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Five days to Thanksgiving, and if anything this year, I am feeling rather more compelled to double down on recipes from Asian Americans as I plan this year's Thanksgiving dinner.

High on the list of new possibilities:

* Justin Pichetrungsi's nam prik ong lasagna. Or maybe Khushbu Shah's saag paneer lasagna ("la-saag-na," as she puts it), if we do the pork belly and don't want two meat-heavy dishes.
* Mandy Lee's oyster-kimchi stuffing (especially if I can get ahold of a gochujang loaf from Rize Up, I have been swearing I'm going to make this for close to a decade now)
* Kristina Cho's persimmon custard tart and/or Stephanie Le's pumpkin Basque cheesecake. I thought that was it for desserts, but then yesterday morning, Molly Yeh posted a recipe for pistachio butter pie, and I have that jar of pistachio butter I picked up at the Santa Monica farmers’ market this summer …

As for potentially returning favorites:
* Pim Techmuanvivit's fivespice pork belly
* Kay Chun's cranberry Asian pear chutney (which goes really well with Joanne Chang's roast leg of lamb, side note)
* the Le's miso butter mashed potatoes
* Eric Kim's little gems salad with roasted seaweed dressing
* Still need an orange vegetable dish, unless I decide orange is represented enough by the persimmons for dessert
* Still thinking how I've wanted to bring in Betty Liu's lemongrass corn soup as a lighter side for ages. But that's a chilled soup, and it's looking chilly and rainy for Thanksgiving this year, so maybe I do Kathy Bui's lemongrass cornbread instead? But then also I keep thinking about how much we love custard-topped cornbread, but now have lactose intolerance issues; I wonder how well substituting coconut cream for the heavy cream before baking would go. And maybe infusing that coconut cream with the lemongrass and shallots?
* Still don't really have anything Filipino on here. I had been thinking this would be the year I would figure out a Filipino hotdish, at least before I saw the lasagna possibilities. Maybe Rezel Kealoha's Thanksgiving stuffing will get my brain in gear?

Uncharacteristically, I didn’t manage to get that many pics of the food at this year’s Thanksgiving! (What I did get is over on Instagram.) We hosted my parents and hyounpark's brother and sister-in-law, maybe they got some pictures?

I’ll blame the timing around the homemade Peking duck we built the menu around - it was delicious, but fiddly as hell; see the giant stack of silicone accessories dragooned into supporting the duck on its butt end when the beer can that was supposed to be doing that job failed. And this was the “simplified” Serious Eats version! But Kay Chun's cranberry-Asian pear chutney, a stalwart of our Thanksgiving dinner table the past 20-odd years, made an excellent substitute for the typical plum sauce.

Thankfully, we had backup plans in the form of Joanne Chang's roast leg of lamb, a recipe we’ve done multiple times over the last few years. The only change we made was swapping out the rosemary for Oaktown Spices’ Urumqi lamb rub - garlic, cumin, black pepper, cayenne, gochugaru, Szechuan pepper, and ginger. (While they haven't fully replaced Penzeys for me, I do appreciate that my spice runs are now a mere mile down the Ohlone Greenway instead of four miles up the Minuteman :) )

Most of our sides were familiar repeats as well, perhaps with another riff on the spicing. The Woks of Life's cheesy scallion mashed potatoes, Maangchi's 맛탕 (mattang, candied sweet potatoes) spiced with baharat, maple duck fat braised greens (hyounpark made that substitute when we realized we didn't have the traditional bacon), a stuffing pulled together from a loaf of sourdough, fennel, cherries, and more duck fat. Even the blender cornbread I learned how to make last summer from Smitten Kitchen is approaching muscle memory levels of familiarity. The surprise new hit: Eric Kim's Little Gems green salad with 김 (roasted seaweed) vinaigrette (from his cookbook Korean American), with another New England callback as it was inspired by the green salad at Eventide.

And for dessert, I made Alana Kysar’s liliko’i chiffon pie (from her cookbook Aloha Kitchen) again. I tried subbing out the whipped cream layer, given the level of lactose intolerance at the table, but I overbeat the meringue layer and didn’t achieve the Flour Bakery levels of meringue altitude I’d been hoping for. Oh well, there’s always next year!

It may just be the two of us this year, but does that ever stop me from going over the top ahahaha nope.

