We love turkey as much as any American, and have spent our share of Thanksgivings wrestling with the best way to master that monster of a bird — brining it, smoking it, deep frying it, roasting it smeared with butter. But to be honest, we’re usually not convinced that the end result is worth all that effort.

This year, we decided to give Thanksgiving a trial run and experiment with a no-brainer preparation that puts a turkey on the table without the stress and in just a little over an hour.

We asked the butcher to cut up a whole turkey into pieces, and roasted them until perfectly crisp, juicy and flavorful.

Here’s how:

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Peggy Knickerbocker is a San Francisco-based freelance food and travel writer and a contributing editor to Saveur and Gourmet magazines. She is also the author of several cookbooks including Simple Soirees: Seasonal Menus for Sensational Dinner Parties. Learn more about Peggy at her website.

Sweet or salty?

Salty

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Good flaked salt and olive oil.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

The sizzle of meat once it hits a nice, hot pan.

What’s your favorite cooking smell?

Onions and garlic cooking in olive oil.

What are the qualities you most admire in a dish?

Simplicity and the use of the best possible ingredients. Read the rest of this entry »

A weekly column on the psychology of food and cooking.

I sometimes wonder why it is we make such a production out of Thanksgiving — slaving for hours over the proverbial hot stove, gathering family members who have nothing in common but DNA, eating too much of the same old unhealthy standbys.

But traditions die hard, and for every cheery well-adjusted person who is looking forward to sitting down a week from today and sharing a meal with friends and family, there is another who is working themselves into a frenzy of dread.

Got gravy anxiety? No idea how to roast a turkey? All out of recipe ideas?

Thanksgiving anxiety is a common ailment. Luckily, everyone wants to help: Oprah, Martha, Dr. Joyce Brothers. There’s advice for single dads. Working moms. Holiday stress is such a hot topic, it can apparently fill a book.

How do you cope with Thanksgiving stress?

Like just about any other root vegetable, radishes keep best the closer their storage conditions mimic their natural environment — the cool, dark, insulated underground. If you’re ambitious about making them last and have the space for it, you can fill a small storage container with sand, bury the radishes and keep the container in a cool place — like a basement or root cellar — for up to a month.

Otherwise, radishes meant to be eaten raw will last 4 to 5 days trimmed of their greens and wrapped in plastic or a damp towel in the coldest part of your refrigerator. Radishes meant to be cooked will keep a little longer — about a week depending on how long they were out of the ground before you bought them.

Either way, don’t clean your radishes until you’re ready to eat them. And if your radishes have gone a little soft (or you want to make them extra-crisp), just soak them in ice water for an hour or so. The cold water will firm them up. You can even store them in ice cold water in the refrigerator, but only for a day or two before they absorb too much water.

Related: How To Prep Radishes (Cookthink blog)
Related: Root Source: Radish (Cookthink)
Related: Radishes: The Raw And The Cooked (Cookthink blog)
Related: Two Easy Radish Appetizers (Cookthink blog)

For the past several months, we’ve been fortunate to have Olga Berman as a Cookthink editorial intern.

An economist by day, Olga moonlights as a food blogger, a Sur la Table kitchen assistant, and a recipe tester for cookbook author and nutritionist Robyn Webb.

In addition to working on our recipe database, recently Olga has begun contributing reference articles to Cookthink. (If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between a yam and a sweet potato, she’s got you covered.) Help us welcome Olga and be sure to visit her at her blog Mango & Tomato!

Vinegar pie sounds strange; but it is an old-fashioned American treat that tastes like butterscotch with a kick. It is a refreshing change from the usual pumpkin, apple pie or pecan pies at the holiday table. And guests and family will never guess the secret ingredient!

Recipe: Old-Fashioned Vinegar Pie (Barbara Kafka)
Related: More recipes by Barbara Kafka at Cookthink.com

A bunch of radishes may look daunting for the uninitiated, but the subject of this week’s Root Source is actually one of the quickest and easiest vegetables to prepare. How you do so depends on the radish variety you choose, and on how (and whether you plan to cook them).

Start by thoroughly washing them: Cut off radish greens, leaving an inch or so attached to the radish, plunge them into a bowl of cold water and pat them dry.

Read the rest of this entry »

We spend a lot of time thinking about how our mood affects our cravings. Every Monday, we share some of what goes on inside Cookthink as we’re analyzing recipes for the Cookthink database. In anticipation of Thanksgiving, the subject of this week’s Root Source is turkey, which inspired us to think about which foods we think of as being particularly “homey.”

Apart from being festive and Thanksgiving-appropriate, turkey tastes homey to us, because it’s something we almost always make at home. And because even a sliced turkey sandwich from the deli tastes like something a loved one could have made us. Read the rest of this entry »

Ann Cooper is the director of nutrition services for the Berkeley Unified School District. Her newest book is Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children (Harper Collins, Sept. 2006), co-written with Lisa M. Holmes. You can find some of Chef Ann’s recipes here.

Sweet or salty?

Salty

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Salt, EVO, balsamic, fresh veggies.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

Sauté — the sizzle. Read the rest of this entry »

Hair of the Dog is Cookthink’s Monday morning cocktail column by Rob Chirico, the author of the Field Guide to Cocktails. Read more about Rob here.

Irish Coffee is merely a time-honored blend of noble vices: coffee, whiskey and cream. Pedigrees for many drinks are dubious at best, but the arrival of the Irish Coffee on the colonies’ shores is well-documented.

While waiting for his late-night flight back to the US, the bedraggled and sleep-deprived San Francisco Chronicle columnist Stanton Delaplane was served one at the Shannon Airport bar in 1952.

Dubious at first, he was so taken with this new twist on “mud in your eye” that after returning to San Francisco, he passed the recipe on to Barman Jack Koeppler at the Buena Vista bar. A little of his own PR no doubt helped, but soon the rest of the country was clamoring for it. Read the rest of this entry »