NEW YORK, Nov 18 — The Times asked 15 families from across the country to tell us about the dishes on their Thanksgiving tables that speak most eloquently about their heritage and traditions, about who they are.
‘The food that sustained our ancestors.’
As it has for Native Americans, Thanksgiving has always been a complicated holiday for African-American families. In the era of slavery and Jim Crow, it was often celebrated on another day because African-Americans had to serve other people their Thanksgiving meal. Sometimes it was celebrated in January to mark the day in 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, the same year he made Thanksgiving an official national holiday.
But always, it was used as a day to bring together communities and to eat.
Erika Council, a software engineer in Atlanta who is also a professional cook and a food writer, grew up with a special reverence for Thanksgiving. Her parents were divorced. Some years she ate the meal as interpreted by her paternal grandmother, Mildred Council, better known as Mama Dip, who opened a popular restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and went on to write two cookbooks.
But more often, she sat at the table with her mother’s family, where her maternal grandmother, Geraldine Gavin Dortch of Goldsboro, North Carolina, made sure everyone gave proper thanks for the sacrifices of their enslaved ancestors and their elders who had battled for civil rights. Without their struggle, the bountiful meal on the table would not exist.
“We always had to get dressed up and read a little speech at Thanksgiving,” said Council, 35. “My grandmother was very steadfast in making sure not just me, but all the kids knew what we as African-Americans should be thankful for, because she knew they were not teaching that side of the story in school.”
To drive home the point, there would always be one or two simple dishes that reflected the kind of food cooked in the kitchens of enslaved Africans. Neck bones was one of them, served alongside more elegant Thanksgiving dishes as a reminder.
The dish, built from pork neck bones and elbow macaroni, is delicious in its simplicity. The bones and onions are simmered in water well seasoned with red pepper flakes, ground black pepper and salt until the mixture becomes fragrant and the gelatin from the bones has given body to the broth. The macaroni goes in next, absorbing flavor as it cooks.
“That water and neck bones could make this rich broth that would give them enough strength to get through the day is kind of a miracle,” Council said.
KIM SEVERSON
Neck Bones (Pork Neck and Noodles)
Yield: 6 servings
Total time: About 3 ½ hours
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 to 4 pounds pork neck bones
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 onion, diced
1 ½ cups elbow-shaped pasta
1. Heat olive oil in a Dutch oven or large pot over medium-high heat. Season neck bones all over with salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes. Add neck bones to pot and sear for 4 to 5 minutes, then flip and brown the other side, 4 to 5 minutes more. Add onions and 3 cups water. It’s OK if the water doesn’t cover all the neck bones; they will cook down.
2. Reduce heat to low, cover and slowly simmer, stirring occasionally, 2 ½ to 3 hours, or until the meat is very tender and falling off the bone.
3. Remove the cooked neck bones to a separate bowl. Bring liquid to a boil, then add pasta and more salt and pepper to taste, if desired. Stir constantly for the first 2 to 3 minutes to keep pasta from sticking. Reduce heat to low; cover and cook, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes, or until pasta is al dente.
4. Meanwhile, if you’d like, remove the meat from the bones using your fingers or a fork. Discard bones and any cartilage. When pasta is done, stir the cooked meat back into the pot. Serve hot alongside a heaping of greens (collard or mustard) and a hunk of cornbread.
‘My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.’
Carolyn Ling of Carmel, Indiana, is a second-generation physician whose grandfather came to the United States in 1882 from southern China and set himself up as a merchant on Mott Street, in Manhattan.
There were other investments as well. Her grandfather, Ling said, had “interests in restaurants.”
Those interests played a big role in the Ling family’s early Thanksgiving feasts: They ate takeout. Ling’s father, a doctor who fought at the Anzio beachhead in Italy in 1944 and earned a Bronze Star, loved those meals: capons lacquered with soy, perfumed with ginger and garlic, crisp and juicy at once.
When Ling was young, she said, her father urged her mother, a passionate home cook and reader of Gourmet magazine, to emulate them in her holiday cooking at home in Queens. The result was a vaguely Cantonese turkey, the bird roasted beneath a rich glaze of fermented soybean paste, garlic, ginger, soy sauce and alliums galore, then served with roasted potatoes basted in the sauce and drippings of the bird.
It is remarkably easy to prepare, and Ling, 58, prepares it still: phenomenally juicy and rich, she said, “with the umami of soy and turkey fat.”
SAM SIFTON
Cantonese Turkey
Yield: 8 to 12 servings
Total time: 6 hours
1 12- to 14-pound turkey
4 tablespoons neutral oil (such as canola)
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 3-inch knob ginger, peeled and minced
6 scallions, thinly sliced
2 leeks, thinly sliced (white and light green parts only)
4 stalks celery, thinly sliced
1/3 cup soybean sauce (preferably Lee Kum Kee brand)
1 2-inch strip dried orange or tangerine peel (or use 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice)
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
½ cup rice wine or sherry
½ teaspoon ground white pepper
3 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
3 ½ pounds small Yukon Gold potatoes, halved
Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste
1. Remove turkey from refrigerator and pat dry with paper towels. Place on a rack in a roasting pan and allow turkey to come to room temperature while you prepare the sauce.
2. Swirl 3 tablespoons oil into a wok or large Dutch oven and set over medium-high heat until it begins to shimmer. Add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, until golden, about 3 minutes. Add scallions, leeks and celery and cook, stirring often, until vegetables soften and cook down, 10 to 12 minutes.
3. Add soybean sauce, orange peel, sugar, rice wine or sherry, white pepper, soy sauce and oyster sauce to the vegetable mixture, along with 2 cups water. Turn heat to high and bring to a boil, then lower the heat and allow mixture to simmer and thicken, 30 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool 20 minutes.
4. Heat oven to 450º. Spoon 1 cup of the sauce over turkey and spoon 2 tablespoons into its cavity. Tuck the tips of the wings under the bird and truss its legs together with kitchen string. Pour remaining sauce and 2 cups water into roasting pan and transfer to oven. Roast turkey, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
5. Reduce oven to 325º. Baste turkey with pan juices, and tent it with foil. Continue roasting another 1 ½ to 2 ½ hours, basting every 30 minutes with pan juices, until a thermometer inserted into the thigh registers 165º. If pan starts to look dry, add hot water or turkey or chicken stock, if you have any, 1 cup at a time.
