Apple ginger squash soup for Thanksgiving

This is a handwritten recipe from a friend, dating from the days when our group of young stay-at-home mothers organized toddler playdates and Christmas recipe exchanges. (And yes, tempus fugit and two of them are grandmothers already.) It's been tucked away in a binder ever since I tried it for the first time one appropriately wintry day, and found the combination of squash and fresh ginger too bizarre for my innocent tastes. Thank God, time flies -- looking over it anew, I saw how simple it was, and so made it for our Thanksgiving. As my friend wrote at the bottom of the page: "On Thanksgiving Day keep pot simmering -- keep covered -- on stove or in crockpot. Serve as a warm beverage in mugs. Adds wonderful aroma throughout the house. Really! Really! Wonderful!" And it is.

You'll need:

3-4 Tbsp butter
1 and 1/2 lb. butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut in chunks
1 medium onion (sliced)
1 large Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and chopped
2 cups chicken broth
1 sprig of thyme or 1/2 tsp dried
2 Tbsp fresh ginger
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup heavy cream

Saute the squash, onion, and apple in the butter about 5 minutes. Add the chicken broth and the thyme, bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer 40 minutes until squash is tender. Remove thyme sprig if using, and let soup cool.

In blender, puree soup in batches, adding the fresh ginger with each batch. Blend well.

Scald cream, and stir in the pureed soup. Reheat to a simmer. Ladle into mugs, and sprinkle with chives or scallion tops before serving. The recipe is rich but serves only six -- it could be easily doubled for a larger crowd.

Here come the Thanksgiving pinot noirs

-- among which, and starting off in no particular order, is 2010 Llai Llai, from Chile's Bio Bio Valley.

In Llai llai, pinot noir's distinctive earth-tar-hung game-forest floor-musk aromas lean more toward (very clean) forest floor and wholesome chewy bread crust; be forewarned the delicate, fresh berry flavors that follow will not last beyond the first night, so if you open this for Thanksgiving, drink up. That seems to be true for many of the good, inexpensive holiday pinot noirs I have been lucky enough to sample lately.

Llai llai pinot noir retails for about $12 to $15.


The next two are from R. Stuart Winery, McMinnville, Oregon. Big Fire is their more approachable pinot, R. Stuart Autograph the "step-up" label. I preferred the latter.

2008 Big Fire pinot noir

very pale, clear red
earth, fresh, faint floral --
very light, very subtle fruit (too light?)
almost as gentle as water -- a little burst of acid and tannin at the end
will accompany any food

Retail, about $20

2008 R. Stuart "Autograph" pinot noir

All of the above, only this time a gray charcoal drawing colored in --
more berry-like fruit, more of a pinot's earth and musk
more acid, more body, more interest

Start here?

Retail, about $30.

The Crossings

Awatere Valley, Marlborough, New Zealand --

startlingly light, bright currant jelly color
that pinot noir scent -- earthy, tarry, "gamy"
light silky acidity, berries


... and very good with a baked short rib stew and garlic mashed potatoes. A pinot noir's musky delicacy can be as surprising as its clear, jewel-like color when it sloshes into the glass, especially if you have spent several weeks sloshing cherry-sweet malbecs, thick, black carmeneres, or chocolate-coated zinfandel blends (all the rage) into that same glass.

Which leads me to admit that, really, I am suffering an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the samples that nice people at wineries and winery PR firms send me. (Thanksgiving pinots is the theme of the latest shipments. Remember when I used to drop broad hints that I'd be delighted to be offered a sample one day? It's true, I am delighted.) Or, as my daughter complains when she ventures into the little pantry to get some comestible, and turns around and stubs her toe on yet another cardboard box -- "We're tripping over wine in this house." Followed by an equally frustrated  "...and we're tripping over cats," as one or other of our large furry roommates, absorbed in rubbing meaningfully against a human leg, trots away in alarm from a misplaced human foot. The pantry is where we keep the kibble, too, so of course the lords of the manor imagine any darkening of its threshold is all about that.

Absent a short rib stew with garlic mashed potatoes, will The Crossings pinot noir complement Thanksgiving? Yes, I think so. Delightful. 

Retail, about $15 to $20.

And finally, FogDog. They also make a marvelous chardonnay.