( follow me down a foodie rabbit hole )

So basically, we are very much having Porksgiving over here with a side of crab rangoon. Said experimental siopao asado stuffing just went into the oven; the pork belly is currently dry-chilling before its 4 pm date with a bubbling oil bath. We're about halfway through the checklist for Thanksgiving dinner:

X Cranberry Asian pear chutney (Kay Chun, perennial)
X Hobakjuk (Maangchi)
X Lap cheong gravy (Cynthia Chen McTernan)
X Sigeumchi namul (Sunny Lee)
X Siopao stuffing - starting with Lalaine Manalo's base recipe for siopao asado
X Cornbread bibingka (Liza Agbanlog)
X Sujeonggwa
X Apple cider sticky buns (Joanne Chang, from her Pastry Love cookbook)
/ Lechon kawali (Lalaine Manalo) (boil and air dry W, fry Th)
- Crab rangoon (Bee Yinn Low) (for apps, make Th)
- Fruit plate (persimmons, satsumas, shingo pear; for apps, make Th)
- Saelsim to go in the juk (Th)
- Scallion mashed potatoes (Woks of Life) (Th)
- rice (Th)
- the mangos did not ripen in time but honestly between the bibingka and leftover sticky buns we may not need more dessert

God, this has been a weird year, but at least we made it to Thanksgiving again. Though I have mild concerns for the mental health of our upstairs neighbors, who have been playing Oasis' Don't Look Back In Anger for the last 2.5 hours straight. It's a good song! But I'm still somewhat perplexed - why this song? Oh well, I'll put on John Denver and the Muppets soon enough.

In the space of 48 hours, hyounpark and I went from "eh, we're still recovering from the last nine weeks of work travel, let's just relax on Thursday and eat leftovers" to a plan for our #AsianAmericanThanksgiving:

- Delmonico steaks with gireumjang
- Sesame cornbread - these first two are from Cynthia Chen McTernan's A Common Table; Southern-raised Chinese-American meets hapa-Korean-Hawaiian.
- Kale laing laing (I've been making something somewhat similar to this for years, just from Vikram Vij and using slightly different spices; Marvin Gapultos, LA-born Fil-Am, points out Tuscan kale's similarity to taro leaves in his tweak on the Filipino original). If I were in California, I'd be trying to get Dungeness crab to do it like how I had at Bad Saint earlier this year!
- Miso-glazed carrots (do I ever prepare a banquet without at least one Joanne Chang recipe? Food and Wine did a profile of Joanne Chang's Asian American Thanksgiving awhile back, and we've used many recipes from her over the years.)
- Cheesy mashed potatoes with scallions (staple foods for H, guidance on the cheese:potato ratio provided by the Leungs from The Woks of Life, another Asian-American family)
- Cranberry-Asian pear chutney (I've been making this most years since I found the recipe in Real Simple in 2001, I eat it like applesauce it's so good, thank you Kay Chun)
- Masala chai tarte tatin (This ... did not quite go as planned, see below. But Ming Tsai, Joanne Chang, Nik Sharma, and Irvin Lin all contributed to the mashup of a recipe I ended up making. Nik Sharma for the spice guidance)
- Malasadas for breakfast! (via Alana Kysar, via the Leonard's original recipe)

( It's not a feast without at least one disaster, ROFL )

Almost every recipe mentioned is written by an American by birthright with Asian heritage, some by multiple generations, like me. (The exceptions are Vikram Vij, an Indian immigrant to Canada, and Nik Sharma, an Indian immigrant to the US.) For providing me with easy access to all of these recipes from the Asian diaspora in America, I am grateful to everyone mentioned above.

The meat and produce are all from local farms, but I'm especially delighted to note that the carrots are from Assawaga Farm, a small farm in East Putnam, CT, specializing in Japanese vegetables, co-owned by a Japanese immigrant farmer and her partner, named to reflect the original Nipmuc name of the river flowing along the farm, colonially named Fivemile (and they provided me with a regular source of fresh shiso all summer! as well as introducing me to komatsuna and mizuna and the Egyptian molokhia). And the flowers that will be gracing our table are end-of-season chrysanthemums and chocolate cosmos from Fivefork Farms, a flower farm in Upton, MA, co-owned by five Chinese-American siblings.

The fact that there will be donuts and steak on our Thanksgiving table comes down to my husband's love for meat and frying things; what could be more American than that.

A blessed and fulfilling Thanksgiving to everyone partaking. I recognize this is not a time of celebration for all Americans, but may the name of the day and our observation of it lead to a better, more equitable world sooner rather than later.

Thanksgiving will be with Jane this year, hyounpark and I hosting again. Definitely feeling back in my stride again, I do love hosting Thanksgiving, even if for a relatively small crowd :)

And we got a good start on things today so tomorrow shouldn't be too harried. The turkey breast is brining, the onion confit for the stuffing is cooling, braised greens and mashed potatoes are tucked away for tomorrow. Still on the docket for tomorrow: the stuffing, persimmon quickbread, cranberry-pear chutney, cider-sage gravy, honeynut squash kaddo, buttermilk biscuits, quinoa cornbread, macapuno ambrosia, and cranberry-ginger upside-down cake. And the 🦃 itself. And ribeye steaks. And leftovers for dayyyys. Happy Thanksgiving!

