Give me 22 minutes, and I’ll give you a dozen of the best corn muffins you have ever tasted. Sweet and moist, with a maple-ey note that makes you think of corn pancakes drenched in syrup. This recipe originally appeared in Good Housekeeping at the request of a reader who had tasted them at Heathcote Tavern in Scarsdale, New York.
Having turned my pecan pie into bar cookies, I decided to do the same with my pumpkin pie. I used the same crust recipe as for the pecan bars, but used brown sugar and added in a little cinnamon to give the dough a streusel flavor.
Is it just me, or do you also find it next to impossible to find pareve deep dish pie crusts in the freezer section of the supermarket right before Thanksgiving? They are dairy, or the only crusts left are all broken, or something. Maybe I should have shopped earlier?
Homemade crusts are better, anyway, but I am so not in the mood to be rolling out crusts.
Fortunately, I remembered about my pecan bars. The crust is an easy press-in dough and, when all is said and done, you end up with forty bars, which is a bigger serving yield than you would get from a pie anyway. Isn’t it easier to platter and serve bar cookies than pie? Most people want just a nibble after all that heavy food.
And these pecan bars are exceptional, with a perfect balance of nuts, maple brown sugar goo and crust.
See, it turned out for the best. Who needs frozen pie crusts? Not me.
This would be a great thing to serve to vegans on Thanksgiving: it looks festive, has seasonal fall flavors, and is a filling meat-free main dish.
I used a grain mix, but you could use any single grain you like. The idea is simple: saute onion and garlic with some diced tempeh. Add seasonings and fold in cooked grain. While you are doing all this, let acorn squash roast until tender and then stuff it with the pilaf. That’s it.
It is actually not so complicated to make, so it is a nice weekday vegan supper, too. I brought some to Leora, and she says I should mention that she really liked it. A lot. My husband liked it so much that he wants it added to the regular rotation, and he is more a meat and potatoes type of eater than a fan of vegan cuisine. Which is a way of saying that this dish pleases the health conscious but also has that crucial mainstream crossover appeal.
The combination of grains, vegetables and seasonings is unusually savory. What I especially like is the way that the tempeh seamlessly blends in with the other ingredients. Tempeh can sometimes be a bit of a tough sell–this recipe has a great chance of converting the tempeh suspicious.
The Kosher Connection, an informal group of creative kosher food bloggers from all around the world, proudly present the first kosher recipe challenge. Each month we will present you with recipes on a different theme from all the kosher food bloggers.
This month is root vegetables! Follow our recipes on Twitter with #KosherRecipes.
This is a fusion of a recipe from Ina Garten for roasted butternut squash and one from The New Elegant but Easy Cookbook for Agata and Valentina’s Sicilian Carrots (see the Agata and Valentina website for a picture of the recipe made with sliced carrots and this post at The Wash Family Cookbook for a picture of the recipe made with baby carrots).
Most likely, if you have vegetarians coming to your seder, you have already figured out what you are serving them. But, if you are a last minute kind of person, this nut loaf will be a good addition to your seder table.
It is good served cold with some tangy sauce on the side, like duck sauce.
This is the pumpkin bread recipe you need. Sweet and moist, but not too sweet, spicy, but not overbearingly so–this irresistible pumpkin bread has been winning accolades for my mom. She made it for Thanksgiving, and it was a huge success. So much so that my mom decided to bake it for other occasions. Now, she is asked to bring it all the time and it is rapidly becoming a signature dessert.
The recipe comes from Lunch ‘Til Four, a cookbook put together by the sisterhood of Young Israel of West Hempstead. This cookbook, incidentally, is full of wonderful recipes. One of the recipe contributors is Michele Friedman, the author of Chef’s Confidential.
This pumpkin bread is almost exactly the same as Irene’s Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread, except that Irene uses allspice instead of nutmeg and 12 ounces of chocolate chips instead of nuts and raisins. Plus, Irene uses a slightly different mixing method, adding the sugar to the dry ingredients.