Bright lush color
Bursting, almost fizzy with strawberries --
typical musk or tarriness is not so evident
a little vanilla
Excellent -- pair it with something rich and creamy --

-- or your Thanksgiving turkey, of course.

Image from Freestone Vineyards

I am your ultimate Thanksgiving wine pairing guide

It is really all so simple. You must plan to serve more wine. At least four types, and preferably five or six.

Our ancestors would never have dreamed of forcing one or two wines to be all things to all guests at this, the most important meal of the year. Here is a suggested menu for Thanksgiving dinner, from the Boston Cooking School Cookbook, written by Fannie Farmer and originally published in 1896.

Oyster soup, crisp crackers

Celery, salted almonds

Roast turkey, cranberry jelly

Mashed potatoes, onions in cream, squash

Chicken pie

Fruit pudding, sterling sauce

Mince, apple, and squash pies

Neapolitan ice cream, fancy cakes

Fruit, nuts, raisins, bonbons

Crackers, cheese, cafe noir

Opulent as this repast is, it still does not constitute a "full course" formal dinner, which would have proceeded precisely and graciously from shellfish to soup to fish to roast (beef) to vegetable to sorbet to game to salads to jellies, puddings, ices, cakes, bonbons, and then the inevitable crackers, cheese, and cafe noir. As to the wines at either style of meal, full or not, Miss Farmer's advice is brief.

"Where wines and liqueurs are served, the first course is not usually accompanied by either; but if desired, Sauterne [sic] or other white wine may be served. 

"With soup, serve sherry; with fish, white wine; with game, claret [Bordeaux, e.g., a cabernet-merlot blend]; with roast and other courses, champagne."

That's all. Unless of course, you wish to add after-dinner cordials to the festivities.

"After serving cafe noir in the drawing room, pass pony of brandy for men, sweet liqueur (Chartreuse, Benedictine, or Parfait d'Amour) for women; then Creme de Menthe to all."

You'll be relieved to know that the very last thing "passed" was Apollinaris, sparkling water. And can it be that Miss Farmer did not much like Burgundy? For she seems to have forgotten it, whereas the table settings drawn up in the era's equally popular White House Cookbook make prominent room for it. To the right of one's plate at a formal dinner in Washington in Gilded Age days, one found six glasses, arranged in a sort of anchor pattern: glasses I, II, and III, the arms of the anchor, held Sauternes, sherry, and Rhine (German riesling) respectively; glass IV at the anchor's throat held water (thank goodness); glasses V and VI, making up the shank, held champagne and Burgundy.We know for example, from this same White House Cookbook, that General Grant's birthday dinner allowed for the serving of "Ernest Jeroy" along with filet de boeuf a la Bernardi. Ernest Jeroy seems to have fallen off the planet -- look for it in books in vain, google it and you will find it only turns up in retellings of General Grant's birthday dinner --  but it sounds like a Burgundy, doesn't it? The fact that it was also served at a state dinner to accompany saumon and then grenadines de bass leads me to suspect it was everything a supple, beef- and fish-friendly pinot noir should be. Perhaps Miss Farmer simply preferred her claret.

At any rate, the holiday wine and food pairing challenge is easy to face. Let our ancestors guide you. To each course, its appropriate wine. The good people at Epicurious appear to have some inklings. They suggest a trio of food pairings for each of several possible wines, based on the flavor profiles of some suggested recipes for the turkey, the stuffing, a vegetable, and so on. Chardonnay to match sweetness, a pinot noir to match anything herbal, a zinfandel to marry with Italian flavor profiles. All fine. But to General Grant, or Miss Farmer, I suspect such anxieties might have seemed rather mean. Rather too much concerned with efficiency and not pleasure. For heaven's sake, they might have said, all this has been thought out for you long since. Look at the six glasses beside your plate, and be glad to anticipate all the good, right things coming your way.

Chestnuts 101

Every autumn and holiday season, I vow that I will cook chestnuts this year. I forget why I ever got the idea. Somehow I recall reading a French cookbook, which enthused about chestnuts and made them seem glamorous and wonderful. This year became the year, because I read a post at An Obsession with Food and Wine which dropped broad hints that chestnuts are a pain in the neck. I thought, aha! If a professional has difficulties with them, then I perversely have the courage to try them. So I bought a small bag from the grocery store, brought them home, consulted my cooking bible, Marion Cunningham's Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and set to.

