Old/New Thanksgiving Food

We had many of the usual dishes on Thanksgiving: Portuguese-style turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, applesauce, pumpkin pie, etc. I did manage to insert two new twists on cranberries and sweet potatoes, which we all enjoyed.

Sprouts sells these sweet potato chips, which are delicious. I often serve them with raw tomatillo salsa, but this time found a cranberry salsa recipe in the local paper. It was a satisfying and colorful appetizer.

Spicy Cranberry Salsa

1/2 small red onion

1 tablespoon canned jalapeno slices

2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

8 ounces fresh cranberries

1/2 cup dried cranberries

2 tablespoons lime juice

2 tablespoons honey, or to taste

1/2 teaspoon or more salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

In food processor, pulse onion, jalapeno, and cilantro to chop finely. Add cranberries and pulse until coarsely chopped. Add remaining ingredients and mix lightly. Serve with chips.

Instead of the usual sweet potatoes, I made baked wedges with a yogurt dipping sauce, which we had at Zinburger recently. I got the recipe from the Bon Appetit website.

Smoked Turkey, Black Bean, and Sweet Potato Enchiladas

Lawson and I invented this dish several years ago after Thanksgiving, and now we make it every year. It's a product of our particular Thanksgiving, which usually involves a turkey smoked by Lawson's brother; we always have a bag full of leftover smoked turkey meat.

We call it Signature Dish. I take no pictures of it because it is a casserole. Instead, here are pictures of the cat trying to help me fix my speaker cabinet:


***Signature Dish***
First, you have to make a batch of classic Southwestern red chile sauce.

At the same time, you have to roast two whole sweet potatoes at 400 degrees until they soften and collapse a bit.

Then you compile the following:

Layer 1
black beans
roasted sweet potatoes, peels removed and innards gently sliced

Layer 2
a few cups smoked turkey meat
a cup of sour cream
several green onions, chopped

You will also need:
corn tortillas
a little bit of cheese for the top

Get out a pan, grease it lightly with olive oil, and pour some sauce in the bottom. Add a layer of corn tortillas. Add more sauce. Then add the beans and the sweet potatoes, evenly distributing them. More tortillas. More sauce. Then carefully spread/dab the turkey filling on for the second layer. More tortillas. More sauce. Sprinkle cheese on top.

Here, I made you a picture. s=sauce, t=tortilla, c=cheese.

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|222222222222222222|
|ssssssssssssssssss|
|tttttttttttttttttt|
|111111111111111111|
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|________pan_______|

It's more than the sum of its parts, this dish. We actually smoked a chicken once just so we could make it.

If I were trying to be fancy, I might make individual plates of stacked enchiladas, New Mexican style, but it's so good left over that I prefer to make a big cafeteria-looking pan full.

Caribbean Curry Goat

I'd never made Caribbean food before. But we picked up some local goat last week at the All-Local Farmers Market and I decided to make curry goat. I made some Jamaican-style cabbage to go with it.

It's a profound thing to produce certain flavors in your kitchen for the first time. I've eaten delicious Caribbean food at restaurants, but it was quite another thing to find out about the building blocks of that food, to put together a recipe that tasted Caribbean but also like something I'd made. And the house smelled good and strange for days.

Caribbean curry powder is somewhat different than Madras curry or the various generic things sold as curry powder. I used some plain curry powder but added habanero, chile powder, and star anise to produce the right flavor.

So here's the recipe I put together after some research and daydreaming. I will make it again. The goat was mild and tender but dark the way duck is dark, with that faint iron tang.

Curry Goat

• goat -- in this case 1 shank and about 1/2 pound of stew meat. Something with a bone and connective tissue is a good idea.
• 1-2 tablespoons curry powder
• 1 teaspoon plain chile powder
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper

Rub spices all over the goat and set aside.

• olive oil or butter for sauteeing
• 2 medium onions
• 5 cloves garlic

Brown the meat, being careful not to burn the spices. Remove, and saute the onion, then the garlic.

