The Thanksgiving Issue Part Two

 Yesterday The New York Times Food section printed their unofficial Thanksgiving issue. It was chock full of ideas and recipes. There is still more to go over and share with family and our veterans alike.

 We discovered spins on turkey thanks to Padma Lakschmi and some interesting dishes from a Liberian Thanksgiving. Now it's time to look into traditional and classic New York Times recipes. These reflect over 150 years of them from The Times. Krysten Chambrot food editor of the section  created the assembly of these tasty dishes.She's had help from Amanda Hesser, co-founder of the cooking and home company Food 52, and former Times food writer and editor. Some of the recipes weren't originally meant for the holiday but they can easily be made for it.  You could easily start the meal off with Craig Claiborne;s Florentine dip first published in 1959.It's a heady mix of anchovies, capers and lemon juice mixed into a blend if sour cream and cream cheese. Chives, garlic and parsley add to the flavor. A different side is red cabbage glazed with maple syrup. This would also be good with a holiday pork roast or  a Christmas ham too. It's from 1991 , created by Yves Labbe. Red cabbage is first sauteed in bacon drippings with onions, apples, a bay leaf and maple syrup. This is then baked in the oven for thirty minutes after being seasoned with salt and pepper.

You can never go wrong with an Edna Lewis recipe. Her recipe for baked sweet potatoes with lemon was first published in 1993 right after she wrote her seminal cookbook "The Taste of Country Cooking" when she worked at the famed Gage & Tollner.The sweet potatoes are first boiled as a syrup of brown sugar, lemon zest and nutmeg in water. Butter is whisked in and then lemon juice. The potatoes are then sliced into half inch thick  discs or coins and put into a buttered shallow baking dish. The lemon syrup is poured on top and the whole dish is baked for half an hour at 425 degrees. What to end the dinner with? Not a traditional pie but David Lebovitz's fresh ginger cake first made by Times readers in 1999. Mr. Lebovitz was the pastry chef at the famed La Panisse in Berkeley California. This recipe is from his first cookbook "Room For Dessert". It's sort of like a gingerbread, but made with fresh peeled and cur ginger along with cloves , cinnamon and black pepper.It only has two eggs so it's not as rich as other holiday cakes. It would go well with vanilla ice cream or a dollop of freshly whipped cream.

These are great Thanksgiving recipes to be shared with everyone, including our veterans. They can also be made for other holidays too. Enjoy these New York Times classic recipes and their classic flavors. They are the perfect accompaniment to turkey, ham or roast port.

Ina Baugarten Why We Need Her Now

 Is there was any popular cook than Ina Garten? She has a large cult following that includes  Jennifer Garner, Taylor Swift and Katie Couric, the last her neighbor in East Hampton New York. The question is why is she and her cookbooks so popular and why do we need her especially during this fraught holiday season?

Julia Moskin answered this question in today's New York Times Food section. She went to Ms. Garten, also known as The Barefood Contessa, after her famed deli in her posh Long Island town.The reason for the big fan base is because she is like us. Ms. Garten states that she finds cooking hard and is not a trained chef. She just loves it, which most of us do. Yes it can be a challenge and a chore - and she definitely understands that. She brings that knowledge and a bursting enthusiasm to the screen which makes her identifiable. However she is not your  go-to television chef for ordinary recipes. It's more upscale bistro food for those with disposable incomes. Yet she still remains the darling of the culinary world, especially when she opened up her pantry on Instagram during the pandemic. It came with the question "Does anyone have something they don't know what to do with?" In March she gained a million more followers. It was the first time she invited regular contact with her followers. Through them, she learned no one was using dried beans and sourdough was over quickly. The need for her baked mac and cheese recipe crashed her website. On April 1st she posted herself making a Cosmopolitan That got her three million more fans. They love her, probably because she has a fondness for fats, heavy cream and pancetta, lush ingredients that make any recipe sing. Surprisingly she started out as an analyst in the Carter White House of Office of Management and Budget. she left to start her celebrity loved deli The Barefoot Contessa in East Hampton, New York.

Ms Moskin includes Ms. Garten's favorite recipes. There is the flavorful cacio and pepe cheese puffs, the perfect hors ' d'ouevres for any dinner,These are cheesy biscuit  like balls, about the size of Hershey's kisses. They're zinged up with Pecorino cheese and freshly ground pepper. The recipe is rife with five (!) eggs , butter and whole milk. A great side dish for next week is pureed potatoes with lemon. These are Yukon Gold spuds cooked with two whole sticks of butter and a cup of whole milk. To balance out the richness is a tablespoon of grated lemon zest. Another would be perfect side is Ms. Garten's recipe for charred carrots with orange and balsamic vinegar. It's a colorful dish of rainbow carrots oven roasted and drizzled with a mix of orange juice and zest mixed with balsamic vinegar. Of course the star is the turkey breast roulade with garlic and rosemary. This is a riff on a Florentine pork roast. There are ingredients not usually associated with turkey, like fennel seeds garlic and rosemary. The only traditional herb is  sage.  The breast is butterflied and stuffed with prosciutto and an herbed onion mix. It's basted with a mix of dry white wine like Chablis and water. It's cooked for about one and a half hours until the skin is golden brown in a 350 degree F oven. . It's then tented with foil and cooked for fifteen minutes more.

