Top five sandwiches, high difficulty recipes, and dad beers: it's the November mailbag
Take five minutes out of your Election Day anxiety pacing and dig into these reader questions. Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to be nervous afterwards.
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Somehow October’s mailbag was lost in the wash, so we’re back and starting off November on the right foot. Thanks to everyone who submitted questions. Let’s go!
Assume no COVID- you're making Thanksgiving dinner. What's on the menu, and why?
-Blanx
I’ve always been fascinated by people that make non-traditional Thanksgiving meals. We always had a very straightforward Thanksgiving growing up, and I’ve found myself drawn more and more lately to changing things up. I think most Thanksgiving food is wonderful, but sometimes you just need to shake it up. And for me, the one dish that can go is turkey.
Roasting a whole turkey, and doing it well, is really hard. It’s hard to get everything cooked through without overcooking the outside, and asking people who don’t normally cook like this to do this once a year is really unfair. And as a matter of personal preference, I just don’t like turkey that much. It doesn’t have that much flavor, and even slightly overcooked white meat is so dry it’s almost inedible. Last year, it was just the three of us for Thanksgiving, and instead of making a turkey we roasted a chicken instead. It’s easier to work with than turkey because it’s smaller and a more forgiving protein, and honestly it just tastes better. I’d do that again. You’d probably need several chickens depending on how many people you’re hosting, but that’s not a problem this year.
The rest of the menu would look pretty normal. I love stuffing. Yes, I know it’s technically dressing if it’s not prepared inside the bird, but people who are pedantic about that are dorks. Stuffing is wonderful, and it’s something we should make more often outside the holiday season, in my opinion. I’ve made it with cornbread and with breadcrumbs, and it’s all great. I’d also make a big dish of roasted vegetables, probably a mix of Brussels sprouts, leeks, carrots, and maybe fingerling potatoes. I would not make mashed potatoes. Maybe that’s strange to some, but I don’t think you need stuffing and mashed potatoes and my next pick, macaroni and cheese. Mac and cheese is a pretty normal Thanksgiving dish in some areas of the country, but it isn’t in the northeast and that should change. I don’t think I mentioned gravy yet, but please know that the gravy is implied.
To finish the meal, I’d go for both pecan and pumpkin pie. You know, a real light, low cal meal.
Peter please give me your (current) top five sandwiches
-Sean
To choose only five sandwiches, let alone rank them, is nearly beyond comprehension. The options are so many, and of such high quality, that some truly special sandwiches will be left out.
Here are my current top five, in no order, and with no explanation.
Cuban
Grilled cheese
Roast pork and broccoli rabe
Cheesesteak
Patty melt
Burgers exist in a separate category from sandwiches, but I do believe patty melts qualify due to being on sliced bread rather than a bun. They’re also extraordinarily good. You should eat more patty melts.
Oh, and for a truly special sandwich, you should try my recipe for steak sandwiches with jalapeno chimichurri.
Ok I’ve got one - what’s the most complicated and technically difficult recipe you’ve perfected? High risk for high reward!
-Andrea
This is tough because I feel like most of the recipes I make are more complicated than technically difficult. For instance, jambalaya takes a lot of prep work and planning, but the actual cooking is pretty straight forward.
One that’s both complicated and tough is takeout-style sesame chicken. It’s a ton of prep work and turns your kitchen into a huge mess. There are bowls everywhere and corn starch gets onto everything. And if you’re not quick on your feet, it’s very easy to make something totally inedible. The first time I tried to make it, we dumped the first batch and set off the smoke alarm multiple times. But I’ve gotten the system down now and while it still makes a huge mess, it comes out great.
The one dish I’m still chasing is cacio e pepe. It sounds so simple — it’s basically Roman mac and cheese, how hard could it be? — but my sauce breaks every time, and just typing this has caused my pulse to spike.
Rank your top 10 fast food food items
-Chaz
I don’t eat fast food that often and when I do I almost always order the same thing, so this is kind of tough for me. Okay here goes.
Popeyes sandwich.
Okay that’s it.
If you could take six months to live abroad and study a region's cuisine, where would you go and why?
-Vin
This is a really tough question. There are lots of great options, but if I had to choose one I’d pick France. There are so many techniques and concepts that you learn from classical French cooking that you can apply to cooking anything. I learned to cook at home so learning these more high level concepts has always been appealing to me, and I think it would do the most to elevate my cooking to the next level.
The other options I considered were Mexico and China. Mexican food is probably my favorite regional cuisine in the world, and it would be amazing to dive deeper into some of the lesser known dishes. Chinese food, as most Americans know it, is not really giving you the whole picture. There are so many different kinds of regional cuisines that my knowledge of it doesn’t even really scratch the surface. It would be so interesting to dig into the wide variety of produce used in Chinese cooking that simply isn’t available in America. And on a conceptual level, Chinese cooking has a very different approach to seasoning than Western cooking, relying much more heavily on oils, vinegars, and wines than dry spices.
