Good morning! Today we have for you:
We’ve got 100 Thanksgiving sides, and this Southern mac and cheese is one
Oh, hey. It’s Wednesday. Specifically, it’s the Wednesday a week out from Thanksgiving, which feels like the top of the roller coaster we’ve been clacking up slowly before the screaming free fall into shopping, cooking, baking, cleaning and cooking some more. It’s a lot, but it can feel like a thrill with dishes that flow at the season’s velocity. This mac and cheese beauty from Millie Peartree definitely does. She brought us her family recipe, and it tastes like an heirloom, rich and refined over years to draw perfection out of six ingredients. Instead of relentlessly stirring a butter-flour roux on the stovetop, you simply whisk milk and eggs for a custard that sets in the oven with macaroni, melted butter and a lot of Cheddar. Sprinkling Colby Jack between the pasta layers and on top gives you the well-deserved gift of stretchy cheese. Featured Recipe Southern Mac and CheeseI’ve been bubbling this casserole for my family for years, and I’m pretty sure they love me more for it. It’d be worth preparing even if it took a lot of time and a little stress, but the steps move naturally, one to the next, so the act of cooking it feels relaxing. The same is true of the other 99 recipes our editor in chief Emily Weinstein curated for our Thanksgiving 100.
Sometimes, the hardest part of Thanksgiving (or any meal) is picking dishes. That just got a little simpler, too: As you scroll the list, tap the “Save to Recipe Box” button for anything that sounds like a contender for your table. It’s a satisfying little button (and a tempting collection of sides), so you may end up with 38 options as I did. I started narrowing my options by guests’ dietary restrictions and will end at the quarterfinals based on supermarket deals. (I get such a high from buy one, get one free — BOGO for those who know.) And for dinnerMaple harissa chicken with butternut squash: A marinade usually implies some planning. Not so with this sheet-pan meal from Nargisse Benkabbou. While chicken thighs and butternut squash cubes roast, they soak up the spicy, sweet harissa blend that’s poured over them in the pan. Tossing edamame in the marinade left in the bowl before roasting them is a strong waste-not move. Nargisse suggests serving this with couscous, rice or flatbread, but I like scraping it over a pile of baby kale for a warm salad. Lemon butter salmon with dill: The night before my daughter’s college graduation, she asked me to cancel our dinner reservation and cook for our party of six instead. I had an hour to shop and get food on the table; this is what I made. Wild salmon ends up silky when roasted with lemon-honey butter, and quick-pickled baby cucumbers cut the richness with tangy crunch. It all comes together in 35 minutes and tastes like a celebration. Meatballs with any meat: Melissa Clark offers a basic a formula for creating your own meatballs in a sort of no-recipe recipe. She instructs you to gently combine a pound of ground meat with an egg, ½ cup breadcrumbs and seasonings, and then to shape and broil or fry it. I’ll add my detail here: Use your fingers to whisk the egg, crumbs and seasonings, and then gently stir in the meat in with your fingers to disperse it evenly. Just as gently, shape the mix into loose balls with your hands. The delicate handling prevents the meat from being overworked and ending up tough. For a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started.
The Food section’s deputy editor Patrick Farrell dug into Joan Didion’s archives to research her Thanksgiving feasts and came out with this sublime article. Along the way, he passed me photos of her handwritten recipe cards. I was thrilled. We turned her instructions, as minimalist and clear as her prose, into full recipes for her cool midcentury mainstays: sweet potato soufflé, purée of celery root and turkey hash.
There’s more brilliance from that era in the first season of “In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon.” (If you have Amazon Prime, it’s streaming until the end of the month.) For something of our own time, Caity Weaver has a lot to say about the demise of the penny in The New York Times Magazine, as well as in The Atlantic. Both are absolutely worth reading. Enjoy the rest of the week. I’ll see you back here Sunday.
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