Hm. It doesn’t seem that I got as much done whilst I was away as I planned. Luckily, this is the last of my Thanksgiving missives.

Dessert! The most important part of the meal! Following my usual rubric, I had planned to have a fruit, a pumpkin, and a chocolate. I was persuaded to delay the chocolate until the weekend, when we celebrated my brother’s birthday, but I did keep to my fruit and pumpkin. For the former, I was persuaded by Luisa of The Wednesday Chef that Maury Rubin’s cranberry, caramel, and almond tart would be perfect for Thanksgiving.

I must confess. I was a wee bit disappointed.

The crust was easy enough to make since the butter is creamed rather than cut into the pastry dough, and I found it easier to blind bake than Luisa did. What with that other caramel tart behind me, I thought that I’d be an old pro at caramel-making by now, but it appears that I remain a rank amateur. I used the prescribed dry method for melting the sugar, except that I used a saucepan instead of a skillet. It turned dark awfully quickly, and I was so nervous about letting it get darker that I didn’t wait for the whole thing to melt and swirled the caramel into the still crystallized sugar until it combined. When I added the cream, my caramel seized. I put the mixture on low, and I stirred and stirred and stirred. The caramel melted into the cream, mostly. I strained it and it seemed plenty sweet enough. I mixed in my cranberries and almonds, and poured it carefully into into the pastry.

Well. The crust tasted good enough, but it was of the crumbly sort rather than the flaky that I prefer. The filling melted together into a sweet, chewy candy, which is fine, if you like that sort of thing. Although the caramel almonds are punctuated by bursts of tart cranberries, I thought it was too sweet, too chewy, and most everybody agreed with me. Even my mom, for whom the sweetness was okay, agreed that the tart was a bit too chock full of nuts.

My dad campaigns for pumpkin pie every year. While I like creamy, predictable sweetness of pumpkin pie, it’s in my nature to shake things up a bit. This year, I got all fancy when I picked the pumpkin cake from Sunday Suppers at Lucques.

The fanciness is apparent in the cake’s many components, some of which can be made ahead. I made the maple ice cream days before in my parents’ antique behemoth of an ice cream maker (which I will never have to use again (spoiler!)). The recipe involves tracking down some maple sugar, but luckily, I had my parental assistants to do that for me. When frozen, the maple is somewhat subtle; if I were making it to eat on its own, I’d increase the maple sugar next time. Still, it was so tasty that my cousin Mark skipped the cake entirely in favor of a big bowl of ice cream.

The next step was the pecan streusel, which was supereasy to put together: flour, sugar, pecans, butter, etc. all whizzed together in a food processor. Facile. As for the cake, the most major change I made was to use pumpkin instead of squash, thus allowing me to take down the scare quotes Suzanne Goin uses in the recipe title. Suzanne, who prefers to call this “‘Pumpkin’ Cake with Pecan Streusel and Maple Ice Cream,” dislikes using pumpkin, saying that it’s watery and flavorless and a couple more things I’ll quote when I have the book in front of me. She advocates Kabocha or butternut squash, which I probably would have used if I hadn’t had roasted pumpkin left in the freezer from previous adventures. I thawed it in a saucepan and kept simmering until it had reduced some, then went ahead with the purée. I think the reduction concentrated the flavor, making it a little better than the watery pumpkin Suzanne derides.

The cake was a tasty thing. The insides were so dense and moist that I thought I might have undercooked it (turns out I didn’t), while the top was sugary and lightly crunchy — so lightly that Drew didn’t even complain about the nuts. Like the ice cream, the cake was subtly sweet. This was maybe because of the pumpkin/squash issue, but I liked how it made it easier to cut myself a generous wedge, to be eaten with cream both iced and whipped.

(more…)

There are some Thanksgiving dishes that people feel they must have, even if they’re disgusting. Mashed sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows spring to mind. Cloyingly sweet and relentlessly tacky, that mush-topped mush is much loved my dad and brother, and much loathed by me. This year, I decided that I’d sidestep that request by putting the sweet potatoes in something else, namely a spoon bread recipe from Robert Stehling, via Food & Wine.

I expected the spoon bread to be a cross between pudding and corn bread, but it was closer to the latter. There’s a lot of cornmeal, probably too much, and I may have overbaked it a bit upon reheating. For both reasons, it was moist in the middle but rather dry towards the edges. I didn’t want very sweet sweet potatoes, but these could have been a little sweeter, which reducing the cornmeal might accomplish. It was probably the least popular dish at the table, but I found myself enjoying it as leftovers, particularly when soaked in gravy.

Green bean casserole is another holiday classic, but not at our table. I’ve never had the Campbell’s version, but I knew I had no interest in featuring processed mushroom cream. I turned instead to James Beard, the authority in American Cookery.

Making green bean casserole from scratch is a bit more involved than opening a can. The first step was the mushroom sauce. I was instructed to brown the mushrooms, a directive with which I’ve always had trouble. Mushrooms release liquid when cooked, which is slow to evaporate and prevents that sear that one gets on meats and other vegetables in a hot pan. I cooked the mushrooms through and set them aside, then added butter to the liquid to make a white sauce. James has a recipe for that as well, but I ended it up doing it mostly by feel, adding flour until it seemed the right thickness. I added the mushrooms back in, and I knew I had done it right because it tasted like very rich cream of mushroom soup.

I mixed the mushroom sauce with lightly steamed haricots verts and arranged them in a casserole dish the night before Thanksgiving. Eschewing the traditional crispy and substanceless French’s fried onions, I took James’ suggestion of sliced almonds. When the time came, I popped the whole thing in the oven to heat through. The recipe resulted in a lot of casserole, and we didn’t get through all of it. It was good enough but not a huge hit. I’m glad I gave it a try.

A bigger hit was this vegetable soufflé, adapted from a recipe in Taste.

The original recipe is one for spinach and green garlic, but green garlic is a little out of season in November. I’ve never had it, so my efforts at approximating it might have been way off, but I recommend them anyway. I threw a head of garlic and some green onion together with spinach for a pungent, green bouquet. I made another deviation with the cheese: the recipe called for goat, by which I think it meant Chèvre. My dad picked out a crumbly, saltier goat cheese encrusted with dried rosemary. It was a happy mistake, and I much preferred it to bland sharpness of Chèvre.

I had never made a soufflé before and had heard many horror stories of soufflés falling into a puddle of mousse. I timed the day’s cooking to the minute, arranging to have the soufflé out of the oven just as we finished our soups and salads. It was just when I got it in the oven that my chef-in-charge-of-turkey informed me that there was a snag. My dad had been in the basement with the turkey and an electric oven, an innovation new this year. My parents invested in it to make holiday cooking a little easier; the turkey is undisturbed and the usual oven is free for side dishes. The bird ended up very moist and tender, although if crispy skin is important, it’s not for you.

The turkey, said my dad, was running an hour behind. There was nothing I could do but will the turkey to cook faster. This willing must have made some difference, because in the end, it lagged by only twenty minutes or so. I had no choice but to turn off the oven, leave the soufflé be, and hope that it stayed aloft. Again, the hoping worked, and even after serving, it was light, fluffy, and delicious.

And that was our Thanksgiving dinner. Although it now seems so very long ago, let me assure you that it was worth remembering.

(more…)