Text and recipes: Nina Budabin-McQuown
Text and below-jump photos: Leah Koenig

Ah, Thanksgiving.  All across the country, families are gearing up to tuck into nearly identical plates of turkey (or a vegetarian alternative), mashed potatoes, green beans, and creamy yam casserole dotted with little white marshmallows.  But in this era of local-foods awareness, should all Thanksgiving dinner tables really look and taste the same from sea to shining sea?

The Jew & The Carrot set out to find out what a truly local holiday meal looks like, in three diverse parts of the country: New York, Florida, and California’s Bay Area.  We found that New York’s Thanksgiving dinner plate looked the most iconic and familiar, since it is geographically closest to the holiday’s colonial beginnings.  But we got the biggest thrill out of introducing new fruits like figs, grapes – and even avocados! – into a holiday meal that is second only to Passover in its insistence on standard repertoire fare.

Below the jump: find a delicious collection of recipes and ideas for three very different, very local Thanksgiving dinners.  And if you’re daring enough to stray from the delicious same old, same old – we’d love to hear how it turns out!

New York

(pictured from left: fennel, sweet potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts – not pictured: broccoli)

*Sweet Potatoes*

Sweet potatoes have a hallowed spot on the Thanksgiving day table.  You can sub in sweet potatoes in any pumpkin pie recipe and cut the sugar for a wonderful taste and slightly creamier, less custard-y texture. They’re lovely with nothing at all, mashed, fried, sweet or savory and here on The Jew & The Carrot we’ve covered this fair fruit of the vine from plenty of angles. The recipe below features both sweet and regular potatoes, and it’ll take your Thanksgiving table in a new directions.

Sweet Potato Curried Lamb
1 leg of lamb
4 large red onions, sliced thin
4 sweet potatoes, sliced thin
4 golden potatoes, sliced thin
2/3 cup honey
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 teaspoons each of cardamom, coriander, turmeric, paprika, chili
1 teaspoon powdered cloves
2 tablespoons cumin
salt to taste
¼ cup olive oil
1/2 cup water or stock

Mix the sliced sweet and golden potatoes with the sliced red onions in the bottom of a roasting pan. Mix the water, honey, olive oil, salt, spices and four finely chopped garlic cloves in a separate bowl and pour one quarter of the liquid in with the vegetables. rub the lamb with the two roughly chopped cloves and salt.

Make small incisions in the lamb and push in garlic and salt. Place the lamb in the roasting pan and rub the lamb with one half of the remaining liquid. Check with your farmer for the correct cook-time for
the size of your leg of lamb. Ours was 4 pounds, and we baked it in the oven for approximately 40 minutes at 375 degrees, basting it with the remaining liquid after fifteen minutes, and adding water/stock as necessary.

*Fennel*

Fennel isn’t traditionally part of the Thanksgiving meal, but it makes a wonderful palate cleanser, which helps in a multi-tiered, root-heavy extravaganza. This recipe uses mainly North East ingredients with a lemon vinaigrette, which makes it perfect, too, for California, where virtually all of the ingredients are in season.

Fresh Fennel and Apple Salad
3-4 medium fennel bulbs with fronds chopped (set aside the stems for stock)
1-2 crisp, tart apples
1/2 cup walnuts, pecans or almonds
1 teaspoon dried dill or 1 tablespoon fresh
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper

For the salad, halve and finely slice the fennel, cutting out the root. Quarter and slice the apples. Crush the nuts and combine all of these on a platter.

For the dressing, whisk together the mustard, dill, honey, lemon juice, vinegar and a pinch of the fennel fronds on a large bowl. While whisking, add olive oil in a steady stream until combined and emulsified. Add salt and pepper, pour over the platter of fennel and apples and garnish with fronds.

*Jerusalem Artichoke/Sunchoke*

This lesser-used tuber is high in iron and very crispy, with a sweet, nutty flavor. It’s closely related to the sunflower, and is a totally indigenous North American plant, making it, along with poultry, pumpkins and corn, one of the likely originals at the Thanksgiving table (all we actually know about what they ate was that it included fowl and venison).

Jerusalem Artichokes are great in salads, latkes, and make a particularly crunchy pickle, and we also use it as a local alternative to those canned water chestnuts we Americans like in our stir fries. Our favorite use for it on Thanksgiving is in stuffing, to provide a crunch. Just peel the Jerusalem artichokes and add them to your favorite stuffing recipe, chopping them as fine as you would nuts. They stay crunchy when baked this way, so don’t leave them too big or you’ll find your jaw working harder than it ought, particularly when doped up on tryptophan.

