Thanksgiving
2220 recipes found
Sautéed Kale With Garlic and Olive Oil
This recipe from 1992 was ahead of the curve on the kale trend. It gives a good basic preparation for this now ubiquitous leafy green: trim, blanch, drain, sautée (do not overcook), then serve immediately and often.
White Tepary Bean and Potato Purée
Tepary beans are very small beans native to the Southwest and Mexico. They are among the most drought-tolerant foods in the world – they would have to be, grown as they are during the extremely hot, dry summers in the Sonora desert and southern Arizona. A dietary staple of native American tribes in Arizona, they are very high in protein and have a low glycemic index. There are two varieties, brown and white. I’m using small white tepary beans here; regular small white navy beans can be substituted. The teparies have a particularly sweet, meaty flavor. The purée, which is in some ways like a white bean brandade, isn’t a main dish, it is more of a comforting, high-protein stand-in for mashed potatoes. But it is substantial.
Turkey Tamales
Tamales are a holiday staple for Mexican-American families from the Rio Grande Valley up to North Texas, and not just at Christmas. “We have a big market for Thanksgiving tamales,” said Cyndi Hall of Tamale Place of Texas, in Leander, near Austin. Although Ms. Hall said she’s seen more families buy tamales than ever before, many still keep the tradition of coming together to make them. You can cook up a turkey breast or extra legs for tamales to have with the Thanksgiving meal, or make the tamales with leftover turkey for the long weekend. They aren’t difficult, but they do take time, so the more hands you have for your assembly line, the quicker it goes. Corn husks and masa mix for tamales can be found in markets that sell Mexican ingredients; make sure you get the masa for tamales (Maseca is the most widely available brand), not the finer, drier tortilla masa harina.
Baked Stuffed Acorn Squash
This makes a substantial vegetarian – or vegan if you leave out the cheese – Thanksgiving main dish. It is another riff on the native American tradition of the Three Sisters – corn, beans, and squash. I used acorn squash here, and it serves as a vessel for the sweet and pungent bean, corn and tomato filling. Acorn squash comes in various sizes; the larger ones, which are sometimes all I can find, take almost an hour to soften and cook through; the finished squash can be cut in half or even into thirds if too big for one serving. With everything that comes on the Thanksgiving sideboard, that will probably be the case. I always bake the squash for about 20 minutes before cutting it in half; they soften up a little bit, which makes it much easier to cut.
Baked Beans With Sweet Potatoes and Chipotles
I used Rancho Gordo Mexican heirloom San Franciscano beans for this richly flavored dish. The beans are dark reddish purple, not too big, with an earthy, sweet taste that fits perfectly into this slightly sweet and spicy baked bean dish. From the supermarket, use red beans or pintos.
Portuguese Pumpkin Preserves
This recipe was designed for something that happens only about every 125 years: the collision of Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah, an event that presents both a celebratory conundrum and culinary opportunity. Of course, you don’t have to wait (the last time it happened was in 2013). These preserves are a perfect topping for latkes, but you can just as easily incorporate them into your breakfast routine. Best of all, the recipe takes less than an hour, and will make your house smell like the essence of fall.
Hot Honey Nut Mix
Almond, cashew, almond, cashew. Oh, a Brazil nut! There’s a kind of pattern to every nut mix, but in this one, each bite is a little different, pushing you to keep scooping for more surprises. It’s a roasted jumble of nuts (whichever you choose) and flavorful pops — a seed, a honey-crystallized cluster, a pebble of coarse sugar, a bite with swelling heat, then a salty one. Serve them next to olives and cheese at a party, keep a stash in your tote or office snack drawer, or tie a bag of them up with a bow.
Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pie
One of my all-time favorite pies, this one is sweet with spices but not very sugary. Because of the small amount of molasses, this is darker than classic pumpkin pie. Make it with fresh roasted pumpkin (small “pie pumpkins” are perfect for the job), or use canned pumpkin.
Roasted Winter Vegetable Medley
This is a sweet mixture of comforting winter vegetables that you can serve on its own as a side dish, or use as the component of a polenta, big bowl, frittata or omelet, or pasta. I roast the squash in one pan and the other vegetables together in another. If you have a small oven, roast the squash first, then the other vegetables. Or you can use two shelves and switch the trays top to bottom halfway through the roasting.
