Thanksgiving

Growing up, one of my favorite holiday dishes was my great-grandmother's noodle kugel. Kugel is one of those things that has a wide variety of meanings - it roughly translates as pudding or casserole. In my family's case, noodle kugel was a sweet baked dish composed of egg noodles loaded with cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, and pineapples. It is one of the family recipes that I got from my grandfather, though I know that the version that he gave me was changed a bit. Like me, he was a tinkerer with food.

That was years ago... and, to be fair, one of the first things I did with the recipe he gave me was make notes about how to change it. I'm like that.

Not too long ago, I started thinking about kugel after talking to my brother about traditional Jewish foods. I came back to the family recipe. At the time, the idea of something quite that sweet was unappealing. I decided that it needed to be toned down... and maybe have some contrast added to it.

The pineapple got replaced with some chopped apples. Most of the sugar got tossed out. Sweet cheeses got replaced, in part, with cheese that had a bit more bite. Caramelized onions got added.

Here's what I came up with:

Onion-Cheese Kugel

Ingredients

• 16oz wide egg noodles
• 4 eggs
• 8 oz cream cheese
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 Tb brown sugar
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 apple (peeled and diced)
• 4 cups loosely packed caramelized onions
• 1/2 cup Gorgonzola
• 1/2 cup gruyere (diced)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350º
• Cook noodles until al dente.
• Melt butter.
• caramelize onions.
• Add apples to onions.
• Blend eggs, cream cheese, sour cream, brown sugar, and salt until smooth.
• Stir in noodles, 2/3 of onion/apple mixture, gorgonzola, and diced gruyere.
• Pour mixture into greased pyrex dish.
• Top with a remaining onion/apple mix.
• Bake at 350º for about 1 hour.

Those at least were my notes. I made this for the first time at Thanksgiving. I can't guarantee that I followed them exactly. I don't even have respect for my own recipes.

In any case, the kugel went over extremely well at Thanksgiving. It was definitely one of the stand-outs.

This Thanksgiving, I tried two new dishes, both of which worked as well as I could have hoped. The first of these was a butternut squash dish. My brother had requested squash. I was concerned because we'd already worked out the rest of the menu and it was heavy. I wanted a lighter vegetable in there.

I decided to try to make something light using butternut squash.

I started off with a maple-balsamic dressing: balsamic vinegar, olive oil, maple syrup, a couple cloves of garlic, and some mustard to emulsify it a bit.

The night before, I cut up some squash into about a dozen half-circle slices, each about 1/3 inch thick. I marinated these in the maple-balsamic. A bottle of Jack Daniel's caught my eye, and I added a splash of that into the marinade. I didn't know whether there were any alcohol-soluble flavors in there, but I figured that it wouldn't hurt.

Shortly before the meal, some chopped red onion got added to the dressing. I tossed the squash slices on the grill. Each of the slices got cut into smaller pieces as they came off grill. The spinach was wilted, and I tossed it with the squash, onions, and some crumbled gorgonzola.

I'd considered adding some pecans, but I decided against it at the last minute. I don't think they would have worked in terms of texture.

The result? A relatively light, healthy vegetable dish that still managed to evoke Thanksgiving. Definitely a success.

I'd love to make my own cranberry sauce - maybe a cranberry chutney - for Thanksgiving, but my mother insists that we have canned cranberry sauce. This isn't unusual, apparently.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the stuff, though it can have its uses in moderation. Given the chance, I'd alter it - add some real cranberries, orange zest, and things like that, but she'd object.

I began to wonder whether there was anything I could do to make it more interesting.

I suppose, I though, I could get rid of the stupid can shape.

Cranberry sauce melts, but not easily. Don't use a frying pan. Use a double boiler (or a ceramic bowl in a pot of water), and mix the stuff up with a spoon.

Once you have it melted, you can reshape it in a mold. Freezing it in the mold helps. Additional pectin would probably help, too. Still, with a silicone mold that Angela made (for soap - we cleaned it out), we were able to cast cranberry sauce and get some pretty good detail:

This does give off a small amount of liquid. I suspect additional pectin (or another hydrocolloid) would help there too.

I didn't have any cookie cutters around, but I though that they might work well to create cute single-servings of cranberry sauce.

On Friday, I told you why you shouldn't stuff your turkey. I also promised that I'd tell you how to make a turkey dressing that is cooked outside of the bird that tastes at least as good as stuffing cooked inside the turkey.

It can be done, and it is not that difficult.

1. Turkey Infusion
   Why does stuffing cooked inside a turkey taste good? It tastes good because it catches a lot of drippings from the turkey. The stuffing soaks up that flavor. I made a rich turkey stock from turkey necks and wings. My dressing will get tossed and basted with some of this. The rest of it will go towards gravy. When the dressing is ready to be served, it will get tossed in a bowl with some of the drippings from the roast turkey. It isn't going to miss out on turkey flavor.
2. Use Fat
   Fat carries flavor. Turkey drippings will help with this, but we also want to get some in at earlier stages. Remember the turkey stock? I skimmed a good bit of fat off of that. I'll use this fat to saute vegetables that will go into the dressing. You can also mix a bit of sausage in with your stuffing if you want.
3. Let It Blend
   I'm going to start cooking my dressing before Thanksgiving day. I'll toss together most of the ingredients and bake it at a low temperature for a bit, basting it with my turkey infusion. Then I'll let it hang out in the refrigerator overnight. You know how some things are better the next day? This is one of them. That's an advantage you can't get when you stuff the bird. On Thanksgiving, I'll mix some eggs into the stuffing (maybe with some sausage), and bake it to get a nice crust.
4. Vary Texture
   Did I say crust? That's another thing you don't really get when you stuff the bird. Stuffing tends to be spongy and soggy. You don't get much texture variation. With dressing, you can... and I like to play to advantages. I'll use a ton of different ingredients with different textures. In terms of bread this year, I'm thinking challah and pumpernickel. I might throw some bagel in there, too.

