Parsnip potato horseradish puree and maple-bourbon brined turkey

One more thing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving: It turns out there was enough charge left on the camera battery for one lone shot before, surprise, it gave up. So this shot is the only one from a Thanksgiving meal that was low stress and very tasty.

We paired this with a bone-in turkey breast brined in a maple syrup-bourbon mixture featured in a recent Taste section. Basically we made a standard brine and added maple syrup, a generous amount of bourbon and pumpkin pie spices. Even if you're fed up with the pumpkin pie spice bit, it worked quite well in this usage, making really, really tasty skin and a moist bird despite being white meat. We left it in the brine for 24 hours. Following the procedure from Kitchn, we placed the bird on thickly sliced onions in a roasting pan, rubbed the skin with butter and sprinkled it with salt and pepper before putting it in an oven preheated to 450 degrees. We then reduced the heat immediately to 350 and cooked the 7-plus pound bird for a bit more than 2 hours, covering it with tin foil with about a half hour to go. The turkey was great, but the really, really stupendous part was the onion layer on the bottom of the pan. That is so cheating.

It paired well with this recipe.

Horseradish parsnip puree
Adapted slightly from foodzia.uk

Ingredients
3 medium parsnips, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Combine parsnips and potatoes in a heavy sauce pan and cover with salted water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer, partially covered, until veggies are tender. Drain.

Rice parsnips and potatoes into a serving bowl. (Or if you don't have a ricer, you could mash them and then pass them through a sieve, or use a stick blender.) Blend in cream, milk, butter and salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 2 to 4 depending on what else you're having.

Rating: Very easy and quite tasty. Worth repeating. I didn't find it too horseradishy, but if you're less tolerant, I'd start out by adding 1 tablespoon and then going from there.

It's been awhile since I've hosted Thanksgiving. But this stove would be just the ticket.