The kitchen real estate is precious on Thanksgiving. Most of us just have one oven and four burners, so it becomes a real juggle fest trying to keep all the sides warm, especially when the bird is hogging up the heat for hours. What's your strategy?
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Our goddess of sweets, Jessie Oleson, aka Cakespy, spotted these festive turkey cakes at Madison Park Bakery in Seattle. Like real turkeys, you can choose between white and dark "meat."
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With all the channels on broadcast TV and cable—and the inevitable episode repeat—-it's hard to sort out what's new or worthwhile. Let us sort it out for you so you don't miss anything worth watching. Times may vary with region; check your local listings for exact hour and channels.
Good Eats: "The Proof Is In the Pudding." Alton takes a look at the use of alcohol in preparing food. 8 p.m. ET, Food Network
Cake Boss: "Pizza, Poochies & Pop-in-Law." Buddy makes a cake for a local animal shelter and challenges his father-in-law to a pizza-making contest. 10 p.m. ET, TLC
Cake Boss: "Golf Greens & Gravity." Buddy and his crew make a cake for a planetarium and a cake for a golf tournament. 10:30 p.m. ET, TLC
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (warning, a video plays automatically on site): "Burgers, Steaks and Chops." Guy goes to a dive bar making high end dishes in San Francisco; a place serving piles of burgers in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and a restaurant grilling house-cut steaks in Kemah, Texas. 10 p.m. ET, Food Network
Chef Academy: "Bitter Sweet." The students are challenged to recreate one of the desserts demonstrated by chef Novelli. 11 p.m. ET, BRAVO
I was initially attracted to this recipe from Viet World Kitchen because it reminded me an awful lot of the Singaporean dish, Hainanese Chicken Rice. I'm kind of obsessed with that dish but rarely find the time to make it.
This soup wasn't as intense, and there was no spice to speak of, but it still managed to capture the warm embrace of ginger balanced by the acidic dipping sauce. Plus this one is a hell of a lot easier and less time-consuming than Hainanese Chicken Rice.
At first, I found the soup to be a tad underwhelming and bland. There is a definite ginger ring to each sip, but it lacks bite and presence. Fortunately, this can be changed by just chopping up the chicken and adding it to the bowl along with a healthy spoonful of the sauce. This act is totally inauthentic and probably a horrible social faux pas, but it really created something unique and delicious.
Last week, we recommended eight great beers to serve with your Thanksgiving feast. But the beer pairing doesn't have to end when you bring out dessert. Beer is actually great with pie, and pie is even better with a well-chosen beer.
Some beers mirror the cinnamon and nutmeg in your dessert, while others bring out the caramel and nut flavors. Some are richer than espresso and cream, some are buttery, and others are refreshing enough to make dessert feel light.
Look for styles that aren't very hoppy, and serve in a wide-mouthed wine glass.
Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to open a bottle of something special. Look for styles that aren't very hoppy, and serve in a wide-mouthed wine glass, snifter, or tulip so you can really experience the scent and savor a few sips slowly.
Most of these beers are intense: you probably couldn't drink a whole pint. Be sure to serve them around 50 to 55°F—any colder, and you'll taste mostly alcohol and carbonation, rather than the rich, warming flavors that blossom at the proper temperature.
Cook the Book: Simple Fresh Southern: Rebecca F., NOLA_Pam, rsgrandinetti, themotorcyclechef, and Cupcake819. Winners have been notified by email and also appear on our Contest Winners page. Thanks to all who entered.
Note: Jessie Oleson (aka Cakespy) drops by every Monday to share a delicious dessert recipe.
The Buche de Thanksgiving has some attitude. [Original artwork and photographs: Jessie Oleson]
Nobody ever makes Thanksgiving cakes (or if they do, they've never invited me to dinner). So in an effort to right this grievous wrong, I have adapted a traditional Christmas cake—the Bûche de Noël, or the Yule Log—for Thanksgiving.
Do pumpkin pies have marzipan drumsticks? Yeah, didn't think so.
The November version starts with pumpkin cake rolled with rich cream cheese filling, and gets even better when liberally slathered with chocolate cream cheese frosting and finished off with sweet marzipan detailing. Perhaps this all sounds like a bit much, but I assure you, one bite of the Bûche de Thanksgiving will allay such fears. Consider it a sweet alternative to pumpkin pie, and a rich and tantalizing amuse-bouche before the more predictable Bûche de Noël in December.
Note: It's time for another edition of Street Food Profiles. This week we scoot to Seattle for Hawaiian-Korean curbside cuisine.
[Photograph: Andrea J. Walker]
Name: Marination Mobile
Vendors: Kamala Saxton and Roz Edison
Twitter: @curb_cuisine
Location and hours: Roaming the streets of Seattle six days a week. Equal opportunity neighborhood dwelling. Typically open 11a.m. to 2 p.m. The changing locations are posted on our website.
