November 22, 2019

Thanksgiving Recipe Round-Up: 30 Recipes for Giving Thanks This Season

November 22, 2019/ TC Martin

By Susan Able & Thomas Martin

We’ve been gathering recipes from top chefs, recipe writers, cookbook authors and fab home cooks for almost 6 (!) years now…and suffice to say, we’ve got some delicious things to try that capture fall and great seasonal ingredients. Enjoy!

Appetizers

1. Flaky Fall Hand Pies

Savory hand pies have traditionally provided a quick, satisfying lunch for fishermen, farmers and other workers too busy—or too far away—to return home for a midday meal. But either of these hand pie recipes (potato-kale or pumpkin) would serve as an excellent starter to your Thanksgiving feast!

2. Minty Lamb Meatballs with Cumin Yogurt Dip

Quick to prepare and easy to share, these minty lamb meatballs pair perfectly with a cumin yogurt dip. Serve them to your guests while you’re wrangling the main dish and sides in the kitchen—but don’t let them get too full!

3. Chicken Liver Mousse

This recipe for chicken liver mousse requires some advanced preparation, but the rich and creamy spread it creates is worth the wait. Spread it on toasted bread or crackers and garnish with herbs, greens, edible flowers—your choices are endless.

4. Peg’s Salt Savory Spiced Nuts

Made with Peg’s Salt, a blended salt seasoning with over twenty spices, this savory nut mix works great as a starter (and as a last-minute stocking stuffer later in the year!). And don’t fret about leftovers; the mix will keep for three weeks in an airtight container.

5. True Blue Maryland Crab Dip

With the end of crab season fast approaching, make this Maryland crab dip while you still can! Grated Gouda and a generous amount of Old Bay make this cheesy flavorful dip a true crowd-pleaser.

6. Winter Squash on Toast

Featuring kaboucha squash and ricotta, this fun starter is easy to prepare and even easier to serve. Simply spread it on slices of golden brown toast and garnish with flaky salt and mint. Voilà!

Mains & Sides

7. Prosciutto-Wrapped Pork Tenderloin

Pork tenderloin is the perfect center course for a smaller Thanksgiving gathering. It’s moist, not too rich, and always pairs well with side dishes. Serve with an expertly paired fennel apple salad to wow your dinner guests!

8. Garlicky Roast Bird

Chicken is much easier to manage in the kitchen than an oversized turkey. What this roast bird lacks in volume, it more than makes up for in flavor and saved cooking time. Give it a try this year!

9. Pumpkin Risotto

As delicious as it is delightful in presentation, pumpkin risotto served in mini pumpkins can be the centerpiece of any holiday gathering. There’s no better way to say goodbye to autumn than with a dish inspired by the season’s most iconic gourd.

10. Harissa Squash & Chicken Stew

Straight from the Edible DC Test Kitchen, this spicy and savory stew is hearty, satisfying, and simple to prepare. Adjust the spice levels to your guests’ liking, and bust out your biggest bowls—they’ll be going back for seconds.

11. White Bean Soup with Chorizo

The Proustian powers of this soup’s strong aroma sends us back to its origins: on the seasonal menu of Rustik Tavern, a now-closed DC restaurant once run by Chef Seth Brady. Luckily for us, Chef Seth shared his recipe, and now we get to enjoy it year after year.

12. Minty Farro Salad with Cucumber & Kale

A delicate and refreshing side, this salad will nevertheless satisfy your guests with its hearty mix of textures and flavors, from cooling mint to salty feta.

13. Eastern Shore-Style Oyster Stew

Oyster stew is a huge family favorite everywhere in the Chesapeake area. This stew recipe from our editor-in-chief and publisher Susan Able originally came from her grandmother’s table—but Susan’s added a few exciting twists.

14. Winter Rosemary Galette with Squash, Goat Cheese, and Prosciutto

Ring in the arrival of the colder months with this savory galette, featuring prosciutto that crisps under the oven’s heat, its natural salty flavor a counterpoint to the taste of fresh celery, all balancing the richness of the seasonal filling. Serve warm with a salad of lightly dressed kale and hearty lettuces.

