Thanksgiving Dinner: Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

I'm a skins-on kind of gal.

My mom has a great pet peeve.  She hates it when my siblings and I order food at a restaurant that we could easily make at home.  I loved ordering macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes.  I had the palate of a 7 year-old ('cause I was).

As we grew older, we learned to make the foods that had caused my mom so much exasperation at restaurants.  My brother learned to make some awesome mac and cheese.  I remember one summer, he stumbled out of his room, having not eaten in three days (he'd been reading all the J. R. R. Tolkien books in succession).  He'd knock everything out of his way and make enough mac and cheese to feed Bangladesh.  Then he'd eat it all and disappear again (to read some more).

My sister and I learned to make some super-garlicky mashed potatoes.  We even had mashed potato cook-offs to the sheer detriment of our familial relationships.  I believe our house was once divided by a meridian of mashed potato preferences.

Thanksgiving Dinner: Butter Pecan Sweet Potatoes

Candied yams is a Thanksgiving dish I've never cared for.  I love the flavor, but why does it have to be the texture of baby food?  I've grown up eating Korean sweet potatoes.  My mom would poke them with a fork and throw them in the microwave.  I looooooved them like this.  When I went away to college, I'd buy sweet potatoes and prepare them in the same way.  I was the girl walking around eating a sweet potato like it was an apple.  I remember the first time I had a candied yam casserole with the marshmallows on top.  It was mushy and sickeningly sweet.   My friends raved about the toasted marshmallows.  Toasted marshmallows are awesome (as are all slightly burnt sugary concoctions), but they're really just there to trick children into eating the gloppy mess of yams hiding under them.  For this Thanksgiving, I decided to combine my beautiful Korean sweet potatoes with the ugliness that is the candied yam casserole.

Candied yams aren't actually yams.  What Americans know to be yams are actually orange-fleshed sweet potatoes.  If you really care, read this, and let me get back to my dish.  I used Martha Stewart's Butter Pecan Sweet Potato recipe, but adapted it by using a mix of local Korean sweet potatoes.  Pecans are insanely expensive in Korea.  I've paced back and forth whimpering in front of an itty-bitty package of 10,000 won ($10) pecans at Homeplus.  WHY?!  In Texas, they fall from the trees like manna.  Anyway, my point is, feel free to substitute a more economical nut or blend of nuts if you wish.

Thanksgiving Dinner: Green Bean Casserole

My first proper Thanksgiving meal was in the projects of San Antonio where my mother had consigned me to child slavery volunteering for the less fortunate.  It's strange to remember my perspective as a child.  I didn't quite understand how the people we were serving were "less fortunate."  Everyone seemed to be laughing, eating, and having a great time.  No one was sucking on gasoline rags or had flies crawling all over their faces.  Where were the suffering masses?  How was I to live out my Savior complex and practice my benevolent, Mother Theresa face?  As a ten or eleven year-old who wasn't seeing enough sorrow nor grateful teary eyes (god, I was completely delusional and annoying as a kid), I started "sampling" all the dishes.  Needless to say, the Thanksgiving spread wasn't cooked with the love and dedication of an All-American mom bent over her 100% organic turkey.  But, it was my first Thanksgiving dinner experience, and I came to understand the greatness of the Thanksgiving feast.  I also had a bread roll thrown in my face.

If I can get past the bread roll, I remember the green bean casserole.  It was watery and overcooked.  It wasn't until I had it fresh and delicious out of some loving Texan mother's kitchen (can't remember whose but I can assure you, it wasn't mine), that I my fondness for green bean casserole grew.  I love green bean casserole.  The original recipe is so easy - some Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup thrown together with some green beans and topped with French's Fried Onions.  In Korea, all three of these ingredients would be subject to tariffs.  Who wants to pay $5 for cream of mushroom soup?  Not me. Furthermore, French's Fried Onions aren't sold in Korea.  So, I found Alton Brown's recipe in order to make the beloved dish entirely from scratch.

Thanksgiving Dinner: Smoked Oyster and Bacon Stuffing

I chose to make a smoked oyster stuffing because I love smoked oysters.  Oysters have a distinct oyster taste that is delicious when fresh and simple.  When smoked, they take on a whole different smokey, meaty property while still maintaining a subtle lilt of oysterness.  In searching for a recipe to incorporate smoked oysters, I found Martha Stewart's Smoked Oyster and Bacon Stuffing.  I adapted the recipe to be friendlier towards ingredients I could get in Korea (i.e. switching out brown rice vinegar for sherry vinegar).  I also used the rice cooker to finish the stuffing instead of the oven because there were so many other dishes that needed to be cooked in my small convection oven.

This smoked oyster and bacon stuffing was the star of the dinner.  (Some may argue it was the turducken roll.)  The smoked oyster, with the support of some savory bacon, really revived plain ole' bread stuffing.  The result was an aromatic stuffing accented with pockets of smokey, oyster flavor and crumbles of salty bacon.

Thanksgiving Dinner: Turducken Roll

Being Korean American, my family had a lot of learning to do in the American culture department. Peeled apple on a chopstick was my lollipop.  I once heard Oprah say that moms who lovingly cut the crust off their kids' sandwiches - THAT was love.  I needed to know mom loved me so I got her on that right away. Christmas was an awkward time when we'd all sit around and stare at each other before slowly receding to our rooms to read or study.  There was one time we tried to do presents, and I got wire hangers. I don't think I've ever gotten over the trauma of that gem of an experience.  Perhaps the most successful example of how we adapted to the American way of life is Thanksgiving. Once my siblings and I left home to attend college as far away as possible from Texas (Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Chicago), we'd gather at my oldest sister's house in Philadelphia to do the thanksgiving. It was a perfect holiday. No parents and the freedom to cook amazing thanksgiving dishes we hadn't had a chance to cook yet. It's how I discovered how to roast a turkey. We made a green bean casserole that actually tasted good, and it finally made sense to me why people ate them.