Simple, from Abroad Thanksgiving Recipes

November 30, 2016 by Mackenzie

Most of you know this blog started out as a cooking blog. Cooking is my thing. I love to browse for recipes, shop for ingredients, and spend a whole day in the kitchen. Since I’ve been in Indonesia on my two Fulbright grants, I’ve done a lot less cooking then I used to, and my blog turned from a cooking blog to a travel blog.

However, this year I’ve been much more adventuresome in the kitchen. Last weekend we hosted a Friendsgiving complete with mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin pie! I scoured the internet for simple ingredient/stovetop recipes, seeing as we don’t have a stove, and as there were all a success, I figured they might come in handy for future Fulbrighters/expats wanting to experience a Thanksgiving of their own, but with very limited resources and ingredients. Thus, here are our recipes!

Creamy, Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Recipe Type: side dish

Cuisine: Thanksgiving

Author: Mackenzie, adapted from Alton Brown

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 50 mins

Serves: 10-12 servings

An easy, but delicious mashed potato recipe. Proportions edited from Alton Brown’s recipe – http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/creamy-garlic-mashed-potatoes-recipe.html

Ingredients

10 medium russet potatoes
2 tablespoons salt
8 oz “cooking cream” (what we found in Indo or heavy cream/half and half if you can find it or milk if you want to be super cheap)
3 gloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 tablespoon (ish) salt

Instructions

Wash, peel, and dice the potatoes. Place in a large saucepan or wok and cover with water. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to maintain a rolling boil. Add salt. Cook for about 15-20 minutes – until the potatoes are soft and fall apart with pierced with a fork.
When potatoes are almost done cooking, heat the cooking cream and garlic over medium heat until simmering. Remove from heat and set aside.
Drain the potatoes, move to a large bowl, and mash them.
Pour the garlic cream mixture over the potatoes and mix it all together. We then moved it to a rice cooker to keep it warm while we prepared the other food. Just before serving, stir in the softened butter and additional salt, to taste.

Garlic cream sauce

The almost-finished mashed potatoes!

The original recipe for this came from Alton Brown and I only modified the proportions, and took out the parmesan cheese.

Sorry, apparently I can only add one fancy looking recipe in each post – but I want them all here so I’ll have to make do.

We based our sweet potato recipe off of this recipe from Tyler Florence. We made ours more of a mashed version, but flavor-wise it was this! (We bought non-orange sweet potatoes so it turned out really ugly and gross-looking but it was delicious so… no picture 😀 )

Our no-bake pumpkin pie was more of a challenge but in the end, it turned out to be pretty simple and delicious!

First, I bought a pumpkin, halved it, scooped out the goop, chopped it into big slices, and boiled the slices until soft.

It took about 20 minutes to get them soft and then I pulled them out, let them cool, and peeled off the skin. I stuck it in a tupperware to cool and came back to it later!

I used this recipe for a no-bake crust. We couldn’t find graham crackers here so we bought a similar type of cracker and it worked out fine (we used the Indo brown Malkist crackers). I also used less sugar than the recipe called for, per the reviews. Oh, and we couldn’t find normal size round pans so we bought smaller ones and had enough for two pies! (This recipe was enough for two smaller pies)

We followed the directions exactly – crush the crackers, mix it all together, press it into a pie pan, and refrigerate for an hour before pouring in the filling. And when we served it, we had no trouble getting it out of the pan or keeping it together – my initial concerns with a no-bake crust.

I used this recipe for the filling – it was delicious!! Gelatin is a no-no here (Muslim community) so I used a substitute, agar, instead. It came out of the package red and we were worried it would taste like strawberry… but it didn’t so don’t fret! Only other differences were fresh ginger and my pumpkin, but otherwise we followed it to a T. AND IT WAS SO GOOD. I WILL NEVER GO BACK TO CANNED PUMPKIN EVER AGAIN.

Cooking the pumpkin mixture

Ready to chill!

After pouring the filling into the pies, we put both in the refridgerator and within an hour it seemed ready to serve but we didn’t use them for another three hours or so.

The final things we made was stuffing! We were really unsure about this one since we didn’t have an oven and were worried about finding all of the ingredients. But in the end, it turned out perfect!!

