{Feast} A Modern Thanksgiving

photo by Yunhee Kim 

Throughout childhood, my mom's annual Thanksgiving was utterly classic-- a Butterball turkey, mashed potatoes, bagged stuffing, grandma's cranberry relish, turkey gravy, warm buttery dinner rolls, and two pies: pumpkin and pecan. The only discussion was whether to make mom's version of sweet potatoes (candied) or dad's (smashed with marshmallow topping), or both (the answer: both!).

The first Thanksgiving after I graduated from culinary school, my siblings put me up to making the whole meal. The mashed potatoes were riced (read: luxuriously lump free) and extra rich (yes, cream). The turkey was brined and the gravy herbed. The rolls were homemade, of course, and the stuffing a decadent, wild mushroom and sage number. My family said it was the best Thanksgiving meal they'd ever had. And then, agreed that they still wanted mom's henceforth. Ah, tradition. 

Truth? That's been a great deal for me--it's the one day of the year I usually don't cook. Plus, Thanksgiving cooking is epic. Super intense. You need a trunk full of ingredients. You need counter space, oven space. You need to wake up early to put in the turkey (deal breaker.). By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, I've already cooked  my heart out all year long; I'm more than happy to just show up to the meal, hungry. 

But somehow I always get lured into making dinner the night before. That's when I cook the meal I really want to eat--the meal I'd be making if I were hosting thanksgiving. This meal would star fish, my favorite protein, and would be decidedly autumnal and centerpiece-worthy. 

It would also be epically easy, because my days of ricing potatoes, folks, were over long ago. These days, I'm more likely to put that effort into getting the family to agree on what movie we'll watch after we've cleaned up, which, by the way, will take just minutes, since this whole meal roasts on one cookie sheet, unlike our beloved pilgrim's feast. 

This, friends, is the modern Thanksgiving. 

ROASTED WILD SALMON, MUSHROOMS AND SQUASH WITH HERB GREMOLATA | SERVES 4

5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 organic acorn or delicata squash, seeded and thinly sliced

8 oz oyster mushrooms, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces

4 small shallots, peeled and quartered

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1 1 ½ -pound skin-on side of wild salmon or arctic char

1 handful sorrel or arugula, chopped

1 handful parsley, chopped

1/3 cup toasted pine nuts

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Serves 4 {easily doubled or tripled} 

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Toss together 2 tbsp of the olive oil with the squash, mushrooms, and shallots in a medium bowl. Place in the bottom of a large oven-to-table baking dish and spread out evenly. Season with salt and pepper. Bake until squash is fork-tender and the mushrooms mostly roasted, with some golden and crispy parts, about 20 minutes.

Coat the salmon with 1 tbsp of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Lay the salmon on top of the vegetables and continue roasting until just cooked through, about 10 minutes more. The salmon should be pale pink on the outside, easily flaked with a fork and ever so translucent pink in the very center.

Meanwhile, stir together sorrel, parsley, pine nuts, and lemon zest and juice with the remaining 2 tbsp oil. Season with salt and pepper. Scatter the gremolata wildly all over the top. Bring the baking dish to the table still warm from the oven (or transfer the fish and mushrooms to your favorite platter before you add the gremolata) and serve portions of fish, squash and mushrooms with plenty of gremolata for each person. 

baked apples. easy.

photo by Yunhee Kim 

There are a lot of things I’m not good at. I recently forgot (yes, forgot) to vote, I never have the right boots for fall, I’m not blessed with the kind of easy humor that diffuses awkward meetings, and when it comes to pop culture, well, all my material is significantly dated. And that’s just the beginning. But there are a few things I do pretty well—keeping cool under the pressure of a crying toddler—especially on that’s not my own, is one of them. In fact, if you see me on an airplane and your wailing child has everyone turning, squinty eyed your way (as if, folks, that actually helps anything), you might as well pass her down the aisle to me. I likely have something—a song, a goofy face, squeaky toy or other surprise in my bag that might help.

Just last week on a plane to Birmingham, a mother sat down in my row with three kids under age four. She passed them each some some buttery crackers to keep busy, but just as we were wheels up, the littlest one burst into sobs. The mother cooed and bounced her babe on her knee, but the wailing only got worse. I could almost feel her sweating two seats away. Eager to help, I fished in my purse and produced a handful of Hello Kitty stickers. I passed them her way—instant awe and silence from the toddler (stickers are magic). The mother leaned over and mouthed a grateful “thank you.”

Of course, that’s not a talent, really. And just as often, other parents have entertained my child on an airplane or restaurant or other places we find ourselves without all the gear needed to keep things on the up and up. It took me nearly a year to learn we had to bring wipes, snacks and sunscreen everywhere we go (thanks, every mom I met in zoos, beaches and parks, who shared theirs until I got the hang of it), and there’s still lots I have to learn.

Where am I going with this? Ah yes, baked apples.

