It’s not even Halloween yet, but that hasn’t stopped us from starting our detailed Excel spreadsheet for Thanksgiving dinner (complete with a pie chart for pies).
We’ve always loved Thanksgiving. Mostly because it’s an excuse to get in the kitchen and use all those $99 tools and $600 appliances that we just had to have to make one Barefoot Contessa recipe back in 2007.
Starting months in advance, we typically tear out pages from magazines featuring intriguing side dishes; dog-ear the pages of old family cookbooks with unique takes on roasted turkey; and fill our DVR with episodes of every Food Network show known to man.
Then the recipes compete X-Factor style for a spot on our Thanksgiving table (runners up get a slot in Paula Abdul’s bed).
Well, no more. This year we’ve found the most surefire way to gay up the holiday. That’s because we got our oven mitts on The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Cookbook from the Fabulous Beekman Boys themselves, Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Dr. Brent Ridge.
Together with Sandy Gluck, former editor of Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food magazine, they have gathered more than 100 recipes that celebrate seasonality and the ability to modify recipes to incorporate your own personal touches. The book offers helpful tips for meals in every season (not just holidays), so you can enjoy cooking when each ingredient is at its peak.
On our radar for Thanksgiving are roast pork with gingerbread stuffing, leek and potato gratin, butter-crumbed cauliflower and caramelized pear bread pudding. We’ll be skipping the llama lloin and llemony llegumes, though. (Poor Polka Spot.)
The best part is the inclusion of blank recipe cards for celebrating your own treasured family recipes, allowing the book to be handed down for generations. Although, we’re gay with no children, so we sure hope that after we die, our dogs will learn to read.
And properly operate a brûlée torch.
$25.00 ($12.88 on Amazon.com)
www.beekman1802.com