*Leeks*

Leeks are still in season in November, although they’re winding down. These wonderful, onion-y vegetables make an excellent side dish, particularly prepared as Gourmet magazine suggested in 1995 (and adapted for a large group of kosher guests)

Braised Leeks with Lemon
8-10 medium-sized leeks
3 Tablespoons olive oil
½ cup broth (chicken or vegetable)
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1/2 lemon

Discard the dark green tops of your leeks, then peel and clean them (they can get quite gritty under the first layer, so be sure to clean them well) then quarter each one as oil heats in a pan. Place the leeks in the hot oil and cook, stirring occasionally, for about five minutes. Add the broth, zest and juice, then cover the pan and braise for five to ten minutes or until tender.

*Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli, Cauliflower*

The Brassica Family is in season again in November, making broccoli, cauliflower, kale and collards all excellent Thanksgiving veggies. The Brussels Sprout, often considered an “outsider vegetable,” is up there on our list of favorites. They’re one of the more flamboyant veggies to buy at the market, at least when they come arranged on their stem, and unless they’re overcooked, or (heaven forbid) boiled, have a wonderful cabbage flavor with a hot kick at the center. As an alternative to the usual whole sprout, you can shred Brussels sprouts and sautee them with salt, pepper and lemon for a tender slaw.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Pecans
½ cup pecans, baked on a sheet in the oven in a single layer until fragrant
2 pounds Brussels sprouts, trimmed
1 tablespoon of olive oil
2 tablespoons mustard
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
salt to taste

Toss ingredients together on a baking sheet and sprinkle with salt. Bake in a hot oven (around 400) for 15-20 minutes or until the sprouts are tender to a fork.

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California, San Francisco

(pictured from left: grapes, avocado, dates, figs, apple – not pictured: chicory)

San Francisco’s November provides the rest of the country with the vegetables we’re used to on Thanksgiving – but also includes a great variety of other fruits and veggies, including some early….

*Avocados*

These green, fleshy fruits are surprisingly good baked with meat (or not surprisingly, if you consider their mild, fatty flavor). You might try slicing them and baking them in your bird along with preserved roasted red peppers and garlic. Refer to the New York Plate for veggies in season now, and look here for San Francisco’s autumn fruits (and one root).

*Apples*

Apples, of course, are available in the North East in November too, and have their slated spot in a pie shell, mixed with cinnamon, sugar, ginger and lemon, but they’re more versatile than we give them credit for, and make an excellent addition to the main table too, in stuffing with sage, onions and sausage, mashed with celery root and potatoes for a sweet, fluffy starch, or as a slaw to freshen the palate between bites.

Apple Slaw
4-6 medium apples
1 bulb of kohlrabi, peeled
1/4 cup dried fruit, such as dates, cranberries or raisins
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
handful of chopped mint leaves
juice of 1 lime
1 tablespoon olive oil
chili powder
salt

Cut apples and kohlrabi into matchsticks, roughly dice the dried fruit and nuts and toss together with remaining ingredients.

*Chicory*

Chicory is cultivated for its roots and leaves. Common chicory grows on the roadsides, a bright blue flower with a long thin stem and jagged-edged leaves. The root is used to make a sweet and redolent brown brew that’s the potable equivalent of one of those black hats with the buckle on front (both in that it goes back to colonial times and in that it was imported from Europe).

To prepare the drink: roast the roots, grind them, and mix them with water (they’re very water soluble, so use less powdered chicory than you would coffee). Varieties of chicory leaves are more familiar to us as endives and radicchio, which are most often eaten raw in salads. Chicory has a bitter flavor raw, but it’s delicious paired with nuts and sweet vinaigrettes. It’s also good in soups, like the recipe from Gourmet below.

Chicory and White Bean Soup
2 medium onions, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
5 garlic cloves, smashed
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, crumbled
5 cups low-sodium broth (40 fluid ounces)
1 head chicory (1 pound), torn into 2-inch pieces (16 cups)
1 (16- to 19-ounce) can white beans, rinsed and drained

Cook onions in oil in a 4- to 5-quart heavy pot over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and oregano and cook, stirring, 2 minutes.

Stir in broth and bring to a boil. Stir in chicory and beans, then simmer, uncovered, until chicory is tender, about 15 minutes.

Transfer 2 cups of soup to a blender and purée until smooth (use caution when blending hot liquids), then stir into remaining soup to thicken. Season with salt and pepper.

*Figs*

If you’re not kosher or are having a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner, the classic fig appetizer, served with goat cheese, is a celebratory opening for your meal. You can slice the figs in quarters, stopping a half inch from the bottom of the fruit and pressing it open like a flower, where it will make an excellent vessel for your goat cheese, perhaps drizzled with honey or paired with a little smoked salmon.

