Sweet Potato Casserole with Pistachio Crust – Save the Mini Marshmallows for Your Hot Chocolate!

Of all the traditional Thanksgiving side dishes, sweet potato casserole scares me the most. Luckily, for the vast majority of holiday meals, I’ve been the one who got to decide on and cook the menu. But there have been the rare occasions when I’ve been a guest at someone’s home, and subjected to the horror that is the mini marshmallow-topped dish of sweet potatoes.

Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to food, I’m as opened-minded as anyone...hey, one time, I actually ate a McRib...but I just don’t understand taking something already as sweet as sweet potatoes, and topping it with one of the sweetest ingredients ever.

Sure, my topping has some brown sugar in it, but I think it’s balanced nicely by the crunchy savoriness of the pistachios. I also forgo the usual scoop of sugar in the filling for a much smaller amount of maple syrup (which, contrary to what you learned in school, is a one-syllable word).

The result is a rich and decadent, yet not cloyingly sweet side dish. By the way, as I mention in the video, the sweet potatoes I used may be called “yams” at the store, but the fact is that all yams sold in American supermarkets are really varieties of sweet potatoes.

Having said that, my recommendation is for using “Garnet Yams,” if you can find them. If you can’t, literally any other variety will do. I hope you give this great side dish recipe a try. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

For the sweet potatoes:

2 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes

salt to taste

2 tbsp butter

2 large eggs

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup buttermilk

1/3 cup milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

pinch of allspice

pinch of cayenne

For the pistachio crust:

1/2 cup chopped pistachios (I used roasted, salted)

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

4 tbsp melted butter

“Mango Cranbango” – Fresh Cranberry Sauce with Dried Mango and Ghost Pepper

Don’t let the ridiculous name fool you; this delicious cranberry sauce recipe would make a wonderful condiment for your Thanksgiving turkey. My wife Michele, a cranberry sauce aficionado, says it’s the best she’s ever tasted.

Conservative estimates have the number of different cranberry sauces she’s tasted over the years at somewhere around 37, so that’s very high praise indeed. While the taste of this sauce is an unmitigated success, the name is another story.

You’ll have to forgive me, but when you post as many recipes as I do, once in a while you just have to give “half the peace sign” to those search engine algorithms, and simply amuse yourself. The “mango” and the “cran” in the name are obvious, but the “bango” comes from a few drops of hot sauce featuring the infamous ghost pepper.

I’m not sure if it’s the hottest pepper in the world, but the Bhut Jolokia is right up there. You can get the actual pepper if you look hard enough, but I had a bottle of Dave's Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce in the fridge, which worked perfectly.

It’s amazing how hot this stuff really is, and a few drops were all I needed. Believe it or not, more than just providing a searing heat, the pepper is actually celebrated for its fruity sweetness as well. By the way, while it may look like blatant product placement in the video, I can assure you I was not paid to use this specific brand (not that I’d be above such a thing…Dave, call me).

Anyway, if you’re looking for a creative, unusual, yet still relatively familiar fresh cranberry sauce for your holiday table, I hope you give this a try. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

12 oz fresh whole cranberries

4 oz dried candied mango

zest of 1 lemon

zest of 1 orange

1 cup fresh orange juice, plus the juice of 1 lemon

1/3 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 star anise

1 cinnamon stick

1 tsp finely grated fresh ginger

1 tsp garam masala (or other Indian-style curry spice blend)
dash of hot sauce, to taste

pinch of salt

Respect the Bird!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. A day dedicated to football, family, food, and giving thanks. Somehow this great American feast has avoided all the corporate commercialism that’s tainted the rest of our holidays.

However, while Thanksgiving itself has remained relatively pure, each year it seems the Christmas shopping season overlaps T-day a little more. We all grumble, but no one does anything about it. Well, that was until Doug Matthews came along.

Last November, Doug wrote a blog post on Allrecipes.com entitled, “Respect the Bird.” There he made his case for taking back Thanksgiving from Madison Avenue, and the response from the community was overwhelming. A subsequent national survey found that 82 percent of home cooks think Christmas is marketed too early, which results in the Thanksgiving holiday getting less attention than it deserves.

Do you agree with Doug? I certainly do, and favor any movement that will help keep that insidious Christmas music out of the stores for a few more days. To aid the cause, my friends at Allrecipes have created a dedicated site, RespectTheBird.com, where you can show your support for this movement by taking the Respect the Bird Pledge.

I hope you head over to take a look, and as always, enjoy…a Santa-free Thanksgiving!

Slow Cooker Braised Pork Shoulder Roast with Apple Butter Sauce – Reducing the Need for Roux

Man, I’ve been making a lot of rouxs lately (which you’ll be seeing in all their buttery glory in a series of upcoming holiday videos), but for this apple cider braised pork roast, I wanted to keep things a little lighter and decided to use a classic reduction.

We’ve done dozens of similar style sauces, but most of those were traditional pan sauces, where the skillet is deglazed with some kind of flavorful liquid, which is reduced down, and finally finished with butter.

This is basically the same technique; except here we’re reducing the braising liquid from the slow cooker while our pork rests. By the way, I keep saying “cider” because it sounds and looks better in print, but I actually used apple juice. Both work very well, but a just-pressed, unfiltered cider would be my official recommendation.

One thing to remember about these types of reduction sauces is that a little goes a long way. You’re taking an already flavorful liquid and reducing down to maybe 25% of its original volume. This is also the reason you shouldn’t season it until the end. After the cold butter is whisked into the sauce, and your herb of choice has been added, give it a taste and adjust for salt then.

Since we’re using a relatively small amount of braising liquid for this big a hunk of meat, I decided to use the slow cooker. You can certainly do this on the stovetop, over very low heat, or in a slow (275 degrees F.) oven, but neither is quite as convenient. Regardless of your cooking method, I hope you give this delicious pork shoulder a try soon. Enjoy!
 

Ingredients:
4-5 pound pork shoulder roast (boneless or bone-in work fine)

salt and pepper to taste

1 tbsp vegetable oil

a couple shallots or yellow onion, sliced

1 rib celery, chopped

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

2 1/2 cups apple cider or juice

4 peeled garlic cloves

1 bay leaf

cayenne to taste

1 rounded teaspoon Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons cold butter cut into small cubes

1 tbsp fresh herb – parsley, sage, thyme, etc.

View the complete recipe