What Dish is a Must-Have on Your Table?
Athens chefs and cooks share their favorites. Add yours!
There’s a special place for this guest every Thanksgiving.
Others may come and go from one year to the next, but this particular one is faithful and constant. It may even have its own special bowl.
Yes, we all have favorite Thanksgiving foods, ones whose absence would ruin the meal. Maybe it’s Aunt Betty’s congealed salad, or your mom’s whole wheat biscuits or even a strange looking, cheese-laden squash casserole. You eat it because, well, it’s a habit bordering on becoming a tradition.
For chef and cookbook author Rebecca Lang, nothing says Thanksgiving like her grandmother’s cornbread dressing. Lang says she’s been making for years. Every time, she gets closer and closer to getting it right.
Well-known baker and cook Marilyn Gootman counts on sweet potato soufflé and apple pie to make her Thanksgiving table sing. For the soufflé, she says, she just bakes the sweet potatoes in the oven “until they’re nice and sweet,”, then peels them, adds an egg white and some cinnamon and bakes. “There’s no sugar needed,” she adds.
Sarah Dunning of Gymnopedie favors a clean green bean casserole. No, there’s no soap involved in making things clean—by clean, she means no cans of gloppy cream of mushroom soup.
And she offers the recipe: 1 1/2 pounds fresh green beans, trimmed and cut into bite-size pieces; 1/2 lb. cremini mushrooms, 1 Tbsp. Oil, 3 cloves garlic, minced, a generous pinch cayenne pepper, 1 tsp. fresh thyme, Salt and pepper to taste, 2 Tbsp. Flour , 3/4 cup vegetable broth, 1 Tbsp. dry white wine, 1 3-ounce can of French fried onions
Bring water to boil in a large pot. Add 1.5 T salt and beans to the boiling water. Cover and cook for 6 minutes. Drain beans in a colander. Pat dry to remove all the water. Slice the mushrooms. Combine the mushrooms, garlic, cayenne, thyme, salt, and pepper in a skillet with some oil, and cook until mushrooms are very soft. Whisk the flour into the vegetable broth and add to the mushrooms along with the wine. Simmer, stirring, until the mixture reduces, about 10 minutes. Adjust the seasonings and stir in the beans. Put the green bean melange into an oiled casserole dish and top with the onion mixture. Bake at 400 F for about 15 minutes. If you are not serving this right away, refrigerate the topping separately; bring to room temperature before sprinkling the topping on the casserole. Bake for about 20 minutes or until hot throughout.
Mimi Maumus, who runs Catering by Homemade on Baxter Street, says her grandmother always made pepper jelly. It was “a must have pre-dinner treat, with cream cheese and crackers.” For the dinner itself, Mimi says, there has to be oyster dressing and homemade cranberry sauce.
Here's a recipe for spicy pepper jelly. Definitely feel free to adjust the heat to your liking…or omit it altogether.
1 cup seeded and chopped bell pepper – red or green but not a mixture of both, 1/4 cup chopped hot pepper (jalapeno or serrano) or 2 – 4 Tablespoons hot sauce, 1 ½ cups cider vinegar, 6 ½ cups sugar, 4 ounces liquid pectin – these are found near the canning jars – certo and ball are popular brands
Puree the peppers with the vinegar in a blender. Pour into a nonreactive pot – stainless is perfect…just not aluminum. Add sugar and stir to combine. Heat over medium – high heat. A foam will rise to the top – remove this with a ladle or spoon – this will cloud the jelly. It will persist for a bit but, once you remove it all, you will be left with a beautiful, transparant liquid. Once you reach the boiling point, add the liquid pectin. Stir in. Allow to boil for one minute and then promptly remove from heat. Can according to jar directions or pour into glass containers to cool – if you are going to use in the next week or two.
The National’s chef, Peter Dale, says Thanksgiving isn’t complete “without my mom's pecan pie (from a Betty Crocker cookbook from the ‘70s, it's the gold standard).” His father’s family is from the North, so Peter grew up eating stuffing instead of dressing.
“It's my favorite... torn white bread with sauteed celery, onions, apples, raisins, and lots of melted butter,” he says. “When it's cooked inside the bird, the natural juices enhance the flavor. It's addictive and tastes of home.”
So what's your favorite, traditional food? Want to tell us how you make it?
In This article
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Gymnopedie
675 Pulaski St Ste 1400, Athens, GA ((Entrance on train-track side of building)) -
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The National
232 W Hancock Ave, Athens, GA
Milton Leathers
12:57 pm on Thursday, November 24, 2011
Bing Cherry Salad. It was only a few years ago that I had the startling, to me, realization that our grandmother's recipe for this dish could not really be very "Old Athens." Heck, when did these gelatin dishes come into fashion? The 1930s? '20s? Before that? Certainly not before we all had refrigerators..... If my grandfather's mother ate this (which she undoubtedly did at her daughter-in-law's house on Milledge Avenue) then I have personally fed this purple treat with creamy topping to the 6th generation of our family -- our two-year-old grandson. He liked it. I think. My wife has "learned" to eat Bing Cherry Salad (withOUT the 1/3 sour cream-1/3 mayonnaise-1/3 cream cheese topping that almost made my son-in-law throw up, just to look at it). Over the years, I have watched our daughter-in-law and so many other "newer" family members TRY to approach this dish with as much gusto and respect as we of the Bing-Cherry blood display at holiday-time. All of us knew full well, from babyhood, that Nana's "salad" held an august -- if jiggling -- predominance over practically every other delicacy served at Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's.
