Mmmm... Thanksgiving

Occasion: Turkey Day! Except with no turkey...
Edibles: maple-roasted brussels sprouts; roasted carrots with butter and cilantro; beurre noisette mashed potatoes; spiced ham with cranberry applesauce; chocolate fruitcake

An orgy of recipes below.

Maple-Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Trim and clean brussels sprouts; halve any large ones. Toss with a 50/50 mixture of olive oil and maple syrup, like you'd dress a salad. Sprinkle in a little salt and pepper. Spread out on a baking sheet and bake at 375° for 20-30 minutes, depending on the size of the brussels sprouts. Garnish with toasted, sliced almonds.

Roasted Carrots

(This was a last-minute addition to the menu, after my mom got worried that we wouldn't have enough food.)

Peel, then slice carrots on the diagonal into ½-inch slices. Toss with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread out on a baking sheet and bake at 375° for 20-30 minutes. I finished them with a little butter and chopped cilantro for interest.

[Note: If you've roasted one vegetable, you've roasted 'em all. The above method works for everything from peppers to potatoes to butternut squash to asparagus. Just remember that the bigger the pieces and the harder the vegetable, the longer they have to cook.]

Beurre Noisette Mashed Potatoes

Peel, cut up and boil some Russet potatoes - however many you think you will need for your guests. When cooked, drain and mash by hand* with beurre noisette (see next paragraph) in whatever quantity you like. (I like the equivalent of one tablespoon of butter per potato. At the upper limit, Joël Robuchon's famous pommes purée uses an insane one stick of butter for every pound of potatoes.) Thin with hot milk or hot stock until you get the texture you like. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg (freshly grated is best).

Beurre noisette (a.k.a. brown-butter) is made by melting butter at medium-low heat. Continue to heat on med-low, stirring frequently, until the milk solids have separated and browned. The result should be a toasty amber color and taste nutty, hence the name en français. You can choose to use the speckled brown bits or not. They're flavorful, but will mar the unblemished creamy whiteness of the potatoes.

[*Note: If you have a food mill or potato ricer, you can use that. You cannot, however, make mashed potatoes in a food processor or blender - you will be making glue instead.]

Spiced Ham
(based on Nigella's recipe)

a 6lb boneless mild-cured gammon
1 bottle of red wine (something decent)
1 cup cranberry juice
water
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 large onion, halved
2 star anise
1 tbsp coriander seed
1 tbsp fennel seed
1 tbsp whole peppercorns

For the glaze:
whole cloves
some sort of preserve (Nigella calls for red currant jelly, heated and doctored with smoked paprika, cinnamon and red wine vinegar; I used cranberry apple butter from Trader Joe's, straight out of the jar)

Place the ham in the smallest pot that it will fit in (to minimize the amount of water you'll need to cover it). Glug in the wine and juice, and put in all the aromatics. Add enough water to (mostly) submerge the ham. Bring to a simmer and cook, partially covered, for 2 to 2½ hours. Remove the ham to cool and discard the cooking liquid. Preheat the oven to 440° F. [Note: even if they will all fit in your oven at the same time, the temperature is too hot to roast vegetables.]

Once ham has cooled slightly, trim off the rind and most (but not all!) of the fat. Score the remaining fat in a medium-sized diamond pattern. Stud a clove in at every intersection. Cover the ham with the glaze you've chosen and bake for about 15 minutes to burnish. Unlike turkey and most other roasts, ham does not need to rest before you carve it.

[Thanks go out to Kathy, Bess, Yining and Liliana for sharing their spices!]

Cranberry Applesauce

5 apples, peeled and cubed (I like Granny Smiths)
½ cup fresh cranberries
½ cup cranberry juice
sugar and honey to taste

Heat the fruits and juice over medium heat. Stir occasionally. You're done cooking when the apples fall apart into a smooth, lump-free sauce. (You can help it along with a potato masher.) For sweetening, I start with about ¼ cup of sugar and then adjust while it's cooking. How much you end up using will depend on how sweet you like your applesauce, but remember that cranberries are VERY tart.

I added the cranberries for the holiday, but it turns the sauce an alarming Hubba Bubba shade of pink. Compositionally speaking, it's also too close to the color of the ham. I'll probably just do plain applesauce (with a little lemon juice and zest) for the next ham.

