Slow Food Fast Thanksgiving Guide

Recipes

I’ve combed through the general Recipes page for some Thanksgiving-suitable recipes. Not all are microwaveable but most are fast and reasonably fresh. You’ll notice I don’t bother with stuffing–the NoFurkey! post tells why I think it’s utterly skippable–your mileage may vary.

For diabetes carb counts, see the Carb Counts tab at the top of the web page for cooking and portion estimating help.

Last-Minute Thanksgiving

• Microwave Cranberry Sauce (with reduced-sugar and sugar-free variations)
• Turkey breast with ta’am
• Pumpkin Pie in the Microwave

Appetizers

• Baba Ghanouj
• Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms  (use smaller mushroom caps or cut these up in wedges
• Marbella Relish (prune-olive-tomato sauce inspired by Chicken Marbella) or Pan-Fried Variation with Artichoke Hearts–use these for bruschetta toppings
• Microwave Plum Jam(to go with goat cheese tartlets or baked brie)

Salads

A salad in winter: counterintuitive comfort food

Five Salad Dressings (creamy mustard, oil and vinegar, tehina, herb ranch, creamy bleu)

• Tie-Dyed Red Cabbage Salad
• Slightly More Dignified Salad
• Three Orange Salads
• Cucumber Salad in the style of half-sour kosher dills (hold the salt)
• Fennel and plum salad
• Greek Green Cabbage Salad with Herbs, Lemon and Olives
• Marinated Artichoke Hearts  for a variety of salads

 Vegetables

Microwaving Vegetables (cruciferous, long greens)

• Broccoli with Garlic, Fast and Slow (microwave/stir-fry vs. “sofegae” pan-braised)
• Microwaving Butternut Squash
• Butternut Squash Flan
• Butternut or red squash in fillo
• Butternut Squash Salad with Tehina
• Green Beans Four Ways–Monet-Inspired Microwave Platter, Salade Niçoise, Shakshouka-Style Green Beans, Szechuan Dry-Fried Green Beans
• Brussels Sprouts with Hazelnuts
• Spaghetti Squash Too Many Ways
• Italian-Style Creamed Spinach
• Microwave Palak Paneer (spinach with fresh cheese)
• Rapid Red Cabbage—sweet and sour in minutes
  

Vegetarian Protein Dishes

Most of these are at least protein-containing, some are reasonably or very quick, but most are still not the kind of inspirational vegetarian centerpiece dishes I hope for. You might try some of the suggestions in the posts below the recipe sections–especially  No-Furkey!

• Quiche in 15 Minutes (spinach and feta quiche)
• Israeli Spinach and Feta Crustless Quiche
• Calzone (with cheese, vegetable and vegan variations, and how to calculate the carb before baking)
• Portobello Mushrooms stuffed with Microwave Palak Paneer (spinach with fresh cheese)
• Giant Favas with Rosemary and Rosé
• Peppery Green Lentil Sausages
• Green Lentil Stew with Pineapple
• Red Lentil Dal
• Microwave Stuffed Onions (Mehshi Basal) with Lentils and Tamarind Sauce
• Stuffed Eggplants with Lentil Filling and Quince
• Stuffed Grape Leaves, Cabbage and other vegetables with Lentil Filling
• Italian Sausage-Style Stuffed Peppers with Lentils
• Peppery Green Lentil Sausages
• Chickpea Crêpes: Protein Inside-Out
• Chickpea Crêpes, Masala Do
• Eggplant and Chickpea Stew (Moussaka Betinjan)
• Eggplant Involtini or Parmigiana in the Microwave
• Lower-Sodium Hunan Tofu
• Pressing Tofu in 3 minutes, not 30
• Microwaved 10-Minute Tofu and Vegetable Platter
• Seitan in the Microwave

 

Desserts

• Gingerbread, with microwave instructions
• Flan in the Microwave
• Apple Pie
• Apple-Almond Paste Tart

 

Thanksgiving-related posts

This Thanksgiving, give something to be thankful for

This Thanksgiving my microwaveable recipe and hostess-with-the-mostess guide is on the back burner. The recipe for a better, less-panicked Thanksgiving is to take a minute while you shop and pick up a couple of items or send a bit of cash to your local food pantry or homeless shelter. It doesn’t have to be big to help them, and it’ll help you too–and if someone starts in on you about missing their particular must-have version of potatoes or stuffing, it’ll give you the perfect righteous response.

A Slow Food Fast Thanksgiving

Despite my firm resolve after last week’s marathon kiddush that I will strive Not To Cook (could I possibly be Peg Bracken’s unacknowledged lovechild? Unfortunately, no), I know that most of us don’t have the luxury of not cooking tomorrow. If you absolutely have to cook, here are a couple of posts for speeding up a few of the obligatory or not-so-obligatory Thanksgiving items. Most can go in a microwave and none are really boring.

