Five Spicy Opinions on Thanksgiving menu planning

Plus the Bayou Saint turkey day menu is here!

I’ll be playing around with my version of a sachertorte for my holiday menu this year - my Thanksgiving sacher will feature satsuma marmalade and mascarpone mousse.

A note for locals: I have a small but sexy Thanksgiving menu debuting today - newsletter subscribers get a head start and can order starting… now! Pick up will be from 2-6 pm on Wednesday, November 22nd at Bar Pomona. I’ll be holding down the fort with my friend Angie of Homeslice Pies (check out her Instagram for her pie menu - she’ll be having pie pickup from 2-5). Bar Pomona will be open for drinks, and you can shop Jamboree Jams if you need any last minute host gifts (jam, tinned fish, NA canned cocktails galore).

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ll most likely be slinging slices too (more details on that later). 

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For your consideration: Five Spicy Opinions on Thanksgiving menu planning 

I meant to keep this one short and sweet but it turns out I have a lot of strong opinions on Thanksgiving menu building and given a captive audience, I’ll wax on about it at greater length than anticipated. I’ve gone from being obsessed with extravagant, sprawling menus to wanting to keep my holiday as painless as possible - putting effort in where it counts, and relying on pre-made or catered items to round it out (do you find this horrifying??). Without further ado:

Outsource your Turkey

My wife and I have officially given up roasting our own Thanksgiving turkey and our holiday is calmer and more delicious for it. We live in a smallish home where storage is at a premium, and I’ll never again shove a whole frozen turkey in our ailing refrigerator when that space is better used for other, tastier ingredients. We’re just round the corner from a venerable New Orleans fried chicken restaurant, McHardys, that offers five flavors of whole deep fried turkeys - plain, cajun, Jamaican jerk, garlic herb, and lemon pepper. We’re typically a Jamaican jerk family, though this year we’re going half-and-half with lemon pepper just for fun.

On Thanksgiving, we’ll hit up the race track at a leisurely pace (more for the people-watching than for the gambling), and pick up our turkey on the way home.  It will come adorned with frilly white booties and resting on thick slabs of white bread to absorb the juices. It provides just enough meat so that everyone gets to try a bit (for tradition’s sake!), but the true genius of the McHardy’s turkey happens the next day. I’ll pick the meat and then slowly simmer the carcass overnight. On Friday, this super rich and highly seasoned stock becomes the basis for a turkey and andouille sausage gumbo. I’ll have my gumbo, sacreligiously, over a helping of leftover stuffing. 

When you don’t roast your own turkey, you can dedicate your time and oven space to the sides, which are, after all, the best part. When we’re nearly done cooking our stuffing, casseroles, and vegetables, I’ll crank the oven to 400 and flash our fried turkey to re-crisp the skin and warm the meat. In that same vein - a high quality store bought gravy is also fine! 

A note: the Thanksgiving Day races are another New Orleans tradition - folks get dressed up in outlandish headgear and start the holiday by day drinking at the track. It’s free to enter and people bring their whole families, kids included. 

Sweet potato is superior to pumpkin and flan is better than pie 

A two-parter spicy opinion!

First - there is no earthly reason to roast a pumpkin, extract the flesh, and turn it into pie filling. I actually think this fact is pretty firmly established by now, but in case you’re still on the fence: pumpkins vary wildly in sweetness and starchiness. You’ll typically have to do quite a bit of water extraction to a homemade pumpkin puree in order to mimic the reliability of a canned pumpkin product (Libby or bust). 

I’d go a step further and argue that you don’t really need pumpkin at all. I find many pumpkins have a slightly astringent quality that is distracting in a pie. Sweet potatoes are remarkably consistent, and roasting and mashing the flesh is a breeze. Their color is brighter and more engaging, with a clean vegatal sweetness that lets warm spices sing. The starchiness of the flesh also creates a beautifully firm custard, with little danger of cracking in the center from overbaking. 

