Al Dente

Mark Bittman’s Master Quick-Bread Recipe

One thing that has continued to astound me as I’ve cooked and eaten and traveled over the years is how, by using a single technique, you can create a vast (sometimes limitless) variety of dishes simply by swapping some ingredients. Knowing this makes the world of cooking feel much simpler and it’s given me a great deal of freedom to experiment and come up with new recipes and flavor combinations. (The idea appears throughout the new edition of How to Cook Everything, where I’ve included charts showing how easy it is to swap out ingredients of a main recipe to create an entirely new dish.)

The approach applies perfectly to all the holiday quick breads that pop up around this time of year. Cranberry-Nut, Zucchini, Pumpkin-Hazelnut--you name it--most of them descend from a single master recipe. This makes it easy to customize your own fruit-and-nut or vegetable-and-nut bread combinations; the batter is the same and you just vary the add-ins. (If you’re baking multiple holiday breads to give as gifts, you could flavor each differently--one for your aunt Ida who loves tart cranberry-nut bread, one for your pal Tim who digs a sweeter bread like apple-walnut.) Some of my favorite combinations are:

• Zucchini and cashews (or just zucchini)
• Winter squash and hazelnuts
• Sweet potatoes and pecans
• Cherries (pitted) and almonds
• Cranberries and pistachios
• Grapes (halved) and peanuts
• Apples and walnuts

Making quick bread is easy. If you regard baking as “like cooking but with more rules” know that there’s really only one rule here: Don’t overmix the batter. When you see no more dry bits of flour, the stirring is done. Some remaining lumps are fine. You don’t want the batter sitting around, so make sure your fruit or vegetables and nuts are grated or chopped as needed before you begin. And feel free to play with the seasonings: grated cinnamon, nutmeg, or even crushed black pepper would be a nice twist.

Mark Bittman’s 45-Minute Turkey

When it comes to holiday cooking, I imagine your goals and mine are the same--to make good food for celebrations and gatherings of family and friends without going nuts. But even the most modest Thanksgiving meal takes four times as much energy as an average dinner, if not more. You’ll be serving more people than usual, and more courses than usual. And, for many of us, one of those courses will be a turkey. (Of course, you can buck tradition and still have a wonderful meal; I've eaten everything from crown roast of pork to rice and beans at Thanksgiving.)

The vision of a table laden with harvest-season delights is a beguiling one, but remember that the more courses you prepare, the greater the logistics of maneuvering all that food through the limits of your oven, refrigerator, and counter space in such a way that everything finishes together. So, my primary piece of advice: Do not be overly ambitious. A six-course Thanksgiving meal at which everyone is happy is far better, regardless of the food, than a twelve-course meal at which the host has a nervous breakdown. We’ve all seen that happen.

Choosing a turkey presents a similar contrast between what looks impressive and what’s realistic. Bigger may seem better, but your basic Thanksgiving-sized turkey (say, twelve pounds or more? maybe twenty in your case?) is way too big to mess around with. For many of us, just getting a pan big enough to hold the thing is an issue, and figuring how to turn something whose size is about the same as that of your nephew is not most people’s idea of a good yearly activity. (Myself, I’d rather be out cleaning roof gutters.)

This recipe for 45-Minute Roast Turkey simplifies the process enormously. (Don’t let removing the backbone intimidate you; it’s not that difficult.) Unorthodox though it may sound, you’ll thank me: It will be done in about 40 minutes. Really. It will also be more evenly browned, more evenly cooked, and moister than a conventionally roasted bird. It only works for small turkeys (8 to 12 pounds) but, again, that makes it easier to handle. And it will still serve 10 at least, and more if you’re all OK with eating less meat--something I recommend anyway.