Thanksgiving Vegetariots, or, How Can You Have Any Pudding If You Won’t Eat the Meat?

The idea of vegetarians at the Thanksgiving table seems to throw everyone from newspaper food columnists to my mother-in-law and even Top Chef contestants way off their game, even in California. The world’s cuisines are full of good vegetarian protein dishes, and some of them are pretty easy to make on the fly. So maybe it’s time to feed the people and stop worrying about who eats turkey and who doesn’t.

And one more…

If you’re roasting–or preferably, microwaving–a large red squash, you may as well have another easy recipe in your back pocket. This one packs a smoky, Middle Eastern punch, goes together in minutes and looks beautiful.

A different take on pumpkin “spice”

In which I take on “pumpkin spice” and look for microwaveable–and lightenable–red squash recipes on the savory side. Just by starting with a microwaved butternut or other whole red squash, you can cut the roasting, peeling and chopping time and effort (and danger of self-inflicted wounds) way down. Some decent savory recipe ideas can be done with ordinary cans of plain packed pumpkin too.

Post-Election: Food and, well, everything else we value

The incoming Republican administration has vowed to trash all international trade agreements. Where do they think spices come from? And don’t forget the two great American drugs–coffee and chocolate. Both imports from countries the newly elected right-wingers would like to ban altogether. African countries. Arab countries. Latin America. Indonesia which is, yes, primarily Muslim. Recreational marijuana, which almost anyone can grow in the US, pales in comparison and everybody knows it.

Green Beans Get Serious

With a bounty of cheap fresh green beans in winter, what to do with them is a pretty good question, and one that begs a three-minute solution, especially when most green vegetables are getting harder to come by. You want to stock up but you don’t want to be eating the same old, same old for a month.

How to fly with a pie

How to fly with a pie…In which yours truly finds herself invited to a magazine-worthy Sonoma idyll for Thanksgiving and feels totally outclassed. Luckily Thanksgiving is about cooking together as much as eating, and we all got down to both pretty handily. I even got the honors of being up to my elbow prepping the turkey (the food glam magazines somehow never show that part; too much like an episode of “ER”).

Maximum Flavor in a Minimal Broth

Flu season requires hot vegetable soup, but a sick kid at home means it’s harder to get out to the supermarket. Our last-ditch vegetabalia included (total) an onion and a few carrots, plus some garlic and a few dubious odds and ends. But with that, a microwave and a frying pan, you can still do pretty well in a couple of minutes.

A salad in winter: counterintuitive comfort food

If ever there were a season when you need a simple, fresh green salad, winter has got to be it. Not when you’ve just come in from shoveling the walk, obviously. But shortly after that, when you sit down to lunch and discover you could use some sunshine on your plate. If only salads could be grab-and-go.

Lightening up for Hanukkah (aka Chanukah)

Tonight’s the first night of Chanukah, and not only haven’t I thought of presents, I haven’t thought of dinner. Here are links to Chanukah-worthy dishes from my previous posts.

What happens when you age champagne?

Champagne is generally not my favorite wine for the price, but it’s supposed to age well. I got the chance to test not one but two teenage champagnes last month and find out for myself if it’s worth it.

Fennel Mania

There was a huge sale on fresh fennel at my greengrocer’s this week and I bought four large bulbs, stalks and all, before I could stop myself. What do I do with it all, besides just nosh on the raw slices? It’s a perfect opportunity to experiment.

Celebration Update: “Mashup” Does Not Mean “More Potatoes”

Vegetarian centerpiece dishes that look and taste good enough for a celebration are hard to find. It was too late for Thanksgivukkah, but I recently found a vegan cookbook with the right stuff.

The “other” moussaka–eggplant and chickpea stew

A week of too much food and travel and mashed-up holidays left me thinking, do I really need to be thinking so much about food? Southern California makes it easy to eat well with very little effort. However, the temps have dropped into the 50s, so I realized it was time for a stew. With, obviously, garlic. This eggplant and chickpea stew is having its moment, and with a microwave to start things off, it’s incredibly easy and flexible on flavorings.

Little Green Footballs

When my daughter’s school asked if I could lead a cooking session for 8th graders, my answer should have been, “Who, me? Cook with preteens? In only an hour?” Instead, I showed up with bags of fillo dough and a bunch of different fillings for triangles and rolls. Fillo is easy enough to fold, it’s almost (if you squint) kind of a craft. Like origami. And it bakes pretty quickly–at least if the kids show up to class on time.