6. Transfer turkey to a cutting board or platter and let rest at least 30 minutes before carving. Pour pan drippings into a small pot, adding enough warm water or stock to equal 1 cup, and keep warm on the stove.
7. Increase oven temperature to 450º. Grease a large sheet pan with 1 tablespoon oil, and arrange halved potatoes on the pan, cut side down. Season with salt and black pepper, and slide potatoes into the oven. Cook, undisturbed, until potatoes are tender and cut sides are nicely browned and crisped, 30 to 35 minutes.
8. Remove pan from the oven, drizzle reserved drippings all over potatoes, toss and return to the oven to finish cooking, 5 minutes longer. Serve potatoes with turkey.
‘Bibingka is our cornbread.’
Nicole Ponseca grew up on the West Coast with dreams of becoming the next Don Draper. But once in New York, she slowly turned her attention from the advertising industry toward the city’s scarcity of excellent Philippine restaurants. It gnawed at her.
Ponseca’s parents had emigrated from the Philippines in the 1960s; her mother was working as a nurse at the time, and her father was in the U.S. Navy. “I thought, if no one’s going to do Filipino restaurants right, I’m going to do it myself,” she said.
After practice runs with a pop-up, Ponseca went on to open two restaurants, Maharlika and Jeepney, deepening the city’s understanding of Philippine cuisine with dishes like sizzling sisig (a hash of pig ears, snout and belly) and arroz caldo (a rice porridge).
Jeepney is an homage “to everything I used to be embarrassed about as a Filipino growing up in America,” said Ponseca, now 40 and fiercely proud of her roots.
During the holidays, she makes bibingka, a cake of rice and coconut milk. It plays two parts at the table: sweet and savory. It is rich with preserved salted eggs and a smattering of grated cheese.
It is also standard at Ponseca’s Thanksgiving table, cooked in cast iron to get more deeply golden, chewy edges. “When it comes out, everyone perks up,” she said, “and all the grandmas go, ‘Ooh, there’s bibingka!’”
TEJAL RAO
Bibingka (Filipino Coconut-Rice Cake)
Yield: 6 servings
Total time: 40 minutes
2 cups/320 grams rice flour
½ cup/55 grams glutinous rice flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¾ cup/150 grams granulated sugar
1/3 cup/76 grams unsalted butter, melted, plus more melted butter for topping, and butter for greasing pan
1 ½ cups/355 milliliters coconut milk
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 banana leaf (optional)
1 salted duck egg, sliced (optional)
1 cup/80 grams grated queso de bola or cheddar cheese
½ cup/52 grams grated coconut, for topping (optional)
1. Heat oven to 350º. In a large bowl, whisk together rice flours, baking powder, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center and pour in melted butter, coconut milk and eggs. Whisk mixture until smooth.
2. Wash and dry banana leaf, if using, and line a 9-inch cast-iron skillet with it. (One leaf should be enough, but if more are needed, make sure to overlap leaves so there are no gaps.) Butter the leaf, and trim edges leaving a 1- to 2-inch overhang. Alternatively, generously grease skillet with butter.
3. Pour mixture into skillet and bake 15 minutes. Remove from oven and top with salted egg and cheese. Return skillet to oven until bibingka is golden and browned, and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes more. Brush with more melted butter and sprinkle with coconut, if desired.
‘Food is the most obvious place where you are going to blend.’
When Francine Turone hosted her first Thanksgiving dinner in New York City, she rejected turkey, declaring it “bland and boring,” and made curried goat.
Friends protested, so she devised a recipe from her upbringing in Kingston, Jamaica, brining the turkey with cinnamon, cloves, allspice and juniper berries.
She has been cooking her turkey like this for 15 years. She still likes to serve a roast goat leg on the side, as well as rice and peas with salted pig tails and coconut oil, and tortellini in brodo in honor of her husband, Giacomo, a native of Milan.
In Kingston, her grandmother would cook for weeks in preparation for the big food holidays, Christmas and Boxing Day. “Some people baked fruitcakes a year in advance,” Turone said. “Every month they’d add a little more booze to it.” She tried this in New York one year; when her husband tasted it, his eyes went wide.
A year and a half ago, she and Giacomo Turone, a wine importer, bought a second home in the Berkshires. For their son’s 8th birthday, she roasted a whole pig in the garden.
Her parents sometimes reminisce about how she used to take over the kitchen in Kingston, starting at age 8. Cooking is a way of “reconnecting with myself and my culture,” she said, and of giving her son a family tradition.
It seems to be working. In kindergarten, when he was asked to write a letter to a member of his family, he chose her: “Dear Mummy, I like how you cook. Love, Julien.”
LIGAYA MISHAN
Jamaican-Spiced Turkey
Yield: 12 to 16 servings
Total time: 4 ½ to 6 hours, plus brining
For the brine:
1 ¼ cups kosher salt
½ cup granulated sugar
5 cloves garlic, lightly crushed and peeled
1 large Spanish or Vidalia onion, peeled and quartered
20 fresh thyme sprigs (or 2 tablespoons dried)
8 whole cloves
1 tablespoon allspice berries, lightly crushed
2 bay leaves
6 sage leaves
1 stick cinnamon
5 to 6 scallions, white and green parts, halved crosswise
3 to 4 juniper berries, lightly crushed
1 15- to 18-pound turkey (preferably heritage or pasture-raised)
For the herb-infused brown butter:
1 ¼ cups unsalted butter (2 ½ sticks)
20 fresh thyme sprigs
¼ cup chopped scallions (about 3), white and green parts
For the spice rub:
½ cinnamon stick, broken into pieces
2 tablespoons allspice berries
1 tablespoon whole peppercorns
½ tablespoon dried thyme
½ dried mild or medium hot chili pepper (such as guajillo), stem removed, torn into pieces
½ teaspoon fennel seeds
For roasting:
5 scallions, trimmed
3 onions, peeled and quartered
3 celery stalks (with tops)
2 fennel bulbs (with stems and fronds), cut into thirds
10 garlic cloves
3 large carrots, trimmed and peeled
Salt and pepper
3 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1. Brine the turkey: Combine all the brine ingredients except the turkey in a large stock pot and add 1 gallon water. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and stir in another ½ gallon water; let cool to room temperature. Place turkey breast-side-down in a container large enough to hold it and the brine. Add brine and refrigerate 8 to 12 hours. Remove from refrigerator about an hour before cooking and bring to room temperature.
