Parsnip potato horseradish puree and maple-bourbon brined turkey

One more thing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving: It turns out there was enough charge left on the camera battery for one lone shot before, surprise, it gave up. So this shot is the only one from a Thanksgiving meal that was low stress and very tasty.

We paired this with a bone-in turkey breast brined in a maple syrup-bourbon mixture featured in a recent Taste section. Basically we made a standard brine and added maple syrup, a generous amount of bourbon and pumpkin pie spices. Even if you're fed up with the pumpkin pie spice bit, it worked quite well in this usage, making really, really tasty skin and a moist bird despite being white meat. We left it in the brine for 24 hours. Following the procedure from Kitchn, we placed the bird on thickly sliced onions in a roasting pan, rubbed the skin with butter and sprinkled it with salt and pepper before putting it in an oven preheated to 450 degrees. We then reduced the heat immediately to 350 and cooked the 7-plus pound bird for a bit more than 2 hours, covering it with tin foil with about a half hour to go. The turkey was great, but the really, really stupendous part was the onion layer on the bottom of the pan. That is so cheating.

It paired well with this recipe.

Horseradish parsnip puree
Adapted slightly from foodzia.uk

Ingredients
3 medium parsnips, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Combine parsnips and potatoes in a heavy sauce pan and cover with salted water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer, partially covered, until veggies are tender. Drain.

Rice parsnips and potatoes into a serving bowl. (Or if you don't have a ricer, you could mash them and then pass them through a sieve, or use a stick blender.) Blend in cream, milk, butter and salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 2 to 4 depending on what else you're having.

Rating: Very easy and quite tasty. Worth repeating. I didn't find it too horseradishy, but if you're less tolerant, I'd start out by adding 1 tablespoon and then going from there.

It's been awhile since I've hosted Thanksgiving. But this stove would be just the ticket.

Crockpot Sgaghetti Bolognese

When I want to make a Bolognese sauce, I usually reach for one dating back to the Molto Mario phase of Mario Batali. But I thought I'd give this one a go in the name of make-ahead comfort food.

Spaghetti Bolognese

Adapted from Martha Stewart “Slow Cooker”

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 cups chopped onions

2 garlic cloves, minced

4 carrots, finely chopped

3 celery stalks, finely chopped

2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

1½ pounds ground beef

1 pound ground pork

2 cans (14.5-ounce each) diced tomatoes

1 cup dry red wine

½ cup milk

1½ teaspoons salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

1 pound spaghetti, linguine or other long pasta, cooked to al dente

Chopped parsley for garnish (optional)

Freshly grated Parmesan for garnish

Method

Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Saute onions until translucent. Add garlic and cook for 2 more minutes. Add carrots, celery and thyme and cook until beginning to soften. Transfer to a 5-6 quart slow cooker.

In same skillet, brown beef and pork. Add tomatoes, wine, milk, salt and pepper. Stir to combine.

Add mixture to slow cooker and stir. Cover and cook on high for 3 hours or on low for 6. Serve over cooked pasta. Garnish with parsley and cheese.

Serves 6-ish.

Rating: Not the depth of flavor I’m accustomed to, but not untasty. It has the advantage of hours of hands-off cooking.The Batali version benefits from pancetta and tomato sauce, which might account for its being tastier.

Asian chicken thighs

 After a summer of tossing whatever was ridiculously ripe into a pot, it's time to break open a cookbook again and try something new. This one reminds me a great deal of a recipe I used to make years ago from the "Goodhousekeeping Illustrated Cookbook," although I'm pretty sure I hadn't encountered fish sauce or chili-garlic sauce back then.

I like this one because it calls for chicken thighs, bone-in and skin-on, or fully loaded, as I refer to them.

Chicken thighs with Asian flair

Adapted from “Life in a Northern Town,” by Mary Dougherty in a book that reflects her life as a transplant to Bayfield, Wis. Note that you'll have to start this well ahead for marinading purposes.

Ingredients

½ cup olive oil

½ cup tamari (or soy sauce)

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

¼ light brown sugar

6 garlic cloves, chopped

1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped

1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger

3 tablespoons fish sauce

3 tablespoons chili-garlic sauce

Leaves from 6 sprigs of fresh thyme

8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

Method

Combine everything but chicken in a large bowl or large sealable bag and combine well. Add chicken and turn over until coated. Seal and refrigerate at least 12 hours.

Remove from marinade. Bake in 450-degree oven on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 30 minutes or until cooked through. 

Rating: Super fast, and quite tender and flavorful. Smells wonderful. Easy to mix up the night before and get on the table after work.

Slow cooker chicken with nut butters and garam masala

 

This is a weekend crockpot recipe, the kind where you want to have something ready to go after you get done running errands in the afternoon and in time for, say, "The Durrells in Corfu" to be back on PBS(!) on Sunday night.

