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Thanksgiving happened! My parents came over and brought wine and a cheese plate; we made the rest.

* Pim Techmuanvivit's Fivespice Braised Pork Belly, a longtime fave I've been making for close to 15 years now (not just for Thanksgiving, it's that kind of rich, warm dish that's a treat on blustery Northeastern autumn days). Utterly unctuous.

* Khushbu Shah's Saag Paneer Lasagna, or "La-Saag-Na," badumtish. How did I not realize how easy making saag is? I've been eating some variant of it the majority of my life thanks to Indian restaurants, and now I live within 10 minutes' walk of an Indian grocery. Clearly, I will be cooking more Indian food from now on! I did make the lasagna aspect easier on myself by skipping the béchamel step and using crème fraîche instead, but all in all, it was pretty easy to put together. And we liked having a non-meat entree option, even though we're all omnivores.

* Kay Chun's Cranberry-Asian Pear Chutney, in perpetuity.

* Stephanie and Mike Le's Miso Mashed Potatoes, repeat from last year.

* Eric Kim's Cheesy Scallion Stuffing. I wanted to come up with a Filipino stuffing but ran out of time.

* Joanne Chang's Thai Red Curry Squash Soup, except with yellow curry paste and acorn squash and carrots because we already had all of that on hand when we were trying to fill the "orange vegetable" slot.

* Andrea Nguyen's Magical Sesame Salt Greens, this year with collards and beet greens, again because we had them on hand already. I think the collards worked but the beet greens were too bitter, but this is an incredibly easy way to put a cooked green veg on the table.

* Eric Kim's Little Gems Salad, back for year three and yet somehow nobody else on the internet has written it up to link to? Incredibly easy salad that's a fave around here. I don't just love it because it's a mashup between the green salad with nori vinaigrette from Eventide near my old Fenway apartment, and the classic Californian Little Gems salad that's on every farm-to-table restaurant menu in the Bay Area, but neither aspect hurts it in my estimation, either. How I make it for a crowd: I do make it a chopped salad so it's easier to serve and eat. I also make a vinaigrette, even though Kim likes applying each ingredient of dressing individually - for every 5-6 oz head of lettuce (if you can't get Little Gems, butter lettuce is a good substitute, as is romaine), mix 1T rice vinegar, 1T fish sauce, 1T toasted sesame oil, and a pinch of sugar, and drizzle over the chopped lettuce. Then grind up a packet of roasted seaweed and sprinkle it over the salad. Then toss and serve. Easy-peasy.

And for dessert:

* Kristina Cho's Persimmon Custard Tart. We made a hojicha whipped cream topping instead of a hojicha meringue to keep it a little simpler. I do want to try making it with the meringue next time! ... and locate our blowtorch, heh. The coconut cream we tried did not whip up, so I ended up boosting it with dairy cream anyway. That's what Lactaid's for!

* Stephanie and Mike Le's Pumpkin Basque Cheesecake. Yeah, I can't really say I'm anti-cheesecake any longer. Just anti-New York cheesecake, the taste and texture still don't work for me. But there are plenty of other cheesecakes in the world I'm discovering to like! Adding pumpkin and pumpkin spices makes it more autumnal than the straight-up burnt Basque cheesecake we did last year.

Noting things to remember that I want to try next year:
* The la-saag-na came from a NYT article the week before Thanksgiving about how immigrant Americans adapted another immigrant American tradition of lasagna on the Thanksgiving table. In addition to the recipes for a Thai lasagna and an Indian lasagna, there are references to Korean and Sichuan versions, as well as Filipinos just treating the Italian lasagna like the "American" food on their Thanksgiving tables already overflowing with Filipino food. (Mandy Lee's got a recipe for a Korean lasagna that sounds similar to the referenced one, based on tteok. And further searching brought me to Christine Lau's version as referenced in the Times, as well as Andrea Nguyen's interpretation of Mei Lin's ma po tofu lasagna (and additional ma po tofu fusion recipes, along with Anna Hezel's Lasagna cookbook that sounds worth a read.)

But you know me, I'd rather riff on the idea of a Filipino lasagna. Lalaine Manalo has a version, with banana ketchup and Filipino hot dogs; I think I'd rather incorporate longanisa, though I see how she was pivoting from Filipino spaghetti. And I'd love to incorporate Filipino cheeses like kesong puti (though finding it is the challenge), and/or Edam/queso de bola (more common, though it doesn't melt quite the same way, you need to add milk and it's more like a cheese dip). Though Rezel Kealoha is just like "whatever, make your own kesong puti," heh. Ideally, see if I can get ahold of carabao milk! ... yeah, um, maybe just buffalo milk? (The buffalo farm I knew of around here is probably moving to Santa Barbara. They have some of the best fresh mozzarella I've ever had; I hope we're still able to get it when they move!)

* I really do want to make Mandy Lee's oyster kimchi stuffing that I've been talking about for ages now! I just need to plan ahead and ensure that I can pick up the gochujang sourdough loaf I've been wanting to try it with, and have it in the house at the same time I've got oysters, heh. And it's an oyster stuffing, how much more riff on New England trad can you get?

* I also want to do a lemongrass custard cornbread, mashing up our old favorite custard cornbread with lemongrass corn soup flavors, but also adapting to our digestive systems being less happy with full dairy cream these days. I wonder if coconut cream will custardize similarly to dairy cream in the oven.

quoth the rev. henry ward beecher:

The pie should be eaten "while it is yet florescent, white or creamy yellow, with the merest drip of candied juice along the edges, (as if the flavor were so good to itself that its own lips watered!) of a mild and modest warmth, the sugar suggesting jelly, yet not jellied, the morsels of apple neither dissolved nor yet in original substance, but hanging as it were in a trance between the spirit and the flesh of applehood ... then, O blessed man, favored by all the divinities! eat, give thanks, and go forth, 'in apple-pie order!'"

so kudzita brought up this afternoon that when she heads up for grad school visits in the midwest, apparently she has to try apple pie with cheese on pain of death or somesuch. and oh! how it warms the cockles of my heart, that apple pie with cheese is not merely a new england oddity, but that such a fine tradition is alive and well in another cheese-loving state.

i admit i, too, was suspicious of such a strange combination. i'd had apples with cheese before, which was all well and good, but cheese on a pie? i already disliked cheesecake. (and still do, except for a good bailey's no-bake cheesecake, that's more like a chocolate pudding in pie form anyway.) luckily, slwands and elemmire7 made me try it anyway, way back when at one of our big e excursions, and, well, YUM.

so i mentioned this chatting to various people today, and the universal reaction has been, "apple pie with cheese?" along with generally curled-up noses or bugged-out eyes. so i go to google it, to see just how limited the tradition really is, and i discover that someone wrote a poem about it. and that website is popuppy, so dear mr. field, i thank you, and am documenting your poem here. because, dude, AWESOME.

and kudz, there's even a wee bit of latin in there ;)

( apple pie with cheese, by eugene field, whose taste in desserts is at least partially impeccable. :D )

edit: of course, as shamanix pointed out (i think. i can't remember whether i brought it up first or he did), you also have:

Jim: Uh, what exactly does third base feel like?
Oz: Like warm apple pie.
Jim: Yeah?
Oz: Yeah.
Jim: Apple pie, huh?
Oz: Uh huh.
Jim: McDonald's or homemade?