Thanksgiving breads

Your family deserves better than Parker House dinner rolls. (Even if they don't, you do.)

Squash muffins
Biscuits
Rolls
Spoon bread
Buttermilk cornbread
Puff pastry cheese straws
Hush puppies

Thanksgiving side dishes

Here's a collection of recipes I've published on this blog, that would be great for Thanksgiving side dishes! Don't let me catch any of you with a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup anywhere near your holiday kitchens. Ditto marshmallow topping.

Butternut squash and chard risotto
Butternut squash stuffed with sausage and apples
Onion tart
Bourbon corn pudding
Corn fritters
Corn maque choux
Cranberry sauce
Parmesan brussel sprouts
Green beans with Rocquefort and walnuts
Green beans with balsamic vinegar
Acorn squash soup
Glazed carrots
Beet risotto
Champagne risotto
Mushroom risotto
Israeli couscous with apples and cranberries
Lima bean, corn and bacon succotash

Also, try making home fries instead of mashed potatoes this year. Slice potatoes (unpeeled) into wedges, put in a big bowl with olive oil, and mix them around until they're coated in oil. Spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet, coat liberally with dry rub, and roast at 400 degrees until a fork goes all the way through.

Ditto sweet potatoes, for sweet potato fries, but leave off the dry rub. You can make a kick-ass "aioli" for sweet potato fries by mixing together Sriracha and mayo. Yummmmm.

Thanksgiving ice creams

Oh yes. Ice creams. Why be predictable and serve pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving this year, when you could serve one of these? Plus, you can make it ahead!

Rum Butternut Squash Ice Cream
Sweet Potato Ice Cream
Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream with Pecan Praline
Cranberry Sorbet
Maple Pecan Ice Cream

and the pièce de résistance... wait for it...

Butterscotch and Bourbon Ice Cream with Bacon and Butter Toffee Chips

I think that last one is worth buying an ice cream maker for, if you don't have one already. I'm totally hauling mine out this weekend.

BBQ pork quesadillas

I made a pork loin last week, and still had lots of pork left over. First I put it on salads; then I started adding it to soups; and I plan on using the last of it this weekend in a batch of minestrone. But I still had a whole lot of pork that needed to be dealt with. Yesterday I had a flash of genius: BBQ pork quesadillas!

I shredded most of the rest of the pork and mixed it with the last of my barbecue sauce. (Maybe 3-4 cups of shredded pork to 1 cup sauce.) I mixed that all up together and added it to whole wheat tortillas, along with about 1/4 cup each of shredded habanero cheddar. I topped each with another tortilla, and toasted each one in a big skillet. Because there was more pork than cheese, the finished quesadillas didn't hold together very well, but they were still pretty darned good. I served with a fresh salsa.

So if you have tortillas around, consider that an excellent way to use up leftovers.

I could have also thrown the barbecue pork-sauce mixture onto a tortilla, along with some fresh spinach or greenery, rolled it up, and called it a wrap. Or mixed it with eggs and called it a breakfast burrito.

Cookbook review: The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

If you don't know the name Alice Waters, you should. She's the famed food activist behind Chez Panisse, the Berkeley restaurant that effectively started the slow food/organic movement; probably the most important American restaurant of the last 40 years. Her philosophy is simple: buy local, high quality ingredients, and cook them simply. Good ingredients don't need a lot of fuss to make them taste good. In fact, too much fuss will usually make them taste worse.

This cookbook expounds on that principle beautifully. Many of the recipes are less recipe and more essay; there are two pages on how to properly cook a pork chop, when the ingredients are pork chop, oil, salt and pepper. It's very practical, very simple and very user-friendly for the novice cook.

People always want the "secret" to good cooking. I think it's a largely American trait, one that makes us obsess over the shortcut. We want to win the lottery, know the right people, drive cars that parallel-park themselves, anything that has spark and glamour. No one is interested in plain old boring hard work. We want a cookbook of thirty-minute recipes with secret tips for success, not a three-page essay on why it's better to cook polenta on low heat for an hour, not when we could be eating 30-second toaster waffles instead.