We've made persimmon quickbread and a cheese plate to tide us over until Jane can get here after she had to work this morning. I'm especially proud of the cheese plate: comice pears from the farmers' market on a cheese plate with Cricket Creek's Sophelise and Ruggles Hill Ellie's Cloudy Down - an all-Massachusetts cheese plate! Then we'll move on to ...

* Roasted turkey breast with cider-sage gravy (three of us are not going to finish a whole turkey, this is honestly more to ensure we have leftovers)
* Grilled ribeye steaks
* Garlic mashed potatoes
* Honeynut squash kaddo bourani (so much easier than the pumpkin, heh)
* Coconut-braised kale with bacon (couldn't find collards, so subbed with dinosaur kale)
* Sourdough stuffing with onion confit
* Cranberry asian pear chutney
* Quinoa skillet cornbread
* Buttermilk biscuits
* Queso rebozado con miel - one of my favorite tapas at Dali. Deep-fried goat cheese balls with honey! And we have fancy truffle honey to try with them :)
* Macapuno ambrosia for dessert (we don't have all the fruits but we do have a jar of macapuno)
* Sweet tea apple cider punch
* a local maple icewine!

7/30/24: apparently this was also the year we managed to accidentally set the veggie skewers on fire! Pretty sure there's an Instagram post for this; I'll link it when I find it. I was reminded by Facebook that today is the anniversary of the time I accidentally set the lawnmower on fire, and then when I looked through my Dreamwidth archives, I was also reminded about the time I accidentally set my potholder on fire. Three times is enough of a trend for me to apply a label to these incidents "things i have set on fire," at least until I think of a more amusing tagline, hahahaha :D

hyounpark and I were feeling pretty lazy about Thanksgiving this year; thankfully crschmidt and jpallan had their ish together far better than we did, and invited us and several other friends over for a proper turkey dinner. (Yes, "proper dinner" meaning served at noon. I don't think I could ever be done cooking in time to serve at noon when I've hosted! :D )

Meanwhile, I think we're about to become those people, those bougie yuppies (yes, Grandmother, you were prescient re calling me a "yuppie" at age eight, ahahaha) who get their organic coop groceries delivered; I've just discovered that Instacart has expanded to include both my neighborhood *and* the local coop. (AND Something Gud in the 'ville, but their selection of hyperlocal artisanal foodstuffs doesn't include basics I rely on like canned tomatoes.) My early 20s self squeed over Kozmo delivering video game rentals and pints of Ben + Jerry's. My mid-30s self is squeeing over the idea of rolling out of bed on a Sunday morning, placing my grocery order, and having it arrive before my husband's woken up. Also, to not having to shovel the car out when it gets inevitably covered with the cold white stuff this winter, just to go get food.

In further foodcentricness, I am very excited about the foie gras sandwiches at Ames Street Deli, which just opened. Coconut brioche, green curry, pineapple, mango. There is also a rabbit mortadella sandwich on carrot bread, which just delights me immensely even as it horrifies hyounpark. (Him: "We both had rabbits as pets when we were kids, how can you possibly eat one?!" Me: "... but they're delicious? And prolific?") And a poutine sandwich. I suspect I know where I'll be eating after ice skating this winter.

Went to Knoxville again for Thanksgiving this year! We debated doing a bacon-wrapped turkey, as most of us think turkey is overrated, but Jane really wanted an actual turkey, so we went the classic route.

- roast turkey
- stuffing
- cranberry asian pear chutney
- garlic mashed potatoes
- cider roasted veggies
- quinoa skillet cornbread, yes, with the cream
- challah
- a salad that most of us ignored, heh

And then we came home and Deb Perelman was speaking at the Coolidge Theatre! She is sweet and extroverted and a total conversationalist and she sounds *exactly* like her blog. I didn't leave the Booksmith until 10 pm last night because she was having these conversations with *everyone* in her signing line, but it was still a ton of fun.

On the last day of NaNo, my friends list said to me, "UPDATE OR I'LL SHOVE YOU UP A TREE."

