Episode 26: Our Stuffing Ourselves
We're back with a Thanksgiving special! Samin has a cold, and a cold-pressed juicer, but Hrishi's got some mildly spicy jokes (which is why we have our first ever explicit-ish language warning). For this episode, we’re finding new ways to honor old Thanksgiving traditions. But one thing is true forever: kids just eat rolls.
Food Ideas Discussed in This Episode:
Get ready for an all new, spicy, Hrishi personality–it’s giving 12 year-old boy and he’s entirely out of control. There’s a content warning at the start of the episode, but we would also like to apologize, here, formally in writing. We are so sorry for so many things that he says!
Food Bank & Mutual Aid Resources:
Samin’s comfort foods when sick: Chicken and rice in any form ie: sort of Taiwanese chicken and rice or Tom Kha Gai
Pumpkin Spice Season is bringing wishes for:
Smitten Kitchen's pumpkin bread recipe - it uses the entire can of pumpkin puree so you don’t have a strange amount leftover. Fava gives it four thumbs up.
Samin’s Dream Thanksgiving: Dungeness crab, but the Dungeness season keeps getting delayed here in the Bay Area
Are you tired of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner? Us too. Some thoughts:
Does your family have ancestral heritage to lean into for a theme for your dinner? You can either use the Thanksgiving scaffolding and apply a cultural lens. Or forgo the scaffolding altogether and make a traditional celebratory meal from whatever your culture may be.
Make use of the many hands you have around for the holidays to make the more labor intensive dishes: dumplings, tamales, Peking duck, maqluba, or a full Chuseok meal (aka Korean Thanksgiving).
If you’d like to deep dive on maqluba check out: Reem Assil’s book Arabiyya and Reem Kassis’ Carrot Maqluba recepie, also Parawana by Durkhanai Ayubi has a recipe for Kabuli Pulao similar to the Persian dish Shirin Polo.
Would you like to prep and freeze something ahead of Thanksgiving and/or would you like to make savory pie?
Butternut squash lasagna
Chicken or turkey pot pie (make it or buy it, we don’t judge)
Thanksgiving-y Quiche? Chunks of roasted winter squash, broccoli rabe, gruyere, perhaps with a blue cheese finish if you are into that sort of thing.
Fried sage salsa verde could be an ingredient in quiche?
Savory bread pudding/stuffing pie
Wet stuffing, as thirsty as possible, lots of celery, nearly a panade
Or just make stuffing and freeze it and call it a day
Pie Crust Anxiety:
Work ahead to give yourself less stress.
Make sure everything is cold.
Handle the dough as little as possible.
Add as little water as possible.
Resting will hydrate the dough.
Remember, it will be okay!
Here’s Aaron’s Tart Dough from SFAH, it really will be okay!
Vegetarian Main Suggestions, No Mushrooms Please:
Panade! (see above)
Lasagna! (see above & below)
Savory Mille-Feuille
Kuku-kopita from Good Things
Eggplant-kopita
Spanikopitas
Bourekas
Aaand we are back to Thanksgiving Lasagna!
Fun fact: Baby Samin’s First Article in a National Magazine: Martha Stewart Living with a recipe for Thanksgiving Lasagana! (Tragically, it is lost to time and print magazines).
Try this David Tanis Broccoli Rabe Lasagana recipe instead (don’t worry, you can still add squash).
Does your Thanksgiving contribution need to go through TSA?
HOW ABOUT LASAGNA???
Or cookies?
A Cookie That Tastes Like Pumpkin Pie?
Originally eaten at Wildflower in Arizona, Samin has some thoughts on a dupe.
Think of it like a ginger cookie recipe - a really good one comes from Claire Saffitz in Dessert Person, but with pumpkin instead of molasses. Also, don’t skip on her old, now new, technique where vinegar is added to the batter.
Use the glaze (p. 52) from Vaughn Vreeland’s new book Cookies.
Also, don’t skip: Vaughn’s recipe for Pumpkin Pie Bars, they look amazing!
Important note: if you would like to compliment Samin, ‘The Chicken Lady’ is what she is most spiritually prepared to accept.
YES to Chicken for Thanksgiving!
It’s not harder to roast four chickens than it is to roast one chicken.
Or do a small turkey, stay small with the turkey–a big one will always be dry.
Be mindful of your oven space.
A side to go with the chicken, that you can test your brother on: stovetop potato gratin from Good Things.
Sauces for the chicken: Fried Sage Salsa Verde, or if you are over it by now, go with the Green Sauce in Good Things.
You could also just skip the whole Thanksgiving situation and get Chinese takeout and have a movie night instead. Hrishi is finally starting to make sense with his plan for Salt and Pepper Tofu from Green Dragon.
Illustration by Mamie Rheingold