Thanksgiving

Dusted with flaky sea salt, these buttery Parker House rolls are folded, making them perfect for late night leftover turkey or roast sandwiches.

Grilling a turkey is one of the great dark arts of holiday cooking. It is an excellent choice for those who like to spend time outside, tending a fire and keeping away from family. It requires no skills beyond patience. The turkey ends up with a slightly more rustic flavor, smoky and rich. Two notes: First, use a brine to keep the bird moist, since opportunities for basting are hard to come by. Second, do not stuff the bird. Smoky turkey is excellent; smoky stuffing is not.

Order your turkey far enough in advance to make sure you get a fresh, rather than frozen, bird. Buy it from someone whom you trust, as lying about whether a bird has ever been frozen is common. It makes sense to buy a bird that's larger than you need so you'll have plenty left over for sandwiches, creamed turkey, soup, and the like. Take the bird out of the refrigerator 3 to 4 hours before it is scheduled to go in the oven. A room-temperature turkey will roast more quickly and evenly.

A gravy is made by thickening juices from a roast with flour. Making a generous amount of well-flavored turkey jus or gravy involves a paradox; if the turkey is properly cooked or if it is stuffed, it will release little in the way of juices. When overcooked, as most turkeys are, it will provide plenty of juices for your gravy. If the turkey has released an abundance of juices—a couple of cups (500 milliliters) or more—serving the jus is a simple matter of skimming off the fat and serving the juices as they are, as a "jus." To convert them to gravy, make a roux and add the juices to that. To make giblet gravy, roast the giblets in the pan along with the turkey, chop them fine, and add them to the gravy.
If you've cooked your turkey just right, you won't see much in the bottom of the pan and what there is won't have a whole lot of flavor. To get the most flavor out of a small amount of juices, boil down the juices until they caramelize on the bottom of the pan, pour out the fat (or leave a few tablespoons in the pan if you're making a roux), and deglaze the pan with water or broth. Use only as much broth as you need to serve the guests at hand—about 3 tablespoons (45 milliliters) per person—because the more broth you add, the less flavorful the juice will be. If you're a fanatic, you can bring up the flavor of the jus by adding a little broth at a time and caramelizing after each addition. To stretch a small amount of jus without diluting its flavor, consider swirling in 1/2 ounce (15 grams) of butter per serving.

Empanadas de Calabaza
At our house we welcome fall with sweet, tasty empanadas made with fresh pumpkin. The pumpkin simmering with piloncillo, cinnamon, and cloves gives off a sweet and earthy scent, reminding us that fall has arrived. To this day, whenever I smell cinnamon it evokes great memories of mi mamá baking in the kitchen. During the fall she would request that I bring her a pumpkin so she could make her delicious homemade pies and empanadas. She preferred the green striped pumpkins or the dark green ones, saying they were meatier. But if I could not find those, the orange ones were acceptable. She always made things work.

Figs are abundant in Jerusalem and many trees, bearing the most delectable fruit, actually belong to no one, so anybody can help themselves. Summer months are always tinted with the smell of wild herbs and ripe figs. The mother of Sami's childhood neighbor and friend, Jabbar, used her roof to dry the glut of figs (and tomatoes) in the hot summer sun, spending hours cleaning and sorting them meticulously. Poor Um Jabbar Sami and her son never wasted time and used to sneak up to her roof regularly, stealing her figs at their peak and causing havoc. This wasn't enough for Jabbar, though. The boy had such a sweet tooth that he always carried around with him an old match box full of sugar cubes, just in case. Unfortunately, this habit had clear ramifications, evident in his "charming" smile. This unusual combination of fresh fruit and roasted vegetables is one of the most popular at Ottolenghi. It wholly depends, though, on the figs being sweet, moist, and perfectly ripe. Go for plump fruit with an irregular shape and a slighty split bottom. Pressing against the skin should result in some resistance but not much. Try to smell the sweetness. The balsamic reduction is very effective here, both for the look and for rounding up the flavors. To save you from making it, you can look for products such as balsamic cream or glaze.

After we make a batch of this romesco sauce, we put it on things like eggs, grilled cheese, and turkey sandwiches. We find any excuse we can think of to dunk and cover stuff in the incredibly versatile and tasty romesco.

Editor's note: This recipe is part of a special Thanksgiving menu created by chefs Allison Vines-Rushing and Slade Rushing of MiLa restaurant in New Orleans. This dish is a rice pilaf, where the rice is toasted in oil with onion before liquid is added to finish the cooking. The addition of chopped pecans adds an additional nuttiness to the toasted rice. Pilafs are usually made with a meat-based stock like chicken; if you want a vegetarian version, you can easily substitute vegetable stock or water. We like to serve this alongside our turkey at Thanksgiving.

