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GIVING GREAT THANKS
Turkey for beginners, gravy, mashed potatoes, dressing~only turkey thighs~sweet potatoes~cranberries~lamb neck, for a change~white port from Georgia~disasters in my kitchen
Ah, traditions. Thanksgiving is surely the most-food-tradition-laced or most-painfully-boring-food U.S. holiday. For me, anyway, it is. I don’t much like turkey—roasted, smoked, or deep-fried—save a few bites of thigh, and then I’m done. But for those of you who are 100% traditional, I’ve found a variety of turkey recipes. What is a coolio idea, however, is plain old mashed potatoes like my Dad used to make. I am a true fanboy of these.
Paul Christensen—that’s my Dad—used to make the recipe above. It’s a pièce de résistance. I also do like oh-so-simple dressing. And, oh, I can’t overlook my candied sweet potatoes as my side wonder. One out of ten years, it’s spectacular. The other years, I do like it lots. And, oh, how could I leave out that I’m way keen on my wife’s cranberry relish?
For you experimenters, for your stuffing, try using cornbread, white bread, French bread, biscuits, whole wheat, rye, challah, potato bread, sandwich bread or hamburger buns. But I’m a Pepperidge Farm Herb Seasoned Classic Stuffing guy, white and wheat breads all gussied up with herbs and spices, plus chopped celery and onions.
I add sausage, too, but I skip the fresh rosemary, nuts, mushrooms, raisins, cherries, and apple chunks. I won’t add shrimp, crab, or oysters either. And it’s gotta be real brown before coming out of the oven, not just warm and squishy with a touch of color on top. Real, real brown. As a public service, I offer the following turkey options plus alternatives to my recipes for mashers and dressing.
Cooking your very first Thanksgiving turkey, should you choose to do so, can be daunting. Jenny Rostenbach from “Dinner: A Love Story,” can guide you through your first with confidence.
Take some turkey tips from Anne Bryn: Between the Layers “Dressing Up Thanksgiving - No.167,” a brilliantly thorough treatise on the bird, the bird’s neck cavity, the bacterial hazards of stuffing, the dressing, the gravy, and the pie.
Cooking for my Soul has a selection of succulent sides, such as maple roasted acorn squash, to check out. Here’s one wild mushroom stuffing recipe I can’t resist sharing, plus six highly inventive dressing ideas from Leite’s Culinaria. Plus, Leite’s Culinaria offers fabulous non-turkey & vegetarian Thanksgiving main courses, too.
The Smitten Kitchen features some innovative turkey, stuffing, and sides recipes, if you’re hunting around for even more ideas. Dry-brined turkey, challah stuffing, kale and caramelized onion stuffing, apple and herb stuffing, corn pudding, slow-roasted sweet potatoes, broccoli-cheddar-wild-rice casserole, root vegetable gratin, brussels sprouts and pomegranate salad, with parsley pecorino biscuits.
Turkey Thighs
An alternative to the big bird in the oven is only part of the big bird in the oven. Susanality has a recipe for y’all, Braised Turkey Thighs Osso Buco Style. Being keen on osso buco as I am, there’s an ever-so-slight chance I’ll try this dish if pressured to do some kinda turkey come this Thanksgiving.
Sweet Potatoes
My candied sweet potatoes can be a wonder. Here are the basics. Peel enough sweet potatoes to fill your favorite baking pan. Add several glugs of maple syrup, a stick of butter, and a couple handsfull of brown sugar. Put in a 450 degree oven and hammer the potatoes for a couple hours, checking after that each hour until the liquid surrounding the potatoes has turned into a very thick sauce. Also turn the potatoes over from time to time to even out the cooking. Then cook longer, checking to create a candied sauce. It’s done when you say it is. If all that sounds too time consuming, these slow roasted sweet potato are delightful.
Cranberries
Insanely Good Recipes has assembled 30 fetching recipes for cranberries if you don’t want to use an explosively satisfying recipe from my wife, Sara. Cranberry-currant-walnut sauce: 1 pound fresh cranberries, 1-1/4 cups sugar, 1 cup red currant preserves, 1 cup water, 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, 2 tbsp grated orange peel. Combine cranberries, sugar, preserves, and water in large saucepan; heat to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer uncovered 20 minutes; skim foam; remove from heat. Stir in walnuts and orange peel. Refrigerate (covered) overnight.