But it really is better to spend time on some things. Your soul isn't satisfied with quickie sex; why then should  you expect to be satisfied with quickie meals? This cookbook, as part of the vanguard of the slow food movement, really spells out why it's important to take the time once in a while, and why the food will taste so much better as a result.
I also like it because it gives appropriate variations in the recipes. I'm a big fan of variations, so I appreciate it when other cooks point out that you can use other greens like collards in the chard frittata. This has become one of the core reference books in my cookbook library.

(Bonus: excellent ice cream recipe.)

Oysters Bienville

Mmmm, oysters. I really see no point in cooking them at all; to me, if an oyster is good enough to be eaten raw, there's no sense in ruining it with heat. And if it's not good enough to eat raw, why are you eating it?

I didn't always feel that way. I'll be the first to admit that raw oysters can be a hurdle for a lot of people--after all, their consistency is remarkably similar to snot. I remember when I was a kid, watching my uncles eat raw Chesapeake Bay oysters by the quart and being totally grossed out. (It didn't help that sometimes they dispensed with manners entirely and just drank them out of the quart jar, like some form of particularly chunky moonshine.) So for the longest time I only ate oysters fried. And let's be honest, you could fry cardboard and it would taste good.

Then one day I ate a raw oyster and it realized that, consistency aside, it was actually pretty damned good.

So I picked up a pint of oysters the other day and decided to actually do something with them, rather than just sit down with a fork and a lemon wedge. I adapted this recipe from Cooking Up A Storm. Adaptations noted.

1/2 cup butter
1/4 lb mushrooms, chopped--I left these out, didn't have any
2 dozen oysters, with juice
rock salt--left this part out, too
1/4 cup chopped green onions--I used leeks instead
1/4 teaspoon minced garlic
6 tablespoons flour
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup parsley
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 lb Parmesan
6 tablespoons bread crumbs
lemon wedges

Saute mushrooms in 2 T butter. [SEE ABOVE ABOUT NO MUSHROOMS.] Place the oysters in ramekins, 3 at a time, or individually on their half-shells, and place those on a bed of rock salt in a large dish. [I PLACED MINE IN RAMEKINS AND SET THOSE DIRECTLY IN A PYREX DISH.] Saute onions and garlic in remaining butter, [I USED ALL 6 TABLESPOONS HERE] add flour and stir. (Essentially you're making a white sauce.) Beat egg yolks with parsley and cream, stir into onion and flour mixture, blend well. Add 1 cup oyster juice (or milk, or chicken broth) [I USED A LITTLE OYSTER JUICE AND THE REST CHICKEN BROTH] and cook over low heat, stirring, until the sauce turns creamy. Add mushrooms and cheese, stir until melted and well blended. Salt and pepper to taste. Spoon sauce over oysters, add breadcrumbs, 450 15 minutes until browned. Serve with lemon wedges.

The finished product was very rich. And cute, in their little ramekins. And good, I guess, my husband ate it right down, but I still think oysters are best raw.

Help me plan a Thanksgiving dinner for two!

The cross-country move wreaked havoc with our holiday plans. Originally I planned to visit my sister on the Gulf Coast. But a move, two new jobs, and limited time off put the kibosh on that. Then I thought about visiting either my parents or my husband's cousin, who's getting married the Saturday after Thanksgiving--but either option involves a 12-hour drive (each way), and DH recently threw out his back. So I think long car drives are out in the near future.

So it looks like we'll be sticking close to home this Thanksgiving, for the first time...possibly ever. I don't feel the need to cook an entire turkey for two people--indeed, any turkey at all--but I also think I should acknowledge the holiday somehow, with something special.

What do you recommend? How best to celebrate Thanksgiving, with no family or close friends nearby, and no interest whatsoever in watching football? Have you ever cooked a full-out Thanksgiving dinner for two people?