The Butcher Block

Location: on 41st, just off Queens Blvd in Sunnyside (close to the 40th St / Lowery stop on the 7 train)

Instead of a turkey, my plan this year was to bake a spiced ham based on a Nigella recipe. The recipe listed a "mild-cured gammon," and called for it to be boiled for 2 to 3 hours before going in the oven. I knew that I could find a fully cooked, spiral-cut ham or a fresh, uncured ham (a.k.a. pork roast), but this recipe seemed to require something in between.

I called Lobel's to confirm. Once I got past the call center to the store itself, a butcher named Paul immediately said, "What you're looking for is an Irish ham. We don't have it, but The Butcher Block will." And indeed they did.

From the name it sounds like they just sell meat but they're actually a grocery / market that stocks all sorts of Irish and British foodstuffs. The guy I spoke to on the phone was very friendly and informative; the butchers were likewise in person. My six-pound ham cost a very reasonable $30. Recipe to follow.

I was particularly tickled by the fact that everyone in the store, from the employees to the customers (except me) had the full-on "they're after me Lucky Charms" Irish accent.

Mmmm... chocolate fruitcake

I had never eaten or baked a fruitcake in my life, but Nigella convinced me. I'm pleased to inform you that her promises were not empty ones.

On the first bite, my immediate impression was that it tasted sort of like a brownie with raisins in it. That might sound icky to chocolate purists, but to me it was better than a standard brownie. It had that same dense, decadent, concentrated fudginess, but without the unrelieved mono-sweetness. There's variation in texture from the occasional nugget of fruit and subtle hints of citrus, spice and liqueur. In other words, very yummy.

I am emphatically NOT a baker, either by skill or personality. However, this cake is very friendly to non-bakers. Instead of making a cake, think of it as making a stewed fruit sauce, adding some dry ingredients and bunging it in the oven.

It's a very forgiving recipe, as it doesn't have many "structural" elements. For my test run, I did an approximate half-recipe, which came out about 1½-inches high and somewhat torte-like. [Postscript: For Thanksgiving, I did a three-quarters recipe.]

Chocolate Fruitcake

(based on Nigella's, as published in "Feast"; her product, not mine, pictured above)

2 cups prunes (yields 1½ cups when chopped)

1½ cups raisins

1 cup dried currants

1½ sticks of butter
¾ cup dark brown sugar (Muscovado if you're really fancy)
¾ cup honey
¼ cup coffee liqueur (Kahlúa or Tia Maria)
juice and zest of 2-3 oranges
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg)
¼ cup cocoa
3 eggs
1 cup flour
¾ cup ground almonds
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 300° F. Carefully butter and line a round cake tin, preferably a spring-form, with parchment paper on the bottom and sides. (The full recipe, as you can see by the picture, yields a very tall cake so you will need a deep cake tin. If you only have shallower ones, split the batter into two tins or use a reduced recipe.)

In a saucepan, cook the fruit, butter, sugar, honey, coffee liqueur, orange zest and juice, spices and cocoa for 10 minutes. Take off heat and let cool for 20-30 minutes, until it's only slightly warm to the touch.

Add beaten eggs. (The stewed fruit must be cooled enough that it will not cook the eggs!) Sift the four dry ingredients together and add. Stir to combine. Pour into buttered and lined cake tin and bake for 1¾ to 2 hours, until the top is shiny and a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from tin and cool.

Nigella decorated hers with gold balls and a mound of chocolate coffee beans. I served mine plain, with a dollop of lightly-whipped cream.

Substitutions: You can pretty much sub in any dried fruits for the ones she uses. If you don't have currants (I always do because I like them in couscous), try dried blueberries, cranberries or cherries. Think twice about subbing out the prunes - I was skeptical myself but they keep the cake really moist.

My half recipe: 1 cup prunes; ¾ cup raisins; ½ cup currants; ¾ stick of butter; ½ cups brown sugar; ⅓ cup honey; one of those tiny airplane-size bottles of Kahlúa; juice and zest of one orange; ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice; 2 tbsp cocoa; 2 eggs; ½ cup flour; ⅓ cup ground almonds; ¼ tsp each baking power and baking soda (check cake after 1 hour of baking)

My three-quarters recipe: 1½ cups prunes; 1 cup raisins; ¾ cup currants; 1 stick of butter; ½ cup brown sugar; ½ cup honey; two tiny bottles of Kahlúa; juice and zest of 2 oranges; ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice; 3 tbsp cocoa; 3 eggs; ¾ cup flour; ½ cup ground almonds; ⅜ tsp each of baking powder and baking soda (check cake after 1½ hours of baking)