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11/18/2007 Archived Entry: "Thanksgiving Recipe Round-up"

It happens in life that sometimes the past must be put behind and it becomes time to start new traditions. This year is one of those times for my family. Many of you have nostalgia for the days that I answered last-minute emergency Thanksgiving questions and broadcast Food Talk from my sister’s kitchen in New Jersey. Whenever I bump into old listeners, I hear how much they liked those shows in particular. I liked doing them, too, and enjoying turkey day in my sister’s house. It was fun while it lasted.

This Thanksgiving, however, we are starting a new custom. We are going to celebrate the day at the home of my friend Rozanne Gold and Michael Whiteman. They have a new addition to their family, an 11-year-old girl named Shayna, and, along with some of my cousins, with whom Rozanne and Michael are good friends, and some other good friends, we are all going to their house just a few blocks away from me in Brooklyn. My family will sleep here on Thursday night, so we’ll all wake up together on Friday, and eat breakfast together, as we have for nearly 30 years. It’ll just be in a different house.

We’re all cooking, too. My sister will bring to Rozanne’s some of our family favorites, including the whipped sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows that I have never learned to like, even though my 1950s mother made them, too – too sweet for me. Rachel, my niece, who will be visiting with her fiancée from St. Louis (yes, time does go on) will bake, which she does very well. I bought a spiral cut ham – just in case the two turkeys that Rozanne and Michael are roasting are not enough-- and I’m in charge of making a couple of appetizers, the mashed potatoes, and, at the last minute, making the gravy. My cousin Erica Marcus, Newsday’s food reporter and feature writer, is making a potato gratin. Bob Harned, who barely boils water, has been put in charge of buying several cans of Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce, which we all love although I know we are not supposed admit it. I don’t know what else anyone is baking or cooking. Rozanne has organized it all.

For those of you who have not totally organized your Thanksgiving dinner, yet, and also for those who may need some recipes for the leftovers, I’ve put together a list of the Thanksgiving-appropriate dishes that are archived on this website. There are many, dating back to 1999.

Pet peeve time: The recipe archive on this web site is not utilized enough. I know this from the statistics the web site server provides. I know this, too, from talking to people who come to the site. They are unaware, or don’t remember, that there are more than 300 recipes currently archived here.

Most of what follows I myself found by putting the word “Thanksgiving” in the search box at the top of the page. You think I even remember what’s here?

Let me add one more thing: I am a food journalist. I don’t usually create recipes. I record – communicate -- other people’s recipes, although I often have to figure out the exact formula and write the directions. Oh, I guess once in a while I invent something. But they are, in general, other people’s creations that I select because they suit my personal taste. Naturally, as a cook – and I have personally prepared every recipe I publish on this site and in my books, even when the recipe is from what I would deem a totally reliable source – I have to add my two cents.

All that said, here’s my Thanksgiving list.

Turkey Leftovers
Peter’s Turkey Hash is especially good when you use lots of turkey skin in it. His mother wasn’t much of a cook, so burned onions are a defining flavor here. Impossible Turkey Pie is totally possible with a box of Bisquick.

Egg Nog Pumpkin Custard
This is a favorite recipe of my friend Dorie Greenspan, whose latest book, Baking: From My Home To Yours is a deservedly huge, huge success (and a rather big book, too, gorgeously photographed by my friend Alan Richardson).

Pumpkin Custard Pie and Rozanne’s Sweeet Potato Ginger-Orange Puree
Here’s one recipe that I have fiddled with and made mine, but – confession time -- it started out as James Beard’s. Rozanne’s sweet potato side dish tastes fattening, but it is totally fat free, and as simples as can be. It’s one of her famous three-ingredient recipes.

Joan Hamburg’s Ritz Cracker Stuffing
So, now that I have written Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited (now available on pre-order from Amazon), and I have done all this Yiddish food research, here’s my revelation about Joan’s family favorite: It is perhaps actually the mock kishka recipe that Ritz promoted in the 1940s.

Sara Moulton’s Miniature (Savory) Goat Cheese Cakes
Sara and I share many tastes, including the fondness for the same clunky residential stove, a cheap Amana. I call mine Donna Reed because it looks so 1950s. I was thrilled to learn this week that Sara is coming back to TV. Forget the Food Network. She’ll be on PBS, educating us all about how to prepare dinner for our families every night.

Bert Greene’s Turkey Tetrazzini
Dear, dear Bert Greene, a very good, close friend, died 20 years ago, and besides missing him terribly, I am also sad that young, aspiring food writers are not reading him. Actually, what is really sad is that young aspiring food writers don’t read any of the old greats. Here’s only one of Bert’s recipes that are on my web site. Check out his Ziti Salad, too.