2. Make the herb butter: Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 9 to 12 minutes, stirring often to prevent burning, until butter darkens to deep amber. Add thyme and scallions and remove from heat. (Butter may foam up; stir to keep it from foaming over.) Let steep for 10 to 15 minutes, then strain into a bowl, pressing out all the butter with a spatula. Allow butter to cool so it firms up, but is still a little soft and pliable. Stir butter while it cools to reincorporate any bits that fall to the bottom.
3. Make the spice rub: Combine all the rub ingredients in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Toast, stirring or shaking the pan occasionally, 2 to 4 minutes. Watch carefully to avoid burning. Let cool, then grind finely in a spice grinder or mortar.
4. Roast the turkey: Heat oven to 475º. Line a large roasting pan with the scallions, onions, celery, fennel, garlic and carrots and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pour in stock.
5. Remove turkey from brine and pat dry. Season cavity with about ½ tablespoon of the spice rub. Gently loosen the breast skin with your fingers as far down as you can go, being careful not to tear the skin. Spread almost all of the herb butter under the skin and smooth it out as evenly as possible by rubbing the skin. Rub remaining butter lightly over the rest of the turkey. Sprinkle about 2 tablespoons of the spice rub all over turkey.
6. Place turkey in pan on top of vegetables. Tuck the wings under turkey, and tie legs together with kitchen twine.
7. Roast turkey for 30 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 325º and loosely cover with foil. Cook turkey, basting with the liquid in the pan every 45 minutes, until the leg feels loose in the socket and a thermometer inserted into the thigh registers 165º. Start checking the temperature after about 2 hours. Depending on the size of your turkey, it may take up to 4 hours to cook through. Let sit 20 to 25 minutes before carving.
‘Gravlax, herring and schnapps are the bridge.’
The early life of Maren Waxenberg, who was raised in North Dakota and educated in Minnesota, followed familiar Scandinavian-American patterns. So did the Thanksgiving dinners she made with her Norwegian-American mother: herring and aquavit before the meal, cloudberry preserves instead of cranberry sauce with the turkey, and blotkake (spongecake covered with whipped cream and berries) alongside the traditional pies.
Then she fell in love with a native New Yorker. Twenty-six years later, she has perfected what she calls a “Judeo-Nordic Thanksgiving,” a multicourse feast that she cooks every year for 25 people on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, few of whom are of Nordic descent.
Still, “there are Scandinavian elements in our meal from beginning to end,” said Waxenberg, 53, a business-school teacher, event planner and serious cook who is fiercely proud of her Norwegian heritage and makes specialties like rye crispbread from scratch.
Fortunately, she said, there is plenty of crossover between the two interest groups at her table: “Gravlax, herring and schnapps are the bridge.”
JULIA MOSKIN
Blotkake (Norwegian Cream Cake)
Yield: 10 to 12 servings
Total time: 1 hour, plus cooling
For the cake:
Nonstick cooking spray
4 large eggs
1 cup/200 grams granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup/120 grams cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
For the filling and frosting:
3 cups/720 milliliters whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons cloudberry, raspberry or blackberry preserves
1/3 cup cloudberry or raspberry liqueur (such as Chambord), or berry juice of your choice
12 ounces/340 grams fresh raspberries or blackberries, for decorating (optional)
1. Bake the cake: Heat oven to 350º and mist a 9-inch springform pan with cooking spray. Combine eggs, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer (or the whisk attachment of a stand mixer) until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes.
2. Sift cake flour and baking powder into a separate bowl, then fold into the egg mixture in 2 additions.
3. Pour batter into pan and bake on the middle rack of the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the middle comes out clean. Let cool completely before removing from pan.
4. Make the frosting and filling: Beat whipping cream, vanilla and confectioners’ sugar with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Transfer 1/3 of the whipped cream to a separate bowl and stir in preserves.
5. Use a serrated knife to slice cake horizontally into 3 equal layers. Arrange top layer of the cake cut-side-up on a platter. Poke a few holes in the cake layer with a toothpick, then sprinkle with 1/3 of the liqueur or juice.
6. Spread half the whipped cream and preserves mixture over the cake layer, then arrange middle layer on top. Poke holes in the middle layer with a toothpick and sprinkle with another 1/3 of the liqueur or juice. Top with remaining whipped cream and preserves mixture.
7. Arrange the bottom cake layer on top of the stack, cut-side-down. Poke more holes and sprinkle with remaining liqueur or juice. Frost top and sides of cake with the whipped cream, using a pastry bag to pipe on stars or other designs, if you’d like. Decorate with fresh berries.
‘It’s all about family.’
“I’ve never in my life had mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving,” Debbie Himmler said. In Cincinnati, where she grew up and still lives, her oma (grandmother) made noodles instead, draping them over dining chairs to dry, then flipping them in a big frying pan with bread crumbs and butter.
Himmler’s grandparents were born in southwest Germany but didn’t find each other until they moved to Cincinnati in the 1920s, she to work as an upstairs maid, he as a sausage maker.
For as long as they lived, Thanksgiving was theirs, drawing the generations back to their house on 5 acres, where Himmler’s opa (grandfather) brewed cider and the women of the family made the German apple cake apfelkuchen, using apples gathered from the surrounding trees.
On the table would be the American standards: turkey, gravy, sweet potatoes with a little brown sugar — and her oma’s rotkraut (pickled red cabbage), tangy and vivid. Of Himmler, the oldest grandchild, her oma and opa always said approvingly, “She’s the best eater.”
Only once has Himmler eaten a Thanksgiving dinner that was not a home-cooked meal, just after her mother’s death seven years ago. “It was horrible,” she said.
Now 60, she has taken on the role of host. Several years ago her daughter’s in-laws, who are of Filipino descent, brought lumpia (spring rolls) to set alongside the rotkraut: perhaps a new tradition.
LIGAYA MISHAN
Rotkraut
Yield: 8 servings
Total time: 45 minutes
1 head red cabbage (about 2 pounds), halved, cored and thinly sliced
1 cup burgundy (or other dry red wine)
½ cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Dash of cayenne pepper
Dash of ground cloves
2 bay leaves
2 tart apples (such as Granny Smith or Cortland), peeled, cored and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon cornstarch
½ cup apple cider vinegar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed
1. Combine cabbage, wine, brown sugar, salt, cayenne, cloves, bay leaves and apples in a large pot and bring to a simmer. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes.
