This past weekend we enjoyed a classic Thanksgiving menu lineup of: Roasted Butternut Squash Soup, Orange Rosemary Turkey, Orange Cranberry Relish, Mushroom and Onion Dressing, Roasted Yam Chips, and a bottle of 2007 Hagafen Rousanne.  The dishes worked out great! The soup was lovely, the turkey was mouth-watering perfect, along with the great sides. To wrap up the lineup my wife made a killer pumpkin pie that was baked just enough to form a lovely crust that was crunchy and had a bit of caramelized pumpkin on its edge.

To start the soup recipe is not new – we have done it before and we did it again this year to start out shabbos dinner in style. The Roasted Butternut Squash Soup came out nice, but as usual needed some tweaking from my wife. She threw in some extra savory herb, garlic, and I threw in some rice milk to thin it down when I reheated it because it was too thick.

The turkey is an almost pure pull from the folks at Real Simple magazine, who for the most part must either be folks with way too much time on their hands or be laughing at us, as most of the recipes are NOT real simple at all! Anyway, the turkey recipe was not complicated and the extra herb infused margarine that we tuck under the skin helps to keep the turkey breasts moist throughout the cooking process. What we changed was that we used two turkey breasts instead of a full bird, as we had no guests and that was all we needed for a few meals. Also, we used a thermometer that was plugged into the turkey breast the entire time. Once the temperature in the breast came to 165 degrees, we immediately removed the breasts and tented them to keep them warm.

For the sides we went with a few dishes:

1. The first is our favorite cranberry relish recipe. We keep the zest out of the boiling process until the very end so not to scorch the orange zest.
2. Simple cubed yams that were covered with oil and herbs and roasted at 350 degrees until they get soft inside and crunchy outside.
3. A simple dressing with sautéed mushrooms and onions, bread, herbs, garlic, salt, and broth. The stuff gets mixed and thrown into the oven at 350 degrees for an hour.

To pair all of these wonderful dishes we went with a lovely bottle of 2007 Hagafen Rousanne which turned out to be quite nice indeed. The wine’s bright acidity and toasty oak both work very well with the slight game flavors that the turkey shows and the earthy notes that the mushroom laden dressing has coming out of its pours. The Rousanne is ready now and can probably live another year. However, given its yummy state why not enjoy it and buy the 2008 vintage when you can?

The wine note follows below:

2007 Hagafen Roussanne Ripken Vineyard Napa Valley – Score: B++
The nose on this light gold colored wine starts off with a hit of fresh and almost plump peach, guava, apple, lemon, caramel, rich smoky/toasty oak, hay, vanilla, Crème brûlée, and butterscotch. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine starts off super spicy with bright fruit and toasty oak. The mouth is concentrated showing peach, pear, guava, pineapple, caramel, rich fruit and a ripe mouth with a lovely fullness to it. The mid palate is nicely balanced with core acidity, toasty oak, caramel, butterscotch, hay or green tea, and lemon. The finish is super long, spicy, and bright with toasty oak, summer fruit, lemon drop, butterscotch, and a hint of green tea on the finish. It lingers nicely with lemon drop, butterscotch, and toasty oak. Drink up!