Barbecue Turkey Hash
This is as simple as could be – take a bottle of barbecue sauce … – and, incidentally, one of Joan Hamburg’s favorites for leftover turkey.

Brussels Sprouts
I can’t help myself. I love Brussels Sprouts, especially roasted. And they are so healthy.

A Turkey Tip – Roasting Breast-Side Down
Not a recipe, just a tip.

Carole Walter’s Lemon Meringue Pie
Carole Walter is my baking guru. I mean she is my friend and I call her all the time when I am stumped with a baking recipe, which is often, especially now that I am trying to translate sketchy southern Italian recipes into precise American formulas. Carole’s latest book is Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More: 200 Anytime Treats and Special Sweets for Morning to Midnight. If you bake, you need this book in your library, as you also must have Carole’s other award-winning tomes: Great Cakes, Great Cookies, and Great Pies & Tarts. By the way, Carole still holds forth on baking with classes at the Kings Cooking Studio in New Jersey. I would have to say she is the most respected baking teacher in America today, and maybe ever.

Carole Walter’s Apple Pie
What can I say: Another perfect recipe from Carole.

Marie Kalman’s Key Lime Pie
My darling friend Marie died about six years ago at age 80. At the time of her death, my freezer had several Key Lime Pies-worth of grated zest and ice-cubed juice to bake her pies. Marie would portion these out for me. I have to say that I didn’t have the heart to bake a Key Lime Pie for several years. I wanted to be reminded my Marie every time I opened the freezer and saw the makings. Eventually, I tossed out the grated zest in their tiny plastic pouches that Marie had created, and made myself a pitcher of Key limeade. I drank it very slowly.

Coconut Custard Pie
This is an old family favorite that I did, indeed, come up with myself. When I was a child, my father would go to Mrs. Maxwell’s on Atlantic Ave. in the East New York section of Brooklyn, from whence he came, and buy a coconut custard pie, a pumpkin pie, a Nesselrode pie, and a chocolate cream pie. Maybe a banana cream pie, too. They all came in returnable tin pie plates, for which you had to leave a deposit. Mrs. Maxwell’s is still there at its original location, although I don’t think they carry the same line of baked goods. I keep meaning to check it out, but I haven’t. Nesselrode pie will certainly strike a nostalgic chord with many New Yorkers. There is, indeed, a recipe for it on this site. However, one of the ingredients doesn’t exist anymore – Rafetto’s Nesselro (sic) Filling. I have had to reformulate the recipe. The new and improved formula is in Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food.

Turkey-Mushroom Soup with Wild Rice and White Rice
Another of my very own concoctions.

Ann Nurse’s Baked Ham
Ann Amendolara Nurse is one of my dearest friends. She is the Italian Mamma to many of New York’s top chefs. Among other good works for the food community, she organizes the chef demonstrations at New York Technical College’s culinary, hotel and restaurant department. She calls herself my “Barese Mamma” because her people came from Molo di Bari, although Ann herself was born in Brooklyn, like me. She’s the one who, when I left WOR and I figured I might never work again, said “I’m not worried about you. You make very good pasta fazool.” Adorable, and a brilliant cook, not just of Italian American food, but of all-American food, too. Here’s proof.

Gingered Pear and Apricot Crisp
A great recipe if you are having a very big crowd for a party buffet.

Tawny Orange Marmalade Cake
A nice English tea cake, if you like these kinds of things. I do.

Farmhouse Chocolate-Potato Cake
One day, I will have to dig up the chocolate potato cake recipe I made when I was writing for Newsday. I still dream about it, and I know it is somewhere here in a file or recipe box. This version, however, is superb, too. Potato adds incomparable moisture to the cake, and makes for longevity, not that it won’t right away be gobbled up (Thanksgiving pun intended).

New York Crumb Cake
This is one of my favorite recipes from “Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food.” I worked really hard on it, to get the crumbs big and crisp, to get the cake light and moist. It was only recently put up here on The Food Maven. You’ll find some other recipes from the book – and from my other cookbooks – in the The Maven’s Cookbookssection of the site.

Baked Quince
Quince sort of look like pears. They have a short season, which is now. When yellow and ripe they emit a fabulously sweet and flowery fragrance. When you cut into them and see how hard and dry they are you wouldn’t think they cook up into such a delicious dessert. This recipe is from my friend Arzu Yilmaz, originally from Izmir, in Turkey, now of New Jersey. She teaches Turkish cooking in various schools around the metro area, and is now also doing her Turkish cooking on an English-language, Turkish satellite station, EBRU TV. You can also access it on the internet: Go to the program called Connections at 10 a.m.