Weekly Dish

Even though we traveled to Mississippi to see our families over the weekend, David and I spent this Thanksgiving Day at home. The semester schedule is hard on Thanksgiving holidays — we both had class on Wednesday and decided that getting up early to travel on Thursday was too stressful. Besides, David’s brother, Jon, and his wife, Hannah, are spending some time with us in between moves, and Hannah and I have always talked about how fun it would be to cook our own holiday meal.

And that is exactly what we did. We took our time, assembling and prepping on Wednesday so we wouldn’t have too much to do on Thursday, and made everything from scratch. I am notorious for overdoing everything, and when we sat down to make out the menu, I could tell that narrowing down a Thanksgiving spread to a simple dinner for 4 would be no easy feat.

But, in the name of a relaxing, stress-free holiday, I practiced all of the self-restraint I could muster and decided on a simple menu. The mother of a student I tutor brought me a quart of Spinach Madeline, so that was a for-sure side dish. David wanted to be in charge of the bird, so we sent him and Jon on a quest for an organic free-range turkey and let them take over that part of dinner. The other things we decided on were my grandmother’s cornbread dressing, which she taught me to make last Christmas; the World’s Best Green Bean Casserole (sans cream of mushroom soup, thank you, Alanna); cranberry sauce; and my great-grandmother’s sweet potato pie.

On Wednesday, we made cornbread, baked and mashed the sweet potatoes, made the cranberry sauce, and assembled the green beans minus the topping. It was a luxurious day of cooking — no rushing, no panicking, no worrying. And when Thursday came, all that was left was the bird and the dressing.

Oh, and the most ceremonious part for me: the setting of the table.

I come from a long line of women who have adorned their tables with beautiful things: fine china, cut-glass stemware, and sterling silver appear on my mother’s and grandmother’s dining room tables at every special occasion (and on many ordinary days too). These things are not necessary to enjoy a special meal, to be sure, but I love that I have them.

One of the benefits of getting married in the small southern town you grew up in (and marrying a boy from a nearby small town) is that people still feel like it’s important to arm the bride and groom with every dining accoutrement they could possibly need for their whole lives. And there’s something very sweet about that for me — that when my grown children come to dinner at my house with their families, we’ll feast on the dishes I was given on my wedding day, years and years before anyone could know what my life would turn out like.

We don’t pull out the china and crystal very often, but when we do, I feel like I’m pulling out all of the people who saw me through to this point in my life, all the people who came and celebrated with us when we married, all the people who wanted us to have pretty things and share them with our family.

My favorite of these possessions is a silver chest that belonged to my mother, filled with the pieces my grandmother has been giving me for what seems like my whole life. On my sixteenth birthday, when I opened up my gift from her to find a spoon, a knife, and two forks, I’ll admit that I didn’t quite know what to think. But, now, after many more of those birthdays, and other people adding to the collection along the way, it fills me with joy to pull out those lovely pieces and use them to share food with people I love.

On this Thanksgiving Day, of course I was thankful for the three people who immediately surrounded our small, simple Thanksgiving meal. But I love that I felt the presence of so many others who have contributed to kind of cook, hostess, and person I am. If only my table were bigger.

Dressing (not stuffing) is a staple at my family’s holiday events. My grandmother makes it every year, and every year, the aunts sit around and talk about how somebody needs to learn how to make it like she does (much like all of the other family recipes, there are no official written instructions).

So last Christmas, my sister and I followed Grandmother around the kitchen, snapping photos and scribbling down notes about what she was doing. This year, David’s brother and his wife are sharing Thanksgiving dinner with us, so Hannah and I are attempting to replicate the famous dressing.

I should say a word about southern cornbread dressing: it is not very similar to stuffings of other kinds. It’s more kin to a savory bread pudding, moistened by eggs and stock until it can be pressed into a dish, baked, and cut into squares. The oven browns the top into a lovely crunch, which gives way to a soft cloud of egg-enriched cornbread, flecked with celery, onion, and scallions.

I’m recording Grandmother’s instructions here, as Elizabeth and I observed, but after Hannah and I have attempted to follow them, I promise to update with more specifics. Grandmother’s been doing this so long, she can almost move around the kitchen combining ingredients blindfolded, so quantifying what she was doing was quite a challenge.

Grandmother’s Cornbread Dressing

1 batch cornbread (she makes it with buttermilk, but I don’t have the exact recipe. I’ll post the one Hannah and I use later, but Grandmother says the Jiffy mix works in a pinch)
Half of a bunch of celery
2 yellow onions
Olive oil and butter
Half a bunch of scallions or green onions
6 eggs
1 bag Pepperidge Farm stuffing
A handful of Saltine crackers, crackers
2 1/2 - 3 cups chicken or turkey stock (we roasted a chicken earlier in the week, so we would have homemade)
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Heat the oil and butter (enough to properly sweat the vegetables) in a skillet. Dice the celery and yellow onion, and slice the green onion, white and green parts. Saute the celery and onion in the oil and butter over medium-high heat until translucent. Add the green onions and cook for another minute or two.