Chestnut instructions always begin with the cutting of a slit or cross on the flat side of the nut.



Then, we drop them into boiling water "for a minute or two." Voila -- they do come out with the shell and skin looking ready to peel.



Then, we peel them. The inner skin is not papery like the skin of a garlic clove, but gluey and rather thick. It also adheres to the wrinkles and bumps of the nut meat. The nuts grow more difficult to peel as they cool, which is why the cookbook recommends another dip in boiling water for the stubborn ones.



My first chestnut came out beautifully. It looks exactly like a little brain, which makes me wonder why chestnuts aren't a bigger deal for Halloween snacking fun.



It took two of us about fifty minutes to peel about a pound or so of chestnuts. I begin to think there is something sensible in the old song's instructions to roast them on an open fire. And none of them emerged as pristine as the first. Perhaps it would be best to host a chestnut-peeling bee whenever you feel the urge to include these in your holiday menu, so that a dozen people can make headway against the little brains while they are still hot.

The next day, I simmered them in a cup of chicken broth,



as the cookbook recipe directed (although it did specify beef broth, which I did not have), and then after 20 minutes, added 2 tablespoons butter and some salt and pepper. All might have been well, but in the final five-minute rush of getting Thanksgiving dinner on the table, I kind of forgot about the chestnuts. They overcooked and turned a tad mushy, and did not look appetizing enough to photograph.

Their flavor was mild, smoky, and unremarkable considering all the effort of preparing them. Needless to say they were far too dry, as dry as a mouthful of unbaked pastry dough -- in fact, to combine them on a fork with cranberry sauce was to create an effect just like pie. Perhaps a new pie crust idea for those with gluten problems?

Derrick at OFW endured Chestnut-aux-pain in the neck and then paired his particular recipe with a wine called a vin jaune ("yellow wine") from the Arbois appellation of the Jura region in eastern France: a 1997 Stephane Tissot, to be exact. This is a wine made from a local native grape, the white Savagnin. The wine sits in a half-full barrel for six years under a coat of natural yeast scum, "during which time" (says Oz Clarke in the New Encyclopedia of French Wines) "it oxidizes, develops a totally arresting damp sourness like the dark reek of old floorboards, and yet also keeps a full fruit, albeit somewhat decayed."

How I do admire professionals, and all they know. We enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner, complete with Chestnut Meh, with a standby grocery store riesling that I (ridiculously) decanted because the decanter is pretty. Good times.

A Thanksgiving necessity: creamed onions

This is a big one: over 2,800 views, in At First Glass' day. It's amazing how often people start googling "creamed onions" in October and November.

Creamed onions were not on my family's Thanksgiving table when I was growing up, but I have added them to my menu because I found them listed among the suggestions for the feast at the back of Miss Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cookbook (1896). They seemed so authentic and historical as well as delicious-sounding, and easier to attempt than oyster soup (first course) or fruit pudding with sterling sauce (sixth course).

So here they are. You begin very simply, with fresh whole pearl onions. Drop them into boiling water and simmer them for three or four minutes. Drain them, run cold water over them, and then peel them by cutting off the root ends and squeezing the onion out of its skin. By this procedure you will probably squeeze the onion out of its first layer or two of flesh, as well. It looks and seems wasteful, but can hardly be helped.



Over the years I've learned a variety of ways to simplify the rest of the story. The best and richest way to prepare creamed onions is to make a standard cream sauce, based on a roux of equal parts melted butter and flour stirred into a bubbling paste, to which milk is added; stir and cook until the sauce is smooth. Proportions for this are easy to remember: 2 tablespoons each of butter and flour will need 1 cup of milk, 4 tablespoons each will need 2 cups of milk, and 5 tablespoons of each will need 3 cups. Once the sauce is done, you can put the onions to finish cooking in it -- they are done in about five more minutes -- and then leave them to stay hot on a back burner, until you are ready to serve them.

Or, if you have a gluten allergy problem, you can cook the onions in milk themselves,



and then when you are ready to serve, thicken the milk with a free form, GF (gluten-free) flour and water slurry. You can also simply sprinkle potato flour over the bubbling liquid, and stir it in until it dissolves. Keep on adding a little more potato flour until the cream is as thick as you want it. Both these methods serve the purpose, although these sauces don't cling to the onions as nicely as a traditional sauce does.



Salt and pepper and a dash of nutmeg are all that is needed to finish any of them.