15. Roasted Squash with Black Lentils

With just a quick roast and the right garnish, a humble squash can become the star of your Thanskgiving celebration. Top it off with lentils and a flavorful zhoug featuring jalapeños and cilantro.

Desserts

16. Cast Iron Campfire Cinnamon Rolls

The aroma of these cinnamon rolls will draw all your invited guests to your door—and maybe a few uninvited ones, too! The dough and filling can be made and rolled up a day or two ahead, so you’ll only need to give the individual rolls a little time to rise before baking. They are best enjoyed with a steaming cup of coffee.

17. Pumpkin Chiffon Pie with Cinnamon Vanilla Cream

This twist on a standard pumpkin pie is made all the more delectable by a garnish of homemade chilled cinnamon vanilla cream. You can use either market pumpkins or canned substitution, if you like.

18. Banana Pudding

Great for individual servings, this banana pudding is smooth, creamy, rich, sweet but not too sweet. Dress them up nicely with whipped cream and caramel, and your guests will be thankful for your attention to detail—and this fantastic dessert.

19. Lemon Meringue Cake

This lemon meringue cake is light and filled with flavor—but it’s not as rich as buttercream! It’s tart and sweet, and is the perfect substitute for a lemon meringue pie. You’ll love it, and while there are several steps, it is all doable for the home baker.

20. Apple Plum Pie

For a tart and sweet accompaniment to the more tradition sweet potato, pecan, and pumpkin pies, try this apple plum pie. Who knew putting these two fall fruits together would taste so good?

21. Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

Though they require a few extra steps compared to your standard peanut butter cookie, these peanut butter sandwich cookies feature a creamy filling and are adorably bite-sized.

22. Fiola’s White Chocolate Panettone Bread Pudding

This dessert is complex—but the final product is such a show-stopper for any holiday table. Producing this beauty make take some time, but all the elements may be made in advance and the cakes may be assembled and frozen up to two weeks ahead of your event.

23. Grilled Cinnamon Sugar Apples with Bourbon Whipped Cream

While this dessert comes together quickly, serving requires a bit of patience because the whipped cream will quickly melt if you top the apples while they’re too hot (not the worst thing, but still). Use crisp apples with a sweet and tart flavor balance, such as Honeycrisp or Cortlands.

24. Mini Pumpkin Bundt Cakes with Spiced Pumpin Seeds

These mini pumpkin bundt cakes came to Edible DC from Chef Meredith Tomason, of RareSweets, and feature a stunning bourbon cinnamon glaze. They’re the perfect size to split between two people—if you can get your guests to share them.

Drinks

25. Wadi Rum Cocktail

This cocktail was inspired by a protected tract of land in the southern Jordanian desert called Wadi Rum. Chris Hassaan Francke of Green Zone in Adams Morgan based this recipe on the teas of the region. “And because it’s Wadi Rum, of course, we had to add some rum in there too,” Francke said.

26. Festive Ice Ring for Holiday Punch Bowl

With a simple bundt mold and your favorite fruits, garnishes, and juices, you can create your very own festive ice ring for your holiday punch bowl this year. Freeze for a minimum of six hours, and run warm water along the outside of the pan to help loosen the ring afterwards. Cheers!

27. Winter White Mulled Wine

This mulled wine recipe features a mulling mix from The Spice & Tea Exchange in Alexandria. Be sure to stop in to grab some and make your own spiced wine this Thanksgiving!

28. Fiola’s Holiday Punch

Warming, brisk, fruity and bubbly, this is a sensational punch to start a holiday celebration dinner. This recipe serves six but can be multiplied for larger crowds!

29. A Calming Tonic: 100 Jor Bagh

Rano Singh, the owner of Indian spice store and grocery Pansaari, considers 100 Jor Bagh to be a balancing drink for digestion—all the various ingredients, which are steeped into a tea, have healthy and unique medicinal properties. Perfect for after your post-Thanksgiving nap!

