On Thursday both cafeterias served a Thanksgiving meal to the students for a very affordable price. My plate was so full that not only did I turn down the complementary soup or coffee, but I was hoping that I could grab a nap sometime during afternoon classes. Overall, it was an excellent meal, but there were so many fine details which must be mentioned that I feel the need to break down my review and discuss the individual foods that barely fit onto the plate.
The star of any Thanksgiving meal is the turkey, and to be honest I expected the culinary students to serve up a dry, flavorless, bird. I was happily mistaken. The bird was moist, well-seasoned, and as stated earlier, they did not skimp on the portion. It's not easy to cook and serve a moist and flavorful turkey to hundreds of people so my congratulations to the culinary students for pulling off that feat. It would have been nice to have cranberry sauce included with the turkey, so that was a disappointing oversight, but hopefully it is an oversight that will be remedied by Christmas.
Next on the plate for attention was the dressing. I would love to call it stuffing, but technically it can only be called true stuffing if it was actually stuffed inside the bird during cooking. I am certain the biology students would be quick to panic if they were served true stuffing, as the risk of a bacterial-borne illness is greatly increased with that type of recipe. Thankfully the culinary students must have known that as they put dressing on the menu, instead. Dressing is a touchy subject. It is one of those hit-or-miss recipes. There are so many variations of it and, let's face it, your mom's recipe is always the best recipe. For most people, however, the worst recipe for dressing is the one that is primarily made of spices and chopped onions mixed with mushy bread. Unfortunately, this is what the cafeteria was serving. No potatoes. No dried cranberries. No apples. No sausage. Just mushy bread. It was like eating a handful of croutons that had been soaked in the leftover liquid from a cup of instant noodles. I nearly cried. If I may make a suggestion for next time? If the cafeteria is going to serve plain bread dressing, how about eliminating the mushy texture by baking individual portions in muffin tins? That way the dressing is less likely to have a mushy interior and the exterior of every dressing portion will have that delicious caramelized crust that everybody loves. Alternatively, if the culinary students are not interested in baking dressing in muffin tins, they may wish to attempt to get even more creative by making the dressing into a variation of hush puppies by using a small scoop to form them into balls, then coating them in egg wash, rolling them in panko bread crumbs, and deep frying them until they are golden and crunchy. A little bit of kitchen creativity that I'm sure will be a hit with both the culinary students and anyone trying the dressing that day.
Of course, what Thanksgiving meal would be right without gravy? I found the gravy with this meal to contain a lot of rosemary. In all fairness, some people like to have rosemary in their gravy, but I think this may have been a little too much. It was, however, the perfect thickness, and it was nice to see that the gravy did contain some herbs, unlike most gravies served at restaurants. In spite of the strong rosemary flavor it was a good effort.
Vegetables are frequently overlooked during most Thanksgiving meals, as a vegetable is a vegetable is a vegetable. But the reality is that vegetables are important both in maintaining good health in the human body, and in making a dinner taste exciting. I would like to say that I have noticed the menu planners in the campus cafeteria going out of their way for every meal that they serve to ensure that students receive nutritious veggies in a way that is flavorful. For this I am thankful year-round. I appreciated the variety of vegetables served with this meal, and they were all delicious and appropriately seasoned. I must especially thank the students who likely spent over an hour scoring the bottom of each brussel sprout--a task which I am sure may lead to a later discussion on the causes of carpal tunnel syndrome. Click here to see How to correctly prepare brussel sprouts? Too bad that the brussel sprouts were undercooked. I am going to let that one slide, however, since it is easy to overcook a brussel sprout and nobody finds the smell of overcooked brussel sprouts appealing. As for the mashed potatoes, they were smooth but not gluey, which can be a challenge when making enough potatoes to serve several hundred people, so they were perfect.
The dessert. Oh, my word, the dessert! Real, thick, whipped cream. None of that phony "edible oil product." None of that stuff that comes out of a can and dissolves into a dairy puddle within seconds. No, this was real, thick, whipped cream! I am happy to know that the culinary students are learning to not take shortcuts on this small detail. A customer will often accurately judge the overall quality of the food at a restaurant based on the quality of the condiments and garnishes, and the whipped cream on this pumpkin tart was a perfect example. Case in point: The little marzipan pumpkin with clove stem was adorable and delicious, although I was surprised to not see an allergy alert posted anywhere. Are the culinary students not aware that the main ingredient in marzipan is almonds? As for the little chocolate crunch balls, they were also delicious, although they did not complement the spices in the tart very well. The pumpkin filling itself was fairly run-of-the-mill, and it would have been nice to have a little bit of extra ginger in there, but it was still quite good as it was. Most of all, however, I must emphasise how amazing that tart crust was. It was as if some culinary genius woke up one morning and said, "I wonder what would happen if I combined a cookie dough crust with a traditional pie dough crust?" The Nobel prize for baking, that's what! I don't think that I have ever tasted a better pie crust in my entire life, and I am not exaggerating when I say that. If the Pillsbury company wants to offer the creator of this recipe half a million dollars for it, he or she should accept (but first hold out for more money because it's worth it).
All in all, I must congratulate the culinary students for pulling off such an enormous task of Thanksgiving dinner, without stooping to heavily rely on the folks at Sysco. Well done!
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