Food Friday: You’ve Got a Lot on Your Plate; Practice Now, Give Thanks in a Couple of Weeks

Sometime I like to prepare new and experimental dishes when we have company – which is not always a good idea. Just ask some of our guests how their dinners have turned out. They show their good breeding when they steer the conversation away from the main dish and start to extoll the virtues of our wines. That means that the chicken breast was scorched and reduced to a crispy little smackeral, or that the dog was very helpful in eating the collapsed soufflé that was snuck to him under the table. It could just be that I didn’t know how to handle kohlrabi after all. And maybe I should have practiced beforehand.

Trial and error is fine for a one-off dinner with people you will probably (now) never see again – but for Thanksgiving? This is your family, and your in-laws, and perhaps your grandchildren. You need to have a perfect game. You need to be organized and practice preparing the new menu items, as they could be the stuff of legend for Thanksgivings to come. For years.

Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away. What are you going to do this year that is new and engaging? What serious health implications are there for your family and friends if you don’t practice the dishes a couple of times in advance? I’m not talking about the turkey, because you should have that dish down by now. Pre-heat the oven, clean the bird out, place it with reverence in a nice big roasting pan, rub it with salt and pepper, baste it every so often, and pull it out of the oven at the appointed hour and bask in all it tender golden delicious glory. Yumsters. That is the ease and the glory of turkey.

No, you do not need to practice cooking the turkey. But what about those side dishes that are equally important to the groaning board experience that is Thanksgiving? Are you going to roast potatoes, or serve up a bushel of mashed? Are you a sweet potato family? Do you have one or two young Cross Fit athletes who will be joining you? You need to stock up on fuel. You had best have a ham on hand, too, just in case. Make some decisions today, and enjoy your slightly altered, yet still comfortably familiar meal soon.

Children (whatever their ages) won’t hide burnt offerings discretely under the glazed carrots. They will dangle offending food items before your horrified eyes and will mock you openly and often. Sure, there have been years that you forgot to cook the beans – but no one minded the bean-free years. Will they forgive a year without rolls? Or worse, The Year Without Butter? Think of the rollicking tales about the year you incinerated the potatoes! Don’t worry, family, there will not be any kohlrabi for Thanksgiving. And yes, there will be plenty of good wine.

Here is a lovely little hybrid potato dish that we are trying this weekend with a simple meatloaf: https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/buttery-pumpkin-mashed-potatoes. Mr. Friday can decide if he likes the pumpkin infused potatoes, or if he is going to agree that we can include a basic pumpkin pie on the Thanksgiving menu this year. We will be entertaining Little O this Thanksgiving, who will be fourteen months old, and I am looking forward to the prospect of spending time with him, and not in the kitchen baking an extra chocolate pie for Mr. Persnickety, who cannot be bothered to like a good American pumpkin pie.

Another tiny baby step away from the boring and predictable is ditching cranberry sauce altogether and trying out a nice tart cherry lemon relish. For your practice prep, this will go with a weekend grilled or broiled chicken as well as the big old turkey on Thanksgiving. It’s light and tangy, and it does not have the aluminum can ridges from an Ocean Spray product. Break out of the mold! It will probably go unnoticed and uncommented upon. https://www.thebittenword.com/thebittenword/2012/11/thanksgiving-cherry-lemon-relish.html

Here is a radical idea: Pretzel Parker House Rolls. You will never go for bland yeasty spongy grocery store rolls again. They are worth and time and effort, and your own Little O will have to nap sometime. https://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2014/11/pretzel-parker-house-rolls/

The very clever Melissa Clark from the New York Times suggests Cranberry Parker House Rolls. Maniacal genius! Two dishes rolled into one AND you can make them on November 12, and freeze them for two weeks until your big Thanksgiving feast! https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/802-cranberry-parker-house-rolls?smid=fb-nytdining&smtyp=cur

These sweet potatoes should be on every Marylander’s food rotation dial: https://www.marthastewart.com/336387/old-bay-roasted-sweet-potatoes?search_key=sweet%20potatoes You can enjoy them at Thanksgiving or with your favorite roasted chicken, grilled steaks or burgers, and dare I say at a crab feast? You can never have too much Old Bay.

I love Thanksgiving and all the rituals that attend it, though I draw the line at watching football. I’ll put the bird in the oven, start thawing the rolls, and then walk Little O over to the playground across the street. We will kick up some leaves and work up our appetites on the swings. After dinner we can give Luke a few morsels of his very own, without asking him to eat any burnt offerings. We are going to have a big family Thanksgiving feast that will be one to remember.

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”
― Laurie Colwin