2. In a small bowl, whisk the cornstarch into the vinegar, then add to the pot along with the butter; stir until butter is melted. Simmer, uncovered, 20 more minutes, or until most of the liquid has cooked off and cabbage is very tender. Remove bay leaves before serving.
‘It’s not only making bread, it’s telling a story.’
Last year, Sofía Beltrán, a law student, spent Thanksgiving away from her family’s home in Austin, Texas, for the first time. She studied the South American classics of her parents so she could replicate them in her Los Angeles kitchen.
Her pork roast is her father’s, the meat cooked slowly under a blitz of pineapple and onion until it nearly falls apart. It’s just as he learned to make it from his Ecuadorean father.
And Beltrán, 31, is learning to make the pan de jamón recipe of her mother, Martha Beltrán, who was born in Bogotá and moved back and forth between Colombia and Venezuela before settling in the United States in the 1980s. The elder Beltrán, 58, thinks of the traditional Venezuelan holiday bread as a way to connect her children to her culture.
The dough is time-consuming to make well: yeasted and laminated over 12 hours, then rolled up with strips of ham and olives so that each slice reveals a swirl of butter-slicked fillings.
When Martha Beltrán bakes it, which is only once a year, she makes four big golden loaves at a time. Still, there may be leftover turkey and roast vegetables, but there’s never any leftover pan de jamón.
TEJAL RAO
Pan de Jamón (Venezuelan Ham Bread)
Yield: 12 to 14 servings (4 loaves)
Total time: About 15 hours, largely unattended
For the bread:
1 cup/250 milliliters whole milk
¼ cup/50 grams plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
½ ounce/14 grams/4 ½ teaspoons instant yeast
1 pound/454 grams salted butter (4 sticks), room temperature
½ teaspoon salt
7 eggs
4 ½ cups/509 grams self-rising flour
3 1/3 cups/483 grams all-purpose flour, more for dusting surface
For the filling:
½ pound/226 grams ham, thinly sliced and cut into long strips ½ inch wide
18 ounces/509 grams smoked uncured bacon, cut into long ½-inch-wide strips (do not use thick cut)
2 cups/288 grams raisins
½ cup/85 grams pimento-stuffed green olives, thinly sliced
For the glaze:
¼ cup/59 milliliters whole milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1. Make the bread: In a small pot over medium-low heat, scald milk. When milk is near boiling and bubbles form around the edge of the pot, remove from heat and let cool.
2. In a small bowl, combine ½ cup warm water and 2 tablespoons sugar and mix well. Add yeast and let rest for 5 minutes or until bubbly.
3. Using a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk together ¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) butter, the rest of the sugar and the salt on medium-low speed just to combine. With mixer running, add eggs, cooled scalded milk and yeast mixture. Mix on medium speed until thoroughly combined, about 2 minutes.
4. Place flours in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Change out the stand mixer attachment for a dough hook and slowly add flours to butter mixture about ½ cup at a time, until fully incorporated. The dough should pull away from the bowl’s edges relatively cleanly. Let rest in bowl for about 5 minutes.
5. Sprinkle all-purpose flour on a clean work surface. Scrape out dough and knead for 5 minutes. If dough is too sticky to handle, add a little more flour, but do not let it get too dry. Cut dough into 2 pieces.
6. Roll each piece of dough with heavy rolling pin into a 15-by-20-inch rectangle about ¼ inch thick. Using a small offset spatula or butter knife, spread about 3 tablespoons butter in a thin layer over the top of the dough, just enough to cover.
7. Fold dough into thirds like a letter: With the short end of the dough facing you, fold up from the bottom, and then fold down from the top. Then, take the letter-shaped dough and fold one more time lengthwise, making a small square.
8. Wrap each of the pieces in plastic or place each one in a plastic bag and let them rest in the refrigerator for about 4 hours. Repeat process of rolling, buttering, folding and refrigerating 2 more times with both pieces of dough. This will take a total of 12 hours, but additional chilling time between rollings is OK, allowing you to break up the process overnight. (For instance, the first rolling can be done the night before, followed by subsequent rollings the next day.)
9. Remove dough from refrigerator and divide each piece into 2 equal sections, for 4 pieces of dough in total. Lightly flour a clean work surface and roll one piece into a thin 15-by-20-inch rectangle, rewrapping in plastic and returning the other pieces to the refrigerator.
10. Fill the bread: Working lengthwise, put down a stripe of ham strips in a single layer. Below that place a stripe of bacon strips and below that, a sparse stripe of raisins and olives. (Make sure to use a light hand with the raisins and olives.) Repeat this pattern until the surface of the dough is covered.
11. Take one of the short edges of the dough, and carefully roll it up, like a jelly roll, tucking it in as you go to make sure it is tight. When it is fully rolled, tuck the open edges on either side underneath the roll, and place the whole roll seam-side down on a parchment-lined baking sheet so it doesn’t pop open while baking. Repeat rolling-and-filling process with the other 3 pieces of dough. Place loaves on 2 baking sheets lined with parchment, 2 to a sheet. Cover loaves with a clean dish towel and let rise for 45 minutes.
12. Heat oven to 350º. Bake 2 loaves at a time for about 40 minutes, checking to make sure tops are becoming golden without burning. If loaves are browning too quickly, tent with foil.
13. Prepare the glaze: While the bread bakes, add milk and sugar to a small bowl and stir to dissolve.
14. At the 40-minute mark, pull the loaves out of the oven, and, using a pastry brush, glaze their tops. Bake for another 5 minutes, until the loaves have a slight sheen and are deep golden brown in color. Remove from oven and let bread rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.
‘No maple-bourbon anything.’
All four of Lisa Conte’s grandparents were born in Torella, a tiny town in the southern Italian region of Molise. Together they immigrated to New Jersey in the early 1900s, built homes, planted vegetable gardens — and, finally, married two of their children to each other, becoming one family.
A century later, the Contes’ menu for their Thanksgiving dinner in Wall Township, New Jersey, is still determined by that first generation — especially by Lisa’s paternal grandmother, Pietronilla (known as Nilla), whose cooking skills remain legendary well after her death.
“No maple-bourbon anything — our flavors are more Mediterranean,” said Lisa Conte, 48. “We don’t even have mashed potatoes. Instead we roast them with olive oil and garlic.”
