As we’re all starting to plan our Thanksgiving meals, I wanted to finally post a summary of what we served last year and what we liked about it, as well as some of our ideas for this year.  So, I have a list before of everything we made last year, including a couple ideas for re-mixing leftovers, and some of the things on my list to try for this year.  I’d love to hear your ideas, too.  What’s your favorite part of Thanksgiving?  What new things are you thinking about trying this year?  What traditions are always a part of your Thanksgiving meal?

Our 2009 Thanksgiving Menu:

• Lunch the day before: Butternut Squash Soup
• Thanksgiving breakfast: Pumpkin Brioche Cinnamon Rolls from Wild Yeast

The main event:

• Brined Turkey from Mugnaini
• Dressing from Pioneer Woman: Yes, this dressing is kind of a lot of trouble since it uses 2 kinds of bread and you have to make the cornbread. But you can do a lot of it ahead, and it was truly incredible. I don’t think I’m ever making a different recipe for dressing again.
• Cranberries two ways: Cranberry Sauce and Cranberry Salad
• Brussels Sprouts with Shallots and Wild Mushrooms from Gourmet: sort of an updated take on green bean casserole. We modified it to include pancetta, as in our favorite recipe for Brussels sprouts. That recipe is also a great substitute for something a bit lower maintenance.
• Twice-baked potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes with Coconut and Hazelnuts, originally from 101 Cookbooks
• Corn Pudding
• Angel Biscuits

Dessert:

• Pumpkin Pie: we made my friend Stirling’s Sugar and Spice Pumpkin Pie
• Rum Raisin Apple Pie from Gourmet, adapted to replace the top crust with a crumble topping
• Maple Nut Pie from Gourmet: a really nice update for pecan pie. I expect this will be making a reappearance on our Thanksgiving table at some point.

Leftovers remix:

• Breakfast Pancakes with Sweet Potatoes
• Turkey mole enchiladas with this sauce from Serious Eats: easy to make the sauce ahead, and extra freezes well

Other Ideas:

This year, it’s going to be just four of for Thanksgiving, so it’ll be a bit smaller than our gathering last year.  Although we’ll miss having a big crowd, and seeing my in-laws (and especially our new nephew who we won’t get to meet until Christmas!), the advantage of the smaller group is that there’s a little less pressure and for some reason we feel a little more interested in playing with tradition.  Though I unfortunately haven’t been able to convince everyone to go with the Serious Eats Buffalo Fried Turkey (yet!), I do think we’ll end up trying some new things this year. Here are some ideas, some (but not all) especially geared toward smaller gatherings:

For the turkey:
• Mark Bittman’s Braised Turkey: I’ve seen great reviews for this. Although it involves cutting up the turkey so that you don’t get the Norman Rockwell photo, it sounds like a great solution to get both dark and light meat appropriately cooked. Plus, it involves both sausage and pancetta!
• Tuscan Roast Turkey Breast from Martha Stewart: We did a variation on this rolled-up turkey breast the last time we had a 4 person Thanksgiving. The disadvantage: no dark meat.
• Pimenton Brined Turkey: Add some smoky flavor to your turkey without the smoker!

Side Dishes:

• Butternut Squash, Lentil, and Goat Cheese Salad: Not sure if this will make it to our Thanksgiving table or not, but I definitely think we will try it at some point this fall. Looks like a great possible main course for a vegetarian Thanksgiving, too.
• Green Beans with Meyer Lemon Breadcrumbs, from Sunset: A fresh alternative to green bean casserole
• Sweet Potato Souffle with a Twist: Homemade marshmallows and a bacon garnish! Not sure I’m going to convince the rest of my family on this one either, and we usually skip the sweet potato/marshmallow combination. But just look at that beautiful photo!

That’s all I’ve got so far, so clearly I need some help on the dessert front! We will probably make a pie or two, either pumpkin or pecan, or maybe I will make my grandmother Meme’s chess tarts so I can finally share that recipe with you. And as always, we’d love to hear your ideas, too. What’s on your Thanksgiving table?

Matt’s been out of town for the past week (but is coming home tonight! yay!), so I’ve been having to feed just myself.  The vast majority of the time, we eat dinner together, and even when we don’t, it’s usually because there’s something going on, so I don’t often cook for just myself.  But, I didn’t want to eat takeout or peanut butter and jelly for a whole week, so I’ve been practicing cooking in smaller portions.

Cooking for one can be a challenge: most recipes come for four or even six, cans of things are usually too big for one person, and many ingredients are hard to buy in smaller quantities.  And, cooking can just seem like a lot of trouble when there’s only one mouth to feed.  Many of these are problems for cooking for two people also, but when there’s two of us, cooking a recipe for four isn’t so bad, since I like to eat leftovers for lunch anyway.  However, I didn’t want to have to eat the same thing for three or four days, so my usual leftovers strategy wasn’t going to work for just me.

Despite these challenges, I actually had some fun cooking for only myself, and found that it had some upsides: you can eat the things your usual dining partner doesn’t care too much for, you can be a bit more creative and risky with trying combinations that might not work out, and if you end up eating a little less healthy or balanced a meal, there’s no one to judge you or give you funny looks.

I’m the first to admit that I don’t have a lot of experience in this department, but when I said I was actually enjoying cooking for myself, my cousin Bethany was interested to hear what I was making, so I thought others might be, too.  So here’s the “tips” that worked for me (at least this week) and a list of what I made this week with links to the recipes, some my own, and some from others.