Lamb Neck
Venturing miles from serving a winged creature this Thanksgiving, I’m considering a spectacular meal from a four-footed creature. In 2009, I purchased The Blackberry Farm Cookbook, from Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tenn., around the time of its release. The proprietor then, Sam Beall, wrote in it for me this memorable inscription: “May this inspire you for many meals to come! Stir up life!” I’ve experienced many a first at this luxury inn, including this lamb neck recipe, to my absolute delight.
White Port from Georgia
While I haven’t tried this port from Chateau Elan, I have every intention of doing so since I’m on a port tear . . . be it white, ruby, or vintage. Why? Because some wine-keen friends who live in Atlanta think a lot of Chateau Elan.
Holiday Shopping
If you want to put a taste of the South in your mouth, several can be had at Butcher & Bee in Charleston, S.C., a special specialty provisions shop featuring coffees, juices, bourbon pecan pie, breads, rolls, Nashville-style honey apple upside down cake, and fermented honey.
Kitchen Disasters
While embarrassing, I do like to pass on these tales of trauma to help prevent them from being repeated by others. I’ve cooked most meals in our home during our 55 years of marriage. My wife says she welcomes my efforts. I’ve got a record of cooking food that’s edible 99% of the time—my score, not hers. But . . . .
1. Salmon en Croûte
In the 1970s came salmon en croûte. Maybe I’ve really been screwing up for a long long time, but the only one I remember from years past is a New Year’s Eve meal Hayden LeClair, at the time a Nordic Ware honcho—the Bundt cake pan company folks—and I tried to make. We shopped, we prepped, we cooked, and we tossed it all in the garbage together without eating a bite. We were aspiring foodies, practicing on our spouses, who failed miserably. I wish Cooking for My Soul was around back then to offer this easy recipe. I’m a fan of Jamie Oliver, too, so I might have checked out this recipe.
2. Tuna in Olive Oil
3. Broken Oval Ceramic Baking Dish
4. Grilled Cheese Sandwich
No one in the history of making sandwiches has ever screwed up a grilled cheese sandwich, I’m guessing. But I did once. Loving grilled cheese sandwiches as my wife and I do every once in awhile, with or without a side of tomato soup, makes for a simple dinner. No shopping, with no prep, no clean up.
My wife usually makes them with one slice of American cheese, a type of processed cheese made by mixing one or more types of cheeses, including Cheddar, a washed curd, Colby, and a granular one. Despite being called “American cheese,” it’s really “pasteurized process cheese food.” And it was a staple of ours growing up in the Midwest, along with Jell-O, of course.
Inspiration led me to use, not one, but two slices on each sandwich. The lesson here is surely a case of “less is more,” absolutely with “process cheese food,” utterly unlike with cheesecake or with chocolate gelato where more is unquestionably better. More in this case resulted in a gooey, glob of inedible guck. My wife tossed 3/4 of hers, I one half.
Will I ever stop screwing up in the kitchen?
My husband likes nothing better than a grilled cheese sandwich, which he almost inevitably orders when we’re on the road. I usually have a bite or two and am not impressed. Often the cheese is melty and very orange but lacking in taste and the bread isn’t crisp enough. The most memorable grilled cheese I can recall was my mother’s: open face on rye, cheddar on top, broiled and puffed till it crusted over, sometimes a bit blackened like a volcano hiding bubbling cheese underneath. I’ve never been able to duplicate Mom’s creation and have had a few kitchen disasters while trying.
Thanks for all your Thanksgiving tips and links, Wayne. Always up for stuffing and mashed potatoes (the handwritten recipe is adorable!). Turkey not so much.
3 things:
1) That mashed potatoes recipe reminds me of a recipe card my mom kept for years, one that I'd proudly written up at around age 7 or 8:
Jello Delight. Instructions: Make Jello. Add whipped cream. Eat.
2) Food disaster: the year I made turkey lasagna with leftover Thanksgiving turkey. No need to say more.
3) Grilled cheese, midwestern-style (we called it a "toasted cheese sandwich"}: we always used Velveeta, buttered the outsides of the slices of bread, and browned the compiled sandwich in the oven. Velveeta is creepy, but I still use it for grilled cheese as well as mac and cheese.
We've been pescatarians for over 20 years now, so Thanksgiving means the challenge of making Tofurkey reasonable. Spices and mushroom gravy work wonders.