Lisa’s mother, Carmela, 72, now does most of the cooking, including the fluffy spinach-mushroom stuffing that Nilla adapted from traditional Italian fillings for pasta and game birds. After the meal, appetites are revived with fragrant platters of sliced fresh fennel and oranges, drizzled with olive oil and dusted with salt and pepper, a traditional combination at Christmastime in Italy, where both are harvested in season.
“A lot of people would probably think that’s weird for Thanksgiving,” Lisa Conte said. “But for me, that’s the taste of home.”
JULIA MOSKIN
Italian Spinach Stuffing
Yield: 12 to 14 servings
Total time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups chopped sweet onion (about 1 large onion)
8 cloves garlic, minced
4 (10-ounce) boxes frozen chopped spinach, thawed, drained and squeezed dry
2 cups chopped white mushrooms caps
Salt and black pepper
2 pounds well-trimmed chicken or turkey gizzards
4 large eggs
1 ½ cups grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
½ cup chopped parsley
1. Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and sauté, stirring, until translucent, about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and add garlic, spinach and mushrooms and cook, stirring often, until well mixed and heated through, about 5 minutes. Season mixture to taste with salt and pepper; set aside.
2. Finely mince chicken gizzards. (You can do this by hand or in a food processor, but be careful not to overprocess.) Season gizzards all over with salt. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add gizzards and sauté, stirring often, until cooked through, 5 to 7 minutes. Drain off any drippings, then stir gizzards into spinach mixture. Let cool to room temperature.
3. Heat oven to 350º. When spinach mixture is cool, add eggs, cheese, bread crumbs and parsley and stir until well combined. Transfer stuffing to a 3-quart casserole dish and bake, covered, 1 hour.
‘She made the potatoes legendary.’
“We call them Sweeney potatoes,” Maura Passanisi of Alameda, California, said. Her grandmother Florence Sweeney was of Dutch descent, the daughter of 19th-century immigrants from Hoorn, and the potatoes were her swing at a grand Thanksgiving casserole to honor the heritage of her strapping Irish husband, Kevin, whose parents had fled the potato famine to make a life in America.
Florence and Kevin Sweeney had seven children, and as those children grew and had children of their own, the dish became a staple of the family Thanksgiving feast. Florence Sweeney made the potatoes first in the style of many American home cooks in the postwar 1950s, using canned condensed soups and frozen hash browns, her take on a recipe often labeled “company potatoes” in church and community cookbooks.
“She was pretty frugal,” Passanisi, 34, said of her grandmother, “but there were lots and lots of little kids running around, and she made the potatoes legendary, rich, so they could feed a lot of people.”
Over time, over generations, her recipe has changed, most recently at Passanisi’s hands. It has lost many of the packaged ingredients to become something purer in its sour, silky, salty, sweet flavor, if no less rich and legendary in its power to awe.
SAM SIFTON
Sweeney Potatoes
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Total time: 1 hour
2 ½ pounds russet potatoes, scrubbed and cut into ¼-inch cubes
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, at room temperature
½ cup unsalted butter, melted, plus more butter for the pan
1 cup sour cream
¼ to ½ cup whole milk
Kosher salt and ground black pepper, to taste
2 ½ cups freshly grated sharp cheddar cheese (about 8 ounces)
Chopped fresh parsley, for garnish (optional)
1. Heat oven to 325º. Put potatoes in a large heavy-bottomed pot and cover with cold water. Set on stove over high heat and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and allow potatoes to simmer until they have just started to soften, about 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.
2. Combine cream cheese, melted butter and sour cream in a large bowl and stir to combine. Add enough milk so that the mixture is creamy but not soupy. Season mixture with salt and pepper to taste. Add potatoes to bowl and stir gently to combine.
3. Generously grease a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Tip half the potatoes into the dish and spread to the edges, then scatter half the grated cheese over the top. Add remaining potatoes and spread to the edges, then top with remaining cheese.
4. Bake until casserole is bubbling at the edges and cheese has melted across the top, 30 to 35 minutes. Sprinkle with parsley before serving, if you’d like.
‘You have to respect the animal when you eat it.’
For Choua Der Moua and Nhia Vang Moua, who found asylum in the United States three decades ago as Hmong refugees from Laos, November is the time of new rice, a cause for feasting.
By happy coincidence, Americans, too, celebrate the fall harvest. Thanksgiving is a way to be American and Hmong at once.
On their farm in Junction City, Wisconsin, they raise and slaughter the turkey themselves. Then they rub it with lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves, and stuff it with bean-thread vermicelli and shredded carrots, cabbage and cilantro doused with fish sauce, as if it were an egg roll.
They were teenagers when Saigon fell. Because many Hmong had helped the Americans during the war, there was fear of reprisals, and they fled on foot from their villages on the Xieng Khouang Plateau, heading “where the sun sets,” as their oldest daughter, Diane Yang, recalls her parents saying. In the Ban Vinai refugee camp in northeast Thailand, they fell in love and married.
Yang, 34, is the pastry chef at Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis, where she lives with her husband, a fellow Hmong and her high school sweetheart, and their two children. Every Thanksgiving, they return to her parents’ farm to pick mustard greens from the garden, toast sticky-rice patties and grate Hmong cucumber with sugar and water.
The table is heavy with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. They honor the classics, save one: “No cranberry jelly in Hmong households,” Yang said, with something of a shudder. “Very sweet.” Then for dessert, coconut pandan jellies and pumpkin pie.
LIGAYA MISHAN
Hmong Egg Roll Stuffing
Yield: 6 to 8 servings, to stuff a 16-pound turkey
Total time: 15 minutes, plus turkey roasting time
5 ¼ ounces/150 grams vermicelli bean thread noodles (preferably Lungkow brand)
1 ½ cups shredded green cabbage
1 ½ cups shredded carrots
¾ cup chopped green onion
¾ cup chopped cilantro
3 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1. In a large bowl, soak bean thread noodles in hot water for 8 minutes. Drain well. Using clean kitchen shears, cut noodles in half.
2. Place noodles in a large bowl, along with all remaining ingredients. Mix well. (Hands work best to separate the noodles.) Use mixture to stuff both the body cavity and the front cavity of a seasoned turkey, then roast as directed.
‘A grain of salt and a grain of sugar.’
