Thanksgiving in London

So obviously there's no tradition of Thanksgiving in London. A few years ago my family had the traditional American dinner as it coincided with a day in November when we could all get together. It was good fun, and a bit of a change from the usual roast that we normally have as a family meal.

This year, a friend of mine was visiting London from Chicago and although he loves the UK (check out his blog The Curious American) he was sad that he would miss Thanksgiving in the States. So I thought it would be fun to do a dinner here with him and some other friends and see how it goes.

When I started researching this I realised there's no set standard meal really, it varies from family to family and region to region. A lot of the sites I found with menus had ideas to do different and exciting things for Thanksgiving, finding instructions for a traditional dinner were tricky as in America, everyone already knows it! I eventually settled on the below menu from a selection of sources and a few ideas of my own that seemed vaguely 'murican'. I decided to cut out some things like the sweet potato casserole as I didn't want to eat marshmallow with turkey!

Starter:

Sweetcorn and bacon chowder with cheddar and paprika straws

Main:

Roast turkey with cider gravy

Pork, maple and pecan stuffing

Mashed potatoes

White dinner rolls

Green bean casserole

Honey roasted squash and carrots

Dessert:

Apple and pecan pie with maple cream

Here's the pie before it went into the oven. First time doing lattice work as I don't do a lot of pastry as a rule but it was a lot easier than I thought. The case was first blind baked then the spiced apple and nuts put in afterwards. Hopefully this will avoid the dreaded GBBO 'soggy bottom'. 

Apple and Pecan Lattice Pie

This is the stuffing mix before it's cooked, it's sausagemeat, polenta, milk, red onion, pecan nuts and maple syrup. 

The leftover stuffing (when cooked) was rather nice for breakfast!

I thought these little turkey napkins would be fun, they took longer to make than I thought!

Here's the table layout, my housemates brought back the placemats from Japan, they were kind of Thanksgiving sort of colours so I decided to use them. 

After all my concerns that the turkey wouldn't be ready in time or would be frozen in the middle, it was absolutely fine. We had a fair bit of it but I still have a huge box of cooked turkey meat left, think I might make a curry later :)

Here are the honey roasted carrots and squash, the mash and the stuffing balls. 

Here's the pie cooked, I drizzed maple syrup over the top to give it sweetness and shine to the pastry.