This is my gift to you this Thanksgiving—the gift of your
not cramming your pie hole with baked brie and grape-jelly meatballs right
before you sit down eat the biggest meal of the year complete with a bucket of
gravy, a basket of Aunt Willetta’s dinner rolls, and so many variations on the
theme of glucose-in-a-crust that you have a sudden epiphany about pi, and how
it goes on and on, forever and ever, or at least until you fall asleep on the
couch with a small plate still balanced on your knees. As our friend Megan used
to say after the turkey and stuffing every year, “I’m doing a juice fast until
the pies come out.”
So, here’s this: a way to start the meal on a lovely, light
note; a way to be sure that you won’t be stuffed before you even begin; a way
to give your kids lots of pleasant little jobs while they’re milling around; a
way to get a few veggies into your kids nice and early, while they’re hungrily milling around; and a way to
forget about serving salad with dinner because you’re going to forget about
serving it anyways. I can’t tell you how many Thanksgivings we wobbled late to
the fridge to look for another bottle of wine—only to see in there the poor,
forgotten salad still covered in a damp dish towel. Nobody wants salad after pie.
Not even Michael’s brother Keith, who is famous in our house for once hiding an
entire quart of gravy during the meal so there would be plenty for his
leftovers the next morning. “I could have sworn there was more gravy,” I said,
while our guests ate nude seconds of mashed potatoes, and Keith shrugged and
said cheerfully, “Oh well!”
Now if you’re a friend or family member, well, you’ve
already passed out with boredom because yes, you know, you have been served
this exact platter of vegetables at every holiday meal you’ve ever eaten in our
company, whether or not I was actually hosting it myself, and I’m sorry. This
is what I make at home; it’s what I bring whenever we’ve been invited anywhere.
And it’s always more or less like this. Though, that said, there have been many
variations over the years, and you should feel free to experiment. Here, the
dip is kind of like an Italian green sauce with mayo mixed in—a little pungent,
a little spunky—but I’ve made a milder version using lemon juice, lemon zest, and
dill instead of the vinegar and parsley, and I’ve added other herbs (marjoram,
say, or chives) or lightened it with a bit of sour cream. It’s not mandatory
that you trouble yourself with the whole high-concept shades-of-green thing
I’ve got going on with the veggies here; you could do lots of one single
vegetable (I’ve done all green beans), which makes this very quick and easy to
put together, or you could do a fancy rainbow of veggies (radishes, cherry
tomatoes, carrots, yellow peppers, broccoli), or you could do raw carrots,
roasted cauliflower, boiled new potatoes, or steamed asparagus. Yum.
I am partial to the white backdrop of dishes here, though
when I complain about the fact that the platter wobbles, Michael says, “I can’t
believe that! The quality has really gone downhill, over at the town dump’s
free table.” Good point.
Crudités with the best-ever Green Dip
preparation time: 1 hour; all the prep can be done the day
before.
Two things. One, even though the “cru” in crudités means
raw, in France, where they pronounce it croo-dights (okay, they don’t, they
pronounce it croo-di-tay), many dip vegetables benefit from a bit of cooking.
And two, yes, there’s fish sauce in the dip, and yes you can leave it out,
though then you will be missing what our friend Pengyew calls “a little
something funky.” Nobody will notice it, I swear, not even the people who
always have a heart attack about anchovies, even though they love Caesar salad,
which has anchovies in it, I’m just saying.
Ingredients:
Vegetables for dipping (shown here: radishes, broccoli,
green beans, celery, Brussels sprouts, fennel, cucumbers, endive)
1 bunch fresh parsley (I use flat leaf) to make something
like 1-2 packed cups of leaves
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar (or red or white wine vinegar,
or distilled vinegar)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 glove garlic, smashed and peeled
¾ teaspoon kosher salt (or ½ teaspoon table salt)
1 teaspoon capers (optional)
½ teaspoon fish sauce or an anchovy or two (optional)
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup Hellman’s or Best Foods Mayonnaise (not low-fat)
Begin by preparing the vegetables (below). Now make the dip:
wash the parsley in a large sink of water, spin it dry, then pull the leaves
from their stems, without deranging yourself over the smaller stems, which are
fine to include; this is a wonderful job for a seated child or an adult with a
glass of wine. In a food processor, whir together the parsley, vinegar, olive
oil, garlic, salt, capers, fish sauce, black pepper, and ¼ cup of the mayo.
Stop the motor to scrape down the sides every now and then, and when it’s quite
finely ground together, add the rest of the mayo and process until smooth and
green. Can you do this in a blender? I’m not sure. I once—once—made pesto in a
blender, and after I tried to cram the basil while the machine was still
running, we ended up calling it “wooden spoon pesto,” so I’m the wrong person
to ask. Taste the dip for seasoning—it should be quite tangy and salty, so add
more salt or vinegar as you need to—then scrape it into a small bowl, cover,
and chill until you’re ready to eat it.
Veggie Prep School:
All veggies can be prepped, then wrapped with their own kind
in paper towels or clean dishtowels and stored all together in a big Ziploc in
the fridge until you’re ready to arrange them on a platter.
Green beans: Snap off the stem ends, then drop them in a
large pot of boiling water (steam them if you prefer), scoop them out after a
few minutes, when they’re tender and bright green, and rinse them well in cold
water before wrapping them up in a dishtowel to dry.
Broccoli: Cut off the big stem, peel it, and slice it into
narrow sticks. Cut the rest into elegant florets. Blanch it all in the boiling
bean water for 2-3 minutes until just crisp-tender and bright green, then
drain, chill, and wrap as for the beans.
Fennel: Trim off the feathery top, any damaged looking outer
leaves, and the very bottom, then cut the bulb into vertical slices and cut
each of these in half. The core will keep them largely intact. Toss the slices
with a bit of olive oil and salt, then roast these on a foil-lined baking sheet
at 450 for around 10 minutes until they’re browning and tender.
Do the Brussels sprouts the same way: trim them, cut them in
half, toss with oil and salt, and roast alongside the fennel, on the same sheet
even (cauliflower is also good this way too).
Celery is simply cut into sticks; radishes are washed and
trimmed; cukes are cut into wedges or slices; endive is separated into leaves
that only I will eat.
