Questions for Americans and keen cooks.

[purplecat]

My sister-in-law is American (Texan to be precise) and I offered to do Thanksgiving this year. However, she had now arranged to go back to the States to see her family but is, nevertheless, sending her husband and children to me. The upside of this is that I do not have to recreate an authentic Thanksgiving only one which conforms, more-or-less to the children's memories. The downside, of course, is that I won't have an authentic American around to help out.

Turkey I can manage.

Should I buy cranberry sauce or try to make it? I'm not a jam or chutney maker and I'm appalling at gravy but I can manage simple sauces. My in-laws always have mashed sweet potato for Thanksgiving - would it be sacrilege if I roasted the sweet potatos? Is there anything else I need to include?

Comments

[chainmailmaiden]

Cranberry sauce is dead easy to make and keeps in the fridge for ages, plus you can freeze it too, so if you didn't use it all at Thanksgiving, it can be kept till Christmas. I use Delia Smiths cranberry and orange relish recipe as a starting point. But I don’t bother processing the cranberries first as they burst during cooking and I use 2 cloves instead of 4 as I think too many make it taste medicinal.

1 lb/450g fresh cranberries (I’ve used frozen and it makes no difference)
Grated or zested rind & juice of a large orange
A small cinnamon stick
2 cloves
1 heaped teaspoon of finely chopped or grated ginger or ½ tsp of ground ginger
3oz/75g caster sugar – but any sugar will be fine
3 tblsp of port (optional but nice)

Put all the ingredients except the port into a pan, bring to the boil and simmer for about 10 mins or until the cranberries have softened and most of them have popped. Fish out the cinnamon stick and cloves (if you can find them) and stir in the port and that's it. All done in about 15 minutes. Once it's cool, keep in the fridge until needed or freeze it down. That quantity is supposed to serve 8, but I think it makes loads and would do double that number.