As women, we grow up believing that we should have a fulfilling career, a satisfying marriage, beautifully coiffed children who never cry on airplanes and all the answers for when they do. We expect ourselves to get our holiday cards out on time and make homemade Christmas gifts and bake, at least once a season, a perfect pie. But the truth is, we can’t be or do all things, no matter how hard we try. We can’t be poised, cultured career women and patient, prepared mothers and have nails that don’t chip or boots that are perfectly up-to-date. And we can’t all bake rustic, divine-looking pies, even if technically we could, given the time and energy, someone to entertain the children while we bake and clean up after us.

But we all deserve to have an easy, everyday dessert for pie season that’s just as good and infinitely easier. That’s baked apples: impossibly simple and nearly guaranteed to make you feel that, despite your shortcomings, or mine, we’re still darn good mothers, wives, and women. This is a dessert that promises that we can, sometimes, invite our friends (or our kid’s friends) over on a Sunday for sweets by the fire, and still have the energy left to iron our slacks, and pack lunches and ballet tights and mittens for the next day so that we can try in earnest to be, not perfect, but our own special breed of our very best. Here’s to agreeing that’s good enough.

BAKED APPLES | SERVES 6

A dessert this simple is hard to resist.  It relies on the exceptional taste of the apple itself, freshly picked and still dense with tart, sweet juice that concentrates to baste itself (with a little help from cinnamon sugar) in the oven. I bake mine in a very hot oven because it’s the crispy, almost–crème brûlée crackle on the top of the apple that makes this easy dessert one of my absolute favorites.

3 tbsp unsalted butter, plus room-temperature butter for the pan

6 crisp, sweet-tart apples such as Jonagold, unpeeled and cored

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3 to 4 tbsp sugar, depending on the sweetness of the apples

Vanilla ice cream  (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C/gas 6. Lightly brush a medium baking dish with room-temperature butter and place the apples, touching if necessary, in the dish, stem-side up. Stir together the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl. Put a pat of butter inside each apple and sprinkle the tops with cinnamon sugar.

Bake until the apples are sitting in their own juices and starting to sink just a touch and the tops are crispy and caramelizing, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool just slightly on the countertop, about 5 minutes. Spoon the apples onto small plates or shallow bowls and spoon the juices over the top. Serve warm.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM Feast: Generous Vegetarian Meals for Any Eater and Every Appetite 

Magic Winter Squash and Bean Soup

When I first started making vegetarian soups, I worried that they would be watery or bland without the round, soothing backdrop of good chicken stock. In its stead, some folks take the time to make a rich roasted vegetable stock, but the point of soup, to me, is a meal that’s warm and satisfying on the fly—something simple but downright good.  

My winter soup fits the bill. It’s as nimble and changing as my mood. The only constant is the butternut squash (which breaks down and both colors and flavors the broth to a richer state, like magic) and aged Parmesan (rind simmered in the soup for depth, and shavings over the top for a salty satisfaction). I usually add potatoes (which thicken the broth) and something green (for good health). The rest, my friends, is utterly subject to your whim. 

Besides chopping vegetables, there’s not much to this. You’ll find your way. Promise.

This is the kind of soup you’ll want to eat for days on end when the temperature drops and the ground is suddenly covered in white. And if you make it in your biggest pot, you can. Served with thick slices of whole grain bread and butter, it will leave you so contented you'll need little more than a juicy Clementine for dessert.

So what’s the real magic of this soup? It’s almost guaranteed to serve as many as can fit around your table (or will double or triple till it does). Keep a pot of this going once a week in the winter and you might find your table full of friends and neighbors, waiting with their hands wrapped on eager bowls.

Ladle it forth. The sun is setting later now but there's much to winter yet ahead. 

~

Magic Winter Squash and Bean Soup

Serves 6 to 8

4 large carrots, scrubbed

4 stalks celery, plus leaves

2 handfuls fingerling potatoes, scrubbed

1 large squash, peeled and cleaned (or 20 ounces cubed butternut squash)

4 small campari or 3 plum tomatoes (optional)

1 large bunch kale 

1 small wedge aged Parmigiano Reggiano

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Several sprigs of fresh thyme

6 to 8 cups water, plus as needed

Pinch red pepper flakes

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1 15-oz can of your favorite beans, rinsed and drained

 1. Slice the carrots and celery plus the celery leaves. Quarter the potatoes and cut the squash into chunks. Quarter the tomatoes. Remove the ribs from the kale and chop into bite-sized pieces. Set all the vegetables aside. Trim the parmesan away from the rind (or use a rind saved from a previous wedge) and set the rest aside. 

2.Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium high heat. Add the carrots, celery and celery leaves and stir to coat. Cook until lightly browned, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the potatoes, squash, tomatoes, water, thyme and parmesan rind and bring to a simmer. Add a generous pinch of red pepper flakes and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the vegetables are tender, the squash is beginning to break down, and the soup is full of flavor, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

3. Stir in the beans and cook to warm through, 2 minutes. Remove the lid and add the kale. Stir to cook (uncovered) until bright green and tender, 3 minutes more. Ladle into bowls and grate parmesan cheese generously over the top. Serve warm with buttered bread.

one splendid squash + a prayer for peace

I've always said, never underestimate the ability of a humble squash to feed a family. Growing up, one of my favorite meals was mom's baked squash, stuffed with sweet and spicy sausage and a sprinkling of brown sugar. We'd each get an oozing warm half, or a quarter (for the littler ones) drizzled with the buttery brown-sugar goodness that had collected in the bottom of the roasting pan. It was steady and sure, both the meal and the feeling I had after eating it, surrounded by my siblings and parents at the family table.