30. Patxaran Gin Fizz

This cocktail originated at DC’s Anxo cidery and has a Spanish twist. It uses a Basque digestif called Patxaran—for a gin fizz cocktail that’s as writer Tim Ebner says, “well-balanced and has the subtle flavors of fall: anise, cinnamon and sloe berry.” A perfect palate cleanser!

August 29, 2019

Talking Cake with Star Baker Pichet Ong

August 29, 2019/ Jessica Wolfrom

By Jessica Wolfrom, photography by Jennifer Chase

There’s no need to save room for dessert when you can make it the star of the meal.

For Pichet Ong, a four-time James Beard Award–nominated pastry chef, dessert will never be just the afterthought: It’s the entire idea.

Ong has made a name for himself reinterpreting classic desserts and infusing them with Asian ingredients from his childhood, like the Ovaltine Kulfi or the Vietnamese tapioca coffee affogato he created for Spice Market in New York.

But cake has become a constant in his current role leading the pastry team at The Line Hotel’s Brothers and Sisters and Spoken English. And these aren’t just any cakes. They are pillowy, meringue-based confections with multiple layers. Even for those who foreswear sweets, Ong’s cakes have proved hard to resist.

Cakes are celebratory, but Ong shows us that they can also be cerebral.

This June Edible DC is celebrating its fifth anniversary and we thought there was no one better to cut into a birthday cake with than the master himself, Pichet Ong.

Edible DC’s fifth birthday cake, made by the master Pichet Ong himself.

What makes the perfect birthday cake?

When I make a cake for someone, I try to incorporate the personality and emotion of that person into the cake. Cake has a long history and different purposes, but for me, I want it to be celebratory—something that is meaningful.

How did you think about creating Edible DC’s birthday cake?

In the process of making the cake for Edible, I wanted to do something seasonal and very current. Edible DC is a publication about food, but not just food—it’s also about the history of food, about agriculture and the local food scene.

And certainly, the emotion and the feeling that evokes from using these strawberries, I wanted it to taste and feel like spring.

I used a layering structure on the inside and a very simple covering on the outside so that there is an element of surprise. I want people to be, like, ‘Oh, wow, there is so much going on inside the cake.’ Which is maybe also how my personality is—there’s a lot more than meets the eye.

You make cakes every day, and I’ve heard you eat sweets to start the day. What’s your philosophy when indulging in dessert?

I grew up in a culture of eating desserts. I’m Chinese, but I lived in Thailand for a little while with my dad and my mom. There weren’t particularly strict rules with eating, but there were very strict rules with everything else. My dad had a very eclectic habit: He liked to start the day with some kind of sweet item.

I see dessert as food, as sustenance—as a meal. That’s why I keep the ingredients fresh and real. I think real desserts should be highly perishable, like salads or seafood.

The best desserts often provoke nostalgia—they remind us of our favorite childhood foods. How important is nostalgia to you, and how do you play with this idea in your desserts?

If you look at every dessert I’ve done, it’s always based on something that’s intended to be reminiscent of something you’ve had before. Ironically, it’s extremely challenging to do a dessert that you’ve had a million times before and make it as good or as interesting.

Take apple pie or strawberry shortcake, for example. I am telling you, it’s very hard. To duplicate that emotion or taste is not easy.

But I use that as a jumping off point to create a new dessert. People like being reminded of the familiar. But then, to make it my own, I’ll add saffron or spices into it and make it something new.

What is the most underappreciated ingredient or flavor when making dessert?

I like savory ingredients a lot. I think savory flavors can be successfully translated into desserts. Probably the most extreme example would be onion or shallot. If you caramelize shallots or onions, they become sweet and complex and very aromatic.

Crème fraîche ice cream with caviar was something that I kept on the menu at P*ONG in New York. I’ve also made black garlic ice cream. It was a true blend of a sweet and savory and people remember it.

Here at Brothers and Sisters, I love saffron. Typically, when people think of saffron, most think immediately of risotto, seafood and paella. But it’s beautiful in dessert. I like to take a very popular item and add something like saffron. Right now, we have a molten chocolate cake with a white chocolate ganache center that I have infused with saffron.

ou’ve become famous for eschewing super-sugary desserts and focus instead on flavor and structure. What is your attitude about sugar and fat these days?