Dark Turkey Stock
Fresh Ginger Cake
David Lebovitz's headily spiced cake, which Amanda Hesser wrote about in The Times in 1999, calls for a quarter-pound of fresh ginger. Mr. Lebovitz, who was a pastry chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., has since had a long career as a cookbook author and blogger. But this recipe, from his cookbook “Room for Dessert,” is from relatively early in his writing career. Boldly flavored with just cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and, yes, a lot of fresh ginger, it is simplicity exemplified, coming together quickly and without a mixer. The cake — much like the recipe itself — ages well, its flavors melding and deepening over time.
Vegetarian Apple-Parsnip Soup
Parsnip and Carrot Soup With Tarragon
A fragrant soup that lets the flavor of the vegetables shine through. Parsnips contribute sweetness and texture to this fragrant soup. I used water, not stock, and the flavor of the vegetables shines through.
Pumpkin Chocolate-Chip Cookies
These cakey cookies have crisp edges and fluffy centers almost like muffin tops – which we can all agree is the best part of a muffin. Packed with sweet spices, pumpkin purée and lots of chocolate chips, they are a delightful autumn treat that pair well with a cold glass of milk. Use whichever type of chocolate chips you prefer, in whatever proportion you like, but a combination of milk and bittersweet are especially nice.
Dora Charles’s Lost-and-Found Lemon Poundcake
The South has about as many poundcake recipes as there are grandmothers. This one produces a higher, lighter cake than many recipes. It came from Dora Charles’s aunt Laura Daniels, who got it from a nursing-home patient she was working with in the 1970s. The patient, Mary Martin, mailed it to her long after she left the nursing home, but because of a stroke, her handwriting was shaky. Ms. Charles found the recipe and deciphered it, and included it in her cookbook "A Real Southern Cook: In Her Savannah Kitchen." You can use lemon juice and zest instead of lemon flavoring, which the original recipe called for, or increase the vanilla by a teaspoon if you are leaving out the lemon altogether. The cake, which is a perfect base for peaches and whipped cream or another fruit topping, gets better after a couple of days and will be good for a week if you keep it well wrapped. It freezes well, too.
Mandarin Punch
Turkey and Mizuna Salad
This dish has bright, mildly spicy Asian flavors and lots of crunch. Mizuna is a Japanese mustard green that’s high in folic acid, vitamin A, carotenoids and vitamin C. If you can’t find it, substitute arugula.
Mini Brie and Apple Quiches
The classic pairing of Brie and apples works beautifully in this recipe for bite-size appetizers that came to The Times in 2010 from Eating Well magazine. Premade mini phyllo cups (available in the freezer section of your grocery store) make it easy to make an elegant hors d'oeuvre in about 30 minutes. The cups do not need to be defrosted before filling and baking.
Turkey Waldorf Salad
This is not your classic Waldorf salad, which is traditionally a mélange of apples, celery, raisins, walnuts and grapes in a thick mayonnaise-based dressing. Here, the dressing, thinned out and lightened with yogurt, is spiced with curry and cumin, and the salad mix includes a generous amount of chopped radicchio or endive, which bring a bitter dimension into the mix. This salad is also an excellent home for leftover Thanksgiving turkey.
Orange Glazed Turnips
Eprax (Kurdish Stuffed Vegetables and Lamb)
This recipe for eprax, a multilayered casserole of Kurdish-style stuffed vegetables and lamb chops, comes from Parwin Tayyar in Nashville. To make the dish, sometimes called dolmas, Ms. Tayyar prepares a gently spiced lamb and rice filling, and uses it to stuff a mixture of vegetables, such as squash, tomatoes, potatoes and cabbage. Carefully layered in a pot with a little liquid, the vegetables simmer and steam together on the stove until they're tender. Then the whole dish is tipped out into a messy, delicious pile to be eaten with flatbread, pickles, hummus or a cucumber sauce. It may seem like a complex process, but once all the vegetables are prepped and the filling is ready, things go quickly. The dish is flexible, and what Ms. Tayyar provides is a blueprint: You can stuff any vegetables you have on hand, as long as you remember to stuff them loosely.
Celery Root and Chestnut Soup With Brussels Sprouts
This soup, which came to The Times from executive chef Michael Anthony of New York City’s Gramercy Tavern, has a white, soft and silky base, but each bite has a surprising new texture.
Turkey Broth
Chorizo Dressing With Leeks
The better the bread you use here (a thick-crusted country loaf, sliced and toasted quite dry in the oven works well), the better the end result. It acts as a kind of canvas for the sweetness of the leeks and the dry, fragrant heat of the chorizo. You can make it well in advance of serving it alongside turkey, chicken or pork, at least as long as you leave time to reheat it in the oven, covered, with a few splashes of stock to moisten it. Just pull off the foil for the last few minutes to allow the top to crisp.