I intended to write you about this habit I have of buying a pretty squash on every trip to the market, particularly when I know we'll be going away. It keeps well on the counter, and waits for our return, a promised sure-thing dinner when we return from a weekend or even a week away. I planned to write to you about the style of simple sure-thing cooking I've come to rely on the last two weeks, working outside the house again as Food Director at Real Simple magazine. I thought I might convince you of the splendor such simple foods can translate into when you give them a little love and care. But right now, squash doesn't seem to be quite enough of a steady and sure thing for the times we're living in.

Tonight, far, far too many families are sitting around a table with an enormous part of their world and their hearts missing. I can't express enough sorrow or sadness, can't begin to comprehend the future for these families. All I can offer is prayer, and a wish that each of us take every opportunity to continue to love, cherish and nurture the beloved ones we have the great privilege of sitting among tonight.

God bless and keep us, every one.

{inspired by....} persimmon

I've always been fascinated by persimmons, perhaps because I didn't grow up with them. I love their fleshy, floral vibe but I still haven't quite mastered how to make them shine. Have you? Do share, please?

the sweet smell of Saigon + an apple-pear sauce

Do you know what's really wonderful eaten along side a generous hunk of fresh Carrot Banana Hazelnut Bread? A bowl of warm Apple-Pear Sauce. The apples break down into a tender mush, leaving elegant slivers of pear in tact, every bite swimming in the heady satisfaction of Saigon cinnamon. I make mine in small batches because we all love it warm, straight from the stove, but it keeps like a dream in glass jars in the fridge for the week. There's really little more to say....

~

Apple Pear Sauce

Serves 4

4 pounds sweet-tart apples such as Macintosh, Jonagold, empire, or Macoun

1 pound firm, ripe pears such as Bartlett

1 stick cinnamon, or ground cinnamon to taste

about 1 cup apple cider, or as needed

Wash, quarter and cut out the core of your favorite apples (I like a variety, just like in my pie). Repeat with the pears. Cut the apples into chunks and the pears into chunks or slivers. Layer them in a large saucepan with 1 stick of cinnamon, or a generous pinch of Saigon cinnamon. Add just enough apple cider to reach about 1 inch up the pot and cover and simmer over medium heat until the apples are soft and start to break down, and the pears are soft throughout, about 25 minutes.

Spoon the sauce into four bowls and eat warm, or remove from the heat and puree with an immersion blender until smooth. Serve warm, or spoon it into sterile jars and cool on the counter before sealing. Store in the fridge up to one week. 

{bake shop} Carrot Banana Hazelnut Bread

Did you ever wonder why moms make so much banana bread? I hadn't given it much thought until this weekend, but now I know. If you have kids, bananas are a staple. An utter must. Since the amount of kids I might need to feed can jump from one to five in an instant at the whim of our little social bee, I now stock them in the double digits. This also means that there are bananas of varying ripeness on hand, and more and more often lately, the smashed carried all day in my purse in case Greta got an instant case of the hungries bruised and beaten banana that gets stuck back in the fridge if still uneaten when day is done.  

This lovely bread—as inviting as a breakfast bread as it is an after-nap weekend snack—is the happy accident when a few of those bruisers and last night's leftover carrot mash were calling to me "Reinvent me. Bake! Make me beautiful again!" 

And here's the big reveal...there were. I topped my Carrot-Banana bread with sprinkling of sunflower seeds, rolled oats and hazelnuts (and walnuts on the other) for extra flavor and fiber, but you could add any combo of nuts, seeds and grains to the top (or insides) or yours. Give it a little love, it's deserving. 

~

Carrot-Banana-Hazelnut Bread

Makes 2 large loaves or 4 to 5 small loaves

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups raw organic sugar

1 1/4 cups vegetable oil

10 ounces pure carrot puree (1 1/4 cups)

2 cups white whole-wheat flour or whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 to 3 very ripe smashed bananas

¼ cup rolled oats or barley

¼ cup lightly toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped (or walnuts)

3 tablespoons raw sunflower seeds

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter 2 standard loaf pans or 4 to 5 mini pans and dust evenly with flour.

Beat the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer in a medium bowl on medium-high speed until thick and pale yellow, about 4 minutes. Add the oil and carrot puree. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and cinnamon and stir into the batter until evenly combined. Pour into the prepared pans and top with oats, nuts and sunflower seeds. Bake until the breads spring back lightly when touched and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 40 to 45 minutes, or 20 to 22 minutes for small loaves. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  Wrap well and set aside to ripen overnight or eat warm with butter.     

Photos and Recipes © Sarah Copeland 2012

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