This is an adaptation of a Turkish recipe, a sweet and savory combination of lentils, onions and carrots that can be served hot or at room temperature, as a main dish or a side.
In my flurry of experimenting, I found that virgin coconut oil had a deep coconut flavor that persists even after cooking. Refined coconut oil, which has been processed enough to raise the temperature at which it begins to smoke, lacks the same coconut profundity, but supposedly works better for stir- and deep-frying. In my recipe testing, however, the smoke point of virgin coconut oil was not a problem.
"'Roasting the cauliflower really brings out its flavor in this side dish,' confirms Joann Fritzler of Belen, New Mexico. 'Even folks who aren't cauliflower lovers like it this way.'"
Too many cooks give up at the end of a Thanksgiving meal and resort to canned cranberry sauce. That’s a shame. It’s surprisingly easy to create a simple cranberry sauce that looks and tastes nothing like the canned version. Here’s what we discovered:The standard back-of-the-bag recipe is a little soupy. Cranberries contain a lot of water, and cutting down on the additional liquid yields the ideal consistency.
Too many cooks give up at the end of a Thanksgiving meal and resort to canned cranberry sauce. That’s a shame. It’s surprisingly easy to create a simple cranberry sauce that looks and tastes nothing like the canned version. Here’s what we discovered:The standard back-of-the-bag recipe is a little soupy. Cranberries contain a lot of water, and cutting down on the additional liquid yields the ideal consistency.
A confession: Every Thanksgiving I cringe (I hope not enough for others at the table to notice) when the inevitable dish of marshmallow-topped or otherwise candied sweet potatoes appears. Sweet potatoes possess such an individual, earthy sweetness of their own, I can’t help but wonder why cooks push it into overdrive? Here is a recipe that gives Thanksgiving sweet potatoes a slight spin, keeping the sweetness in check with savory and piquant complements: fresh ginger and chili pepper in a spicy dish with tomato.
You can use peeled butternut squash, if you like; allow 45 minutes only for the initial baking.