We used this recipe for a stovetop stuffing. Edits:

Didn’t use a crusty loaf because we couldn’t find one. Instead we used a regular loaf of whole wheat bread (from the bakery at Hypermart) and cut it the night before and left it out to dry
1 regular onion (not 2)
Couldn’t find celery so we swapped it for two diced apples
6 cloves of garlic (not 3)
No sage (couldn’t find it)
Dried thyme, rosemary, and Trader Joe’s 21 Spices Seasoning (~1 tablespoon of each? I can’t remember)

Basically, we doubled the herby goodness. We initially made it as the recipe called for but it smelled so damn good and didn’t seem like enough so we doubled it (kinda).

We made a lucky find of thyme and rosemary seasoning the night before in a random little grocery store and that was clutch. The TJ’s seasoning Kate had brought from home.

We followed the actual directions exactly and it tasted unbelievably good. I couldn’t believe I was smelling those smells and tasting that in Kendari!

So that’s what we did! It all turned out fantastically and we were thrilled! If you want to attempt your own Thanksgiving feast, I’d recommend these recipes (and modifications!)

Thanksgiving x3

November 30, 2016 by Mackenzie

Guys. I got to celebrate Thanksgiving three times this year. And got to eat stuffing and pumpkin pie TWICE!

As an ETA in Indonesia, Thanksgiving and its related foods are not easily found. In Jakarta and some cities with an expat community, some restaurants will serve a traditional Thanksgiving meal and if you’re ambitious enough you could probably even find the ingredients and make a whole meal yourself.

In Kendari however, it’s a different story. There are eight expats living in/around Kendari (including us three) and Western food is limited. Restaurants include two KFCs, Pizza Hut, and Papa Ron’s (pizza). Grocery stores carry a tiny selection of Western food and brands, namely pasta, tomato sauce, and mayonnaise. So when November rolled around, we didn’t expect anything Thanksgiving-related.

But that assumption was FALSE!

The first celebration of Thanksgiving occurred on Thanksgiving Day. I taught three classes that day and then met my English club after school. I wanted to introduce them to Thanksgiving a little bit so I shared a few photos of my family at Thanksgiving from years past. They loved the pictures of me and my family, all the food, but especially to see the inside of my house 🙂 I shared about Thanksgiving food and how my aunt Suzy and I usually spend two days cooking and preparing everything for the family – they were impressed! As a treat, I had made them guacamole because I had talked about it before and they wanted so badly to try it! Half of them loved it, half of them hated it! (Avocados are usually considered a fruit and served sweet here so it was a weird experience for them!)

Digging in to the guac!

(Mostly) Happy kiddos!

We made hand turkeys of what we are thankful for – I loved watching them make it and was so happy to put them all up on the wall in what is quickly becoming my beautifully decorated classroom!

Everyone pitching in to decorate the wall!

How cute!!

We also did a mannequin challenge, the viral video challenge where everyone freezes in place like a mannequin – swim teams and gymnastic teams have made some pretty impressive ones! Ours is fun too!

That evening, I met up with Kate and Shelby and we went and ate pizza together to “celebrate” Thanksgiving 🙂

On Friday evening, the other expats invited us to their Thanksgiving celebration the following day. So on Saturday we followed them out to where the other expat couple lives (on the beach!) and were astounded to discover a beautifully set table on the beach and endless dishes of stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, black olives (my favvvv), gravy, homemade rolls, pumpkin pie, apple pie, pecan pie… my jaw literally dropped.

Got off our bikes and discovered outselves here

Got off our bikes and discovered ourselves here

We enjoyed a wonderful evening chatting with all of these new friends, watching the sun set over the mountains, and eating food we thought we would have to wait another year for…

Best looking plate I’ve seen in a year and a half <3

A perfect setting

Beautiful view

Pies!!

Then, on Sunday we hosted our own Friendsgiving! We wanted to share some of our culture with the people who have helped us and befriended us in the three months we have been here, so we invited them to a big Thanksgiving potluck last Sunday. We spent the week before looking up oven-less, simple ingredient recipes, going to different stores and markets to find the ingredients, and finally spending all day Sunday cooking up a storm!

Cooking away!

We ended up with quite a spread considering our limitations. We made delicious creamy garlic mashed potatoes, a fantastic stovetop stuffing, yummy but nasty looking (not orange) sweet potatoes, garlic green beans, and even managed pumpkin pies – from scratch! I bought a pumpkin from the market, cut it into big slices and boiled them until soft, cut off the peels, and then had pumpkin to work with! Let me just say, I was quite impressed with myself 🙂

Proud chefs!

