Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

11.12.06

So this post is well, a little late, but anyway it’s finally here.



Thanksgiving arrived here in Sokcho with a bang at the Dongjin Pleasure Palace!

Every since November had started Kelsey and I had been thinking about what we would do for a very American type holiday with a crowd of people who would have no real idea of what the sacred holiday would be. With a little help from Christina, the only other American in our circle of friends we tried to pull off the holiday and give everybody a taste of the Thanksgiving experience.

We decided on a potluck type thing. With the size of my kitchen facilities, well I could host the party but it just wouldn’t work if I had to cook for ten with a rice cooker, one burner gas stove, and a tiny oven.

When we mentioned the idea of a potluck to our British, Australian, Canadian, and Chinese friends we were met with cries of dismay and shouts of, “What the hell do we know about Thanksgiving? What in the name of Christ do you want us to cook?”
We just assured our friends that what ever they brought would be fine and they left us with confused looks and crazy talk about hummus and mushroom soup.

We decided to hold the little party on a Sunday rather than the traditional Thursday because of work commitments so I had to start cooking my stuff on Friday.

I took it upon myself to make a roast chicken, mashed potatoes, pudding, and stuffing and worked hard for two days to get all of my stuff ready.

The chicken and spuds were pretty easy, that kind of stuff is easy to find here, as Koreans love it as much as Americans. It was no problem finding some really nice Yukon Gold potatoes and a huge roasting chicken in the market. The stuffing took some work.

For the stuffing I decided to use my rice cooker. First I cut up two big baguettes and toasted them in the oven. From the market I got some exquisite green onions and fried them in butter with a bunch of mushrooms and pine nuts.

After the bread was done I combined it with my butter rich mixture of onions and mushrooms and through it all in the rice cooker with a can of black olives that I had been saving for a while and let it cook for about an hour. The only thing that really sucked was that a rice cooker has an internal timer, it just stays on long enough for the rice to cook and then just keeps things warm so I constantly had to reset it but it turned out all right.

The chicken and spuds, that was simple. I peeled and boiled a ton of spuds on Friday and cooked and mashed them on Sunday. The chicken I covered with spices and butter and cooked it almost all the way through on Saturday.

The hardest part of the pre-cooking was finding room in my tiny fridge to keep everything. I ended up having to farm stuff out to my various neighbors in the building.

The dinner itself went off without a hitch and was truly a multinational affair with even the Welsh and Scottish members showing up, drunk as usual.
The menu was half traditional and half, well half world cuisine. We had everything from duck to hummus to kimpap and a good time was had by all as we drank and ate through the evening.

Kelly and Suan showed up late after their trip to Seoul bringing the biggest cheesecake I have ever seen and lo and behold, a pumpkin pie made an appearance and was quickly gobbled up, the non-Americans proclaiming it excellent.

Pictures

1. Hard at work in the kitchen, as usual. My precious oven is to the right.

2. Stuart arriving late as usaul, and a little in the bag.

3. Christina, Hong, and Karen

4. Salmon pate and vegetable dip

5. Wojtek, the life of the party as usual