Sugar and fat are first and foremost a seasoning ingredient. Because I do pastry, I need to use sugar for chemistry. For all the recipes, I use enough for it to interact with the yeasts in the bread and doughs. Same thing with salt. It should enhance but not overpower. I am not a big fan of extreme tastes or foods with one note. You need balance.

Speaking of structure, you got a master’s degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. How does this expertise play into your desserts today?

I do think about structure but it’s not the focus. But what I learned most from architecture is the idea of the contextual. That everything you do needs to make sense—in terms of style. It has to be tasteful and cohesive. It is the same thing when you dress [or cook]. It all needs to go together.

I’ve heard you were a self-taught chef. Who influenced your desire to cook?

My mom and my aunt who taught me how to cook. I was surrounded by women in my family who cooked. I think I’ve always had a knack for cooking and I’ve always had the palate. My parents used to tell me at a very young age that I was an adventurous eater.

Often when we think of pastry chefs, we assume they are women. Do you see this norm changing? How much does your identity matter in the kitchen?

Now, it’s not as relevant, but when I first started, things were different. There were more women than men in pastry. Now it’s not so much an issue.

But the most drastic difference is in diversity. We have come a long way, especially in management. There is more and more representation and it isn’t just about race. Now there are more gay chefs, and women chefs, too. But we still have a long way to go.

On Twitter, you are a self-proclaimed “food pimp.” Can you tell us what that means?

I am a big fan of OPD—Other People’s Desserts. Pastry chefs, and chefs in general, can often get closed off in cliques. But I am a fan of stepping outside of that and just showing up and elevating other people’s work.

Speaking of Other People’s Desserts, what is the best dessert you’ve had in DC that you haven’t made yourself?

I don’t want to pick! But I Like Caitlin Dysart’s desserts at Centrolina.

When you crave foods, do you crave sweet or salty?

Both for sure, but I would say mostly salty. My ideal meal is always raw fish, steak and cake—in that order. So, like a sashimi starter or a seafood tower, followed by a steak and then finished with some sort of creamy cake.

If you could make dessert for anyone, who would it be?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I’d just want to sit down with her and share a conversation and a piece of cake.

What’s your favorite cake?

Strawberry shortcake.

December 17, 2018

Caroline's Contribution: Tomato Soup Cake

December 17, 2018/ Edible DC

By AJ Dronkers

This recipe for tomato soup cake is a testament to the resilience of Depression-era Americans, and makes a delicious dessert to boot.

One of my life’s great fortunes was that I knew my great-grandmother, Caroline. She was a part of my life until I was 12 years old, and in my earliest recollections I remember sharing a real connection with her instantly. She performed and sang live on radio back in the early days. When I knew her as young boy, she lived in a house with an overflowing teddy bear collection, lugging around an oxygen machine through rooms that, of course, smelled of cigarette smoke.

So even though she grappled with the setbacks of age and bad health, Caroline was incredibly upbeat. We sat side-by-side on the piano bench while she played and sang, breathless by the end. She would make drinks with her vintage stirrers (I was obsessed!) from Vegas, offer me treats from her ceramic cookie jar and make delicious spaghetti dinners. I felt incredibly special when she made ice cream cones, taking particular care to stuff the ice cream all the way to the base of the cone so every last bite was just perfect.

Caroline lived through the Great Depression and knew how to make a little go a long way. She also passed down a recipe to my grandmother and my mother for Tomato Soup Cake. Disclaimer: I usually don’t tell people the name when I serve it so they keep an open mind. This Depression-era recipe essentially tastes like a delicious spice cake with the benefit of only needing a little butter. Lacking other hard-to-find ingredients like eggs and milk that were often short in supply back then, tomato soup offers the moisture this cake needs. There have been many iterations of this recipe over the years and, at one point, cream cheese frosting was introduced as a topper, which is how I like to serve it.

Mix the ingredients and use a 9- by 13-inch pan for a sheet cake, or use 2 (8-inch) rounds and stack them.

