Our American cousins celebrate Thanksgiving this week, but there’s no reason why you can’t bring some Thanksgiving traditions to your Christmas table.
The fourth Thursday in November is Thanksgiving in the USA when traditionally the family sit down to eat turkey with all the trimmings followed by pumpkin pie. It’s the start of the holiday season!
But that led us to thinking about all the many and varied American dishes. Not just the hamburger, hot dog, barbecued ribs and doughnuts, although the USA do these better than anywhere else in the world.
We are big lovers of American food here at SK and Tex Mex in particular is one of our specialities. Spicy chicken taquitos with soured cream, spicy beef burrito with salsa and three bean cheese filled burger are just some of the US-inspired dishes we make for our customers and we think they would pass the taste test if we took them to New York or California!
Looking for some great traditional recipes for the States created a long list of mouth-watering flavours and tempting ideas and with Christmas coming up we thought we’d take a look at the side dishes that often accompany the Thanksgiving turkey to bring them to our Christmas table.
The Thanksgiving turkey is often served with what the Americans call yams but are really our sweet potatoes. The wonderful sweet flavour of the orangey flesh of the sweet potato just feels like a luxury however simply it is dished up but we were particularly drawn to Tyler Florence’s sweet potato and bananas with honey and the scalloped asparagus with cheese.
But when you’re serving turkey, whether it’s for Thanksgiving or for Christmas, the first thing that seems to spring to mind is a great cranberry sauce.
It’s easy to buy it in a jar and just spoon it out onto the plate but this year why not make your own? It really doesn’t take long!
We love this recipe from the Food Network that gives the traditional sauce an orange twist.
Ingredients:
12oz fresh or frozen cranberries
1 cup of sugar
1 strip of orange zest
A little water
Method:
Put the cranberries into a saucepan and then transfer half a cup to a small bowl and put them to one side. Add the sugar and zest and two tablespoons of water to the pan and cook over a low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves and the cranberries are soft. This should take about ten minutes.
Then increase the heat to medium and cook until the cranberries burst. Once they have burst reduce the heat to low and stir in the cranberries you had put to one side. Add sugar, salt and pepper to taste and cool to room temperature before serving.
About Neil Shaefer
Marketing & Communications Executive of SK Foods.
Your food. Our Passion.
