumpkin flavour is right on spot, and it's quite the decadent treat. As Robyn would say, "Nom, nom!"
I love carrying pie boxes! You know how some things, some objects, can make you very happy? Some people like journals, cameras, phones...well, I like boxes. Pie boxes!
3pm: Kelly and I arrived back at the apartment, tummies contently filled with cake and cr�me brulee. We walked through the doors to find Steph, Shann and Marie hard at work. The kitchen/whole apartment (it's tiny!) smelled AWESOME. All three of them were leaning over the oven, basting the turkey. A fresh batch of cornbread cooled on the table, alongside with butternut squash (waiting its' turn in the oven), boiled potatoes (to be turned into garlic mashed potatoes!), and a loaf of pumpkin cranberry bread from Erica.
Steph & Justin peeking in on the turkey
Kelly and I felt an immediate pang of guilt...eheheh, for going off to eat dessert when we only planned to, ahem, pick up dessert. Teehee. We tend to get distracted when there's food nearby!
3:30pm: Justin and Jess returned from their we-should-buy-some-beer-and-wine excursion with a big, HEAVY white box filled with...
...knishes!!! They purchased it from Yonah Schimmel on their walk back from Whole Foods. Sometimes I forget just how convenient this city is. Whole Foods is a 5 minute walk, Russ & Daughter and Katz is 2 minutes...it is as if the whole world is RIGHT HERE. At the fingahhhtips!! :) I dunno how I can ever live anywhere else. For now...
But yes, the KNISHES!!! We'll start off with the tastiest of the trio - a jalape�o & mozzarella combo. I've only had a knish once, like four years ago, so I'm practically a knish virgin. But this was a good knish, a very good one in fact! A packed mountain of mashed potatoes topped with jalape�os and mozzarella, wrapped in dough and baked. It is soooo heavy. Each one (and they don't look that big) must weigh at least a pound. It also feels heavy in your stomach. But man, it was nice going down! Potatoes are especially comforting, and when baked with jalape�os and moooozarellla, it becomes the ultimate winter/holiday snack. Yay, snackies!!!
Knish: Cut
Yes, we shared. I think we would have suffered major brick-stomach issues if we ate one per person!
We made our way though a red cabbage knish, a lovely creature really, the innards were a soft blue shade...you just wanted to poke it! So soft! And warm! Oh yeah, did I tell you they warmed them all up for us? :)
The sweet potato knish, the only sweet, and perhaps my least favourite of the bunch. Texture-wise it just got boring too quickly. Muooush. Muoosh. Like maybe if they had mini knishes, a five-bite sized kind. That would be better. Theses were major monsters.
And the last of the quartet, a mushroom stuffed knish.
Jess was our honorary knish-cutter, she did an excellent job! *hooray!* So. Knishes were a pre-thanksgiving snack.
We lovalovalova our kinishes, yes? We ate a lot of starch today.
Shann pours a cup of green tea
Aside from cooking, there was little actual 'work' we did today. We did a lot of catching up over cups of tea (brought over from Japan by Marie :) - it's everyone's senior year in college (except for me, haha, I was in such a rush to graduate early!), so this will probably be our last 'official' thanksgiving for a while. The majority of us plan to move back west upon graduation, some to San Francisco, others to Hawaii. We've been close friends since middle school (kindergarten for some), so there will be plenty to miss :)
Steph and her cuppa tea
Steph and I lounged out on the fire escape, it was incredibly warm today - hard to believe this is late November weather!
Here's a shot of Rivington Street from our seat on the escape. This street is normally busy in the afternoons, but it was dead quiet today. Everyone must be huddled in over their stoves!
Turkey coming out! Photo by Marie
Sometime after knish-ing and before the sun going down, the turkey came out of the oven. Steph was girl-in-charge-of-turkey, and she did a real awesome job butter-ing up the baby with thyme & oregano butter (Shann & Justin also helped!) and roasting it with plenty of onions and lemons. Mmm! We basted every 30 minutes, and set off the smoke detector about a million times...which resulted in major towel waving to cool down the room (thank you Kelly & Shann)!
Marie was the pro-turkey carver of the group, having plenty of experience from our last four years in college!
And Steph was the pro-turkey-dark-meat-plate holder! Have you ever seen anyone look so excited over a plate of turkey?! She musta been huuungry!
Here's Kelly during dinner - she must have been even more hungry, my goodness! hehe ;)
Meanwhile, Steph was busy browning garlic for the GARLIC MASHED POTATOES. This is my favourite photo of the day! A big bowl of semi-mashed potatoes, a whole garlic bulb, pepper, cream and, as Kelly said, "lots and lots of looove." Ahhh love indeed. What are mashed potatoes with no love?
Midway though dinner someone said, "I feel like we forgot something..."
Someone else said, "Really? hmmm..."
Another person, "I don't think so..."
Yet another, "oh. okay..."
Cinnamon & Nutmeg Cranberry Sauce (our very first time using fresh cranberries :)
We ate seconds and thirds, generous helpings of rice, warm gravy (made by Justin) spooned over with giddy abandon, some chased after dark meat, others white, all topped by a cinnamon and nutmeg spiked cranberry sauce.
Justin heated up apple cider from Red Jacket Orchards. He also found some real nice strawberry apple cider from Stone Ridge Orchard, which I though was even better (more intensely straaawwwberrry-er than the Red Jacket version).
...And then, 15 minutes later...all of a sudden, "WHERE'S THE SALAD?!"
bwahahahaha.
We all broke into peals of laughter.
Everything.
We remembered everything starchy, meaty, fatty, sugary.
But we forgot to make the one, the ONLY, semi-healthy dish.
STRAWBERRY SPINACH SALAD.
Oh well.
We laughed some more, and ate even more rice + turkey + gravy.
It was delicious.
Oh god. We ate too much today. As usual. I forgot take photos of most of the finish dishes, hehe, but I will tell you what we had!
- turkey
- baked yams
- roasted butternut squash
- stuffing (stovetop nonetheless! :)
- we were supposed to have a salad...but hehe, we forgot!
- cornbread
- garlic mashed potatoes
- cranberry sauce
- a really rich gravy
- plenty of rice!
- pecan pie
- pumpkin pie
- bread pudding
- vanilla ice cream
- pumpkin beer! (I didn't pay attention to the wines...)
- apple cider & strawberry-apple cider
Oooffff. Okay.
Time to digest.
Smooosh, smooosh
(pats stomach)
Have a good night! :)
Yonah Schimmel Knishery
137 East Houston Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 477-2858
Pinisi Cafe & Bakery
128 East 4th St
NY, NY 10003
(212) 614-9079
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