Our friends loved the chance to visit, meet each other, and try our food. We even made little Thankfulness turkeys and went around in a circle sharing what we are thankful for. It was a great end to a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend!

The crew!

Potluck-style – everyone brought something to share

Two of my coteachers, Ibu Asni and Ibu Erni enjoying our meal!

Forget the 14 couches we all could have comfotably sat on… in Indo we sit on the floor 😀

My ibus <3

My no-bake pumpkin pies!

Introducing bahasa tutors to Apples to Apples

Shelby, Kate and I finished the day sprawled out on Kate’s bed watching both the cartoon Grinch and half the Jim Carrey Grinch, before we began to drift off into a happy, food-coma sleep.

Orange Cranberry Sauce

December 22, 2014 by Mackenzie

Can you believe Christmas is this week? December has flown by and I can’t believe we’re here! It’s wonderful to be home with my family. I just finished reading The Vacationers and eh, it was okay. I had heard great things about it but it was pretty predictable… I guess I rarely read light, “beach” books like this so I’m not used to the lack of a complex plot 🙂 On to the next book on my list! Anyone have any recommendations to add to my list?

I have a quick post to share today – cranberry sauce is one of my favorite side dishes during the holidays. Thanksgiving or Christmas… I just love cranberry sauce on turkey or on sandwiches stuffed with leftover meat. So if you’re making some kind of meat for Christmas – why not try this Orange Cranberry sauce to go with it? It’s festive and delicious! We originally got the recipe from about.com and I’ve been making it now for several years and I love the flavor combination of sweet oranges, tangy cranberries and nutty toasted pecans!

Merry Christmas! Enjoy the time with family and friends!

Orange Cranberry Sauce

Recipe Type: Side dish

Cuisine: Holiday

Author: Mackenzie

Prep time: 25 mins

Total time: 25 mins

Serves: 3 cups

Ingredients

1 navel orange
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
4 cups fresh cranberries, rinsed
1/2 cup chopped pecans, roughly chopped

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grate the orange peel and place grated peel in a medium saucepan. Stir in the sugar and ginger.
Juice the orange and add it to the saucepan, bringing the mixture to a simmer over medium heat. Stir frequently with a whisk, about 5-10 minutes, until the sugar is dissolved.
Meanwhile, toast the pecans in preheated oven for about 5-7 minutes, until fragrant.
When the sugar has dissolved, add the fresh cranberries. Cook, stirring often, until the cranberries begin to pop (about 5 minutes). Stir in the toasted pecans and remove from heat to cool.

Caramelized Onion & Gruyere Tart

November 13, 2014 by Mackenzie

I cannot believe it’s mid-November – the time is flying! I only have two more full weeks of class this semester. How is that possible?! I’m not ready for this semester to be done… I feel like I’m just getting into the groove with my classes – I love the material and my professors… Gosh, it’s crazy to think I’ll be on the downhill slide of college in just a little over a month!

I registered for my final semester of classes this week. It hasn’t quite hit me that this is the end. No more pouring over course listings, no more playing with my registration worksheet – I’m set for this last semester! It’s going to be a light semester and I am so looking forward to that! That’s what your senior spring semester is supposed to be, right? 🙂 Although I’m sure I’ll be filling my spare time pouring over job listings and writing cover letters… oh, what fun!

Today I’ve got this delicious savory tart to share with you! I needed a quick and easy dish to bring to a potluck and I started day-dreaming about a tart with caramelized onions, creamy cheese and herbs while I was in class today. So I came home and created this Caramelized Onion and Gruyere Tart! It turned out wonderfully, and beautiful too! I almost wish I hadn’t brought it to the potluck because I only got a small slice and I would have loved to have more! I’ll just have to make it again!

I combined a couple of different recipes for this: the crust is from Williams Sonoma and the filling I adapted from Lovely Bits Blog. The end result was fantastic and I will definitely be making this again – it was so easy and perfect on a chilly winter night.

Caramelized Onion & Gruyere Tart

Recipe Type: Appetizer, Dinner

Cuisine: Savory

Author: Mackenzie

Prep time: 1 hour 10 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Serves: 8 slices

A savory tart with a flaky crust and mouthwatering filling. It is easy to make and wonderfully shareable! You’ll amaze your guests!

