Thanksgiving Postmortem 2023

Here's how everything turned out...

The old New York Times commercials used to feature a lady saying “I think the only thing I enjoy doing more than the crossword puzzle is actually finishing it.” I think the same applies for Thanskgiving. I love, love, love the menu planning and the grocery shopping and the cooking and the last minute adjustments, but the most fun comes from the aftermath. How did everything turn out this year? What were the winners? What were the losers? And what were the surprises? (Oh yeah, and breaking bread with loved ones is great too, I suppose I should add.)

Thanksgiving is such a great holiday to be judgy about food. Not in a mean way, but in a report card sort of way. There are so many dishes flittering about that you kind of can’t help but rank them all. But then again, maybe this isn’t a global experience; perhaps it’s just a unique Mandelker trait. Go to a restaurant with my parents and inevitably my dad will announce: “Mom’s was best, mine was second, Ben’s was eh.” Or perhaps there’ll be a variation like: “Ben’s is VERY good, mine is so-so, and Mom’s is good.” It always turns into America’s Next Top Model: Food Edition, and honestly I wouldn’t have it any other way. (I always imagine rounding up two sad plates of food and telling them one of them is no longer in the race to become America’s Next Top Vegetable Side).

The point is, part of the fun of Thanksgiving is noting the successes and failures so you’ll be better equipped for next year. So, in the spirit of Tyra Banks, Simon Cowell, Padma Lakshmi, and other great competition judges of yore, let’s dive into how Thanksgiving 2023 fared chez Ben.

First, some background. The original plan was to put out an ambitious spread with the help of my friends. There would be stuffing, sweet potato casserole, buns, apple pie, turkey (obvs), and so much more. But when my boyfriend came down with a wretched cough, I scuttled the plan. Suddenly, I was cooking for two instead of twelve. Time to pivot.

Since there was a seventeen pound turkey in the fridge thawing, that was clearly going to stay on the menu. However, I ditched the stuffing. I absolutely love stuffing, but my boyfriend doesn’t, and the last thing I needed in my life was a whole tray of stuffing exclusively for me to enjoy. Time for tough decisions. To paraphrase Heidi Klum, “Thanksgiving stuffing: one day you’re in, and the next you’re out.”

As for the rest of the menu, here’s what I made: salad, cauliflower, potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, and an apple pie. A pretty humble spread that felt like Thanksgiving despite a few remixes. Oh, and I served pretty much everything on sheet pans because why not. Let’s get into it.

THE Turkey

My friends and I have a tradition that when we cook a certain recipe so many times, it becomes a “THE” recipe (note THE Salad, coming up shortly on this list). Well, I’m declaring that this is THE turkey. I talked about it last year: Alison Roman’s Very Good Turkey with Roasted Shallots and Excellent Gravy. This recipe just works. The meat comes out impossibly flavorful and shockingly moist — yes, even the breast. I was afraid I had overcooked it this year, but no, lies! Well, maybe a few points were dry-ish, but otherwise, so juicy and perfect!

Look, I’m not even a big turkey fan, but when the spirit calls for turkey, this is how to do it. Here’s the refresher course: slather a thawed turkey with large amounts of salt and brown sugar, let it sit for 24 hours in the fridge, and then roast it over a bed of shallots, thyme, and garlic. That’s really it. I’ve done other methods that have all been very lovely, but none have compared to this approach. Behold, THE Turkey.

PS. I used a Butterball because I have no snobbery about it, and even though it’s pre-brined, it worked out just fine.

Subsequent Gravy

Does this deserve its own heading when it’s basically an extension of THE Turkey? Probably not. But also yes. Because even if you’re not a convert to Alison Roman’s turkey recipe, I must push the gravy on you. It’s actually insane. I know I was just waxing on about the (THE) turkey, but really it’s a MacGuffin for the gravy. The turkey gets rave reviews for being an excellent turkey in the context of turkey-making. But the gravy is a star with or without a turkey by its side. Mustard and soy sauce lend this roux-based recipe layers of brightness and umami. Cannot express how successful this always is.