I made this on Thanksgiving and my husband loved it so much I think it is going into the regular rotation. Basically, what you do is blanch some green beans, fry some shallots, and then make a mushroom sauce with cremini mushrooms, garlic, and sherry. After all that, you cook the whole thing until the flavors all meld and fuse and it is a creamy, unctuous, fragrant melange of earthy mushrooms, meltingly soft green beans, crispy shallots, and savory sauce.
Here are some of my favorite recipes for Thanksgiving:
Wild Rice Salad (from Connecticut eatery Anna’s Temptations, as printed in Bon Appetit, 2006): this is always a hit. It features golden raisins, walnuts, grated carrots, scallions, dill and a delicious Dijon dressing. I leave out the chicken from the recipe, but I have also tried it with seitan “chicken,” which makes it handy if serving vegetarians. I don’t use sherry vinegar. Red wine vinegar or balsamic is fine. If you don’t use the chicken, you will need less dressing.
Another Wild Rice Salad that I love–and also a handy recipe for vegetarian guests–features chickpeas, golden raisins and a curried honey Dijon dressing. I leave out the ham or add cubes of soy “ham” (veggie cold cuts). This recipe, oddly enough, comes from a dessert cookbook, The Pastry Queen. It was featured in 150 Best American Recipes. The recipe comes from Paula Disbrowe and was also featured in Food and Wine Magazine.
It is nice to serve a warm bread. I love this recipe for crescent rolls which came from the 2005 Thanksgiving issue of Good Housekeeping Magazine. That issue featured Dr. Phil on the cover ( “Change your life for good! Seven decisions that will make everything better”). GH product analyst Nate Benforado contributed the recipe, and making these rolls was a decision that certainly made my Thanksgiving better. I use either water or dairy-free “milk” and oil or margarine to keep these pareve. These lovely rolls always make me think happily of the Pillsbury Dough Boy and those enticing advertisements for canned rolls.
Before latching onto this recipe, I had also tried out a Williams Sonoma recipe for Sally Lunn Herbed Rolls (here, too, I swapped out the milk and butter for non-dairy products). Delicious, sophisticated, and a little less fussy to make. But they don’t make me think of Poppin’ Fresh.
My son learned in school that corn muffins are a must, and I favor this recipe, adapted from AllRecipes.
And, then of course, another must is cranberry sauce.
When I was growing up, I remember cranberry sauce being dumped straight from the can onto a plate and sliced. That was it. It was still in the shape of the can, with the ridges and everything.
Then, we got gourmet and bought the whole cranberry sauce and added stuff to it.
This is a great cake to make if:
(a) a guest/ family member is vegan, has an egg allergy, or dairy allergy;
(b) you need a quick, easy pareve dessert for Thanksgiving; or
(c) you need to make dessert, but you have absolutely nothing in the refrigerator (no eggs, butter or milk).
This the pumpkin version of wacky cake (also known as Amazon cake, Moosewood’s vegan chocolate cake, or witch’s brew cake). You mix flour with spices, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl, you mix pumpkin puree, water, oil and a little vinegar. Wet and dry get mixed together to make a thick, vegan cake batter.
The original recipe calls for topping the moist, dense cake with a cream cheese frosting. The cake is served ice cold from the refrigerator. The taste sensation of cold spicy orange cake and cream cheese frosting is reminiscent of carrot cake. I had no trouble making a dairy-free “cream cheese” frosting with Tofutti “cream cheese,” but you could also leave this unfrosted or pour over a simple glaze.
File this recipe away–it is extremely handy. Not only does it come together in seconds, it relies exclusively on common pantry items (oil, canned pumpkin, flour, sugar, etc.). The only refrigerated item is the Tofutti for the frosting, but you could skip that if needed.
Most people have a fall back super easy chocolate cake, but would you believe that there are people who can’t eat chocolate? Well, there are. And they may end up being your last minute guests. As long as they aren’t also gluten-intolerant, this cake is perfect for them. Just make sure that you don’t have any soy-allergic guests if you go with the Tofutti frosting.
