Above is the menu of Thanksgiving, it was a “simple” meal, a kind of deconstruction of the traditional roast turkey spread. the first two desserts were from David Lebovitz and I highly recommend you check out his site and make them, the pumpkin pie was ethereal and by far the lightest and most delicious pumpkin pie I have ever eaten. I modified the pecan pie and made a tart which need slightly less cooking time and I thought gave a nice diversity to the look of the dessert course. And then on Saturday we had another dinner party where I tried to retool Thanksgiving with a few new dishes. The pies kept well from Thursday to Saturday, I kept them in the fridge and took them out in plenty of time so they would be room temperature when it came time to serve them.
I made two variation of my favorite fall Persimmon Pomegranate Salad, for Thanksgiving I used local Napa Cabbage, it turn out great the crunchy cabbage was a perfect foil to the fruits and made it like an upscale cole slaw. Saturday night I made it with Lacinato Kale, which was fine, I don’t think I’d repeat it tho.
Lastly to save some time, thanks to my friend and urbanfoodguy reader Skip I made Julie Childs quick gravlax and was surprised at how delicious and easy and yes, quick it was. She says it only needs to sit for an hour, I hedged my bets and made it the night before.
I offer this up as one option to a festive meal that uses the traditional herbs, meat and root vegetables, but does it with a different sensibility. Less heavy, more small plates, which I served over the evening, not all at once like the typical dinner would be. Oh and the goat cheese hush puppies are my new favorite thing, look for the recipe here this week.
This entry was posted in NYC, Other Stuff and tagged David Lebovitz, dinner parties, ginger pecan tart, Julie Child's Quick Gravlax, marshmallow pumpkin pie, menus, Persimmon Pomegranate salad, thanksgiving. Bookmark the permalink.