Plenty of Cuban immigrants living in America use Thanksgiving simply as a practice run for Nochebuena, the Christmas Eve feast in which — if you’re at the right house — a pig will emerge glistening from the metal roaster called the caja china, and there will be lots of boiled yuca to soak up garlicky mojo.
Not Margarita Velasco and her family. She left Cuba for the United States in 1960, when she was 24. From the start, her family embraced the traditional Thanksgiving meal.
“We always thought if you’re here, get used to it, don’t try to change the things,” she said. “So we make a big deal of the American Thanksgiving.”
The family toggles between Miami and Chicago each year, with Velasco, her sister and a sister-in-law doing much of the cooking for a group that can include 50 people.
Even though the stars of the feast are wild rice, cranberry sauce and turkey, Cuba is never far from their minds. Someone always bakes a pumpkin flan made with calabaza, a kind of pumpkin-shaped squash popular in Cuban recipes. It joins a parade of other, more traditional Thanksgiving desserts, a reminder of the place they were forced to leave.
“Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks to God for all the things we have, despite the bad luck life can bring,” said Velasco, whom everyone calls Maggie. “Life is too short, and you have to take things with a grain of salt and a grain of sugar and keep on going.”
KIM SEVERSON
Pumpkin Flan
Yield: 10 to 12 servings
Total time: About 2 hours, plus chilling
1 ¾ cups/350 grams granulated sugar, divided
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups/473 milliliters half-and-half
4 large eggs, plus 2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (see note)
1/8 teaspoon fine salt
½ cup/125 grams pumpkin purée (from a speckled hound, calabaza or other cooking pumpkin)
½ cup/125 grams butternut squash purée (see note)
1. Make the caramel: In a heavy saucepan, mix ¾ cup sugar and ¼ cup water. The mixture should look like wet sand. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until it begins to make large bubbles. Continue to cook without stirring, rotating the pan regularly, until the caramel is translucent and amber-colored, 12 to 15 minutes. Working quickly, pour caramel into a 2-quart oven-safe glass bowl and rotate the bowl so it coats the sides.
2. Make the flan: In another saucepan, combine remaining sugar, cinnamon stick and half-and-half. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Let cool.
3. Heat oven to 350º. Whisk eggs and egg yolks in a large bowl until well blended. Whisk in vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, salt and pumpkin and squash purées. Add cooled cream mixture and whisk well.
4. Pour custard mixture through a mesh sieve, stirring and pressing with a spatula. You can do this directly into the bowl with the caramel, or into a separate bowl first, and then pour the strained mixture into the bowl with the caramel.
5. Place the bowl with the custard into a larger baking dish and carefully add warm water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the flan bowl. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 45 to 60 minutes, or until flan is just set in the middle, but still jiggles slightly. (A wider, shallower baking vessel will cook more quickly than a deeper one.)
6. Remove flan from water bath and let cool to room temperature. Refrigerate until completely cool, preferably overnight. To serve, run a knife around the edges of the flan, then put a serving platter on top of the bowl and invert. The flan should slip easily onto the serving platter with the caramel sauce pooling nicely around it.
‘I was blown away by the kindness.’
A young man from what was then known as Bombay meets a young man from a small town in Minnesota. They fall in love, and the Minnesotan invites his new love home for Thanksgiving.
“Coming from a land of spice, I thought, ‘Man, how boring,’” Raghavan Iyer, 55, the Indian cookbook author, said of that Thanksgiving meal, his first one.
It didn’t help that Iyer was and still is a vegetarian. That initiatory dinner consisted of mashed potatoes and jellied cranberry sauce from the can, a dish he loved because its sweet-and-sour flavor tasted faintly of home.
That was 34 years ago. The Minnesota family became his de facto in-laws. His partner’s mother started making him vegetarian chili and stuffing moistened with water instead of chicken stock. “I was blown away by the kindness,” he said.
Eventually, Iyer and his partner, Terry Erickson, adopted an African-American boy, Robert. Collards and black-eyed peas were added to the table to honor his heritage. Iyer brings a taste of his hometown, too, often in the form of fried squash dumplings made with chickpea flour, onions and chilies simmered in a cream-and-tomato sauce punched up with ginger.
The dish is a way to bring a bit of the liveliness of Mumbai street food to a staid Minnesota Thanksgiving table. The crisp exterior of the fritters gives way to soft, spicy squash inside, all of it in a bright sauce — which, by the way, goes nicely with jellied cranberry sauce straight from the can.
KIM SEVERSON
Dudhi Kofta Curry (Indian Squash Dumplings)
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Total time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
For the dumplings:
2 pounds zucchini, trimmed
2 teaspoons coarse kosher or sea salt
1 small red onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons raw cashews
4 large cloves garlic, peeled
4 lengthwise slices fresh ginger (each 2 inches long, 1 inch wide and 1/8-inch thick)
4 fresh green Thai, cayenne or serrano chilies, stems removed
¼ cup chickpea flour
2 tablespoons rice flour
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems
Vegetable oil for deep-frying
For the sauce:
2 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 small red onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
4 fresh green Thai, cayenne or serrano chilies, stems removed, coarsely chopped (do not remove seeds)
2 tablespoons raw cashews
2 tablespoons golden raisins
1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon coarse kosher or sea salt
¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
½ cup half-and-half
1 teaspoon garam masala
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems, for serving
1. Prepare the dumplings: Shred zucchini using a food processor or box grater. Collect shreds in a large bowl and mix in salt. Let stand for about 30 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, place onion, cashews, garlic, ginger and chilies in a food processor. Pulse until mixture forms a spicy-smelling, slightly chunky paste.
3. Wrap zucchini in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze out all the liquid. (Discard the liquid.) Transfer squash back to bowl and stir in onion paste mixture until combined. Add chickpea flour, rice flour and cilantro and stir to combine into a slightly wet batter.
4. Working quickly, place a heaping tablespoon of batter in the palm of your hand and squeeze it to condense it into a ball; transfer dumpling to a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining batter to make about 25 dumplings. (The longer you let the batter stand without shaping it, the more liquid the squash will release, making it difficult to handle. Adding more flour will make it manageable, but will also make the dumplings too dense.)
5. Pour oil into a wok, Dutch oven or medium saucepan to a depth of about 1 inch. Set over medium heat until a candy or oil thermometer registers 300º. Meanwhile, line a plate or baking sheet with paper towels.