Now you may move on to the rest of your dinner. Don't forget to give thanks, really.

Me first! Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau, 2014

Beaujolais is made from "gamay the gulpable," as Jancis Robinson called the grape in her small book Grapes and Wines. Gulpable it is, and by that we mean fresh, full, and simple, exactly as if plain grape juice had a slightly older cousin who had been, not quite around the block a few times, but had perhaps dashed across the street on a dare, once. There is absolutely no trace in a Beaujolais Nouveau of the adulthood other wines show. No tannins, no acids, no hints of vanilla or leatheriness, no earth or figs. Just juice. Drink it up on the night of Thanksgiving, my fatheads, because in my opinion delightful and easy going as it is, it will not last even one extra day. 

In his small but excellent thumbnail-sketch book, Windows on the World: the Complete Wine Course, Kevin Zraly says that the quality of a Beaujolais Nouveau in any year can predict the quality of other Beaujolais from that same vintage. The various producers are in less of a hurry about those, releasing them the following spring. These additional Beaujolais types come from better (but still gamay) grapes grown in villages "which consistently produce better wines." Note that the producers can remain the same. And producers are not the same as villages. To talk about better Beaujolais than the Nouveaus of Thanksgiving is not to slur, for example, Georges Duboeuf, producer, whose Nouveau is pictured above.

Do we agree that a sample of a Nouveau predicts what's coming? Perhaps we should try to clear up a few small matters first. We are after all in Burgundy, where the vineyards have been so carefully tended and mapped for a thousand years that they outrank their owners; everybody jealously jostles to own and manage a few rows of vines in this celestial vineyard or that, or near this renowned village or other. In the Beaujolais subregion of Burgundy, the delineations are fairly simple. Three quality levels stand above the "Nouveau" of the bright flashy labels and November's "c'est arrivé!" excitement. In ascending order, there is "basic" Beaujolais made of gamay grown anywhere in the region; there is Beaujolais-Villages, blended from grapes of some of the 35 villages which consistently put out better wines; and there is Cru Beaujolais, made from grapes of 10 specific villages only. These villages -- and I still say French village and sometimes grape names provide an endlessly delightful resource for anyone puzzling over what to name a cat -- are Brouilly, Chénas, Chiroubles, Côte de Brouilly, Fleurie, Juliénas, Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Régnié, and Saint-Amour.  The village names will appear on the label of a Cru Beaujolais. And lots of different producers, jealously jostling, can make their versions of the various Beaujolais Villages or Cru Beaujolais, depending on what parcels of what vineyards they own. You can find, for example, a Georges Duboeuf "Morgon." More serious wine, as Beaujolais goes, far less flashy label. Or you can find something like this. 

Now about the harvest, and vintage quality predictors and so on. Note that this Chateau de La Chaize Brouilly carries a vintage date of 2010. Might it taste good today? From Kevin Zraly we can infer, yes, most likely a Cru Beaujolais four years old is just about ripe for opening. He says Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages are meant to age perhaps one to three years. Crus longer, but not much beyond ten years. Four seems perfect. In fact, according to the useful website Beaujolais and Beyond, the 2010 vintage was good: "Much celebrated, a Beaujolais lover's vintage and a triumph of winemaking after adverse weather conditions." So our Chateau de La Chaize is right on time.

As for 2014, Beaujolais and Beyond says -- based on Nouveau samplings, or merely on weather records? -- the year looks promising. Though I am a bit perturbed by the wine's utter loss of flavor the next day (well, maybe that's normal), I kind of think so, too.

Beaujolais Nouveau, retail, about $9. Beaujolais Villages, about  $12. Cru Beaujolais, about $14.

Your Thanksgiving dessert? -- how about apricot oatmeal bars?

An old handwritten recipe for apricot oatmeal bars sits at the back of one of my oldest cookbooks, within easy reach just inside the back cover. No source is credited for it. It's a favorite because it is full of fruit, easy to make, and very sweet. Whatever its true origins, the recipe must be fairly well known because plenty of examples are out there in the ether-net, too.

Begin by preheating the oven to 350 F and buttering a square 8 x 8 x 2 baking dish. In a bowl, mix:

1 and 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 cups quick rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar. (My recipe calls for a full cup of sugar, but that makes the bars much too sweet.)