What is the perfect "I just put the kids down and I'm ready to relax like a dad" beer?
-Ryan
I think this will vary from person to person, as much as that’s a cop out. The thing you want most after a day with kids is, like you said, relax, and if I’m kicking up my feet and turning my brain off for a few minutes, I’d like to have a beer that I know I like. I like clean, bitter beers, so I would go for either a good pilsner or an IPA. You have to be careful with IPAs though, because I’m just about done with soupy, orange juice-looking IPAs that ring in at like 9% ABV. Maybe you still like them, but I’m tired of getting a headache and my palate destroyed after one drink.
I like to support local breweries, but some of those beers are not always available outside the Rochester area. Swiftwater Brewing is my favorite local place, and they make a wonderful pilsner called Saazy Saazbourne that absolutely slaps. If you can find any of their beers I would highly recommend picking them up, but this one in particular gets the job done for me. As for a more nationally available pilsner, Firestone Walker’s Pivo is my favorite. Pivo is the word for beer in most Slavic languages, and it does a wonderful job of hitting the high notes technique-wise while also reminding me of the cheap, working class brews I had on vacation in Central Europe.
Or a Genny Light works too.
Long time reader second time emailer. As my first child is fast approaching, seamless and Uber eats and “fuck it let’s just get Chinese” isn’t going to cut it when there’s a kid in the house. What are your best tactics for meal planning and any advice you can give to a neophyte in this world of responsibility?
-Yvon
First of all, mazel tov on your forthcoming child. Mealtime and kids can be a challenge but there are things you can do to make it easier. I suppose the good news for you is that for the first six months or so, they don’t eat or drink anything except milk or formula, so your menu doesn’t really need to change. But even though the child won’t be eating solid food, you still have to, and you need to prepare that food while they demand your attention. Whatever you can do to get food on the table with everyone’s sanity intact is a win. Focus on quick meals. Do prep work while they’re napping, if you can. There’s not really much more to it. The first month or two is about surviving. But even after you start incorporating solid food into their diet, you don’t really need to compromise as long as you have a plan and be consistent.
There are a few major things you can do, in my experience, to make eating with little kids easier. First, make sure you’re giving them a lot of variety with lots of fruits and vegetables. If you give them lots of new things to try, you’re building their palate early and giving yourself the best chance to avoid them becoming picky eaters. It’s not foolproof, but you’re maximizing your chances. Two, if you’re giving them a meal they’ve never tried before, make sure there’s at least one thing on their plate that you know they will eat. We give Caroline what we’re eating, but also some kind of fruit, vegetable, yogurt, anything we know she likes. It’s okay if kids don’t like something. Everyone has foods they dislike. But as long as you know they’re going to have something, it’s going to be okay. And finally, don’t prejudge what you think a kid will or won’t like. Parents do this a lot with spicy food in particular, but it applies across the board. It’s okay to warn them if something is spicy, but telling them “Oh you won’t like that” is setting yourself up for failure. Let them decide, you’ll be surprised at what they end up loving.
Oh, and for those of you who are still reading, here is a rare Halloween Caroline.
I'm trying to reduce my intake of solid carbs instead of quitting drinking beer. You got any go to recipes that don't include pasta or bread?
-Alex
Now that you mention it, most of my recipes do involve either bread or pasta. This hasn’t been intentional, it’s just a byproduct of how much I love carbs. It’s good to cut down sometimes, though, and I do have a dependable dinner that is satisfying without needing bread, pasta, or any other carb.
This is the best time of year for hearty vegetables like squash, Brussels sprouts, and the like. A quick and dead simple way to use them is to throw them all on a sheet pan with a couple pieces of bone in chicken and roast them at 425 for about 40 minutes. You can use whatever vegetables you want as long as you cut them into a relatively uniform size. Mix them all together in a bowl and toss with olive oil and whatever seasonings you want, and spread them on a baking sheet with the chicken pieces spaced in between. You’ll want to stir or flip the veggies about halfway through, but that’s all the hands-on work required.
Last week I did this with chicken drums and butternut squash, leeks, and cauliflower. I seasoned everything with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika, and it came out great. You get a rich, hearty meal that doesn’t rely on carbs to fill you up, and it comes together with very little work.
One of my friends made a modest bet with another friend that Spurs would win at least one trophy this year among Europa, League Cup, FA Cup and the PL. Was this a terrible idea?
-Taylor
Coming at this rationally, I don’t think this is a terrible idea. Tottenham have a deep squad with lots of attacking firepower, and between the two domestic cups and Europa League, they should be in contention for something as long as they can stay healthy. And considering how bizarrely open the league looks right now, you never know. I don’t know if I would bet on it considering, well, Spurs, but I don’t think this is that outlandish.
Gareth is back. Anything is possible.