Lightening up homemade scones

Scones don’t have to be a commercial, or even a homemade, salt-fat-and-carb bomb to be delicious. Try these for a lazy brunch.

Tabbouleh vs. me

But let me explain something I learned the hard way about making things from scratch. There’s a reason the boxes of commercial just-pour-boiling-water-on-it-and-wait tabbouleh are so tiny.

Chickpea Crepes: Protein Inside-Out

Vegetarian cooking doesn’t tend to favor centerpiece dishes. Either the ingredients are smallish and lend themselves better to casseroles or they lean towards starches and low protein. One possible solution is to incorporate some of the protein in the wrapper itself by using a high-protein ingredient like chickpea flour. Here I give a basic recipe for chickpea flour crepes for savory or sweet fillings.

The Minimalist Makes His Exit – NYTimes.com

I don’t agree with some of Mark Bittman’s more-is-more recipes. I also don’t think Bittman always walks the walk when it comes to touting nonmeat meals and affordable, commonsense ingredients. But you can’t fault his sense of fun on video. I don’t really think he’ll be able to parlay his next NY Times gig, on food politics and the like, into personal parodies of Blue Man Group, The Thin Man’s Return (He Couldn’t Resist the Spaghetti), or Legend of the [you-name-it Kung Fu] Master. But I could always be wrong

More things to fry in olive oil

Even with mechanical assistance in the form of a food processor, I’m a one-latke-night-per-year-is-enough kind of person. I want something other than potatoes at Hanukkah if I’m going to be frying stuff in more than a spoonful or so of olive oil. Therefore I look for other maybe less starchy and more flavorful (one can always hope) things to fry.

Couscous, its own fine self

The first couscous I ever ate was at a really dingy hole-in-the-wall in Israel. But the couscous itself was so light and fine it was like eating hot curried snowflakes. What was it? How do you do that? And in half a year of eating at other people’s homes, I never ate a couscous that delicate again. You haven’t either, I’ll bet. Couscous out of a box will never do it. Neither will rolling the grains by hand and steaming them in a couscoussiere. But when I came back to the US, I made up my own quick method for the ultra-fine version and it comes out close to right. Now if only I had someone’s mother to make me the tagine to go with it.

No-Furkey!

The main thing about these frozen mock-turkey concoctions, even the simple cylindrical “roasts”, is that they look like centerpiece dishes, and there’s really no knocking that desire to serve something impressive and festive and most of all, shareable at Thanksgiving. It’s important. Thanksgiving feasts demand a monument to plenty. Surprisingly–sadly?–enough, very few vegetarian cookbooks, not even the big tomes, really try for a vegetarian centerpiece dish that looks and feels like an important dish.

Cranberry Sauce Without the Fuss

A lot of people are too scared to make their own cranberry sauce. They must have read the package directions. But you can microwave cranberry sauce beautifully in only 5 minutes, and your stove top won’t look like a magenta Dalmatian when the berries pop. Making your own sauce also gives you the flexibility to add other ingredients or cut down on sugar–or go with artificial sweetener if you need to.

Prunes and Lentils II: Prune Sauces for Savory Dishes

NOWHERE in Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg’s The Flavor Bible can a mention be found of prunes paired in any way, shape, or form with lentils. Don’t have the faintest why not. The benefit to considering prune sauces for savories, especially in my How to Cook a Wolf Challenge, is that you can serve them with a lentil dish if you’re ready for that or to lift a more familiar savory dish with meat, fish or poultry. Here, a couple of great prune sauces that can be made in minutes in the microwave, or a rival French prune sauce that takes overnight. Your choice.

Sweet Potato Ice Cream

Just before Thanksgiving last year, Libby’s sent out a public warning that they were facing deep shortages due to heavy rains during harvest. According to a global produce newsletter, Libby’s remaining inventory of 100% packed pumpkin currently stands at something like six cans. Six. So I’ve been cooking with sweet potatoes instead–they’re cheap, they taste good, they cook beautifully in the microwave and stand in pretty handily for pumpkin. Then my daughter looked at a huge sweet potato sitting on the counter and said, “I wish we could have pumpkin ice cream.” So I made some.

Turkey breast with ta’am

I’ve never loved turkey much, but I had a relatively recent turkey breast in my freezer (circa 2010, not 2001, as in previous excavations…) and a family that was kvetching about why I never cook meat. Then I thought about the way I often cook fish. It’s pretty classic restaurant technique to brown poultry and then stick it in a hot oven, maybe on top of some vegetables, to finish. A Mark Bittman article from a year ago did much the same, even though he treyfed his up with pork products and forgot the garlic entirely (shame, shame). Would it work for me–minus the guanciale?