Cut into this flour mix 3/4 cup cold butter, in small chunks, until the mixture takes on a feeling of rich solidity and resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle about 3 cups of it into the prepared dish, and press to form an even layer. Bake about 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven, and spread the crust with 1 jar (12 ounces) apricot preserves. Sprinkle remaining flour-oat mixture on top and press down gently. Finish baking for 25-30 minutes.

Note: back in the days when I was Examiner.com's Chicago Baking Examiner, I felt constrained to add more information, as follows -- Oats give these cookie bars a nice jolt of nutrition that many sweet treats don't necessarily have. A low-fat version substitutes apple juice and canola oil for the whopping one and a half sticks of butter, and an even easier version calls for melted butter in the first place, plus the use of a larger pan which reduces baking time. There is something leisurely and satisfying, though, about the rhythmic work of cutting in cold butter to a dough and seeing and feeling it take on its proper consistency under your hands. The results are rich and delicious with your after-the-feast coffee, or even better, strong plain black tea.

Is it too soon to think about Thanksgiving leftovers (plus one more pinot noir)?

The recipe is Creamed Turkey and Apple Hash, from The Best of Food and Wine, 1987 Collection. 

In a medium saucepan, melt 4 Tbsp butter; add 1 small onion, minced, and cook a few minutes until softened.

Stir in:

1 cup turkey stock or chicken broth
1 tsp lemon juice

Bring to a boil and boil over high heat until the mixture reduces by half, about five minutes. Add:

2 cups heavy cream
2 tsp soy sauce (I forgot the soy sauce and found the dish didn't suffer for it)

Simmer until reduced again by half, about 10 minutes. (Be sure to take the time to do this. The reduced stock and cream will take on a wonderful very pale champagne-and-toffee color, while the lemon juice prevents all of it from tasting cloyingly rich.)  Add:

4 cups shredded cooked turkey

and cook for 10 minutes. Finally, stir in:

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, sliced thin

and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Season the hash with salt and pepper to taste and garnish with a few minced scallions.

It is very delicious. Cream tends to do that.

And the pinot noir is a 2009 SCV, Sonoma Coast Vineyards. I can offer tasting notes after I open it for my own dinner tonight.

Retail, about $35 to $40.

Turkey leftovers: just add cream ...

"I'm a cream fan," Simone Beck wrote in one of her cookbooks -- I think it was Food and Friends -- explaining that a spoonful or two of cream adds flavor and body to all kinds of sauces and stews, without overwhelming anything else (as olive oil might) or adding exorbitant calories (as butter would).

I'll take her up on her enthusiasm, and offer to you today a dish rich with cream plus a few of cream's best friends -- then again, what is not a friend of cream? -- apples, cider, and poultry. The original comes from The Gourmet's Guide to French Cooking by Alison Burt, published by Octopus Books in London in 1973. This was another library book sale cast-off, as you may guess. The recipe is called poulet à la vallée d'Auge, chicken in the style of the Auge valley (in Normandy). It asks us to braise chicken pieces with apples in butter and then finish them in a cider and cream sauce in the oven. All fine, but we'll use your Thanksgiving turkey leftovers in place of chicken, thus achieving the point of putting cooked poultry into a sauce, because apart from other reasons the Miss Burt's concoction is, to my mind, overfussy with multiple sautéeings of multiple apples, and multiple separate simmerings of cider-and-apples, when one doing of each task would have sufficed

So let us begin. You have ready -- and you are ready to adjust the proportions of, so that neither apples, soupy cider sauce, nor meat predominate -- 

Leftover holiday bird of your choice, dark meat or white, whole pieces or diced meat
4-5 Tablespoons butter
5-6 firm tart apples, peeled, cored, chopped
3 Tablespoons flour
2 cups hard cider -- the good alcoholic stuff, not sweet cider
2/3 cup heavy cream
bouquet garni -- a bundle of herbs tied together and allowed to float freely in a sauce, the bundle to include bay leaf, thyme, and parsley

So simple.

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan. Add the apples, salt and pepper them lightly, and fry until they begin to soften and brown a little. Add the flour, and stir and cook until the flour bubbles up into a paste and begins to color slightly. Stir in the cider, bring to a boil, add the bouquet garni, and simmer for about half an hour, allowing the flavors to meld. If you happen to have any drippings from your roast turkey, or any chicken or turkey broth on hand, a quarter cup or so of either would not be amiss in the sauce.