Chicken Korma

Adapted from "Martha Stewart’s Slow Cooker"

Note: If you don’t want to have to spring for nut butters that you might not use again, you can just whir the nuts in a food processor until they eventually turn into a paste. Just keep in mind that it will take more nuts to yield the called for amount of butter. But this recipe might make you decide you need more nut butters.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter

2 large onions, thinly sliced

6 cardamom pods

1 tablespoons garam masala

¾ teaspoon turmeric

½ teaspoon cayenne powder

3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs

¼ cup cashew butter

¼ cup almond butter

½ plain yogurt

½ cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 tablepoons grated fresh ginger

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1½ tablespoon sugar

2 teaspoons coarse salt

Chopped cilantro for garnish

Method

Melt butter in a large skillet. Cook onions over medium heat until golden. Add cardamom pods, garam masala, turmeric and cayenne powder and cook for 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat.

Chop chicken into 2-inch pieces. Add to pan.

In a food processor or blender, combine nut butters, yogurt, cream, tomato paste, ginger, garlic, sugar and salt until smooth. Pour mixture into skillet. 

Combine mixture well and turn into a slow cooker. The original recipe called for cooking this on high for 3½ hours or on low for 7 hours.  Since I was running a tad behind, I wound up cooking it on high for 30 minutes, then for nearly 6½ hours on low, and it turned out fine.

Serve over rice. Garnish with cilantro. Makes quite a bit, easily 6 servings.

Rating: Pretty nice.It's got more gentle warmth than heat, and a nice mix of flavors. Makes good use of a cheap cut of chicken; it's tender rather than being either mushy or rubbery, a fate that can sometimes befall chicken in a slow cooker. That blender nut sauce mixture could certainly have other uses as well.

Drink & nosh: Basil lemon cocktail with lentil avocado puree

I've got herbs running out my ears, especially basil. In addition to what we planted, it volunteered again this year, one of them even in the actual basil pot. So pretty much everything gets a touch of basil right now, from the saison Dave is brewing to cocktails. It's not a bad problem to have in late summer.

Basil and lemon cocktail
From mollann-m.blogspot.com

Ingredients

Juice of ½ lemon

3-4 basil leaves, plus more for garnish

1 ½ ounces vodka

1 ounce St. Germain

Method

Muddle basil leaves with lemon juice in a cocktail shaker. Fill with ice and add vodka and St. Germain. Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with basil leaves. Makes one very ample cocktail.

Rating: Quite an acceptable cocktail. All the flavor notes come through, with none of them overwhelming. Just really nice, and very summery. And it's still in the upper 80s, so by golly it's still summer.

This recipe falls under the heading of the third time's the charm. The first time I made this recipe, exactly as written, it was a very tasty failed attempt at a dip. The recipe didn't call for draining the lentils after cooking, which I found suspect, but went ahead and followed the recipe since it was supposed to be a puree. It made a very runny concoction that I happily repurposed as a pasta sauce, one which looked nothing like the magazine photo, being yellowy.

I usually bounce off if a recipe doesn't work, but this one had flavor merit, so I pressed on.

Second try: I drained the lentils and used green lentils instead of the yellow or red called for. Slightly better consistency, but still a little grainy-ish. I took this version into work, and people ate it, but it still wasn't quite there.

Third try: Green lentils again, drained, but this time I added an avocado. Much better consistency and and nice and tasty. I'll quit while I'm ahead.

Lentil avocado puree

Adapted from Bon Appetit Aug. 2017

Ingredients

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 cup French green lentils

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 cup cilantro leaves

¼ cup olive oil

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 ripe avocado

Method

Combine onion, lentils, cumin and water in a medium saucepan. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and cook 25 to 30 minutes until tender. Let cool.

With a slotted spoon, transfer cooked lentils to a food processor, reserving liquid in case it’s needed. Add cilantro leaves, olive oil and lime juice. Puree until smooth. Add avocado and puree until smooth. Add some reserved cooking liquid if needed to reach desired consistency.  Adjust season with salt and pepper.

The recipe claimed it serves 4. What? They’re thinking main course? It makes a lot, certainly enough to hold its own for a party if it’s not the only dip.

Rating: If you didn't have to go through three tries, you'd think it was a nice recipe, worth repeating. And if you want a nice pasta sauce, just don't drain the lentils and skip the avocado.

Play along: "Midnight on the Trail" by Hot Club of Cowtown.  In keeping with the summery theme, this album comes from a group we caught while catching our breath at the state fair. Nothing like some laid-back Western swing (sort of jazz meets blue grass) while resting in the dappled noon shade at the Leinie Band Shell. A nice break between honey ice cream and duck bacon wontons.