With Thanksgiving recipes now dispensed, be prepared for a full barrage of Christmas recipes from next week. I recommend you get on board with the root veg and tuber recipes below, so you’ve got the stamina to make it through to New Year.
Hunker down
“These are potato days: the wet, cold nights when a spud is invariably our answer to everything.” Oh Nigel. You’re so, so right. Potatoes with smoked garlic and Comte. Duck with duck fat potatoes and pickled red cabbage — nice touch to have the acidic slaw/quick pickle variation on braised cabbage.
Also in support of potatoes, Rachel Roddy continues to make beige food look and sound as vibrant as a rainbow in the Guardian’s Cook supplement. This week: potato and porcini soup. And Anna Jones put the humble onion front and centre, with things like star anise and brown butter baked onions.
Meera Sodha’s parsnip and carrot mulligatawny soup in the Guardian Weekend will be similarly warming.
Saturday’s Times Magazine made yet another proclamation of a “New Nigella”. The Times are serial offenders here — time to retire the phrase, kids. Moving on … this was a set of recipes from French instagram and blog star Mimi Thorisson. Classic dishes, really, though still tempting. Whole roast duck and cherries, various things with pastry, dauphinois potatoes, a Comte and ham pasty (with a fancier name).
This’ll sort you out: slow braised featherblade steak, prunes, pumpkin and a light dusting of chilli and spice. Thanks to Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer over at Honey & Co (and the FT Weekend).
And if not that, then Tom Kerridge’s venison pie with blue cheese mash. Roast grouse and a game terrine with blackberry and ale compote suggest this column was originally earmarked for an earlier weekend, but they make a nice respite from turkey and sweetened root veg.
Sweet stuff
On which note …
There was a full Thanksgiving menu in The Sunday Times Magazine, courtesy of a Phaidon cookbook titled America. In that, a decent pumpkin pie, maple-glazed sprouts, candied sweet potatoes, sweetish cornbread, and Turkey glazed with sugar syrup and stuffed with fudge (the Turkey embellishments may be an exaggeration).
Yotam took on three was with sweet spuds: Purple sweet potatoes with lime and yoghurt, peanut and sweet potato fritters, and a spiced sweet potato cheesecake.
On nearby pages, Thomasina Miers was also making puds from vegetables, with a pumpkin, nutmeg and olive oil cake.
In Cook, in Jeremy Lee urges us to gild our brownies with fudge sauce. Because, well, why not?
Christmas and stuff
If there weren’t some Christmassy things last week(?), then we now know we’re in five full weeks to go territory, as the Telegraph housed a host of tips.
From the author of Feasts, Sabrina Ghayour’s Christmas with an essence of Persia provided just a little twist on the norm, which is the right amount (saffron roast potatoes and pork, sour cherry and pistachio stuffing ). And there were days and days worth of Christmas menus (Christmas eve, Christmas night, Boxing Day) from somewhere called Highclere Castle. Pleasingly ’90s in vibe: Boxing Day’s pheasant curry stood out, replete with mango chutney, carrots and generic curry powder, plus a ‘winter fruit salad’ pud of dried fruits rehydrated by brandy and allspice. Something to cheer dear Delia after a torrid week.
Oh, and there were also a bagful of recipes from Rick Stein’s latest travels to Mexico. Nice enough. Though I can’t help thinking about this piece whenever I see Mr Stein these days. Enamoured by Diana Henry’s new podcast series though, the first of which is a chat over the kitchen table with the man.
From the internet
I agree with Helen Graves about both stuffed pasta shells and spinach.
If you are doing Thanksgiving and want a practical approach, head to Serious Eats. (It’s just like Christmas tbh, just add corn syrup and marshmallows instead of salt.)
Or maybe make a cookie salad?
Weekend Menu, 18 and 19 November 2017
—
Tortilla soup with chipotle chilli, tomato and avocado
Rick Stein, The Telegraph
—
Confit duck, duck fat potatoes, pickled red cabbage
Nigel Slater, The Observer
—
Pumpkin Pie
Gabrielle Langholtz, The Sunday Times
—
For a nudge whenever #Supplemental is published, plus a monthly email with general foodie news, subscribe to the Rocket & Squash newsletter through the email link at the base of this post.
Comments