November part 3

All right, well on to the most filling part of the Thanksgiving day meal, the entrees. I know that typically people serve turkey or ham or maybe even pork loin, and believe me there is nothing wrong with any of that. In fact, one of the recipes that I will pass on to you will be a pork recipe. The point that I am trying to make is that there are other options available to use other than the “typical” Thanksgiving meats.

I would expect that the percentage of people out there who will serve turkey on Thanksgiving will be high, something around 60-70%. I myself count turkey among my favorite foods, especially the dark meat which is nice and tender and moist, alongside some stuffing cannot be beaten. Since you probably all already have a recipe or method for your turkey, I will leave that one to you. Instead of the turkey, I will offer 3 other alternatives, pan seared honey glazed duck breast, pork chops with black bean and chorizo sausage stew, and finally pesto encrusted salmon.

Duck breast is something that if you have never experienced, you are truly missing out on. It is much more flavorful than chicken, and offers more alternatives for cooking because unlike poultry, you can cook duck to whatever temperature that you like, from rare to well done. I myself prefer medium rare, especially when I have the breast meat.

One nice aspect of duck breasts is that they have a large cap of skin over the breast which should be left on in order to facilitate searing. This skin can be seared until it is almost crispy, and it has a wonderful flavor which becomes incorporated into the flavor of the rest of the meat. For this recipe, I suggest that you use the breast, but if you want to use other parts or even a whole duck that would be fine.

In this recipe for Honey Glazed Duck Breast, there aren’t that many ingredients. In fact, one of the ingredients, chipolte peppers, can be left out entirely if you desire. They are a nice smoked pepper, with a good amount of heat but a lot of nice smoked flavor, but feel free to omit them if you want to prepare this dish without the heat.

Although many of you probably already cook pork chops with some regularity, I doubt that too many people have had them for Thanksgiving (though I have been wrong in the past, and will probably be proven wrong with this one too). I think that sometimes it’s a shame that we overlook foods that we have on a regular basis when we have “typical” meals that we all get together for.

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