Also Subsequent Shallots

For the shallots that cook under the turkey, Alison Roman recommends removing them to a bowl, spritzing them with vinegar, and serving. Yes. Do this. First, it’s an easy side dish. Second, these jammy, sweet shallots are allium glory. A great sweet note to liven up the plate.

Sweet Patatas Bravas Salad

Sort of looks like a mess here. But you know, it happens.

Just a few days ago I wrote about “Unexpected Ideas” for Thanksgiving, and one recipe that caught my eye was this sweet potato dish by Hetty Lui McKinnon. The photo, the description, the ingredients all spoke to me; and since my boyfriend doesn’t really care too much about sticking to the classics (ie. sweet potato casserole), I decided to give this dish a whirl. People. People. This was… outstanding. The sweetness of the potatoes are offset by both a tomatoey bravas sauce and a tangy aioli. Meanwhile pearl barley and toasted almonds offer up vital crunch and chew, preventing the dish from reading as All Sog, All The Time. It’s wonderful. And as a neat bonus: since the oven was occupied with the turkey, I was able to cook off the sweet potatoes in an air fryer to great sucess (I did 25 minutes at 400 degrees).

One snag: while making the bravas sauce, I needed to cook smoked paprika and chili powder with pureed tomatoes and garlic. I don’t know if this was a recipe issue or a pantry issue, but the spices made the sauce taste horrifically bitter. Turns out my chili powder had actually expired in 2019, but it was my smoked paprika that tasted most off. I wasn’t sure who or what was to blame, but everyone was in detention. I tossed the sauce and restarted, subbing chipotle powder - which gave heat and smokiness in a way that I really enjoyed. Bravas sauce round 2 was a success. (Oh and another fun fact: I was able to make the sauce and the aioli the night before, and thank God I did because what a pain it would have been dealing with this bravas sauce issue on Thursday).

While this dish was far from a sweet potato casserole, it did remarkably hit many similar notes. It felt right at home on a Thanksgiving table, but luckily, sweet patatas bravas wouldn’t be out of place at a dinner party, a potluck, a picnic, or really any event that requires good food.

Roasted Whole Cauliflower

A Thanksgiving spread should have a roasted veg; so I decided to tackle this recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi that I’d been curious about for years. A whole head of cauliflower is boiled for 6 minutes and then shoved in an oven at 375 degrees where it’s basted with butter and oil and loved on for up to two hours. The process feels deeply sensual, which is a hilarious thing to say about a cauliflower, but such is life.

By the time the cauliflower is ready, it has turned an inviting shade of gold with brown tips accenting the leaves and florets. Served with a bright — in every way — green tahini sauce, the dish has all those wonderful notes of roasted cauliflower but with a more tender texture. So good.

My only regret, however, is that I really messed up the timing on this one. The slow roasted cauliflower is supposed to be served 5 minutes after it comes out of the oven, and instead I cooked it midday (why? I don’t know), which meant it was cold by the time the two of us sat down. We enjoyed it greatly, but now I’m excited to try the dish in its most ideal, hottest form. (And yes I could have heated up the cauliflower again, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of adding another task to the to-do list).

THE Salad

Broken record alert: this is the Alison Roman’s Little Gems with Garlicky Lemon and Pistachio which I’ve talked about ad nauseam. It’s perfect for any occasion and was one of the foundational dishes of our pandemic lockdown menu. The recipe calls for dicing up a whole lemon, which I have yet to gather the bravery to do. I just omit that strange direction. This salad comes together in minutes and is a true hero. Hence its elevation in status to THE Salad. Surprise surprise, it was great!

Dilly Rolls

There were a lot of Alison Roman dishes on my menu this year, which may or may not be triggering to some people. But when I saw the description for these dilly rolls, I couldn’t resist making them. Besides, without stuffing, we needed some sort of bready presence. Anyway, these rolls call for lots of dill, onion, and dill seed (I used caraway because I have it and always like an excuse to bust it out). What could go wrong?

