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!

By Hope Nelson

Drive east on New York Avenue to Ivy City—the formerly industrial northeast neighborhood enjoying a great –resurgence —and it’s easy to miss the bustle of activity at the intersection with Fenwick Street, adjacent to the old Hecht’s warehouse. But turn the corner and peer behind the glass-and-wood façade, behind the large garage-door-like window that opens upward to let in fresh air on pretty days, and see a new republic taking root.

Here lies Republic Restoratives, the first women-owned distillery in the DC area.

The distillery, which is currently selling vodka and has just released its first bourbon, was a long time coming, says Pia Carusone, co-founder with Rachel Gardner. “It was a loose thought for maybe eight years, but about 2011 we got serious about it,” Carusone said. One crowdfunding campaign and a storefront renovation later, Republic Restoratives opened this past Mother’s Day.

“We love the neighborhood,” Carusone says. “It’s amazing.” The company was one of the first to sign a lease in what was a mostly derelict area of warehouses and with plenty of nods to the local vernacular takes its responsibility to the neighborhood seriously. Republic Restoratives’ brand logo—what appears at first glance to be a pair of crossed fingers—is actually the American Sign Language sign for the letter R, an homage to nearby Gallaudet University.

Careful planning has left Carusone and Gardner in good start-up mode. The interior space is pleasing to the eye—from the glass- and woodwork throughout the tasting room to the distillery itself, a huge room with gleaming silver stills as showpieces. The upstairs barrel room houses the first batch of Borough Bourbon, sourced from a Kentucky distillery, now aging in pristine French wine barrels. The space is welcoming, homey in an unexpected way in this combination workspace and laboratory.

“It’s a super-open layout because we wanted the facility to be really flexible in how we’re set up,” Carusone says. “So when we designed our operations here, we made equipment decisions that were going to be more than sufficient for our current need, but would also allow us to grow. We asked a bunch of distillers when we started, ‘What are your biggest regrets?’ and the one we heard over and over again was, ‘The still is too small. We wish we had bought a bigger still.’ And so we invested in one of the biggest stills in the region—far larger than we need right now, but again, we’re not going to have to replace it for a while.”

The distillery’s aesthetic only serves to enhance libations worth the price of admission. For DC’s cocktail-savvy, both the Civic Vodka and the Borough Bourbon hold up to careful scrutiny—alone or in cocktails.

The Civic is a silky-smooth vodka that lacks the burn of so many of its brethren and pairs quite nicely with a variety of mixers. The Borough’s stint in wine barrels brings about a spiciness with each sip.

The city is responding. More than 100 restaurants and bars now carry Civic, Carusone says, and Republic Restoratives is looking to expand its reach into Maryland and Virginia as soon as the bureaucratic world of alcohol distribution allows.

“This is the first time we’ve done this, so we didn’t have a ton of expectations, but we’re growing enough that we’re busy. Every day feels like we’re so busy, which is great,” Carusone says. “… We’re expanding. People are calling and asking for us. The word is out about the vodka; it’s delicious, people love it, and it’s priced fairly affordably.”

That’s reason enough to lift a glass.

The Chin Chin Cocktail Recipe

Republic Restoratives, 1369 New York Ave. NE. For tasting room hours, distillery tours or to sign up for a private tour and tasting, go to republicrestoratives.com.

Edible Stories