In a large bowl, crumble up the cornbread. Beat the eggs and mix them in. Dump in the soft veggies, the stuffing mix, and the crushed crackers. Stir with a long-handled wooden spoon until well-combined.

Here comes the tricky part. You have to pour in the stock until the dressing reaches the “right” consistency. This is what it should look like (only half that quantity):

You can pour more stock on top of the dressing as it cooks if it looks like it’s getting to be too dry, but you want to be able to easily mold the mixture into a casserole dish. It should stick together without a problem, but you don’t want it to be soupy.

Press into a casserole, and bake for 45 minutes, or until it browns around the edges.

Recipe courtesy of the cutest, sweetest Grandmother I know (and my cute, sweet sister, Elizabeth, who helped record it):

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I have posted many a recipe on this site that I have labeled “Comfort Food.” Dishes that merit this distinction, for me, need to accomplish two things: the cooking process itself should be slow, patient, comfort-inducing, and the eating experience must create warmth and happiness. These two categories cannot be separated, and my suspicion is that it’s because somehow I can taste the care that goes into comforting dishes. You’ll find that most of my comfort foods involve a good bit of stirring. As I have written here before, stirring is therapeutic in ways no other activity is for me. But also, the stirring process infuses the air with smells that remind me of other days: days shared with people I love, days spent cooking for those I love, days enjoying the simple process of creating a warming, delicious dish of food. This comforting cooking process should fill my house with feelings of calm and peace, and in these busy days especially, friends, I welcome the scents and sounds that bring those feelings.

A lot to ask from a simple dish of food, you say? Well, a body has to eat, but sometimes a soul also needs to cook.

When I saw that Ivonne (a long-lost sister I have only discovered in the last year–we are certain that our families, particularly the women, are kin, at least culinarily speaking) and her cohort, Orchidea, were requesting dishes of comfort, I set my sights on the ugly fall tomatoes at my farmer’s market and a hefty hunk of butter.

The process for this simple, simple sauce is neither complicated nor labor-intensive, but it does take time. I like to make it on a cold, dreary day, when I can curl up on the couch with a blanket and a book in between recipe steps. When it’s finished, David and I can sit down in a house filled with the rich scent of roasting tomatoes, and enjoy the way this velvety sauce coats our noodles and our tongues with a soft blend of tomato and butter.

Fresh tomatoes are my recommendation for the best flavor, but high-quality canned ones will do in a pinch. If you have tomatoes you put up from summer (I freeze batches of roasted ones), those will work too, but my favorite way to make this is to start with fresh tomatoes (I bought these out of a box that read “fall tomato rejects, 3 for $1″), roast them until they fall apart, and then simmer them with the other ingredients for a long, long time.

Angel Hair with Buttery Tomato Sauce

2 - 2 1/2 pounds tomatoes (should yield 2 cups tomato puree)
Olive oil
Coarse salt
Cracked black pepper
1/2 stick (4 T.) butter
1 medium yellow onion, quartered
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 4 pieces
1/2 pound pasta (I like angel hair for this dish)

Preheat the oven to 425. Wash and core the tomatoes, and cut them into large chunks (for medium-sized tomatoes, quarters work fine). Place them in a single layer on a greased baking sheet, close together, and drizzle with olive oil. Toss with your hands to coat the tomato pieces with oil. Sprinkle liberally with salt and cracked pepper. Roast. The time depends on you — I leave them for at least an hour and then check; they should be easily mashed with a fork and beginning to brown where the salt has landed. Remove and let cool. When cool, process in a food processor or blender to make a smooth puree.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the onion and carrot pieces. Cover with tomato puree and simmer (don’t boil!) for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

When the sauce is almost done, cook the pasta to desired tenderness. Remove the vegetable pieces with a slotted spoon and serve them on the side. Plate up a mound of pasta with a ladle of sauce and a pat of butter. Eat, and be comforted.

After my revelatory butternut ravioli, I had half of a roasted squash left to use (the ones at our market this fall have been enormous). I also had some Italian sausage left over, and that combination worked so well that I came up with this very fall pizza. Super-thin, crispy crust worked well with this robust flavor combination, although now I’m thinking that these ingredients would also work well in a calzone. Maybe I’ll try that next week. Like the ravioli, this pizza would be good without the sausage for a vegetarian alternative.

What follows is not so much a recipe as a suggestion; I’m sure there are tons of ways to vary this with good success. Amounts for pizza are always for me a matter of taste — if you love blue cheese, throw on a hefty portion; if you only like it a little at a time, sprinkle less liberally. I could be wrong, but I think it would be difficult to mess this up.