Milton Leathers
1:29 pm on Thursday, November 24, 2011
And it WAS "Nana's salad" after all, not -- NOT! -- Jello (which only "held it together," we might say). The Bing Cherry Salad was clearly "above" the bird, above the ham, above the sweet potatoes, above whatever in the world Jennie's fairly new husband's mother had put in THAT dish at the end of the table -- yes, that one! The Bing Cherry Salad was far above everything else, seriously, excepting (possibly, only "possibly") the scalloped oysters. And, oddly, we crowded three separate servings of this all-important Bing Cherry Salad into three separate but connected months: November and December and January. But, in fact, this year these three servings will occur during the longest time period possible: a mere 39 days! From the last week of November, to the next-to-last week of December and finishing up the first day of January......and "nor any drop" to spoon out for the entire rest of the year! Such is the prestige and the saving grace and the partially-solidified family love of Bing Cherry Salad. "Praise to you, our Nana."
Rebecca McCarthy
2:23 pm on Thursday, November 24, 2011
Milton, can you share the recipe or is it a family secret? Rebecca
Meg Dure
8:59 am on Friday, November 25, 2011
I'm with Rebecca Lang on this one. Cornbread dressing is the star of the show to me. I ditched the scalloped oysters several years ago, as nobody really seemed to enjoy them. But I've got teh dressing thing really "going on" now -- this eyar made with my homemade bisquettes, cornbread, celery, onions, chicken broth, eggs, and a touch of oregano. (no sage allowed in my dressing). Also added chopped pecans this year. And I could just eat the whole pan all my myself!
Milton Leathers
9:30 am on Friday, November 25, 2011
Now......I did not think to mention cornbread dressing as a "must-have." Cornbread dressing is an "everybody-has," isn't it? That would be like leaving out water. Never heard of it! The Thanksgiving meal could pass without lots of dishes (sweet potatoes, maybe, or rice, sometimes, or the scalloped oysters), but without the cornbread dressing?!? No.
Milton Leathers
9:31 am on Friday, November 25, 2011
Why no sage, Meg? Somebody -- you? -- just doesn't like sage? I would miss sage.
Milton Leathers
9:41 am on Friday, November 25, 2011
Is that just enough pecans to add "something" to it -- but not to really taste pecan? Pecan, to me, is the best nut by far! But that seems like an odd thing to add to cornbread dressing. By "odd" maybe I mean TOO delicious. (Since the subject of pecans has come up, every Christmas I miss our Aunt Mary Cobb for lots of reasons, perhaps the least of which is her wonderful sugared pecans. Anybody know the best recipe for that? I can ask Mary Cobb's daughters-in-law.)
Nancy Zechella
7:14 pm on Saturday, November 26, 2011
My daughter likes the ones I make with sugar & cinnamon. I just dip the pecan halves in melted (unsalted butter) and then coat them with sugar/cinnamon mix and roast. Johnn Steedman sells some that have a sugar glazed over them.
Of course, I have to make two kinds of roasted pecans because my son likes the spicy hot one.
I'll eat either just as long as I have a toddy.
Meg Dure
2:51 pm on Friday, November 25, 2011
Don't know why I added those chopped pecans...but I sure did like them! Never have liked the smell or taste of sage. Now back to the pecans, we here at our house also savor toasted pecan halves, roasted with a touch of butter. Oh my! Never had Mary Cobb's sweet version, but I know they were wonderful.
Milton Leathers
5:40 pm on Saturday, November 26, 2011
Dang, Meg, you jinxed our oyster casserole this year! It was either you or the fact that what Kammy purchased at the Alps Kroger labeled "Oysters - Select - Small" should rightly be labled "Oysters - Rejects - Huge! - Brimming With Big Pockets of Stinky Black Doo Doo." Why can't these stores label items properly?!? Really, Kammy said it is hard to fine the beautiful, delicate oysters we all used to obtain from Wilfong's. I told my wife that, at Christmas, if the Kroger oysters come like that again, I will gut them like I would any big old fish. The kitchen door has been shut for two hours now, and I can still smell those bulging bags of oyster poop.
Rebecca McCarthy
5:55 pm on Saturday, November 26, 2011
Thanks for sharing that smell, Milton. Yuck. I can smell it over here. Poor Kammy! You should have Jim bring you oysters from the coast for Christmas.