My final, and spiciest opinion - I’d rather get up early on Thanksgiving to go the races than to start my pies. I hold fast to the notion that a flaky crusted pie is best enjoyed the day that its made, but all custard based pies need at least a 3 hour cooling period before you can get a decent slice. While I could certainly bake my Thanksgiving pies in the morning and allow them to cool while working on my savory sides, I’d simply rather be doing something else. So, I make a flan instead of a pie - by its nature, it must be made ahead. You can bake it the previous day, pop it in the fridge with a plate over the pan, and then stack whatever you need on top of it while you're working out your holiday fridge tetris. Just before serving, simply unmold it and you’re ready to go. This is another no-recipe recipe for me - I use my go-to sweet potato pie filling and bake it in a caramel-laced pan in a water bath until it's set. You could make it even easier by skipping the caramel and the unmolding, and making a lovely pan of spoonable custard instead. I’ll be sharing that filling recipe with y’all soon. 

You don’t need a green salad 

Perhaps my most divisive opinion: I only very rarely find a green salad engaging enough to deserve a place on a holiday table. Most climates or grocery stores won’t have access to high quality salad greens in late November, and I see no reason to put a pallid, bagged arugula salad out for my guests. This year, I’m adapting an element of a Melissa Clark recipe (her Sheet Pan Chicken Tagine from Dinner in One). I’ll skip the chicken and rub carrots and sweet potatoes with chili, turmeric, and cinnamon, then roast them with quartered lemons till it all gets deeply caramelized. The veg then gets tossed with olives, dates, mint, and cilantro for a hearty vegetable side. 

You should have more than one fun NA beverage - in fact, the more, the better. 

When one of my closest friends got sober, I started paying much closer attention to my non-alcoholic beverage options when hosting, and I’ve found it a lovely way to get creative with drinks without excluding anyone. When a guest arrives, I make a point of announcing the NA options first when offering someone a drink, and keeping the alcohol almost as an afterthought. If someone chooses not to drink for reasons of addiction, personal preference, or pregnancy, having lots of fun options to pick from makes the decision not to drink alcohol less laden, and also less noticeable if someone would rather not draw attention to it. You could make a cranberry punch that someone could top with either fizzy water or sparkling wine, or a warm spiced cider. I’ll always have kombucha in the fridge for guests in addition to the old standby, pampelmousse La Croix. This year, I’ll probably also stock up on the trendy NA cocktails you’ve seen around, like Ghia or Phony Negroni. 

Not everything needs to be cheffed up

I rarely spend Thanksgiving with wider family. My brother and I are both chefs and we’ve simply given up on attempting to both get time off for the holidays, and fifteen years later my parents have resigned themselves to the fact that we won’t spend those days together. That typically means that I spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with my restaurant industry friends. In my twenties and early thirties, my best friend (also a pastry chef), her now-husband (a chef) and I would host epic Thanksgiving feasts for all of our ragtag colleagues. Each Thanksgiving standby dish would have to be transformed into the most lux version - the techniques more and more refined, every last element homemade, and wherever possible, showered in truffles. My wife, while proofreading this newsletter, admitted that she found the prospect of cooking with this bunch for the first time terrifying.

I spent years working on a fancy green bean casserole, spending money I didn’t really have on expensive mushrooms, crisping my own onions and simmering my own cream base. And for what? In my old age I’m finally ready to say that a classic green bean casserole is just as good, if not better. The most valuable resource to me now is time : less time cooking, and more time putting my feet up and tucking into (sometimes store-bought) leftovers. 

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With all that, here is my work-in-progress Thanksgiving menu for this year. We’ll be hosting about 12 people.

• Cranberry yuzu punch

• Spiced apple cider

• Mashed potatoes 

• Green bean casserole (I’ll use a slightly upmarket cream of mushroom soup and only lightly blanch my green beans - otherwise this will be a pretty classic version). FWIW, Trader Joe’s has the best crunchy onions. 

• Stuffing (no funny business here - mine is scratch made but very simple - torn crusty white bread infused with herbs and chicken stock).

• Roasted carrots and sweet potatoes with olive and dates

• Fried turkey (from McHardys)

• Mac and cheese (from Blue Oak BBQ)

• Gravy (also from Blue Oak)

• Cranberry sauce (homemade, may have a candied kumquat element which is the cheffiest I’ll get) 

• Dinner rolls (going to bribe my BFF to make these for me as hers are the very best)

• Sweet potato flan

• Chocolate Nut Cheesecake pie from Homeslice Pies 

I’m so curious to hear what dishes you’re excited about - let me know in the comments!