Thanks to some American friends we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving in style by ordering and cooking a turkey with all the trimmings. My job was pretty easy, sourcing the big beast. Turkey in the UK tends to be a more Christmas bird although it’s not too far off so ordering one wasn’t really a problem. I ended up getting a fresh (i.e. not frozen) organic bird from Marylebone’s The Ginger Pig. It wasn’t particularly cheap but it was definitely tasty. Fortunately all I had to do with the bird on the day was watch everyone else prepare it.

Sean and Reshma definitely had the style going by placing a butter soaked cheesecloth over the bird to hold the juices on top of the bird, apparently a very good Martha Stewart trick. We then sat back and chilled while occasionally basting the bird.

Over the hours we had a few people trickle in, each of them either bringing something or preparing something at our house. I’m glad that I’d prepared some Anzac biscuits that just needed warming through to keep slightly crunchy.

We definitely had one big feast on the evening with plenty of leftovers. The final set of dishes looked something like this:

Roast turkey basted with butter, rosemary and thyme.

Roasted potatoes in goose fat

Tuna pasta

Jalepeno cheese bread rolls

Yorkshire pudding

Box stuffing

Fried zuchinni

Decadent chocolate brownies

We also had some mashed sweet potatoes, gravy and anzac biscuits (which I don’t have any photos of)

Everyone did a round of thanks and considering it was pouring most of the night we had plenty of things to be thankful for in good company, great good and some great wine.