If you’re kosher and cooking meat, try using figs in your stuffing, chopped and paired with lemon, rosemary and nuts. You can also slice them and combine with arugula and radicchio for a salad that’s complex in both texture and flavor with the sweet fresh figs, slightly hot arugula and bittersweet radicchio.

*Grapes*

You can use grapes leaves, the fresh fruits and of course, raisins, in your Thanksgiving meal. Follow this link to learn how to blanch and brine fresh leaves for cooking to make dolmades (stuffed grape leaves) with rice, raisins, nuts and mint, cheese or meat. Raisins, of course, sweeten up stuffing, salads and fruit compote, which makes a wonderful side for meat as a local, seasonal equivalent for cranberry sauce outside of the North East and Midwest, where cranberries are primarily cultivated.

Check out our Florida plate for a citrus compote, and use any of the fruits available in California in November, including dates, raisins and prunes. If you’re looking for a dessert alternative to blueberry pie, grape pie provides the lovely color, sweetness and fruity, jam-like filling without the out-of season fruit.

Unfortunately, if you’ve having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and want a parve pie crusts – try substituting very cold margerine or shortening for butter in any pie crust recipe.  If you can scale the parve crust mountain (or walk around it with a veggie meal), try this filling for a grape pie, adapted from the Joy of Cooking, and of course, if you have an excellent parve pie crust that doesn’t rely on margerine to share with us on The Jew & The Carrot, we’d love to post it.

Grape Pie Filling

(for two nine inch pie crusts, one on top, and one on bottom)
5 pounds concord grapes
¾ to 1 cup of sugar
1 ½ Tablespoons of lemon juice
1 Tablespoon grated orange rind
1 Tablespoon quick cooking tapioca (or substitute your favorite gelling agent here)

Separate the grape pulp from the skins by pinching them, and set aside the skins in a bowl for later use. Heat the pulp, with no added liquid, until it boils, cook for about five minutes and run it through a colander or food mill to remove seeds.

Combine the pulp with the skins and mix in the remaining ingredients. Let these stand for up to five hours in order to impart the purple color from the skins, a tip from Naples, New York’s Grape Festival, or just for fifteen minutes to combine flavors. Line a pie pan with one crust and pour in the grape filling. Place your second crust on top and crimp its edges with a fork. Bake in a hot oven at 450 for ten minutes, and at 350 for an additional 20 minutes.

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Florida, Jacksonville

(pictured from left: okra, tangerine, strawberries, eggplant – not pictured: prickly pear) *note: Leah realized that, ironically, buying the strawberries for this blog post was this is the first time she’s purchased out-of-season strawberries in the last 3 or 4 years!

Florida fills a North Eastern cook with longing for seasons long past and long to come. Around New York where we live, we don’t see strawberries until June or eggplants and peppers until late August. We don’t see citrus ever (Nina has seen faces drop at the farmer’s market many a time when people realize lemons are never in season in the tri-state area). But Florida has it all, including in November. In addition to what we’ve listed below, there’s winter squash, peanuts, cucumbers, avocados and lettuce available right now. Check out this Florida Agriculture website for ideas on how to cook seasonal fresh produce all over the state.

*Citrus*

Citrus is in season in Florida, including lemons, oranges and grapefruit. Mango is also in season, although only down in Dade County, but it can apparently be found at the Jacksonville farmer’s market. Try a citrus compote as a pareve dessert, or as a stand-in for cranberry sauce.  Local citrus can make a wonderful flavor for your turkey, too. Try lemon, honey and salt, using slices of lemon (with their peels intact) in your stuffing along with onions and dried fruit.

Citrus Compote
2 naval oranges
2 Tangerines or Clementines
2 Lemons
1 Red Grapefruits
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
1 star anise
1 ½ cups dried fruit of your choice, including prunes, dates, figs, apricots or raisins

All of the fruit should be as juicy as you can find it. Zest one orange and squeeze it’s juice, as well as the juice of one lemon. Combine the juice, sugar and spices in a pot and bring them to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until slightly thickened (about five minutes) then remove from heat and allow to cool as you peel the rest of the fruit, removing all it’s pith, slice it and place it in a heat-proof bowl. Pour the hot liquid over the peeled and cut fruit. Remove the spices unless you want a very strong flavor.

Take a look at these sites for alternatives: Citrus Compote from the Dayton Daily News and Cranberry Citrus Compote from Heart Healthy Online.

