A mixed-up salad to fit a multicultural feast
Thanksgiving in my home probably doesn't look like Thanksgiving in yours.
For one, we're turkey-less. We're also a bunch of high-spirited Indian emigres — uncles, aunties, grandmothers and grandfathers, generations and generations of them — and their picky American-born kids. We graze all day at a dining table laden with matter paneer, rice pulao and kofta simmered in tomato-cumin gravy. We skip the cranberry sauce and the mashed potatoes, too, adhering instead to but one tradition: We fill out our feast with “American” dishes: lasagna, spanakopita and, once, quesadillas.
Whatever we want, whatever delicious trifle the aunties and second generation have learned to make, that's what we serve at Thanksgiving.
Like many of you, we have assignments, of course. I am the health-conscious one, so I'm inevitably on the salad beat. I take the challenge seriously.
I've introduced the family to the wonders of a simple, French-style Dijon vinaigrette drizzled over fall pears and arugula, and to panko-crusted fried goat cheese. This year, the salad I chose to make is the embodiment of our mixed-up Thanksgiving: a dish that takes the spices that are part of our traditional cooking — ginger, turmeric, coriander seed and other South Asian flavors — and combines them with ingredients such as quinoa and baked kale and miso, the trendy stuff my family goes wild for. Executive chef Jesse Miller of Washington D.C.'s Bar Pilar provided the recipe for the dish, served in his restaurant. Then I tweaked it so it wasn't so complicated that it turned a festive occasion into something that necessitated a Xanax.
No problems here, it turns out. Kabocha squash is what Miller prefers, but acorn squash was easy to find at a grocery store and did just as well: Its firm texture held up to baking. It can be peeled, for those who don't like the fibrous bite of the dark-green coating, or left skin-on.
Other ingredients are what really put this salad over the top. The baked kale adds crunch. The miso-mascarpone was mildly sweet, thanks to the farmers cheese, but also salty enough that you don't need much salt otherwise. I added only a little to the cooking water for the quinoa, and to the nuts.
About those: The pecans, so fragrant with brown butter and rosemary, are worth the trouble. (Note to self: Make extra! Put them on everything!)
I'm already plotting new ways to adapt the recipe for the future: Roasted butternut squash, which I also tested, provided a slightly sweeter note for this salad; it seemed to carry the acid of the vinegar in a more pronounced way, too. Red quinoa is ideal for the health nuts in my family, who, given that we don't eat meat, will appreciate its hearty chewiness. But white quinoa, which is easier to find and lighter in texture, transforms the dish. And in playing around with my dressing, I found I liked adding a little garlic powder to the miso-marscapone, giving it even more of an umami pop that I know will have everybody asking, “What is that I'm tasting?”
My elders hadn't heard of Thanksgiving until they moved to this country, but now, we celebrate it as reliably as we do Diwali. For us, it's a chance to be together and an opportunity to explore the flavors of our adopted homeland.
Honestly, I wonder why everyone doesn't do Thanksgiving our way.