A Bobby Flay Thanksgiving

We decided to go with a Southwest themed Thanksgiving, using a ton of Bobby Flay recipes from his Mesa Grill cookbook and his website. I'm usually pretty critical of the finished product whenever we cook but everything turned out outstanding. We had family and friends over and as this was the first time we've hosted, it was a very satisfying feeling when everyone raved about the food.

The final menu was this: Pumpkin soup with chipotle, blue and yellow corn muffins, roasted brussels sprouts with walnuts and pomegranate seeds, creamed spinach, cornbread stuffing with chorizo, brown sugar glazed ham, sweet potato tamales with a pecan compound butter, mashed horseradish potatoes, a cranberry and mango relish, and finally an ancho and maple glazed turkey with a roasted garlic and cilantro gravy. We even took the time to make Flay's signature garnish oils, his cilantro oil and red chile oil. Dessert was a sweet potato pecan pie and an apple and blackberry crisp with a cinnamon bourbon home made ice cream. Everything was ridiculously good but also ridiculously time consuming and my girlfriend and I calculated about 22 hours of cook time between the both of us. Between the brines, home made turkey and chicken stocks, compound butters, simple syrups (for a cranberry sangria), and all the prep, we were exhausted but it was so worth it. My girlfriend gets huge props for all her hard work!

Unfortunately no prep pics, just finished ones, as we were just swamped. I broke down the turkey and cooked individual parts to temp on the Egg over sugar maple, apple wood and pecan chips and chunks that had been soaked in bourbon over night. Awesome color on the turkey even before I started to add the ancho-maple glaze.

All the components of the side dishes went so well together and the colors of everything just screamed fall to me. We had some kick ass wines, cranberry sangria, and pumpkin beer.

Hope you enjoy the pics, and hope everyones Thanksgiving was as fun as ours!