Ina Garten will continue to be our go to chef for well after the pandemic. She is one of us , but with tasty  upscale recipes that she urges us to make. We can all give these delicious recipes a try for Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners.

The Dark Side of Catering

Any part of the food industry has a dark side.Restaurants are notorious for it.Now, without any surprise the seaminess of catering is coming through. It's not what  people imagine of just putting food in front of people. It's a lot of quick thinking and even quicker cooking.

Kim Severson wrote about this world in yesterday's New York Times Food section. Most of the inside scoops comes from the Lee Brothers, Ted and Matt who usually write cookbooks and at one time had a food of the month club. This new foray is entitled Hotbox: Inside Catering, the Food World's Riskiest Business (Henry Holt and Company 2019). It is full of revelations, turning out to be a cut throat world that crosses into the A list world of celebrities and billionaires. The industry didn't start out this way. Back in the early 1960's catering was simple. It started with Jean Claude Nedelec who developed the most important invention of cooking - the hot box system. Those are those towers on wheels that hold those many trays of many dinners. It changed the industry completely. Catering expanded in the Seventies and fit the glamourous and gluttonous lifestyles of the Eighties. Any place , from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to The Battery could be turned into an eatery. Institutions like the Metropolitan Opera realized it could make more money renting itself out for catering events.Caterers then grew into event planners.

It wasn't and not as fun as it sounds. The Nineties brought fussier customers wanting better food and celebrity chefs cooking it. Chefs like Daniel Boulud jumped in which didn't work. Cooking for a crowd and cooking for a few are two different worlds. Bobby Flay, had often said that his catering time was the worst time of his life. Now in this Instagram age , food has to not only taste good but look as photogenic as possible. Meringues now float under balloons while waiters pedal around raw bars in bicycle baskets.Caterers have to one up each other in this crazy creativity. Then there is the headache of customized events such as weddings. Couples have very definitive idea of what they want and hand their caterers elaborate lists of foods. Then there is the problem of allergies. There are so many that can put a damper on a caterer's ideas. There are too many special requests which can ruin the assembly line nature of catering. Waiters are barraged with all sorts of questions from is there dairy with the vegan option or is there soy or nuts in the dish.At least some caterers are well prepared for this, coming with soy free dressings and sides, along with other options for the allergy inflicted.

Catering is a hard job. It is fascinating though, with its' stories of survival and triumph. Read the Lee's take on the industry and be taken in by it.

Chili Done Right

This is the weather for a big pot of chili.It's the perfect chill chaser along with being just a delicious meal.It can be made a variety of ways  but the bottom of line is that it should have some heat,  and there should be beans . Those are the essentials to create the perfect bowl.

Julia Moskin tackled the subject in today's Cooking Lab column in The New York Times Food section. It is one of the oldest dishes in North America, first made by the Aztecs long before the Spanish invaded Mexico. Their version had several variations that included lobsters fish and even frogs! They also included a well rounded blend of chilies, from red, yellow and green along to ones that were pickled, smoked and dried. The dish entered the US , namely Texas  by way of Mexican cowboys who brought it to cattle ranches along the Rio Grande River.They were used to eating tough longhorn meat that had been softened by water and made palatable with different chili peppers.This was the original carne con chili or carne con chili Colorado, so named because of the dark red color {or Colorado in Spanish }of the beans.This is the forebear of our modern Texas style one.The German immigrants who settled later on in the Longhorn State contributed to the recipe too. They added dried , powdered chilies to the dish which was surprisingly similar to their goulash. William Gebhardt   ground the peppers into a fine  powder which could be easily added to the blend.

A good basic chili recipe should have a good dash of cumin. Coriander should also be added, although many home chefs omit it.This came from the  Spanish families from the Canary Islands  who were paid by the  Spanish crown to settle the area in the 1700s. Their contribution was spices along with herbs and garlic, hallmarks of TexMex cuisine and chili.Traditional recipes call for unsweetened chocolate  as well as Mexican beer. For fire there is sliced  jalapenos along with chili powder made ancho and pasilla with .Ms. Moskin recommends four to seven fresh ones but adding them depends on you and your tastes. Masa harina is also added for thickening. The meat should be a beef chuck roast or steak however you can sub in more beans or soy meats such as soy beef crumbles for a healthier chili. Remember that the best ones have to sit for a day or two for the best flavor. Ms. Moskin suggests using fritos or tortillas but polenta is always good with it as is rice.

Chili is one of the best cold weather dishes It's a comfort food that warms you both literally and figuratively . Make a bowl of it in the traditional style or your way. It's bound to be good.