• several splashes vermouth, white wine, or beer
• one star anise pod
• water to cover

Deglaze the pan with the booze. Add meat and all other ingredients and simmer 1 hour. Remove the star anise if the stew is tasting too anise-y. Add:

• salt to taste
• one small fresh habanero, minced
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

Simmer until shank is tender and falling apart, 1-2 more hours. Correct flavor with lime juice if necessary. Serve over rice.

What will I do when habanero season is over?

Reading cabbage recipes was interesting. I would never have guessed that fresh thyme is such a common ingredient in Caribbean cooking. But it was exactly right. Adapting various recipes, I cut some wedges of fresh green cabbage (maybe 1/3 of a large head), sauteed a clove of garlic in butter, then added fresh thyme, several pinches of salt, the cabbage wedges, and 1/4 cup of water. I covered it and cooked it on low for an hour or so, sort of steaming the cabbage as the water simmered. It was like Southern greens in a way, very soft, but exactly like the delicious cabbage I had as a side dish at a Caribbean place in Charlotte a few weeks ago.

Holiday Mashed Sweet Potatoes

The annual Thanksgiving lunch at work was today. I brought sweet potatoes. Most sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving tables are really gross -- either chunks boiled in sugar syrup, or a casserole dish covered with colored marshmallows. I wanted to make a compromise dish, one that people would eat but that I would also eat, so I added a pecan topping to my usual recipe.

This is a plain roasted sweet potato, not the recipe described below.

The key, as always, was baking the heck out of the sweet potatoes, which I think brings out their natural sweetness way better than boiling or steaming them. Here is the recipe as I wrote it in an email to a coworker who wanted the recipe.

Bake 5 or 6 whole sweet potatoes at 400 degrees for 1 to 2 hours, until the skins collapse slightly and the potatoes are soft. Let cool until you can handle them and remove the peels. Mash with a potato ricer. Add and mix thoroughly:

1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup half and half
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 scant teaspoon lemon or orange zest

All of the above are approximate -- taste and keep adding as needed. Sometimes I add a few tablespoonsful of bourbon, but I didn't today.

The mixture should be really fluffy, almost soufflelike. Spoon into baking dish and sprinkle with chopped pecans. You can sprinkle on some brown sugar if you like. Toast under broiler for just a minute -- those pecans will burn SO FAST, as I was reminded this morning when I had to scrape off a layer of blackened pecans and start over again. Twice. I had to throw away a lot of bitter, charred pecans, and I was sad.

Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew

You could say this is the meal that got Cooking Habit started, although we never posted it here. It was the first recipe I discovered and told you about, Mom, instead of the other way around...which is when we started to form the give-and-take that led to this site (though I still get most of my cooking ideas and knowledge from you).

The site is coming up on its one-year anniversary in five days, so this is appropriate.

I found the recipe in the 2000 Joy of Cooking. It looked tasty, except that it called for ground turkey or beef, and zucchini, both of which I omitted. It turned out to be delicious -- highly addictive, very warming, very filling. And here's where this story became part of family lore: I told you to try making it, but I forgot to mention what I'd left out. You came up with the exact same modifications, and you loved it, and then Russell made it and he loved it, and it became a family standard. I believe even Isaac, who might as well be a family member, identified the correct modifications independently of us.

It's basically a thick, rich stew made with garlic, ginger, assorted bell peppers and hot chiles, sweet potatoes, and peanut butter. I always serve it over couscous. It's the most satisfying completely vegan meal I've ever had.

I forgot to take a picture of it when I made it this week, so instead here is an old picture of the first table I ever ate it at, in one of my old apartments.