6. Once oil is hot, gently slide 8 dumplings into pan. Fry, turning occasionally, until they are honey brown and crisp, about 5 minutes. Remove dumplings with a slotted spoon and drain on the paper towels. Repeat with remaining dumplings. You may need to adjust heat to maintain the oil temperature.
7. Make the sauce: Heat ghee or oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add cumin seeds and cook until they sizzle and darken, 5 to 10 seconds. Immediately add onions, chilies, cashews and raisins. Stir-fry until onion is soft and golden, chilies are pungent, cashews have turned honey brown, and raisins have swelled and darkened, about 5 minutes.
8. Add tomatoes, salt and turmeric to the saucepan, stirring once or twice to combine. Transfer to a blender and purée, scraping the inside of the jar as needed, to make a smooth and spicy-sweet red sauce. Pour sauce back into saucepan. Pour ½ cup water into blender jar and swish it around; add this liquid to pan. Stir in half-and-half and garam masala.
9. Gently add dumplings to sauce, making sure they do not break apart. Heat curry over medium heat until sauce starts to bubble, then lower heat, cover the pan, and simmer until dumplings are warmed through and have absorbed some of the sauce, about 5 minutes; do not stir. Sprinkle with cilantro before serving.
‘At the end of the day, you’re an American.’
Grape leaves, rolled up with seasoned rice, are made with infinite regional variations throughout the Middle East. In Dohuk, in northern Iraq, where Parwin Tayyar and her family come from, eprax is a carefully layered casserole of grape leaves with other stuffed vegetables (cabbage, tomatoes, squash, potatoes) and a row of lamb chops running through the center.
It’s elaborate and takes time to prepare, but eprax, sometimes called dolmas, is always tipped out onto a platter of flatbread at the Tayyar family’s Thanksgiving, joining roast turkey and stuffing.
When the Tayyars first arrived in the United States in the early 1990s, Parwin was 9 and had spent most of her childhood in a refugee camp. The Kurdish population of Nashville, their new home, was already beginning to grow: Some Kurds had immigrated there in the 1970s, while others came after the Persian Gulf war. Nashville’s Kurdish community is now the largest in the country; its people, mosques and businesses are all a vital part of the city’s identity.
Parwin Tayyar is just as likely to prepare chicken and turnip greens as she is her mother’s version of eprax. Either way, she smooths a tablecloth on the ground, and everyone gathers on the floor to share the feast.
TEJAL RAO
Eprax (Kurdish Stuffed Vegetables and Lamb)
Yield: 4 main course servings, up to 10 as part of a larger meal
Total time: About 3 hours
For the stuffing mix:
3 cups basmati rice
1 pound ground lamb or beef
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons minced yellow onion
1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste
1 cup diced celery
1 small tomato, diced
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon garam masala
2 teaspoons paprika
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon fresh finely chopped parsley
For the vegetables:
1 large yellow onion, trimmed and peeled
1 (3-pound) head green cabbage
20 roughly hand-size grape leaves (from an 8-ounce jar)
2 bell peppers or large tomatoes, or a combination
1 large eggplant
1 russet potato
To assemble:
4 (3/4-inch-thick) lamb loin chops
Salt and black pepper
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
½ medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into ½-inch-thick half-moons or semicircles
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 Kurdish flatbread or 4 Indian naan, for serving (optional)
1. Make the filling: Rinse rice in colander until water runs clear. Transfer to large bowl, add water to cover, and let soak for 30 minutes.
2. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add ground meat, salt and pepper and sauté over medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes, breaking up meat with a spoon. Stir in garlic and onions and sauté for 1 minute, stirring.
3. Reduce heat to low and mix in tomato paste, celery, tomato, lemon juice, spices, oil and parsley. Remove from heat. Drain rice. Add meat mixture to rice, mix well to combine, cover, and set aside to cool.
4. Prepare the vegetables: Fill a microwave-safe bowl with an inch of water. Using a knife, make a cut halfway from the side just into the center of the onion (so it is not fully cut in half). Place onion in bowl and microwave for 3 to 5 minutes, until onion has swelled and become soft, and layers are pliable. Remove from water, drain and let cool. Repeat with cabbage, making a cut into its core and placing in a bowl with water. Microwave for 5 to 10 minutes, until leaves become pliable, and can be easily separated from the head. (Remove outer layers as they soften while cooking.) Cut leaves into pieces about the size of your palm. (Alternatively, bring a pot of water to a boil and cook onion for 5 minutes, and cabbage for 10 minutes.)
5. Soak grape leaves in cold water in a mixing bowl until ready to use. Cut any leaves bigger than the palm of your hand in half.
6. Cut a ½-inch-thick lid off each bell pepper or tomato, or both, reserving lids. Core and seed each, so the center of each piece can be stuffed.
7. Cut off stem end of eggplant, then cut in half so you have two short cylinders about the height of a bell pepper, and use a knife to cut out the middle of each piece of eggplant, leaving a roughly ½-inch wall, so there is a cavity you can stuff.
8. Peel potato. Halve and carve out the center with a spoon so there is room to stuff each half.
9. To assemble: Heat a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Season lamb chops with salt and pepper, then add to skillet. Sear 2 to 3 minutes per side, until evenly brown. Set aside.
10. Lightly grease bottom of a large pot with a lid (10 to 12 quarts) with 1 teaspoon oil. Arrange squash pieces in a circle on the bottom of the pot. Place lamb chops on top.
11. Fill about 20 grape leaves: Place a grape leaf (with the bumpier veined side of the leaf up) on a surface, with the stem closest to you. Place 1 scant tablespoon rice mixture near the stem. Roll up leaf to form a roughly 2-inch cigar shape, folding ends over halfway through rolling. Repeat with remaining leaves, and fit into pot between and over chops. Season with salt and pepper.
12. Loosely stuff peppers or tomatoes or both, cover with their lids, and place in pot on their sides. Loosely stuff eggplant and potatoes, and place in pot on their sides.
13. Separate cooled onion into its individual layers, so you have 6 to 8 individual curved pieces whose ends meet to form little tubes. (Don’t use the smallest pieces.) Loosely fill onion layers, as if you were stuffing Italian-style pasta shells, and fit them in between the other vegetables to fill gaps. Season with salt and pepper.