Fall Pizza

Your favorite pizza dough or shell
Half of a large butternut squash, cooked and mashed (I cook it like this)
Olive oil
One or two links Italian sausage, sliced and cooked
Blue cheese, amount to taste
1 ripe pear (I used an Asian one and it was delicious), thinly sliced
A couple of handfuls of arugula leaves, washed and roughly chopped or torn

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. If you’re working with uncooked dough, rub it with a bit of olive oil and bake it for about 5 minutes. Spread the warm dough with the mashed squash, using olive oil as needed to thin and spread the mixture. Don’t worry if you don’t get an even coat, just try to cover as much surface area as you can. Top with the pear slices next, distributing them evenly. Sprinkle with as much blue cheese as you desire, and then finish with the cooked sausage rounds. Bake the pizza for another 5-8 minutes, until the pears are very soft and the cheese is melted. Cover the hot pizza with chopped arugula; slice, and serve.

I served this pizza with an extra mound of arugula, dressed with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, cracked pepper, Kosher salt, and shavings of Parmesan cheese.

As you know, I have, over the last few months, lost my taste for food. I’m sure for many pregnant women, those who dread cooking or find it difficult, this would not be the end of the world. But, I have to tell you, for a girl who loves to be in the kitchen, relying on peanut butter sandwiches and smoothies for nutrients has not been much fun. I guess I should have relished the break from cooking, as my husband cheerfully took over, but instead, I felt like a big part of my day was missing.

And I didn’t like it one bit.

In the midst of this cooking hiatus, I often scanned my favorite food blogs, searching for inspiration, hoping that something would awaken my nausea-weary tastebuds. For whatever reason (only the hormonal monsters in my body know for sure), one afternoon, a ravioli recipe that I’d bookmarked months and months ago from Chez Megane suddenly sounded good. Nevermind that I didn’t have sweet potatoes or ricotta cheese. I did have a butternut squash, one that had been looking longingly at me from the pantry for several days since I picked it up from the farmer’s market, and I had wonton wrappers. And, miracle of all miracles, I actually had an appetite!

I put on some music and an apron and went to work. I cut the squash in half, smeared it with a bit of butter, molasses, and basalmic vinegar, and popped it into the oven. I harvested the last good leaves of our sad sage bush (which has since gone on to herb heaven, rest in peace), and carefully laid out all the ingredients I would need. I chopped garlic and beat an egg and grated Parmesan cheese. In fact, I decided while I was there, I might as well busy myself until the squash was finished and cool enough to handle. So I baked some bread and made granola.

And, dear reader, I am happy to report that when the ravioli was plated up and ready, I was starving. It tasted like the best meal I’d had in weeks. I know not everyone understands this, but, oh, the pleasure of preparation — of getting my hands dirty and anticipating the way the flavors and textures will taste in my mouth: this is what I’d been missing.

And, ever since I made that discovery, I’ve felt more like myself every day.

Butternut Ravioli with Sage Butter and Italian Sausage

1 1/4 cups of cooked, mashed winter squash
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 t. freshly grated nutmeg
About a dozen sage leaves
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded, plus extra for serving
1 egg plus water
Wonton wrappers or pasta sheets
4 T. butter
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 link Italian sausage, sliced into rounds (you could, of course, leave this out for a vegetarian meal)

In a heavy-bottomed skillet, melt a tablespoon of butter. Saute the garlic over medium-low heat until translucent and very soft. Chop a few of the sage leaves and add them to the skillet. Sprinkle with Kosher salt and saute for another minute or so, until the leaves crisp up a little bit.

In a large bowl, scrape the contents of the skillet in with the mashed squash. Add the Parmesan and nutmeg, and combine well. Set aside.

Now, I am funny about the wonton wrappers: I don’t think they hold up very well unless they’re doubled up. So, I use 4 wrappers per ravioli, brushing one side of a wonton wrapper with egg wash and then laying another wrapper on top of it, pressing to seal. I repeat this process with another pair of wrappers. Then, spoon filling on top of one double sheet, then top with the other double sheet and seal the edges with egg wash. It’s a little extra trouble to do it this way, but I once had a whole batch fall apart in the boiling water with only single sheets, so I prefer to play it safe. (Of course, homemade pasta would be best).

Once the ravioli are assembled, set them aside. Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the ravioli and cook until they float, about 3 or 4 minutes. (You may have to do this in batches). Drain and arrange on plates.

While the ravioli are cooking, brown the sausage in the skillet (the one you cooked the garlic in) until cooked through. Remove with a slotted spoon. Add the butter and cook over medium until it’s just beginning to turn golden. Add the pine nuts and remaining whole sage leaves. Stir and cook until the sage leaves are crispy. Watch carefully so that the butter doesn’t burn. Divide the sauce evenly between the plates of ravioli. Top with the sausage and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Serves 2 hungry people for dinner, with a couple of extra ravioli left over.

–Inspired by Megan’s recipe for Sweet Potato Ravioli