*twinkles* *preens* *counts the earwormed* Congrats to those finishing NaNo, and Hanukkah Sameach to those who celebrate! Tis the season for sufganiyot, fa la la la la, la la la la!

hyounpark has been celebrating NaMcRibMo. I'm kind of glad that's almost over, too, though I suspect he'll make it a national movement the next time it comes around. >_>

Hooray, lazy Thanksgiving. Slightly overcaramelized the veg and spilled twice as much fivespice as I meant to into the sweet potatoes, but the turkey came out perfectly, and Hyoun loved the cornbread even more. Win.

Thanksgiving Menu:

* Maple slow-cooked turkey breast - just the two of us, don't need to try to wrestle a gigantic bird into the miniature oven of our tiny kitchen in the eaves :)
* Cranberry-Asian pear chutney - a regular from Kay Chun that's been on almost every one of my Thanksgiving tables since 2001? 2000? Whenever I saw the Asian American Thanksgiving article in Real Simple.
* Cider-roasted root vegetables - beets, butternut squash because they were what we had, but this goes well with any and all root veg. Also a Kay Chun recipe.
* Custard-filled cornbread - Marion Cunningham via Molly Wizenberg; I also like Heidi Swanson's update with quinoa
* Fivespice mashed sweet potatoes - boil sweet potatoes, melt butter, add fivespice to the butter, mash sweet potatoes with the fivespice butter
* Beet greens with bacon - fry bacon, saute beet greens in rendered bacon fat, chop bacon and mix back into sauteed greens
* Lemon-ginger mousse - a Joanne Chang fave.

And a loaf of rosemary garlic sourdough bread for Friday's leftovers ;)

*

So way back in October, on our first night in Toronto, we hopped the Dundas streetcar out to The Black Hoof, a charcuterie restaurant in Trinity-Bellwoods (according to Flickr, at least). (Toronto, can I just say how much I love your grid of streetcars downtown? Though the whole "step off into traffic" thing was more than a bit terrifying the first time! Luckily, the "DON'T PASS A STOPPED STREETCAR OR OUR MOUNTIES WILL STOMP ON YOUR CAR" thing seems to be pretty well-ingrained into Toronto drivers' minds.)

I started things out with beef tongue on brioche:



( So I used to be vegetarian. Really. )

*

But at the Black Hoof, tongue wasn't the most unusual meat I ate that night.

I've eaten my share of raw beef in my time - the Ethiopian kitfo; the better-known-in-the-West steak tartare.

( Yeah, this would be the part where I ate a meat that would be considered controversial in the States. With a picture of the finished dish. Consider yourself warned. )

I'd forgotten that tartare included a raw egg, though, so hyounpark passed on that particular dish. Not to worry; there was marrow on toast and an excellent charcuterie plate and a simply divine ice cider that I need to figure out how to get a bottle of:



I'm not sure I have anything particularly insightful to say about a meat that is established as "normal food" in one culture while being considered taboo in another culture - but glass_icarus linked me to vi's Gross, Weird, Inedible and troisroyaumes' Seven Things, and I recommend both pieces heartily, even if you skipped what's behind the cuts for this post.

It's just - I've been working myself up about this entry for a couple of weeks now, worried about harsh external reactions because the meat I ate in Canada comes from an animal that is idolized as a pet in mainstream American culture. Even in the course of *writing* this entry, I built up walls and provided warnings well beyond what I usually do when I blog about food, because I don't want to host a discussion consisting of "Ew, you ate $US_culturally_disapproved_meat? Nasty!" But at the same time, if I'm putting up these defenses, will the people voicing those opinions get far enough into reading to realize how rude they're being, and how classist or racist it makes them look?

*

I was talking with a newly-pregnant friend of mine last night, and we got onto the subject of what foods one can eat during pregnancy - and all I could think about afterwards wasn't the foods that I could (not) eat during those months of pregnancy and breastfeeding, but what could I best do to encourage my future offspring to be as open-minded about food as possible, and to give them as much experience with as many different food cultures as possible? (I don't have any magic answers. I'll let you know how I did in a couple of decades.)

When we were growing up, my mom was the primary cook of the family, and at home, we ate dishes like meatloaf and spaghetti and mac-and-cheese, with fishsticks on Friday - a very middle-America Catholic diet. Filipino food was what her mom cooked, and we would eat things like pancit and adobo "at Grandma's house" for holidays; when Grandma stopped being able to cook, holidays were spent at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge, and instead of siopao, we learned to order bao. But it still wasn't "everyday" food for us, and sometimes, I envied my relatives for whom it was. I was already enough of an outsider at school - if I had "weird" enough food that I liked, maybe it would be enough so that I could be left alone to read my book at lunch.

