In his book Good Together: Drink & Feast with Mr Lyan and Friends (Frances Lincoln, £20.00), Ryan Chetiyawardana (aka Mr Lyan) has called on his many friends from the world’s best restaurants to share dishes they love to make for friends and family served alongside his stellar cocktails for the perfect social gathering. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we thought we’d take a closer look at what the book has to say about the perfect Thanksgiving Dinner with recipes from Tien Ho of Whole Foods.
Tien Ho says, “I’ve worked in restaurants for much of my adult life, and holiday season tends to mean extra-long days – it makes having a day off to celebrate food with friends and family just that much sweeter. For the last ten-plus years, we have crammed into my little apartment in NYC for a potluck feast!”
“We called it Tiensgiving. Everyone brings a dish that is special to them. I always make turkey and cornbread. We stuff our faces, drink and talk shop all night. These are still some of my best memories.”
Tien Ho's Turkey
Ingredients
For the turkey
- 12 turkey breasts boneless and skinless (2 per person)
- canola or rapeseed oil to deep-fry
For the fish sauce vinaigrette
- 750 ml fish sauce
- 500 ml water
- 375 g sugar
- 5 cloves of garlic finely chopped
- Juice of 4 limes
- 125 ml white wine vinegar
- 3 fresh Thai chillies finely chopped
For the flour mix
- 500 g plain flour
- 3 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp pepper
For the egg wash
- 3 eggs
- 125 ml water
Instructions
- Start preparing the turkey the day before you want to serve it. First, make the fish sauce vinaigrette by combining all the ingredients. Slice the turkey breasts into 1cm strips and leave to marinate in the vinaigrette for 24 hours.
- When you are ready to cook (after the cornbread stuffing is in the oven, see below), combine the ingredients for the flour mix and put in a shallow bowl.
- Mix the ingredients for the egg wash together well in a separate bowl.
- Put the oil in a large pan, making sure it comes no higher than halfway up the pot. Heat to about 175°C (350°F).
- Remove the turkey from the marinade. Dredge the turkey first in flour, then egg wash and then flour again. Deep fry a few turkey strips at a time until they are dark golden brown. Let them rest on a rack or on kitchen towels.
- Serve hot.
Grandma Murrell’s Cornbread Stuffing
Ingredients
For Granny’s cornbread
- 3 tbsp canola oil or rapeseed oil
- 250 g white fine cornmeal
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp caster sugar
- 1 egg
- 500 ml buttermilk
For the stuffing
- 8 sticks of celery chopped
- 1 large onion chopped
- 225 g butter
- 4 hotdog buns
- 8 eggs
- 8 large sage leaves
- 1–1½ litres chicken stock or turkey stock
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- For the cornbread, preheat the oven to 230°C (450°F/gas mark 8). Pour the oil into a 23cm (9 inch) ovenproof cast iron frying pan or similar heavy-based pan. Once the oven has heated up, put the pan in the oven to get piping hot.
- Combine all the ingredients for the cornbread in a bowl and stir until well mixed. Pour the hot oil from the pan into the batter, then immediately pour the batter into the hot pan. Return to the oven and bake until brown on top and set – about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
- When you are ready to make the stuffing, preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F/gas mark 5). Saute the celery and onion with the butter, until tender and translucent.
- Coarsely crumble the cornbread into a large bowl. Roughly tear the hot dog buns and mix with the cornbread. Add the sauteed vegetables to the breads. Stir in the eggs and sage, and season with salt and pepper. Stir in a small amount of warm turkey or chicken stock. My mom’s instructions were to use enough stock to make it ‘kind of soupy’ – this doesn’t mean like soup, but just so that the stuffing is wet enough that you can see a bit of stock come to the surface when it stands – in combination with the eggs, it will bind in the oven.
- Pour the mix into a well-buttered pan or other baking dish. Dot the top with butter. Bake in the oven until very brown, set and puffy, about 1 hour. I like it to have very brown edges.
Recipes from Good Together: Drink & Feast with Mr Lyan and Friends by Ryan Chetiyawardana (Frances Lincoln, £20.00)