what to bring to thanksgiving

plus: a halloumi and fall vegetable roast and an interview with erin alderson

Nov 25, 2024

Monday, November 25, 2024

Good morning!

In these busy holiday cooking weeks, I can’t help but note that the world is suddenly sorted into two groups: those that host and those that show up as guests. The hosts have usually been plotting their menus for weeks, if not longer, taking notes from the year(s) before. The turkeys are acquired, or will be shortly. Dry vs. wet brine has already been sorted. Potato and pie formats are selected, too. And those of us on the guest list (I’m a guest this year) are texting the hosts: What can I bring?

“Just bring your wonderful self!” is a sweet but slightly unhelpful response I, too, am guilty of sending most of the time, but I fall into the category of host listed described the second article above — I prefer handling everything myself. But should your host be normal, and not a 3x cookbook author with control issues, heh, I’ve collected below some Thanksgiving-friendly recipes that I think are perfect to bring — excellent at room temperature, easy to make ahead, and both keep and travel well to wherever you’re heading.

Today we also have an interview with the wonderful Erin Alderson, whose new cookbook, The Yearlong Pantry is out now. Read on to enjoy it!

Cheers!

Deb

halloumi and fall vegetable roast

New! A sheet pan of fall vegetables roasted until almost charred, finished with balsamic, and studded with heavenly, salty, crispy pillows of halloumi. Is this for Thanksgiving? Sure... if you wish. But I’ve been making this on repeat, just for me, and cannot recommend it enough.

“One of the winning elements of ‘The Recipe’ is that it’s not prescriptive — rather than settling on one universal ‘perfect’ recipe, the chefs explain their personal preferences, then give listeners the information they need to make their own adjustments. By breaking their recipes down ingredient-by-ingredient, digging into what each one is doing, they make the science of cooking approachable and fun.” — New York Times, 7 Podcasts to Inspire a New Hobby

The latest full episode of my podcast with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb is all about Apple Pie! You can listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts, such as Apple, Spotify, and more. Plus, for this holiday week, we’re running an excerpt of the new special audiobook edition of Smitten Kitchen Keepers, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: A Kitchen Counter Conversation. You can listen to it here, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

parsley pecorino biscuits

A ridiculously simple, unapologetically cute, biscuit for all of your breakfast-to-big feast needs. Make them today and freeze them until needed (you can bake them from the freezer) or just make them today. For the morning you deserve.

caramelized onion and gruyère biscuits

Perfect with eggs for breakfast or soup for dinner, these are the biscuit equivalent of onion soup, ribboned with caramelized onions and studded with diced bits of cheese, some of which spill into crispy frico puddles as they bake.

perfect corn muffins

Golden, craggy, towering and tender muffins, meltingly good with a pat of butter, get their texture from a clever hack from Cook Illustrated -- cooking some of the cornmeal until thick. It's worth it. *We* are worth it.

date, feta and red cabbage salad

One of my favorite winter salads, this is a symphony of salt, crunch, and sweetness and it complements all of those rich holiday meals so nicely.

butternut squash and caramelized onion galette

This butternut squash and caramelized onion galette is my every-fall-without-fail favorite thing: the flakiest, easiest pastry, the coziest filling. You’re going to be asked to make it again and again.

wild mushroom and stilton galette

This galette is a little bit fancy (those mushrooms! that cheese!) and a tiny bit fussy, but it's a holiday brunch/luncheon/dinner spotlight hog every time thanks to an unforgettable flaky crust and hearty filling.

sweet potato cake with marshmallow frosting

Sweet potatoes and toasted marshmallows, freed from their casserole confines, make an astoundingly good, decadently crumbed spice cake that wants to be your new Thanksgiving thing.

cranberry pecan frangipane tart

Ground pecans, a little orange zest, a nip of brandy and whole tart cranberries, cooked until they slump, all fill out a parbaked tart shell and we cannot keep our forks out of it.

nutmeg maple butter cookies

Do not be deceived by the simple appearance of these cookies. They are a tumble of butter and maple syrup, crackly sea salt and a whiff of nutmeg and the exact reason I took so long to make good on my promise to provide a recipe for straightforward sugar cookies. It’s hard when stuff like this exists.

apple cider caramels

This is my favorite candy I've *ever* made. It compacts a whole bottle of fresh apple cider into a salt-flecked, cinnamon-y, buttery caramel that is so loud with everything awesome about fall, no Thanksgiving is complete without it.

I’ve written three cookbooks and I’m a tiny bit biased, but I think you’d love them all. Wondering what you might cook from Smitten Kitchen Keepers now that school’s back in session and the leaves are changing colors? I thought you’d never ask! Try the peanut butter, oat, and jam bars, spiced sweet potato oven fries, tangy baked eggplant and couscous, and weeknight lemon chicken wings. To finish, I recommend the apple butterscotch crisp, the pumpkin snacking cake, and/or the apple cider old-fashioned. Were you looking for a list of all the recipes in each of my cookbooks? I’ve added these in a separate page and hope it makes it easier for you to find everything you want to cook.

AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIN ALDERSON

My shelves are full of wonderful cookbooks I don’t get to talk about enough, so I’ve added this section so you can get to know the cool people behind them. Today we're chatting with Erin Alderson. Her new cookbook, The Yearlong Pantry, came out in October.

1. What inspired your cookbook?

I often say that my cooking style is such that I want people to take a bite of my food and go, "Oh, this is delicious" and then have the afterthought that it just also happens to be vegetarian. To do that, I'm focused a lot on what makes a meal, a dish, or even a bite satisfying. And, I kept coming back to so many of the ingredients I highlighted in the book (grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds). These are the ingredients that provide the foundations of flavor and texture and, what I think is just awesome, can be used in so many varying ways to provide that.

2. What recipe are you the most proud of in the book, or felt the most triumphant when you got it right?

This is an easy pick for me: the Black Bean Smash Burger in an In-N-Out style (page 129). When I moved to California, I feel like the question I was most asked is if I had tried In-N-Out. Whether people agree or not, it's viewed as a quintessential west coast fast food burger known for its thin patties with crispy edges and the use of a thousand-island like dressing. I really wanted to replicate the burger with beans, complete with crispy, lacey edges and I feel like I nailed it.

3. What recipe is so low-effort, high-reward that it's worth cooking for dinner tonight, even if we're tired and don't want to cook?

I'll be the first to admit that my style of cooking is not alway low effort but I adore the Chipotle Pinto Bean Stew (page 126) which relies heavily on canned chipotle peppers and red miso for flavor and no-cook toppings like avocado and radish. And while I love cooking beans from dry, this is a recipe that can easily work well with canned beans.

4. What's something you wish more people knew about your book?

I think, for me, it's that the book feels equal parts recipe-driven and resource-based. I want people to feel inspired by the recipes and I wrote the book so that if people wanted to use grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds in varying ways, I could be there to help them out as they explore more.

Thank you, Erin! You can order The Yearlong Pantry right here.

bourbon pumpkin cheesecake

shop my favorites

Ever wonder where I get my cutting boards, paring knives, offset spatulas and more than you see when I cook? I've created a page on Smitten Kitchen with links to some of my favorite kitchen items, the ones I'm asked about the most — yes, including the the Smitten Kitchen x Staub Braiser, which is back in stock! For each item, I've attempted to provide a range of shopping links so we're not just focusing on one giant retailer.

See you next week!