Pour in the cream, and stir and return to a gentle simmer. Add the leftover turkey. Continue simmering until everything is heated through. Fish out the bouquet garni, adjust the seasonings, and serve.  

Bring a sour to Thanksgiving (or any party) -- Ichtegem's Grand Cru

Because it's delicious, as Flemish sours are. (I am always so pleased to find a flavorful beer without bitterness that I can't understand beer geek-reviewers only giving a Flemish sour like this a score of "3.15" out of 5 at Beer Advocate, for example. What's not to like?) The Ichtegem's people might just consider stepping up their marketing a little, however -- the label art is not all it could be. See "Best beer packaging, ever."

Retail, about $4 for an 11 ounce bottle.

Thanksgiving numbers

Update, January 11, 2014. Please excuse the broken links in this post. As you know from consulting my "Profile," I have lost access to my former domain name, atfirstglass.com. I plan to upload the Thanksgiving favorites from six years' worth of At First Glass, to Pluot as soon as possible. 

Here at At First Glass our page views begin steadily rising in about mid-October, and they carry on rising, going from strength to strength you might say -- in the spirit of Bertie Wooster and his Scripture Knowledge prizes -- until the day after Thanksgiving, when they plummet return quite to normal.

What the autumnal uptick in traffic means, of course, is that more people than usual are surfing the web looking for Thanksgiving recipes and wine pairing advice. Some of them happen to come to me. Perhaps I had better go easy on the "my fatheads" wheeze, so as not to non-plus the newcomers. Anyway to make the searching more efficient I thought I may as well create a handy little index, below, of the posts that seem to be the most consulted at this time of year. I would not dream of quoting the vigorous teen cook  Tilly, of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI: an Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott (I kid you not), 

" 'Come now, if you want roast turkey and onions, plum puddin' and mince pie, you'll have to do as I tell you, and be lively about it!' "

A Thanksgiving necessity: creamed onions
I am your ultimate Thanksgiving wine pairing guide
Apple stuffing
Here come the Thanksgiving pinot noirs
Etuveed shredded carrots
Perfecting pie crust
Apricot oatmeal bars for your Thanksgiving dessert
Frenched green beans
2009 The Crossings pinot noir
Is it too soon to think about Thanksgiving leftovers? (creamed turkey and apple hash)
Turkey leftovers: just add cream (again)
Apple ginger squash soup for Thanksgiving
Bring a sour to Thanksgiving -- Ichtegem grand cru

If you care to read the whole of Aunt Jo's Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (the Scrap-Bag dates from 1872-82), you may find it at Google books. I wonder if Louisa May Alcott might have missed her true calling -- remember how her alter ego character, Jo March, was always fretting about betraying her art in writing sensational garbage for The Weekly Volcano? --  I wonder if she should have been a cookery writer, to join those noble nineteenth century ranks that included Mary Randolph (Virginia Housewife), Eliza Leslie, Lydia Maria Child (The Frugal Housewife), and Fannie Farmer. If you think about it there is quite a bit of food writing in Little Women, from the March girls' donated Christmas breakfast to Amy's pickled limes to the newlywed Meg's failed currant jelly; the high point of the book's foodie subtheme must be Jo's ruined banquet of overboiled asparagus, overrisen bread and salted strawberries (" 'don't try too many messes, Jo, for you can't make anything but gingerbread and molasses candy fit to eat' "). Likewise, the climax of An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving is a disastrous dinner cooked by teenagers unsupervised because Mother and Father are temporarily away. These young people are tough souls from a different era, however, "old fashioned" even to Alcott. They have already begun a snowy November day by breaking the ice in the water pitchers in their upstairs bedroom, so as to wash properly and come down to breakfast "with their cheeks glowing like winter apples." After chores and a lunch of doughnuts, cheese, and cider, it's time to set-to about dinner. They will cook, positively medieval style, over an open fireplace. While wearing long gowns and aprons, remember. We modern milquetoasts have to look up the word "andiron" in a dictionary, for a start.

Prue obediently tugged away at the crane, with its black hooks, from which hung the iron tea kettle and three-legged pot; then she settled the long spit in the grooves made for it in the tall andirons, and put the dripping pan underneath, for in those days meat was roasted as it should be, not baked in ovens.

