The Right Pies to Make

I am on "pie duty" for Thanksgiving, so I need to figure out which pies I will make.

Someone else is planning to bring an apple pie, so that base is covered. My plans for the moment are:

• cherry pie
• pumpkin pie (it is Thanksgiving after all)
• lemon chess pie

But I have never made lemon chess pie before. Sure, I understand that it's pretty easy to make one, but I'm finding different recipes that call for varying amounts of corn meal or lemon juice. There is this recipe from AllRecipes.com, and then there is this one from the Food Network. Even the amounts of sugar are different.

Decisions . . . decisions.

Final Tips & Ideas for Thanksgiving

Take a deep breath and relax. Linda Larsen offers these tips on making a gravy for the Thanksgiving turkey.

Cranberry sauce shouldn't come out of a can. Especially when there's an easy recipe like this one. Stir in a little orange zest if you wish.

Mashed potatoes are a predictable side dish. Want to try something different? How about sweet potatoes? No, they don't have to be candied. Try this recipe, but substitute a can of mandarin oranges for the orange, and replace the corn syrup with 1/2 cup of molasses. You'll love it.

What about pies? Pumpkin pie is traditional, but Simply Recipes offers several other options on this web page.

Perfect Mashed Potatoes

It's a safe bet that a large bowl of mashed potatoes will grace most dinner tables on this upcoming Thanksgiving. But how they are prepared is likely to vary, if only a little. Today's Washington Post includes this article about making the perfect mashed potatoes:

Mashed potatoes or potato puree is a dish everyone can make. It demands so little: Boil some potatoes and crush them with whatever you have at hand: a potato ricer, a fork or the backside of a wooden spatula.

The transformation from plain boiled potatoes to a dish with its own merit needn't take more than a minute. If the potatoes are good, and if you add a little milk, a lump of butter or some cream, few people would not appreciate or even love the result.

... However the process of making good mashed potatoes does have its demands. ... Cooks who are overeager or inattentive risk ending up with a sticky mass of something more resembling wallpaper glue than gastronomy.

The article talks about the importance of letting the potatoes drain (once they've been boiled). The writer recommends using a hand-held electric mixer rather than a food processor. There are other suggestions and caveats so it's an article worth reading.

Some people swear by using Russet potatoes, while others insist that Yukon Golds are the best. I think the latter make the best mashed potatoes.

There's also the issue of whether to add garlic or an herb like sage. I like these kinds of twists, but my significant other is a purist when it comes to mashed potatoes.

A Make-Ahead Thanksgiving

The N.Y. Times' Mark Bittman opens this article by writing:

For cooks, most Thanksgiving problems are brought about by the sheer number of dishes competing for the stove: It's not easy to roast a turkey and sweet potatoes for 20 at the same time.

The best solution is to make food in advance . . .

What follows are dozens of recipes for side dishes, relishes and soups that can be made ahead of time. Some sound much better than others, but any Thanksgiving cook should be able to find several good ideas here.

Speaking for myself, I don't get serving "soup" for the Thanksgiving meal.

Brining a Turkey

I've eaten a turkey both ways, brined and not brined. And I can tell you that brining makes a big difference in producing a tastier, juicier turkey.

Slash Food offers these do's and don'ts for brining. Over at the weblog Serious Eats, this post walks people through the ABC's of brining. As the blog notes, brining is not a new concept:

The Scandinavians and Chinese have been extolling the virtues of brining for milennia, and Cook's Illustrated has for at least a decade. But the thing that is odd to me is that people can't seem to agree on how it works -- even the experts.

Cranberry Cravings

“It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is inedible without it.” -- Allistair Cooke

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that turkey is "inedible" without it, but it sure tastes a lot better with it. Everyone I know seems to have a favorite version of cranberry sauce. For some, it's the no-nonsense gelatinized version that comes right out of a can. For others, it's more of a relish that may have orange or lemon zest in it.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, this article on MSN's "Delish" offers several different recipes for cranberry sauce. The version with apples and port looks most appealing to me. The Ginger-Orange version is also enticing.