Center of Gravity

whole roast chicken 

Maybe my favorite thing I cooked this season. I’ve been meaning to learn how to roast a whole chicken for a while and this was the perfect time to do it given my functional employment/purgatory before semester starts. It took a little longer than I’d like for a frequent weeknight meal (90+ minutes not including prep) but it was great for a lazy Sunday afternoon vibe. Flavor wise I’m surprised at how much salt and pepper can do for hormone-boosted farm birds; this is a case where the method really brought out the best in the ingredients, where doing it from home makes a difference. The most surprising thing, though, is how cheap a whole raw chicken is. It was like five bucks. Coming back to this one all season long. 

pan-seared green beans 

This one’s been a reliable standard all year. Fast, low effort, healthy, and tasty. No complaints here, but also nothing to write home about. About 80% of this recipe’s appeal is breaking up the monotony of roast broccoli. That matters. 

cranberry sauce 

Every holiday season I’m reminded of how miserably easy it is to overdo it with this one. Cranberry sauce would be the platonic ideal side-sauce if not for the fact that, after the third bite, you can feel your blood sugar spike. Somebody give me an alternate use for all my leftover sauce. Please. 

celery stuffing 

Not my favorite! Why is this the most highly rated stuffing on NYT cooking? What the fuck. Don’t get me wrong, it does the job, and it probably works great as actually stuffing (vs eating it on the side like I did) but it just doesn’t hold up. I’m going back to sausage stuffing, or perhaps cornbread stuffing. Anything with a little personality. 

filipino beef empanadas 

I spent a lot of time this year exploring the food of my culture, and I wanted to end it strong with a decadent treat that reminded me of my childhood. It was between this and lumpia. On more than one occasion, a gifted bag of these frozen pies saved the whole season. I started with a recipe that called for half a pound of ground beef, which sounded ridiculous to me. Who buys just half a pound of ground beef? I defiantly bought two. A few days later I was struggling through the stuffing process, forearms stiff from rolling out four dozen little balls of dough. I severely underestimated how labor intensive these were; altogether the process took something like six hours with help. But after all that? The first bite was like gold. 

pinakbet 

I made this almost as a joke; we needed vegetables in our thanksgiving menu and this was an extremely efficient way to achieve that. That said, it turned out to be surprisingly festive. It’s basically a cornucopia – squash and green beans in a homey, hearty stew. Even better, it cuts through all the heaviness of the other dishes. Balance and good health, Pinakbet might be the most thanksgiving food of all. 

cookie dough 

I’m sick of the extremely complicated “gourmet” or “elevated” chocolate chip cookies that take two types of flour, brown butter, nuts, chocolate chips and wafers, etc. A chocolate chip cookie is meant to be simple. Any alteration to the most basic recipe immediately yields diminishing returns. I followed Tollhouse’s classic and made three logs. The ease is part of what makes them so delicious. 

BONUS ROUND: See’s candy 

I dug up a $25 See’s candy gift card and, after looking around their website, found out that I could assemble a custom box. Imagine: a full box of above-average-quality chocolate where every piece is your favorite. I refrain from using the term “hack” but this really feels illegal. My box is all dark chocolate, all almonds, all toffee and caramel, all molasses chips. I have a complex relationship with indulgence, but I’ll let this be simple: I will eat as much chocolate as I want. No caveats.

happy thanksgiving