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
3-4 tablespoons ice water
2 tablespoons butter
2 large vidalia (sweet) onions, halved and sliced thin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
1 egg white, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons dijon mustard
3/4 cup shredded gruyere cheese
Fresh rosemary or dried herbs

Instructions

Prepare the crust: In a food processor, pulse together the flour, salt and sugar just to combine. Add the butter and pulse until pea-sized pieces form. Add the water and pulse until dough comes together in a ball. Gather dough into a ball, form into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill for at least 30 minutes.
On a floured surface, roll out the dough into a circle just a little bigger than your tart pan. Carefully transfer the dough to the tart pan. Chill for another 30 minutes while you prepare the filling.
In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt the butter. Add the onions, salt, pepper, and sugar. Cook onions for 8-10 minutes over medium high heat, stirring occasionally, until tender. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 7-10 more minutes, until onions are browned and caramelized.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Brush crust with egg white and spread dijon mustard over crust. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the cheese over the mustard and then top with the caramelized onions. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top and finish with some fresh rosemary or dried herbs sprinkled over the top.
Bake at 425 for 17-19 minutes, until crust is golden and cheese is melted. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

Deep Dish Apple Pie

May 26, 2013 by Mackenzie

Sunday was quite the day in the kitchen! Not only did we make this gnocchi in tomato vegetable sauce, this roasted beets and root vegetable salad with quinoa, homemade granola, and focaccia bread – but we also made this deep dish apple pie! And my oh my, what a pie!

I’ve made quite a few apple pies in my time. Apple pie is a staple at our Thanksgiving and it’s probably one of my favorite desserts – so I’ve made a fair amount of apple pies! However, I believe this pie has easily defeated any of its other competitors – in sheer size and of course, deliciousness.

This pie is made in a springform pan instead of a regular pie dish, which allows this pie to be deep and the filling to be almost double a normal-sized pie. Because it is such a large pie, it takes quite a while to bake – about an hour and a half – but the wait is more than worth it!

Although it is quite the pie, it isn’t too heavy since the top is just a streusel crumble rather than a second layer of pie crust. I added rolled oats to the streusel because one, I love oats, and two, it gave it an apple crisp twist – which is another apple dessert that I love.

Deep Dish Apple Pie
Serves 12-16
Recipe from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Pie dough:

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon table salt
16 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold and diced
1/2 cup ice cold water

Directions:

1. In the bowl of a food processor, add the flour, sugar and salt and pulse to combine. Add the diced butter and pulse just until you have pea-sized pieces of dough. Transfer to a large bowl.

2. Drizzle the water over the dry mixture and work it together with your hands. Knead briefly then form into a large disk, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for two hours.

Apple pie:

Ingredients:

1 recipe of above pie crust

Filing:
4 lbs apples, 1/2 green apples and 1/2 Fuji apples
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Streusel topping:
3/4 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 tablespoon butter, melted

Vanilla ice cream

Directions:

1. Prepare crust: coat a 9-inch springform pan with oil. On a floured surface, roll out chilled pie crust into a 16-inch round – 1/4 inch think. My trick to getting a rolled out pie crust into the pan is to roll it back over the rolling pin and then slide your arm under it and then you should be able to lift the whole thing up and transfer it to the springform pan! Trim the overhang to one inch, crimp edges and then place the dish into the fridge while you prepare the apples.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Peel, core and chop apples into bite-sized pieces. Place them all into a large bowl and drizzle with the lemon juice. In a separate small bowl, whisk the sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and then mix into apples.

3. Spoon apples into prepared crust and spread them as flat and evenly as possible. Bake pie for 30 minutes (if the tips of the apples begin to brown and burn, cover the top with foil).

4. While pie is baking, make the streusel topping. In a medium bowl, stir together sugar, cinnamon, salt, flour, oats and baking powder. Pour in the melted butter and mix to combine. Stick in freezer until pie has baked for 30 minutes.

5. After 30 minutes, remove the pie from the oven, decrease the oven temperature to 325 and then spoon the streusel onto the top of the pie – pressing gently into apples. Return to the oven and bake for an additional hour. Cover with foil if the streusel begins to brown too quickly.

6. When the pie has finished baking, remove it from the oven and let cool to lukewarm. Run a knife around the crust to loosen the edges from the pan. Carefully loosen the clamp on the springform and slide it over the top and off the pie. The pie slices best when chilled in the fridge, but warm pie and ice cream just can’t be beat. Take your pick and enjoy this tall and proud creation!

Mackenzie

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