On the other hand, because of my mom's choices in marrying Not-A-Filipino ("She married him because no good Filipino boy would have her" was the narrative spread around), our family was already ostracized from the San Francisco Filipino community. So for a long time, I was perfectly sanguine claiming nothing but blood from my Filipino heritage, especially after I ditched Catholicism - because at least my half-blood status made me "interesting" to white people rather than "untouchable" to Pilis. It's only been the last few years I've decided that even if I am "merely" hapa, that I still want to claim the parts of the culture that *do* resonate with me. Food is the obvious place for me to start. :)

It's interesting for me to compare with Hyoun - he came over to the States as an infant, and his mom cooked almost-exclusively Korean food growing up. They were in the middle of Tennessee, so they would order out pizza and go to steakhouses and eat at fast food chains. But the usual nightly meal was based on 밥 and 반찬. So when I make beans and franks for dinner, or some other American dish I grew up with, Hyoun finds it ... bemusing.

In the last couple of weeks, though, I was introduced to an American home-cooking dish similar to one I grew up with: elbow macaroni, ground beef, and tomato sauce all put together into a casserole with chopped-up green bell peppers. (My family's version omits the bell peppers.) We called it "Macaroni Casserole." The other Americans? Particularly the Midwesterners and Northeasterners? Call it "American Chop Suey." Which, amusingly enough, means something else entirely in India.

And now I really, really, really want an Asian Food Writing Carnival.

[A version of this will probably show up on Camberville Chow at some point, particularly because I never did write up the Filipino Night they did at Ole last spring. But this got looong. :) ]

Still alive! The South may be trying to kill me with cholesterol, but I'm still tickin'. ;) It's been a much-needed, relaxing, nearly responsibility-free vacation.

Tuesday: Arrived chez Park. Ate a wide assortment of Korean food. Napped frequently.

Wednesday: ( sliders, Crystalis, and multicultural appropriation in a Southern grocery store. Of which I highly approve and am vastly amused, being one of them crazy blended peoples and all ;) )

Thursday: Feast! Turkey, natch, with yummy gravy (at which Hyoun's mom kicks ass; must learn from the master) and cranberry-Asian pear chutney; apricot-chestnut stuffing, garlic mashers, candied sweet potatoes, cider-roasted veggies (carrots, parsnips, zucchini, shiitake mushrooms), buttered corn, pan de sal, sesame green beans, spinach salad with goat cheese and candied pecans and blueberry vinaigrette dressing; strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert. And of course, more Crystalis. ;) And Bubble Bobble!

Friday: ( fannish references in an art museum, awesome pizza, deep-fried Oreos. )

Saturday: ( the Smoky Mountains, farmers' market natch, Biltmore Estate, wherein I have to cut myself off at a WINE TASTING, and seeing Emily and Ben! )

Today: it's off to the Smokies again for a wee bit of hiking, plus barbecue for Hyoun and steak for Jane. Plus finishing Crystalis when we get back for me!

the easiest way to get my attention is to talk about food. :D

i'm looking at savenor's holiday menu and drooling. dessert-wise, i'll probably go with rolling my own, although the chocolate grand marnier mousse bombe sounds heavenly, but i have been reminded in the last week by my pears rioja that i can handle making anything that has sugar in it. :)

somehow, we went the entire thanksgiving without eating any cranberries or cranberry sauce. this will, of course, not be true of christmas, though i'll probably be a christmas orphan this year. i love cranberry sauce so much, i eat it straight out of the can, practically. :) "would you like some mashed potatoes to go with your cranberry sauce?" though i really like the homemade version i did last year, the one with asian pears and ginger. and it's easy to make! i will probably do that for christmas, then i just need to figure out what else to eat it with.

but really, with andrew here, this whole long weekend has been a time to give thanks, and a time to eat well.

--braised pheasant with polenta
--garlic mashed potatoes
--pears rioja (ooh, flambee!)
--sushi from bluefin, i dragged him up to porter and my old neighborhood (and i needed to go to kotobukiya anyway)
--caramelized salmon with ginger
--way too much ice cream
--and last, but not least, dali. lots of seafood (mussels, scallops in saffron cream), lots of game (rabbit, wild boar, venison sausage in pomegranate sauce which i *must* get the recipe for), and one of my favorite desserts: floating island. mmm. :) but the real revelation was these amazing fried goat cheese balls with honey and caramelized onions! oh my gosh. if frying things didn't scare me i'd have to learn how to make these at home.

we took pictures, of course, though we waited till the last minute to do that again. one of these days, we will have pictures of us that aren't in an airport. really! (and one of these days, i will remember, backlighting is not of the good. meh.)

i've forgotten how to answer anything on the support board. eeps. that's what snuggling with your boy and playing too much ffx will do to you.

( whining about honking cars, ignore )