And When the Pilgrims Came to Singapore...

So, tomorrow I'm serving Thanksgiving dinner to 16 people, plus four 3-year-olds, and four babies who aren't big enough to eat much yet. But I made them some pureed pumpkin, just in case. This is the largest number of people I've ever had to sit down. I'm trying to assuage the pain of not being in East Hampton with the rest of my family, breathing the crisp November air, mingling at cocktails over oysters and clams, sitting down to dinner with 48 of my closest relations. Plus standing rib roast on Wednesday (enabling me to have one of my favorite breakfasts, cold roast beef on a heavily buttered English muffin), game dinner on Friday, waffles at Uncle Jon's on Saturday, etc. etc. Waah. Oh, what was I saying? Right, in real ife I'm having Thanksgiving in Singapore. Here's the menu:
Cheese Snacky Crackies (I solved the re-rolling problem by forming a log of dough into a long rectangle, and then chilling it and slicing it thinly before baking)
crudités with tzatziki
cronbread stuffing
turkey cooked for 2 hours on the grill over hardwood charcoal, then finished in the oven
gravy
mashed potatoes
sweet potatoes mashed with orange zest and mango-orange juice
fine beans, blanched and reheated in butter
Hong Kong flowering chy sim, fried in olive oil
Parker House rolls
rosemary-parmesan biscuits
pecan pie
pie made with local pumpkin and macadamia-lime crumb crust
egg-nog ice cream
Other people are bringing:
some vegetarian protein
apple pie
cranberry sauce
stuffing with oysters
You are invited to leave envious comments. Unless you're in my family. Then you are invited to say, damn, that's weak! Why aren't you in EH?

Comments

[Mitch Mills]

Sounds very very good. Props on the cornbread stuffing. Do you actually stuff it (I'm thinking not, what with the grilling), or cook it in a pan alongside? I'm in the in-a-pan-alongside camp, and we usually call it "dressing", perhaps to avoid confusion and/or linguistic spats among the kinfolk.

[Jeremy Osner]

Mmm, sounds good. My sister told me she is making cornbread stuffing this year for the first time. Myself I am a devotee of my mother's rice stuffing.

[Aeon Skoble]

I think it's pretty cool that you can get all that stuff in Singapore! I would not have guessed that there were such things as "local pumpkins" in the part of the world. Globalization rules!

[William S]

Excellent. I am having dumplings.

[ben wolfson]

I think a small amount of maraschino would go really well in a pecan pie.

[Russell Arben Fox]

Can't touch your level of culinary expertise, Belle; we'll eat well, but this sounds fantastic. Cheers for including the Parker House rolls; Melissa makes a huge batch every year, and Thanksgiving simply wouldn't be the same without them.

[belle waring]

well aeon, the pumpkins are local inthat they are local to Singapore. maybe they're actually called kabocha squash or something? Mitch: the cornbread stuff is indeed "dressing", cooked in a pan, with hard-boiled eggs in it. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

[Big Ben]

I'm confused. What does "kabocha squash" mean in English?
("Kabocha" is the Japanese word for all squash, including pumpkins. The word is a corruption of "Cambodia", where squashes were believed to come from.)
Any pumpkin experts out there who can help?

[Larry Brennan]

What they sell in California as Kabocha is a roundish medium sized green-skinned gourd with some orange highlighting. The flesh is orange and pumpkinish, only a bit sweeter. The seeds are nice roasted, too. I often use it in place of pumpkin because it's easily available in small quantities.

Belle, what is this cronbread stuffing of which you speak? Is it a product of advanced technology that always achieves doneness at the same instant as the bird it is being served with?

[belle waring]

well Larry, it looks as if my pumpkins are indeed what Americans call "kabocha squash"; they are as you describe it. They have the advantage over regular orange-skinned pumpkins in one respect: the flesh stays a bright orange when cooked. yeah, about the "chronbread"...

[Big Ben]

That also describes the most common type of "kabocha" in Japanese supermarkets. I didn't realize a decent pie could be made from them.

[ashley]

I think kabocha may be a type of squash, and technically not a pumpkin, despite what is written in engslish-japanese dictionaries. Though I have to admit, the distinction between pumpkin and squash is up for debate.