Here's the recipe with my/our modifications:

Saute in 1/4 cup oil until translucent:
-1-2 onions, chopped
-1-2 bell peppers, any color (I prefer red)
-1-2 fresh chiles, minced

Add and saute for a minute or two:
-4 cloves garlic
-1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

Add and saute for one minute:
-1 tablespoon chili powder
-1 teaspoon cumin, ground or whole
-1 teaspoon whole or crushed dried red pepper -- scale up or down depending on heat of other chiles used

Add:
-2 large or 3 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cut in 1-inch chunks
-1/3 cup tomato paste

Cover with water and simmer for 45 minutes to 1.5 hours, until sweet potatoes are sweet and soft. Stir 1 cup of the broth into a bowl with:
-1/2 to 3/4 cup peanut butter

Then stir the mixture into the large pot. Salt to taste. Serve over couscous.

I've actually tried it once with some ground beef, and I didn't like it at all. Let it remain vegan, zucchiniless, and perfect.

Crab Cakes and Miscellany

I was so excited to get Molly O'Neill's American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classis Recipes from the library, and I did use one good recipe from it, but overall it was so disappointing. Where did she find 500+ pages of such boring writing about food? I am especially bummed out because I was thinking of sending it to you for your birthday, but it was a dud.

***

Once we were with Uncle George buying fried clams or something similar and I asked whether he wanted to get cocktail sauce. "Oh no!" He was firm. "That has to be homemade." Well, homemade cocktail sauce to George was ketchup, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice. And very good it is, too. Last night I made some to go with our Crab Cakes.

Sections of King crab were on sale at our favorite store. The 4-inch lengths were so easy to deal with. A few minutes with kitchen shears and I had a big pile of crab meat (it cost about $7.50). I used the Joy of Cooking recipe which adds just a few seasonings, a little mayonnaise and bread crumbs; then you coat each cake in bread crumbs and chill. Fry about 4 minutes per side.

I served sweet potato fries (baked, really) and asparagus. We felt lucky.

Well, maybe Dad didn't feel all that lucky. I made a really big pile of dirty dishes in the process of making this meal!

Soft Foods

Lawson had some dental surgery this week, so for the last several days we've been eating soft foods. It's been a fun challenge. The problem with foods for sick people (milk toast, chicken noodle soup, etc.), as I see it, is that they are mostly low in fiber, and who wants to be both sick AND constipated?

So here's what we've been eating:

Sweet potato and red pepper soup: I found a recipe for this in that great soup book you gave both me and Grandma a few years ago, but the recipe was dumb -- throw everything in some vegetable stock and boil it for half an hour? So I roasted the sweet potatoes until they sweetened up properly; softened the onions, garlic, and pepper in oil; simmered the whole thing for a while with leftover duck stock; seasoned it; then pureed it. It was wonderful. I added some Texas Pete to my bowl.




Roasted beets: my new obsession. If you roast them long enough, cut them into 1/2-inch pieces, and toss them with lemon, salt, and olive oil, they are soft and sweet and perfect.

Homemade mushroom soup: Sauteed cremini, dried shitake, stock, sherry, and fresh thyme, mostly. It was creamy without dairy. I was happy.

Puddings: puddings! If they are not already, I predict that puddings will be the next silly comfort food trend. My homemade butterscotch pudding was a bit too firm, but the flavor was excellent. I made rice pudding with cardamom, honey, and lemon zest -- excellent with a glass of tawny port, in case Dad's interested. But the most incredible discovery from this series of dental surgeries has been simple vanilla pudding. Here's the Joy of Cooking's recipe (mostly), which is perfect (and small -- enough for four tiny ramekins):

Mix in a heavy saucepan:

- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 T plus 1 1/2 t cornstarch
- 1/4 t salt

Thoroughly blend in 1/2 cup, then stir in the rest of:

- 2 cups milk or cream or some combination thereof

Stir slowly and constantly over medium heat until it begins to thicken (this is usually rather dramatic). Then stir fast. The pudding will start to simmer; hold it there for a minute, then take it off the heat and stir in:

- 2 t vanilla

Pour the pudding into bowls and put them in the fridge for as long as you can stand it. Once I unmolded the puddings from tiny ramekins onto tiny plates and scattered them with fresh raspberries. That was pretty special.