Editor's note: This recipe is part of a special Thanksgiving menu created by chefs Allison Vines-Rushing and Slade Rushing of MiLa restaurant in New Orleans. Fried turkey is the answer to a Thankgiving under the gun. There is no need to wake up at the crack of dawn to put the turkey in the oven. Let that bird brine for 36 hours then pop it in a cauldron of hot fat (outside, of course). And you've got turkey on the table in under 2 hours. It's not just any turkey. It has juicy meat all over, even the breasts. Don't feel guilty about the frying, you probably only eat turkey once a year. Serve it with a healthy array of sides if that makes you feel better. You'll need to invest in an outdoor turkey frying kit.

This recipe is part of the Epicurious Online Cooking School, in partnership with the Culinary Institute of America. To watch it being made, and to learn how to make other dessert classics, check out the videos.

This recipe is part of the Epicurious Online Cooking School, in partnership with the Culinary Institute of America. To watch it being made, and to learn how to make other dessert classics, check out the videos.

Editor's note: This recipe is part of a special Thanksgiving menu created by chefs Allison Vines-Rushing and Slade Rushing of MiLa restaurant in New Orleans. The licorice root is optional, but if used, will add a slightly sweet, woody flavor to this fall soup. If you can't find it locally, the chefs recommend Gourmet Spice Company as an online source. We have yet to come across a person who does not like butternut squash soup. Even staunch vegetable haters fall for it. (Maybe its sweet richness makes them think that it can't be healthy.) When it is on the menu at the restaurant, probably eighty percent of our customers order it, leaving the cooks to complain about how much they have to make. And if you peek through the kitchen doors, you will undoubtedly see one of us with a steaming hot bowl of it in our own grubby hands.

I see no reason why salads should be limited to greens. This one has a ton of different textures and flavors and is as visually rewarding as it is delicious. Vermont is famous for its fall color, so when I thought of this dish, I wanted all the components to come together on a platter in the same way that autumn leaves fall together in a collage of color on the forest floor. There are bits of roasted squash, blanched squash, pickled squash, and even toasted squash seeds. While I don't like dishes that are so fussy and manipulated they look less like food and more like art, I can't deny that we eat first with our eyes.

Pastry chef Jennifer Jones of Topolobampo in Chicago shared this recipe as part of a Cinco de Mayo feature on Mexican desserts. Coffee liqueur adds incredible depth to Frontera Grill's legendary chocolate pecan pie, but if you prefer to skip the booze in the whipped cream, use an equivalent amount of pure vanilla extract or espresso instead. Jones prefers to serve this pie when it's warm and gooey, but warns that it's a little tricky to cut that way. Her solution is to cool the pie completely, cut it into slices, and then pop it back in the oven until it's just heated through.

To make the breadcrumbs, tear up a day-old baguette or some crusty country bread and pulse it in a food processor until the crumbs are coarse. If you end up with more than you need, freeze the surplus in an airtight container.

Kale adds vitamin C and additional beta-carotene to the stuffing for sweet potatoes, while tofu contributes protein. For extra fiber, eat the skins. Round sweet potatoes work best; if you use oblong potatoes, trim along the top of each lengthwise instead of cutting off the top quarter.

A wholesome twist on a traditional Thanksgiving side, this dish uses farro, also known as emmer wheat, an Italian grain that is high in fiber, magnesium, and vitamins A, B, C, and E. Other grains, such as pearl barley, can be used instead; cook them according to package instructions.

The flavor and texture of these miniature spiced soufflés are reminiscent of sweet potato pie, but with far fewer calories and much less fat.

Before the development of canning, pickling was one of the most important preserving methods, along with salting, drying, and smoking. Particularly in warm countries, pickling was favored for the way it used acid to stop or retard the growth of bacteria. Some historians credit the Egyptians and Romans for developing this technique, which was brought into Spain and then to Mexico. Turkeys, especially ones raised naturally, have a rich, dense flesh and dark, meaty flavor that can stand up to—and are improved by—heartier, more complex flavors like this escabeche. My favorite garnish for each taco serving is a slim feathery frond—no more than two inches long—from the top of a small stalk of fennel. It looks pretty, has good flavor, and is delicious with this filling.

When you think of fruit pie, a double-crust beauty with juices bubbling up and out of the top probably comes to mind. And though you will often hear that baking requires precision to turn out right, once you get in the habit of baking fruit pies, you will begin to see an opportunity for some flexibility with the fillings. With a little practice, you can learn to adapt the basic formula depending on what fruit is in season, and to adjust the amount of sugar or thickener (such as flour or cornstarch) based on the juiciness of the fruit. You might even begin to experiment with combinations of fruits, or flavorings such as zests and spices, to suit your own tastes. Apricots and cherries taste great together, as do peaches and blueberries. If you want to combine fresh and dried fruits, try pears with dried sour cherries; up the ante with a pinch of Chinese five-spice powder. In order to get to that improvisational stage, however, you have to start with something very basic, and what’s better than starting with the American standard—apple?