Meantime Tilly attacked the plum pudding. She felt pretty sure of coming out right, here, for she had seen her mother do it so many times, it looked  very easy. So in went suet and fruit; all sorts of spice, to be sure she got the right ones, and brandy instead of wine. [Mem.: note the rich ingredients ready to hand.] But she forgot both sugar and salt, and tied it in the cloth so tightly that it had no room to swell, so it would come out as heavy as lead and as hard as a cannon ball, if the bag did not burst and spoil it all. Happily unconscious of these mistakes, Tilly popped it into the pot, and proudly watched it bobbing about ....

As the story moves on Mother and Father unexpectedly return, bringing the entire mountain clan with them in two sleighs. The iron-souled and busily cooking young folks had already planned to serve forth at five p.m., which is considered late and "genteel." The various details of the ruined dinner are more or less interchangeable with those of Jo's luncheon in the "Experiments" chapter of Little Women. Tilly put catnip and wormwood in the turkey stuffing, because up in the dim larder those "yarbs" looked so like mint and pennyroyal; and the turkey scorched on one side because the girls forgot to turn the spit. Just as Jo's suburban meal ended in good-natured laughter, "bread and butter, olives and fun," so the Bassett Thanksgiving finishes with a surprising amount of equanimity or even, as Bertie might say, dashed sang-froid. I would have expected hardscrabble farmers to be appalled by the young folks' waste of food, never mind the good intentions. No. Everyone laughs, eats apples and drinks cider, and dances and plays the  mysterious parlor games Hunt-the-Slipper and "Come, Philander." Meanwhile we moderns can't help but wonder, in a juvenile sort of way -- how is this family of fifteen, give or take an Aunt or two, also seeing to the needs of the body on a snowy November night? Tough souls.

A glance at The White House Cook Book, circa 1910 (judging by the photos, Edith Roosevelt seems to have been the current First Lady). Look at that thick paper and the beautiful, firm type.

Chicken paillards with pesto cream and balsamic vinegar (retro 1988)

If you are the cook on Christmas Eve you might find reason, the day being somewhat harried, to at the last put together a very quick dish of chicken breasts, pounded flat so that they will heat to done-ness in seconds, and then promptly sauced with a pan-dripping ménage of pesto, balsamic vinegar, and cream. We find the recipe in Abby Mandel's More Taste Than Time (1988). A "paillard" is a chicken breast, cut in half, tendon removed, and flattened by pounding with a rolling pin -- place the breast between two sheets of plastic wrap first.

Lacking a nice photo of Ms. Mandel's end result, here instead are some "recipe dice" from the Bas Bleu catalog, with the appropriate ingredients front and center. A charming concept these dice, if a bit loaded, shall we say? on vegetables and greens.

Abby Mandel's Chicken paillards with pesto cream and balsamic vinegar

1 whole boned and split chicken breast, tendon removed
3 Tablespoons pesto sauce, commercially prepared or see below*
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup whipping cream

Place the chicken breast between two sheets of plastic wrap. Pound with a rolling pin until the paillard is very thin, about 1/8 inch thickness.

Set a 10 inch skillet over medium heat. Brush one side of each breast with a little pesto sauce (about 2 teaspoons each). When the pan is warm but not hot, lay in the chicken, pesto side down. (Pesto has enough olive oil in it to grease the pan.) Brush the top of each breast with remaining pesto.

Cook only about a minute, long enough to cook the underside through. Turn the paillard and finish cooking the other side, about one more minute. Remove to a warm platter and cover with tin foil.

Raise the heat under the pan to medium high and add the balsamic vinegar, stirring up any brown bits. Add the cream and whatever juices have accumulated on the platter from the waiting chicken. Stir and cook the sauce another two or three minutes. Salt and pepper to taste, and spoon over the chicken. Serve immediately.

*Pesto sauce, also from More Taste Than Time

2 large garlic cloves, peeled
3 ounces Parmesan cheese
2 cups fresh basil leaves
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup pine nuts or walnuts
1 cup "light tasting" olive oil, or "equal parts olive and safflower oil" (Some commercial "olive" oils are already this mixture; look for "safflower" in very light colored type on the label, especially if you don't want it.)

Combine all ingredients except oil in a food processor or blender, and whirl until the mix is ground. With the blender running, drizzle in the oil. Pesto will keep, refrigerated, for up to a month.