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Stream recap: Thanksgiving dinner(s)

So on Saturday afternoon and into the evening, I did my first cooking livestream since 2022. I decided to do my personal twist on Thanksgiving dinner which included some more traditional items as well as some fun changes. I do apologize for the shit image quality: these are all screen captures from the stream VOD. 
The first course was simple enough: panko breaded and air fried chicken wings with cellentani in a creamy parmesan and asiago sauce. I included some ghost pepper in the corn starch I used to dredge the wings, then a quick egg wash, some panko crumbs, and into the air fryer for 25 minutes (15 on one side, flip, then 10 more). It was a hell of a start to the meals.
Second course was an oven "smoked" turkey leg. I cooked it in the same fashion that I recently cooked the beef bottom round roast. It took a bit longer than I had intended for the turkey to reach an internal temperature of 160, and that ended up throwing off the rest of my timing for everything else in the fucking stream. On the bright side, Chat coined the term "meat sauna" for this cooking style, and I'm going to keep using that. My side for this course was deviled eggs: I did one with the yolk mixed with hot chow chow relish and topped with smoked paprika; two were made with Tabasco brand sriracha mixed into the yolk and a topping of brown sugar; the last was made with Japanese barbecue sauce mixed into the yolk with a dusting of red hot paprika. The sriracha/brown sugar mix is my favorite deviled egg, so I was very happy with that. The leg was pretty damn spectacular, too.
My third course was actually one of the first ones to be started. I did dinde au vin, which is coq au vin with turkey. According to a French guy I asked, I could still call it coq au vin, but I like being obnoxious, so I called it about 30 different things throughout the course of the stream. As I said to him: the French really care about pronunciation more than anything, so I was going to butcher the hell out of the name as much as I could. I served the braised turkey leg with some of the mushrooms and pearl onions that cooked with it over the top of some roasted root veggies (carrot, parsnip, and turnip).
Course number four was a stuffed turkey breast, similar to what I recently did with a chicken breast. I served that with some dressing, which could also be described as "warm soggy bread." Tastewise, it was great, but the texture of the dressing wasn't pretty shitty. I used a baguette for my bread, and that ended up with crunchy crust throughout, plus the bread kept its shape a bit more than I had hoped it would. I'll have to make sure to use a different bread next time.
My last entree that I took a picture of was the turkey nuggets. I diced up a breast, dredged in flour, washed with egg, and covered with bread crumbs, then fried it all in butter and olive oil. I was going to serve it with a side of green bean casserole, but my casserole ended up being an unmitigated, inedible disaster, so I didn't bother plating it in any kind of fun way. The main problems with the casserole were that I burnt the onions to hell and back and my cream of mushroom soup was way too fucking watery. Rather than correct the soup issue, I said "fuck it" and tried to use it anyway. It was a terrible choice.
I also made a turkey stew using my leftover broth and the thighs and tenderloins of the turkey. However, everyone knows what stew looks like, and I was about 6 hours into the stream and didn't feel like scooping out a bowl of it, so no picture.
The surprise hit of the night was my dessert. I made some mashed sweet potato, then mixed it with flour, egg, and brown sugar, rolled it out, and chopped it into something vaguely resembling gnocchi. I did not form the pasta well, so it ended up more like sweet potato and brown sugar dumplings. I also made a cranberry reduction for my "pasta sauce" by mixing a cup of water, a cup of sugar (yes, I actually fucking measured for once), heating that mixture up to make simple syrup, then dropped in a few handfuls of halved cranberries. I just let that simmer until I had about a quarter of a cup left, so the flavor was pretty well concentrated, and I just spooned a little over the top. The cranberry reduction was pretty fucking good, but the gnocchi was missing...something. One of my mods recommended lemon, and I think that's a good idea, so I'll probably add in some lemon zest next time and see how that affects things.

All in all, it was a great time, and I'm looking forward to doing another one, probably in January sometime. If you want to watch the VOD, you can find it here. That link should be live for a couple of months; in the meantime, I'm going to figure out how to at least put segments of it on YouTube for the future. Anyway, between preparing for that and holiday stuff coming up, blog posts are going to be on a hiatus until December, but I hope to see you back here then. I've got a few new ideas I'm kicking around in my head, so I'm sure we'll have some more fun soon.
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