14. Use remaining rice mixture to stuff as many cabbage leaves as you can, then use stuffed leaves to create a top layer in the pot. (If you don’t have enough stuffing to make a full layer of stuffed leaves, cover the stuffed vegetables by draping them with leftover cabbage leaves.) Season with salt and pepper, then drizzle lemon juice over top.
15. Add water to pot until it comes about halfway up the sides of the vegetables (about 2 inches below the top layer). Cover pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Cook at a hard simmer for 10 minutes.
16. Drizzle vegetables with 2 tablespoons oil, then cover pot again, lower heat to a simmer, and cook for 35 to 45 minutes more, or until rice is cooked and much of the liquid has been absorbed. To check for doneness, cut into one of the leaf bundles on top and check to see that the rice inside is fully cooked; to check the liquid, tilt the pot so you can get a sense of the water level. If there is more than ½ inch water, carefully drain off excess.
17. Place a large circular platter or tray on top of pot and carefully invert the pot onto platter, tapping bottom of pot to loosen any remaining ingredients before removing it. (If you’d like, line tray with flatbread first before turning out dolmas, or serve flatbread on the side. The bread absorbs the excess water.) Pat any stray vegetables back into a big pile. Serve in the center of the table.
‘Things that reflect where we came from.’
Sometimes there is arroz con gandules on Veronica Garcia’s Thanksgiving table, the rice studded with pigeon peas and olives. The dish is one that her mother, who was born in northeastern Mexico, learned from Puerto Rican neighbors in Chicago, where she arrived in 1961 as a teenager, and where she lived and worked and married and had children before moving with her family to Texas.
For a while, there was pancit, the Philippine noodle dish, which her mother learned from a co-worker and, Garcia said, “Mexican-ified over time.” There is always a turkey. There are always tamales. And there is always, always, she said, arroz con leche for dessert.
The recipe is her maternal grandmother’s. Garcia, 40, the vice president for government and public affairs at the Texas Charter Schools Association, makes the dish with a little less sugar than her grandmother did, which she worries disappoints her mother slightly. And she uses a split vanilla bean in place of the extract her grandmother used because she could not afford fresh vanilla.
But in keeping with the original recipe, she soaks and rinses the rice twice before combining it with milk, sugar and evaporated milk. The process delivers a terrific texture to the dish, one that is far from dense.
“I come from a family of proud, naturalized American citizens,” Garcia said. Her father also came to the United States from Mexico, as a teenager, got his green card by joining the Army during the Vietnam War, then earned his citizenship after fighting in it. “Our Thanksgiving table is pretty traditional,” she said. “But I love that we serve things that reflect where we came from, too.”
SAM SIFTON
Arroz Con Leche
Yield: 10 to 12 servings
Total time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
2 cups long-grain white rice
8 cups whole milk
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 (12-ounce) can evaporated milk
1 fresh vanilla bean, split
2 small cinnamon sticks
Ground cinnamon, for topping
1. Fill a medium pot halfway with water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add rice. Set aside 20 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, combine whole milk, sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla bean and cinnamon sticks in a large heavy-bottomed pot (at least 4 quarts) and set over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, 40 minutes. If mixture starts to boil, reduce heat so it is just barely simmering.
3. While milk mixture cooks, drain the rice, rinse it and set it aside. Fill the medium pot halfway with fresh water and bring to a boil. Add drained rice to the boiling water, turn down heat, and simmer 6 minutes. Drain rice again.
4. Add drained rice to the milk mixture and continue to cook at a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally, until the mixture has thickened considerably, another 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool slightly (mixture will thicken more as it cools), then remove cinnamon sticks and vanilla bean. Serve warm, room temperature or cold, sprinkled with ground cinnamon to taste.
‘We didn’t realize that one day we would carry on this tradition.’
Ayaan and Idyl Mohallim started their clothing label in Brooklyn in 2008, driven by a distinctly cosmopolitan aesthetic. The designers, twin sisters who are now 33, grew up in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where they were surrounded by family in their grandmother’s home.
Their grandmother taught them to cook, insisting that they help chop onions and garlic, and showing them how to make xawaash, a mix of sweet brown spices and turmeric, from scratch.
“We’re American, but Somali was our first language, and our years there are so vivid,” Ayaan Mohallim said. They later named their company Mataano, the Somali word for “twins.”
For special occasions like Thanksgiving (which they’ll celebrate in New York with family and friends), they make a glamorous platter of bariis iskukaris, Somali-style rice, the basmati grains cooked in a rich, meaty stock and strewn with fried onions, raisins and peppers, or sometimes green beans.
Stained orange with saffron and perfumed with their homemade xawaash, a pile of this rice could be a meal on its own. Instead, it makes everything on the Thanksgiving table shine a little bit brighter.
TEJAL RAO
Bariis iskukaris (Somali-style rice)
Yield: 12 to 16 servings
Total time: 1 hour
For the rice:
4 cups basmati rice
½ cup olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cinnamon sticks
5 whole green cardamom pods
10 whole cloves
2 teaspoons xawaash spice mix (see below)
8 cups chicken stock
1 teaspoon saffron threads, finely chopped
1 cup raisins
Salt
For the xawaash (Somali spice mix):
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
2 teaspoons dried whole sage
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 ¼ teaspoons ground ginger
8 green cardamom pods
10 whole cloves
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/3 cinnamon stick
For the topping:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
¼ cup raisins
1 red bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
Salt
1. Soak rice in cold water 30 to 45 minutes, then drain.
2. Meanwhile, prepare the xawaash: Combine all the spices in a spice grinder and finely grind. Set aside.
3. Prepare the topping: Heat olive oil in a wide, deep pot over medium-high heat and add the onions, stirring occasionally until translucent. Add raisins and allow to soften, about 2 minutes, then add red bell pepper and cook until softened, about 5 to 7 minutes. Season with salt and set aside on a paper towel.
4. In the same pot, make the rice: Heat ½ cup oil. Add onions and sauté, stirring frequently, until softened, 6 to 8 minutes. Add garlic, cinnamon sticks, cardamom, cloves and xawaash and cook, stirring, 1 minute.
5. Stir in stock and rice. Bring to boil, then cover and cook on low heat 20 minutes. Stir in saffron and raisins and season to taste with salt. Cover, turn off heat and steam for 5 more minutes. Transfer to a serving platter, using a large spoon to pile rice in a heap onto a platter. Sprinkle topping over rice and serve. — The New York Times
