Thanksgiving Eats

Thanksgiving is a food lover's holiday and around here it has certainly been a week of good eats. The festivities started with a potluck lunch at work on Tuesday. I contributed a main dish- harvest pilaf and a dessert- pumpkin flan.

Harvest pilaf was nothing but my standard biryani recipe. I reduced the amount of rice, and instead loaded up the dish with all the vegetables that to me are the real stars of Thanksgiving. So in went a tray of roasted sweet potatoes and carrots, and another tray of roasted cauliflower, beans and zucchini.

I've made pumpkin flan a few years ago and we had enjoyed it- pumpkin flan has all the flavor of pumpkin pie but in a cool and light custard. This time, I used this recipe from Lucinda Scala Quinn. It uses pantry ingredients (and at this time of year, I count canned pumpkin as a pantry ingredient) and makes a nice 9 inch flan. The minor changes I made to the recipe: (1) I used only 1/2 cup of sugar in the flan mixture instead of 3/4 cup, (2) I used regular granulated sugar and used a dollop of molasses to make it "brown" and (3) I made the caramel in a small saucepan instead of in the oven. For the bain marie (water bath that keeps the flan smooth and tender), I used a huge foil roasting pan from the supermarket. You only have to buy it once and then you can keep using it any time you need a bain marie.

We had a wonderful spread, including deviled eggs, spinach quiche with a puff pastry crust, a salad with kale, shredded brussels sprouts and dried cranberries, corn casserole, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, cranberry sauce with orange zest.




The salad was my favorite dish, a crunchy and fresh counterpoint to all the other heavy dishes. I loved it so much that I made something like it to take to our Thanksgiving dinner- which was another potluck at a friend's home. My starting point for the salad was this recipe from The Kitchn.





Here's how I made my version of Shredded Brussels Sprouts Salad.

• Lop the stem ends off 1 lb of fresh brussels sprouts. Using the slicing disk of the food processor, shred the sprouts. Also shred a cup or so of red cabbage. Core a crisp apple (like honeycrisp or gala or fuji) and make thin slices with a mandoline. 
• In a small saucepan, melt 4 tbsp. butter and cook it until browned and nutty. In a large bowl, whisk the brown butter with 2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp. dijon mustard and salt and pepper to taste, until the dressing is emulsified. Stir in the chopped veggies and apple slices. (This salad can be made in advance). Top with roasted pecans and serve. 

For a main dish to take along to the potluck, I started out with the idea of making a butternut squash lasagna. Then I remembered that I had a box of jumbo pasta shells in the pantry and this seemed as good a time as any to finally cook those. Here's what I came up with, a mash up of various online recipes- and it was a resounding success.

Jumbo Shells stuffed with Butternut Squash and Spinach

Make the filling (I did this a few hours ahead of time):

• Peel and cube a butternut squash (there are videos online that teach how to do this safely). On a large baking sheet, toss the butternut squash cubes with 6 unpeeled garlic cloves, olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast at 425F until tender. 
• Cool and peel the garlic. Place roasted garlic and squash (I used 2/3 of the whole large squash here and saved the rest for another dish) in a large bowl. Mash it up coarsely with a fork.
• Thaw a box of frozen chopped spinach in the microwave, squeeze to remove excess liquid and add to the cooked squash.
• Add 1 cup ricotta, 1 cup diced mozzarella
• Add 1 tsp. poultry seasoning, 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste
• Mix everything together and refrigerate until you're ready to assemble the pasta.

Cook the jumbo pasta shells according to the directions on the box. Here's what the cooked shells looked like- adorable and surprisingly sturdy. Lila was delighted and munched on a couple.








Make the sauce
I made 2 cups of basic white sauce for this dish. You could use a tomato sauce or no sauce at all.

Assemble and bake
Scoop about 2 tbsp. filling into each shell. In a 9 x 13 baking dish, pour the white sauce. Arrange the shells on top. Scatter with 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese. Cover with foil and bake at 350F for 30 minutes, then uncover and place under broiler for a minute or two to get the cheese browned. Ta da.

This pasta dish was full of flavor and had a pretty nice presentation (which is rare for me). Each person could conveniently serve themselves a shell or two.

I had enough cooked shells left over to make another (smaller) tray of shells the next day.

So, tell me, what's cooking in your world?