Tomato Soup Cake

2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons butter, softened
2 (10½-ounce) cans of 10.5 Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
2 pinches cloves
1 cup raisins
1 cup walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Prepare baking pan(s) with butter and flour, or spray with nonstick product.

Mix together sugar and butter first then add soup until butter is dissolved; set aside. Mix together all dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Add the raisins and walnuts.

Add the soup mixture to the flour mixture, stirring by hand till everything is mixed together. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan.

Depending on the size of the pan, bake for 40 minutes to an hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon whole milk, and more as needed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
16 ounces confectioners’ sugar

Beat the cream cheese with the milk and extract in a medium bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until creamy. Slowly beat in the confectioners’ sugar until the frosting has the desired consistency. The icing needs to be stiff, so my tip is to only use 1 tablespoon of milk to start and then add more as needed.

December 12, 2018

Sweden's Ambassador of Cuisine

December 12, 2018/ Edible DC

By Susan Able, Photography by Nicole Crowder

Chef Frida Johansson, the Executive Chef to the Ambassador of Sweden to the U.S., makes holiday saffron buns.

The life of an embassy chef is a busy one. Just ask Chef Frida Johansson, the Executive Chef to the Ambassador of Sweden to the United States. We meet Frida where she spends her working hours: the kitchen in the residence of Ambassador Karin Olofsdotter, Sweden’s first female ambassador to the United States.

As I arrive, Chef Frida is prepping dessert, a white chocolate cheesecake with cloudberry sorbet. On the stove is the main course, a Swedish crawfish soup, where stock made with crawfish shells that have been roasted and torched with cognac is bubbling away; cream and crawfish meat will be added in before serving. Just another dinner at the Residence, that night for 16. She cooks for parties for two to 500; it varies week to week, and with big events it totals over 7,000 people a year. She laughs as she tells me, “You gotta remember that I’m only one person.”

Even in mid-October, Frida was already well underway with plans for her biggest party of the year, the St. Lucia’s Day celebration held at House of Sweden in Georgetown. And since Chef Frida has raised the bar on herself for this already popular event, she is committed to making each year even more magical and exciting than the ones before.

The 32-year-old culinary powerhouse tells me she is from a “super super small place in western Sweden, about 70 kilometers outside Gothenburg,” and decided to go to culinary school after thinking about fashion design. Her creative expressions are as strong as her chops in the kitchen and she tells me, “What is important to me is putting my signature on every dish from Sweden, taking something traditional and making it modern, or giving it something unexpected.”

Equally unexpected was her journey to the Embassy and the United States. Frida worked abroad after graduation, including a stint cooking in New Zealand. She returned home to Sweden for a month, only to be involved in a near-fatal car accident which required extensive recovery, waylaying other plans.

Frida laughs, “It was the right place at the right time. Because of the accident, I ended up staying in Sweden, cooking for a very well-known chef who was good friends with an even better-known chef, Leif Mannerström. The Ambassador [then-Ambassador Jonas Hafström] was friends with Chef Leif, and he recommended me from knowing my work. They trusted his opinion and hired me. I came to the U.S. in 2010 to spend what I thought would be one exciting year. As you see, it is now eight and a half years later.”

“I’ve stayed because I love my job. It is up to me to be creative, to come up with new ideas and try them. Obviously, I also like living in DC; this is such an interesting multicultural city. I take very seriously that I have a great opportunity to represent Sweden and Swedish cuisine. People think Swedish food and think ‘meatballs at IKEA,’ that is all that we have. But it is not. Our day-to-day food culture is so fabulous and healthy—the Nordic diet is just a healthy way of eating. Vegetables and lean protein, the way you should be eating. Sustainability is big for us and eating seasonally is just something we do. The winter for me means root vegetables and game, winter seafood.”