My family, like many, has a bad habit of Late Turkey Syndrome. Traditionally, we'd plan for Thanksgiving Dinner to be served at, say, six. The turkey wouldn't be done for another hour or two. A few years ago, my brother had our family over for Thanksgiving at his place in California, and he let me cook the turkey. I've been doing it since, and we've been free from Late Turkey Syndrome.

How did I do it? Read on...

1. Turkey, Part I:
   My basic method comes from Alton Brown's Good Eats Roast Turkey recipe. Why? It works. I'll have a fifteen pound turkey done in two and a half hours, and it will be good. The first time I made turkey this way for my family, they spent all morning pestering me to put the turkey in the oven. I kept putting them off. They thought we wouldn't be eating it until midnight. They were wrong.
   
   I do tweak the flavorings here. The brine gets apple cider and bay leaves, for instance. While isn't mentioned in the recipe, you may want to cover browned areas with aluminum foil after the first thirty minutes of roasting to prevent burnination.
   
   
2. Turkey, Part II:
   I never leave well enough alone, so I had to improve on Alton Brown's turkey. How? Through basting. Normally, basting a turkey is counter-productive. First, normal basting of a turkey isn't going to lead to a juicier bird. A turkey's skin is waterproof. Normal basting is pointless. Second, normal basting a turkey involves opening the oven, cooling it dramatically. This is one of those things that leads to Late Turkey Syndrome.
   
   So, if normal basting is bad, then clearly what we need is abnormal basting. What could be simpler? We need to be able to baste (1) under the turkey's skin (2) without opening the oven door. How do we accomplish this? Apples and butter.¹ As they are heated, apples tend to release liquid. Similarly, butter melts. Freeze a stick of butter. Cut this and an apple (use a non-mealy variety that will get mushy when cooked) into slivers. Put these under the skin of the turkey before roasting it. If you are garlic-obsessed, you can add some garlic slivers in there, too. They aren't going to have quite the same effect, but you'll get roasted garlic bits in your turkey, and that's nothing to complain about.
   
   
3. Stuffing:
   Forget about stuffing. Instead, use dressing. It is the same thing - cooked outside of the turkey. Why? I am less concerned about the health reasons, actually, than I am on the effect that stuffing has on cooking time. Stuffing a turkey introduces a ton of variables to a turkey depending upon the density and moisture level of the stuffing. Stuffing is one of the main contributors to Late Turkey Syndrome. It isn't worth it.
   
   My mother disagrees. We get in a fight every year about stuffing the turkey. She says it tastes better. Then I make stuffing that she loves and she recants her objections. Three hundred and fifty days later, she has forgotten this.
   
   How do I make dressing² that tastes as good as stuffing? That's another post. I promise you that it will be up on Monday at the latest. [update: Read it here!]

¹ Not apple butter, though that is an interesting thought for a turkey glaze...
² Generally, I just call it stuffing, since "dressing" is ambiguous.

I don't think that I've extolled the virtues of my vegetable peeler to you all. I should. It is awesome. I know a lot of people swear by those Y-shaped peelers. I admit, those are better than those all-metal swivel peelers. My peeler, though? I bought it because I hated my old potato peeler. I saw this one. It is a Kitchenaid Euro Peeler. It isn't the fancy one, either. It is the cheap, $6 or so version. (There's another version that sells for about three or four dollars more.) I am thankful that I have it going in to Thanksgiving - when I'm going to be peeling some root vegetables: potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and celeriac. Celeriac (celery root) is particularly obnoxious to peel, but this cuts the pain a quite a bit.

A few weeks ago, my brother came by and we cooked dinner together. He was using my peeler on some carrots, and he expressed his admiration for it. What makes it awesome? I really don't know. It just works. The handle is comfortable without being offensively ergonomic. You have fairly fine control while using it. The blade has just enough swivel to it to respond to the contours of what you're peeling. The blade is fairly hefty. You aren't going to bend this thing on a potato.

I feel a little silly singing its praises, but I will be doing some of the Thanksgiving cooking over at my parents' house, and I made a mental list of the kitchen tools I needed to take with me. My Kitchenaid Euro Peeler was at the top of it.

Seriously, does anyone know why this is called a Euro Peeler?

And so it begins...

Actually, it began last weekend, when Angela and I went over to my parents' house for dinner. (They made steak. It was good.) After dinner, my mother and I sat down and hashed out a menu for Thanksgiving. There was some negotiation involved. For some reason, she was adamantly against the idea of soup.

I don't know why. She loves soup.

Today, though, I need to make up a shopping list. When you are dealing with multiple dishes that share some of the same ingredients, this can be tricky. How many pecans do we need? There will be some in the salad, some in the stuffing (dressing, actually, but I find that word ambiguous), and maybe a pie... (Dessert is still vague.)

My solution? Overkill.

I fired up a spreadsheet. The first column became the shopping list. Other columns were each assigned to a dish. Rows got unique ingredients. These get totaled up in the first column. Ingredients in my pantry get gray backgrounds. I won't buy those, but I want to make sure that they are on the list so that I don't forget about them.

A printout of this becomes a useful cheat sheet while cooking so that I don't repeat that thing from a couple years ago when I forgot to put eggs in the stuffing.

If you have multiple people cooking and/or shopping, you can put your spreadsheet up on Google Docs, assigning each person a unique background color or something.

Alternately, you could just laugh at me.