Thanksgiving

cautionmen.jpgIt’s been our Thanksgiving tradition for twenty years. The men do the cooking. The women get the day off.

I am not a cook. I am a chopstick in a world of forks. I look at my hands and see ten thumbs. And most of the other guys have culinary skills no better than mine. In fact, one guy thought the TV on the kitchen counter was a microwave and tried to put his dish in it.

Yet, somehow, each year, the meal turns out spectacular. 

The tradition began in 1987 when breakups and other untimely events left four of us with no choice but to make Thanksgiving dinner ourselves.

The result could only be described as a miracle. When the Red Sea parts, you don’t ask how. You just keep walking. And when we got to the other side, we decided to tempt fate and do it again.

When friends heard about our plans for a sequel, they had a knee-jerk reaction usually reserved for lemmings. They wanted in. That’s when the original four chefs, “the founding fathers”, as we’re now known, came up with a set of rules.
 

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ImageWhat is it about the holidays that make everyone feel like baking? Is it the change in seasons that triggers a Pavlovian response to stock up on delicious dishes in order to endure the long winter ahead? Or is it simply that because of the temperature change people wear more clothing and can afford to eat a bit more of the foods they love without worrying about exposed midriffs or cellulite?

This past weekend, dreaming of Pumpkin Crème Pies from the “Tasty Kitchen” section of Ree Drummond’s Pioneer Woman website, I waded with the recipes through the throngs of humanity out shopping, for what I foolishly thought would be a quick trip to the store. What seemed a simple task at hand turned into a nearly day-long ordeal in which I wandered from store to store, leaving each one empty-handed and downtrodden. But motivated by a yearning for the old-fashioned whoopie pies I envisioned, my “food mood” quickly accelerated from a status of moderately hungry and cranky – to completely starving and angry. The problem: the recipe called for a few ingredients that for some reason proved challenging to find with the chief culprits being canned pumpkin (versus pumpkin pie filling), ground ginger and ground cloves.

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bestpumpkinpie2There are tons of pumpkin pie recipes, and in November all of the food shows and magazines are filled with both classic and innovative recipes. I think I’ve tried all of them – most started with canned pumpkin, and then the ingredients vary - some use heavy cream, others swear by evaporated milk, some are heavily spiced with cinnamon and cloves.

I love pumpkin pie, but have never found what I would call the BEST pumpkin pie until recently. I was watching an episode of America’s Test Kitchen (the leader in test perfected recipes) called “An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving”. The ingredients and the method were quite original and I couldn’t wait to try it.

There are a few extra steps, but well worth it. If you don’t want to make your own crust, you can use a Pillsbury Ready Made crust. Feel free to alter the amount of cinnamon (I used Penzey's Extra Fancy Vietnamese Cassia Cinnamon Click here for Penzey's), but the fresh ginger is key to the pie’s flavor.

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stuffingNo matter what you say, my mother made the best Thanksgiving. It was not at noon or at four; we ate at dinner time when it was dark. Stuffing was my favorite part and still is unless you make creamed onions. When it's my assignment I use this recipe. One reason it doesn't taste quite like hers is that I don't have old bread. She calls it turkey stuffing but that can't be right because she never made turkey, only capon. My father did not eat turkey and nobody knew from brine.

Esther Kaufman's Long Island Simple Stuffing: 8 cups stale white bread cubed, no crusts; 1 cup minced onion, 1 tablespoon salt, ½ cup butter, 1 cup diced celery with leaves; parsley, sage, thyme and pepper. Dry out the bread at 325°F but don't let it brown. Cook the onion in butter, add the seasonings. Add the celery, cook 3-5 minutes. Pour over the bread, mixing well, and stuff the bird. It was perfectly okay to stuff . . . then (after seat belts and before helmets were fitted at birth).

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cranberryI love cranberries. I do. I love Ocean Spray whole cranberry cranberry sauce. It has to be whole berry and I’m addicted to it. I can’t even serve a roast chicken without cranberry sauce. We were once out of cranberry sauce (which I didn’t realize) as I put the chicken on the table and I started crying. Literally.

Alan was so annoyed at me he stormed out and bought ten cans of whole berry cranberry sauce and we had a very pleasant dinner. The roast chicken was very good by the way. But it just feels naked to me without the “sauce” and gravy might do the trick but it’s fattening and bad for you and over-indulgent on a Wednesday night.

On Thanksgiving, I like to take two to three cans of Ocean Spray, put them in a decorative mold (like you make a bundt cake in) but I have one that’s in the shape of a rose, put it in the fridge for three hours and then carefully place a plate over it, hit the bottom of the pan and serve it on the plate and pretend I made it myself.

My friend Carol Caldwell once made a spiced up cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving that we thought was pretty great. She has no recollection of this. But I do. What I remember is that it had jalapenos in it, a kind of zingy (or California) addition and some kind of alcohol (which may be why she doesn’t remember it). I think it was bourbon. She thinks it was Vodka. I’m pretty sure I’m right. And for sure, a little bit of grated orange rind for flavor.

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