Frida talks about ingredients too. I taste a cloudberry marinating in a spiked punch; it looks like a golden raspberry but tastes so different. She explains, “I use things like produce and meats produced locally here all the time, but there are certain things that are only in Sweden, like cloudberries, tiny North Sea shrimp, sea buckthorn, crawfish, wild Norwegian salmon, and herring. These are things I have to bring over, mainly for the big holidays or in season, because they define our cuisine. For a Swede, what is a party without pickled herring?”

Frida’s saffron buns make for an excellent shareable dessert.

Frida’s Saffron Buns
By Frida Johansson

Your journey to the world’s most delicious saffron buns starts the day before you actually put them in the oven by letting the saffron infuse the milk you will use in the sponge. This is my take on a traditional holiday bun that everybody makes at home and you will love it. Our cuisine has been very influenced by international trade for centuries, so that is why you will see spices from the Silk Road and Asia in our food like saffron, cardamom, ginger, and cinnamon.

Makes 40 buns.

Ingredients

Sponge

2⅛ cups milk
¼ cup fresh yeast
1.2 grams saffron (1 hearty pinch or 1 packet)
520 grams all-purpose flour (3.6 cups)

Dough

10½ tablespoons butter, at room temperature
¾ and 2 tablespoons sugar
2 grams salt (2 hearty pinches)
320 grams all-purpose flour (2.3 cups)

Almond filling

300 grams almond paste
2½ tablespoons sugar
1 vanilla bean OR 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
9 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

Topping

1 egg
1 tablespoon water
1 pinch salt
Sliced almonds
Swedish pearl sugar, available at Whole Foods (or regular sugar)

Instructions

Start with ¼ cup of milk, warming it gently without reaching a simmer. Add the saffron and let it infuse the milk for about 15 minutes. Then add the rest of the milk and put it in the fridge overnight, or for at least 12 hours.

The next day, warm up the milk to body temperature and dissolve the yeast into it. Add the flour and mix. Once it comes together, knead the dough for 5 minutes. Let it rest, covered by a dish towel, for about 15–20 minutes. If you are mixing with a stand mixer, you will want to use the dough hook for this. If you are mixing by hand, consider this recipe to be your cardio for the day!

Once the sponge has rested, add the ingredients listed under the “dough” section: butter, sugar, salt and more flour. Knead or mix until the dough is smooth, glossy and starts to release any hard edges. If you are kneading by hand, just keeping kneading until you can’t do it anymore!

Let the dough rest under a dish towel again for about 20–30 minutes.

While the dough rests, prepare the filling. Mix the almond paste with sugar and vanilla sugar. Add the butter gradually until you have a smooth and fully combined filling. Don’t forget that the butter needs to be room temperature.

Roll out the dough in a large rectangle on a lightly floured surface. It should be about 18 by 27 inches, and about .2 inch thick (half a centimeter). That’s about the size of a full-size sheet pan, for reference. Spread the filling evenly over the dough, all the way to the edges.

Now it’s time to knot your saffron buns. Step one: Looking at the rectangle of dough and filling in front of you, grasp the top edge of the dough and fold it toward you, so that you have a long, skinny rectangle in front of you. Try to fold it as smoothly as you can, with the edges from the top layer of dough matching the edges on the bottom.

Step two: Cut the folded dough into long skinny strands about 1½ inches wide. You can cut the strips with a knife, a pizza cutter or scissors.

Step three: Imagine you’re playing rock, paper, scissors. Make the “scissors” with your non-dominant hand, and then wrap a strand of dough around your 2 fingers twice. Then tie the dough into a loose knot by wrapping the dough around the middle of the loops you just created and tucking the middle into a loop. Overall, this action will remind you of wrapping up a pair of headphones.

Wrap the strips of dough around two of your fingers as though they were a pair of headphones.

Repeat with the rest of your dough pieces, placing each knot onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Once you’ve finished making all of your knots, cover the buns with a dish towel and let them rise for about 1–2 hours.

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Now that your buns have risen, beat the egg with the water and salt to make an egg wash and brush each bun with it. Sprinkle the sliced almonds and pearl sugar over the buns. Bake 13–15 minutes, or until your saffron buns are golden brown. Alternately, bake without the topping, let cool, then brush with melted butter and dip in sugar.

Edible Stories