*Prickly Pear Cactus*

If you’re looking for a plant that produces both a fruit and a vegetable simultaneously, go for the prickly pear cactus, available at the Jacksonville, Florida farmer’s market in November. Choose young, thinner pads (the veggie), which taste something like green beans and have a texture like okra. Larger pads will be more difficult to prepare with a stronger flavor. Peel them wearing gloves, using a vegetable peeler or a paring knife, and wiping the knife after each stroke to avoid any painful bites later.

Once peeled, rinse the pads, and cook them. You can boil them, drain and rinse them, and mix them with a salad of jalapenos, peppers, cilantro and onion. Grill your pads coated in salt, chili and cumin. When they’re tender and slightly brown, serve them with lime juice and oil. Alternately, boil them with water, and then reboil them with pureed lime, cilantro, onion, jalepeno, garlic and tomatillo. Consider dressing them with a vinaigrette made of blended prickly pear pulp, mild vinegar (like white or rice vinegar), honey, chili and salt. They can also be coated in seasoned cornmeal and fried for the traditional “disguised vegetable” Thanksgiving plate.

The fruit, generally known as the prickly pear, puts on an impressive performance for every sense (counting your sense of touch, particularly if you don’t carefully scrape off the spines with a brush and cold water). The Flesh is gorgeous, deep pink, and aromatic, full black seeds the size of a grape’s. It tastes something like a mild combination of strawberry and melon. Check out this extensive article at Mother Earth News for plenty of ideas for how to include prickly pear fruit in your meal as a juice, a marmalade or a pie (including prickly pear wine!)  Check out a picture of the prickly pear juice that Nina made on the left.

*Strawberries*

If we  could, we’d have a bowl of hulled, halved local strawberries on our New York Thanksgiving tables every year, maybe drizzled with a little agave or a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar.  We guess Thanksgiving celebrants in Florida will have to live out that dream on our behalf.

Strawberries with Dumplings
The biscuit recipe below includes butter and milk, but it’s possible to make the dumplings with vegetable shortening and water as well.

2 pounds of strawberries, washed and hulled
Peel of 1 lemon
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon each of cinnamon and ginger
¼ teaspoon of nutmeg

For the dumpling dough, I use the Joy of Cooking recipe for “Fluffy Biscuits or Shortcake dough”. This requires:
1 ¾ cups all purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoons combination baking powder
1 ¼ teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon sugar

Sift these dry ingredients together and cut in:

2-4 tablespoons of butter or other shortening
Add ¾ cup of milk or cream.

As you mix the biscuit dough, cook the strawberries, lemon peel, spices and sugar on the stove top on medium heat until it just boils. Turn off immediately and transfer to a baking dish. Top the strawberries with the biscuit dough, if you’re making a dairy dish, dot the top with butter and sprinkle with butter, and bake it in a hot over (425) for ten minutes, or until the biscuits brown.

*Eggplants, Squash, Peppers and Onions*

Eggplant gives ample opportunity for a vegetarian main dish in Florida. The main complaint we hear about eggplant is that it is bitter.  But by salting the flesh as it is sliced, eggplant doesn’t oxidize as much, and doesn’t grow bitter.  When using a lot of salt, rinse the eggplant before adding it to your dish.

The recipe below for Stuffed Italian Eggplant on Gourmet fits the bill for impressive presentation, danger and gargantuan prep-time. You could also make a baked version of ratatouille. Sautee onions, sweet and hot peppers, garlic cloves and fennel in olive oil, add dill, parsley salt, pepper and lemon juice with tomatoes, if you have them canned, add a small amount of water (half a cup or so) then layer this sauce with slices of eggplant and squash, sautéed lightly in olive oil. Top it off with feta cheese and bake it at 375 for forty minutes for a recipe adapted from the Eggplant Mykonos recipe in “Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home.”

*Okra*

This southern staple goes well with eggplant, peppers and onions, is great fried and pickled, and because of the thickening agent it releases when cut, makes wonderful soups and stews. For anyone who’s never seen okra growing, it’s a spectacular sight, with enormous stalks towering up to six feet, with okra pods curling outward from these stems in a variety of colors, including everything from green to red to purple.

It’s often suggested cooked with bacon or ham, because okra tastes great with smoky flavors (Rick’s Picks, a New York pickle-maker, makes “smokra” pickles with smoked paprika. )  You can try a trick like Rick’s, by adding smoked paprika to your cornmeal mixture for frying, or use a kosher smoked meat, like smoked turkey or “turkey bacon” in stews, although be sure to use additional oil to make up for the fat loss. You can also marinate fresh okra in a vinaigrette and toss it with salads.

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Wherever you live and whatever you eat this Thanksgiving, we hope it is delicious, nourishing and fun!  We’d love to hear your ideas for a spectacular and creative Thanksgiving table, all across the country – please share them below.

Top image credit: Mooqi