Kimchi rice bowl. [Food photographs: Marination Mobile]
What's on the menu? Tacos (spicy pork, kalbi beef, "sexy" tofu, and miso ginger chicken), Aloha sliders (made with Hawaiian-style braised pork on a sweet bun), kimchi fried rice (served with a sunny-side up egg), and things involving Spam (like Spam sliders and Spam musubi). We regularly throw in specials too. We give away love for free.
How long have you been street fooding? So far just 4.89 months. To infinity and beyond!
What better recipe to start out with from this week's Good Eats: The Early Years than Alton's roast turkey. He explains every detail, from the brine—a mix of vegetable broth, brown sugar, black peppercorns, allspice berries, and candied ginger—to the roasting.
As far as television food personalities go, Alton Brown is the perfect combination of wacky mad scientist, comedian, and food nerd extraordinaire.
Way back in 1998, Brown aired the first episode of Good Eats on a Chicago PBS station. In Brown's own words, Good Eats set out to be a combination of Julia Child's kitchen chops, Mr. Wizard-style accessible science, and Monty Python's unique brand of silliness. Knowing a good thing when they saw one, Food Network picked up the show a year later Good Eats is now well into its thirteenth season.
With more than 200 episodes of the show under his belt, Brown has recently released Good Eats: The Early Years, a massive tome that includes all of the recipes from the first 80(!) episodes of Good Eats.
The first season covered basics, correct steak cooking procedures (Steak Your Claim), proper potatoes (This Spud's for You), and baking techniques (The Dough Also Rises, shot with the help of Brown's grandmother). That first season also gave birth to one of my favorite Good Eats traditions: the Thanksgiving episode.
Why do people eat cinnamon, glue, live bugs, and light bulbs on camera? To get famous! Even if they look really stupid. Really. Really. Stupid. In Current TV's latest segment of Viral Video Film School, host Brett Elrich rounds up some of the most baffling videos on the web of people eating weird things. It'll make you feel worse about humanity, but better about yourself. Unless you too like to eat fragile objects made of glass. Watch the video after the jump.
Elise Bauer. [Photograph: Ree Drummond]
Mama Bauer's turkey stuffing. [Photograph: Elise Bauer]
We are longtime fans of the recipes and want-to-eat-the-computer-screen photography by Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes. She took the time to chat with us about her Thanksgiving plans this year—which will, absolutely not, involve the green bean casserole with fried onions.
Where are you feasting? At my mom and dad's house in Carmichael, California, with all of my siblings—there are six of us kids. We like to keep it really simple. Thanksgiving is not a time for experimentation. There's enough chaos and stress with all the family showing up, we want the actual meal to be as easy as possible.
What's on the menu? Any family recipes that reappear every year? My grandmother's stuffing recipe. She wasn't known for her cooking but she did a few things right. This one we do every year. We call it "stuffing" even though we prepare ours in a separate casserole pan—it's easier and safer that way. To get the turkey flavor, we use stock from the giblets and one of the secret ingredients? Olives.
2134 E. 71st Street, Chicago IL 60649 (map); 773-878-9898
The Short Order: Perfectly proportioned burgers griddled to order.
Want Fries with That? These delicious, highly seasoned fries come with every order.
Want Ketchup? Not needed.
My wife and I drove past this location twice before we finally spotted the tiny neon sign in the window. There is no large indication declaring you've made it, or even a host to greet you at the door.
That's-A-Burger is definitely not a sit-down restaurant—It'd need some actual seats for that—but it's not exactly fast-food either. Orders can take up to 30 minutes since everything is made to order. It's this special attention to ingredients that also makes this easily one of the best burgers in the city.
That's-A-Burger's burger starts with a large, hand-formed patty of fresh beef that's been griddled until expertly seared on the outside. It's then stuffed into a squishy white bun that's also wrapped up with some fries. This is the burger place I've been dreaming about since moving to Chicago.
Editor's note: On Mondays, Kristen Swensson of Cheap, Healthy, Good swings by these parts to share healthy and delicious recipes with us. Who knew stuffing could be healthy? Take it away, Kristen!
[Photograph: Kristen Swensson]
There are certain times in our lives when eating smart, watching our weight, and exercising are the best things we can do for ourselves.
Thanksgiving is not one of those times.
That said, it doesn't hurt to include Turkey Day dishes that are both delicious and incidentally, healthy. Homemade cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and Brussels sprouts are all pretty solid choices, and a little bit of dark meat never hurt anybody. With some careful planning, you can add stuffing to that list, as well.
This Sausage, Apple, and Cranberry Stuffing is an adaptation of Dan Smith and Steve McDonagh's popular Food Network recipe. The original version was fairly lean to start out, and with a few tweaks, it came to a highly respectable 209 calories per serving, with around 6 grams of fat and 5.5 grams of fiber. Plus, it's delicious. Curse me for trotting out light cooking clichés, but no one will know it's a lean stuffing.
Nobody wants withered white meat that only a boatload of gravy can rescue on Thanksgiving. The solution: turkey stuffed with turkey sausage. A meat within a meat!
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See more photos in the Serious Eats Photo Group at flickr
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