Welp, in Alison Roman’s instructional video, she encounters a baker’s dreaded fear: dead yeast. Being the meticulous student that I am, I unfortunately copied this step too closely. Dead yeast! My adorable mound of dough failed to rise — or rather, rise much — but I was unwilling to waste it and convinced myself that no, the dough had risen. I was in denial. And so I shaped it into little balls (which was super fun) and set them in a tin for a second rise. 60 minutes later, they had sort of grown (clearly some of that yeast was still striving for a better life); so I went ahead and baked off these questionable rolls.

Bad news first: yeah, these did not rise. They emerged looking like tight little slider buns as opposed to pillowy rolls (is there a difference between rolls and buns? Let’s say there is). So, yes, height was an issue.

Interestingly, the texture felt somewhere between a biscuit and a roll, which I actually enjoyed in its own way. And honestly, the flavors were all on point. Topped with some salted butter, these dilly rolls were not the vision of perfection but they were tasty.

Hasselback Potatoes

I didn’t do a mashed potatoes dish — maybe I should have since oven space was at a premium — but instead I went a Swedish route with Hasselbacks. For the uninitiated, this super fun twist on a baked potato has you slicing whole spuds into rounds… but not all the way through the skin. As the potato bakes, it fans out gloriously, which creates a dramatic table presence but also allows heat to penetrate its core. The result is something between a potato wedge and a cottage fry (notably, the whole thing is basted with butter and oil, which helps get things crispy).

I used Chrissy Teigen’s recipe from Cravings, which always works out well, even if the timing is sometimes a bit off. These Hasselback potatoes took about 25 minutes longer than planned, which was annoying, but I resolved to just start dinner without them. I’m not sure I would make them again for Thanksgiving, only because they really demanded a lot of oven time at the end of the cooking process. Next time, I’ll go for something that can be achieved on a stovetop. (Plus, if the potatoes hadn’t gotten in the way, I could have timed the cauliflower better. UGH).

I’m losing the thread here. The key takeaway is that these potatoes still were delicious, if cumbersome. Maybe save them for a dinner party rather than the high wire act that is Thanksgiving.

THE Apple Pie

Thanksgiving is when a lot of the “THE” recipes come out. While I clearly like to mix things up with new dishes and recipes, I do hold space for the classics — in this case, apple pie. Usually I do a pecan pie (THE pecan pie, if you will) on Thanksgiving, but I had apples on hand; so I went for this recipe. I’m not going to go in depth on this apple pie since I plan to do a full post dedicated to it, but I will say that I had the terrible idea of trying to adapt an 8 inch frozen crust to my 9 inch pie pan. There were cracks, fissures, and lots of crumbly dramas. In the end I sort of broke the whole thing down, formed it into a strange ball and rolled it out until it fit my pie pan. With the time it took, I could have literally made a shell from scratch. Oh well.

Truth is that we were so full from dinner we never even got to the pie. It wasn’t until about 25 minutes ago (it’s Saturday) that we finally heated up some slices. This is an excellent recipe. It always works. My pie crust, however, was definitely still underbaked on the bottom — the product of either my manhandling or my timing. Either way, I’m never one who’s particularly flummoxed by soggy bottoms, but people get very ornery about their crusts; so this may have been a fail for them. We were happy, and that’s all that matters.

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So for the final assessment in this Thanksgiving pageant:

Last place:

Dilly rolls, but only because the yeast failed them. Still tasted great though.

Some issues but honestly really good:

Cauliflower — again, my bad. Why did I do you dirty, cauliflower? I should have cooked you last!

Apple pie - I was impatient with the crust. But everything else was excellent.

Reliable standbys:

THE salad. It stays in its lane and never fails.

Hasselback potatoes — I’m mad that they took longer than usual but worth it.

Unmitigated success:

The turkey, the shallots, the gravy — this trio blows me away every year.

First place:

Sweet patatats bravas salad. A major wow. It upstaged the turkey. No, it upstaged the gravy! It takes a special dish to pull that off.

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What were the hits and misses on your table this year? Any exciting debuts?