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For Christmas last year, my parents gave me a “gift certificate” to go shopping with my mom for something for the kitchen.  Although I used some of it a couple months ago (to get those low bowls in the picture, come to think of it) we hadn’t found time for me to use the rest of it, mostly because I had been indecisive about what I wanted to get.  Last week I was told that my “gift certificate” would expire after six months, so I needed to get to it!  We went to Williams Sonoma one night last week and I decided to buy this beautiful pasta maker.  Isn’t it a beauty?  I love that it’s bright red and shiny!

I was eager to put this baby to work, so I decided to make ravioli for some friends we were having over Saturday night.  (I’m in a little bit of trouble for breaking it in without letting Mom help, but I was just getting the kinks worked out.)  My only previous experience with making pasta was for the Daring Bakers lasagne a couple months back.  In that case, while it turned out very tasty, it was really a pain to roll out by hand (tearing, etc.) and I could never get it anywhere close to as thin as I wanted. (more…)

I know it’s January and everyone has New Year’s Resolutions to lighten up and cut back on the sweets.  I know I do too — however, you won’t be able to find whole cranberries much longer.  In fact, it may already be too late!  We were able to find a couple bags of cranberries in the freezer section at the grocery store this weekend, and maybe you will be so lucky, too.  And if so — you should rush out and make this tart, as soon as possible.

Fresh cranberries have a very limited season, and so they are only available around the holidays.  They freeze very well, and in fact will last for months in your freezer.  For some reason though, it’s hard to find them even frozen except in November and December, so if you’re still able to find them, grab as many bags as your freezer will hold, and they’ll last you into next summer!  I forgot to do stash up this year, and was afraid I’d missed them all, so I was very excited to find them when I was buying some other frozen fruit this weekend.

Matt and I made this Cranberry Pecan Frangipane Tart for his family over the holidays.  I’ve mentioned her before, and I’ll do it again — Deb over at the Smitten Kitchen hasn’t led me wrong yet.  I’ve made more of her recipes than I can keep track, and I’ve got an even longer list of things to try.  (Ok, I admit there was one dud — but even that tasted good but was just a pain to cook.)  So why are you still here?  Go on over to Deb’s place and make yourself a cranberry pecan frangipane tart.  And if you can’t find fresh cranberries, grab the ingredients for whatever else you find there — I guarantee you it’ll be delicious!

Yeah, I’m way behind the curve on this one, but whatever. I’ve been reading for a while about the wonders of macarons (not to be confused with American macaroons). I finally bought some recently at La Baguette, a French cafe at the Stanford Mall. I’m sure they were somewhat (ok, hugely) inferior to the famous ones you find on the streets of Paris, but I thought they were still pretty tasty. They’ve been in the back of my mind for a while now of something I need to try, but they are notoriously difficult to get right. They must be mixed for exactly the right amount of time so that they have a perfectly frilly “foot” at the bottom, but are not too dense. Some say they must be left out for up to a couple hours before cooking to develop a “skin” to help form that beautiful domed shape and ruffled foot, etc., etc.

So when I finally decided to try my hand, I of course carefully looked back at all the detailed directions I had seen of what to do to produce the perfect macaron, right? No, of course not. At 10:00 pm on a recent Saturday, I felt a sudden urge to bake. I was getting started kind of late, so I didn’t want anything that would take too long, but any type of cookie I had made before just didn’t seem exciting enough. I was sure David Lebovitz would have a recipe for macarons, and of course he did. Last time I tried something from his site it turned out pretty well, and I had all the ingredients on hand, so I was good to go. These actually come together pretty quickly, so 45 minutes or so later (including cooling) I had myself some very un-authentic macarons. (Though apparently I should’ve let the flavors meld overnight instead of eating the entire plate that night … I’m only barely exaggerating.)

The good news? Despite my inattention to detail (the tops are peaked, they are too narrow and tall and shaped somewhat like acorns, many of them cracked on top, but miraculously, some of them do have a decent-looking foot) they still taste pretty delicious, even if they don’t look anything like they are “supposed to.” The even better news? I’m sure I’ll be trying these again (perhaps with a more creative flavor), and when I get it right, I’ll fill you in on the results!

If you want some more details on what to do to have adequately-tasting but ridiculous-looking macarons, here’s what I did wrong that I will correct next time:

• Since our freezer is still filled with Honey-Lavender-White Chocolate Opera Cake, I halved the recipe. This meant folding the dry ingredients into only one egg white, which was very difficult to do.
• Fold the ingredients together more thoroughly. I was super-worried about overmixing, but based on these tips, I think my batter was too stiff. (Hence, I ended up with the peaked-top acorn-shaped cookies.) Apparently the batter should “flow like magma”, not hold any shape you pipe it into exactly.
• Pipe out bigger circles. (This could’ve been partly from the too-stiff batter.) I realized after the fact that David says 1″ circles and about a tablespoon for each cookie. (I just read the 1″ part the first time.) I don’t know, maybe when you move to France your definition of an “inch” shifts. At any rate, my 1″ circles were way less than a tablespoon, and I think they should’ve been a bit bigger and also flatter. Though the almost-bite-size result was kind of cute.
• I used leftover ground almonds from the opera cake, which I realized later had a little bit of flour in them. I don’t know as much about baking chemistry as I would like, but my guess is that’s probably not kosher (sorry, I know that’s a terrible pun, I’ve been hanging around Matt too long), so next time I will add a bit of the powdered sugar instead of flour to keep the almonds from turning to butter.
• Let egg whites come to room temperature. I have no idea what effect it did or didn’t have on the end result (in fact I saw one recipe saying to keep the egg whites chilled), but next time I’ll follow what most recipes seem to say and use room temperature eggs.
• Don’t grab unsweetened instead of bittersweet chocolate from the pantry for the filling. (Yep, that’s how little attention I was paying. Amazing, huh?)