New Thanksgiving Traditions?

November 19, 2015 11:05 AM

For the first time ever, my family is visiting Boston to celebrate Thanksgiving with my husband and me. I'm really excited, and I really need some help planning the dinner menu.

I'm having a lot of difficulty deciding on a menu. My parents are both excellent cooks, and I would like to avoid making the traditional foods that they make. I want to do something new and different.

To that end, I was thinking about going with a New England-specific themed dinner and making the following:
*Clam chowder (to be made in a crockpot?)
*Lobster tails OR Lobster rolls
*Creamed corn
*Some other veggie?
*Some chocolate dessert?
*Non-alcoholic cranberry punch/drink?

Do you have any good recipes for the above dishes? Another other recommendations for dishes? Also, as a bonus question, what should I look for when buying lobster and where in the Boston area should I go to purchase it?

posted by ASlackerPestersMums to Food & Drink (18 answers total)

Lobster's kind of out of season at this point, unfortunately, so you won't be finding anything reasonably cheap and fresh. Clam chowder only takes twenty minutes or so to cook, so there's no need to do it in a crock pot.

Brown bread would be a good traditional side. Baked beans, maybe?
posted by backseatpilot at 11:14 AM on November 19, 2015

Both of these would complement your menu:
Succotash
Roasted lemon-pepper asparagus

For the cranberry drink, try the Cranberry Ginger Fizz cocktail (just leave out the gin, it's still delicious).
posted by erst at 11:15 AM on November 19, 2015

Succotash is a local-ish dish (the word is from the Narragansett who lived all over southern RI, and, chances are, the Wampanoag (early allies of the Plymouth Colony) probably ate something vaguely like it) made of sweet corn and lima beans, and it makes a good vegetable side (I like lima beans best if they are cooked from the dried state instead of frozen (ok) or canned (bleh), but that's extra work). You can add a lot of other veggies (tomatoes and peppers (sweet or hot) being pretty common). There are like a million recipes online for it. Search until you find one you like for a vaguely-historically-appropriate Thanksgiving addition.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:16 AM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh, actually, I forgot a point about the lobsters. If you ultimately decide to go that route, keep in mind that you'll be getting hard shell lobsters at this time of year so you're probably not going to want to serve it in the shell. Cook it and then cut everything open so your guests aren't fighting with it.
posted by backseatpilot at 11:19 AM on November 19, 2015

Lobster roll recipe (it's summer food to me, but it's always good!):

Cooked lobster (around 1/4 pound per person) - cut into 1-inch chunks
Mayonnaise (to taste)
One New-England style flat-sided hotdog roll, fried in butter

Where specifically are you in the Boston area? Probably there's a good fish market near you - no need to go towns away...
posted by mskyle at 11:46 AM on November 19, 2015

Response by poster: I am in the Waltham/Watertown area.
posted by ASlackerPestersMums at 11:48 AM on November 19, 2015

Indian pudding!

Cranberry sauce using fresh, local cranberries of course. (it is very, very easy to make)

I'm a big fan of traditional New England foodways, and you could do worse than to peruse this article about pre-colonial cooking as inspiration for truly "native" dishes, particular in terms of squashes (acorn squash, in particular) and also chestnuts and onions. I think clam chowder is a fine idea. I also associate maple-glazed carrots with the "traditional" New England feast.

Cornbread, either served piping hot with butter or as the stuffing.

Hot spiced apple cider.

Green beans prepared however you like.

Julia Childs' Aunt Helen's Fluffy Pumpkin Pie
posted by anastasiav at 12:04 PM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

I love almost every vegetable but I have never liked squash. However, for some reason Thanksgiving happens and not only do I eat the squash, I sometimes have seconds. Try a small sized acorn squash, cut into quarter wedges, tossed with a little neutral oil and salt, placed on a cookie sheet skin-side down, and then the inside of the flesh gets a little spread of molasses and chopped dried cranberries (if you can find the unsweetened kind, use those) and dotted with butter and a little extra sprinkle of salt. Bake at a low heat so your molasses doesn't burn and it will sort of melt in and coat your squash wedges. Serve with the skin on, it will come off cleanly when fully cooked.

Do you have access to low bush blueberries? Every year my family picks their wild blueberries and freezes enough for at least two pies over the winter, so wild blueberry pie is a Thanksgiving treat. You might be able to find them frozen for sale somewhere, I'm pretty sure they can be ordered online these days. Because wild blueberries are more intense in flavor and smaller, you need less of the other flavorings you might use and can expect the filling to be less liquidy and have more natural pectin. Keep it simple with just a little sugar, cinnamon (get the real stuff) and a little lemon juice. Dot the top with butter before you put the top crust on, and put it on a cookie sheet with foil so when it inevitably releases amazing blueberry juices you don't get it all over your oven.
posted by Mizu at 12:29 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

One note of caution, check with your family first to be sure everyone is totally cool with doing a non-traditional menu. Some people have very strong associations of the traditional foods that "go" with the holiday and would be bummed to have (any-other-day-of-the-year-awesome!) clam chowder and lobster because it doesn't taste or feel like Thanksgiving.
posted by cecic at 12:33 PM on November 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

Oh, and for a cranberry drink, try making a shrub! They are super Colonial America. Bump up the sugar a little and add some orange peel with your cranberries. Provide fizzy water, simple syrup, and whatever kind of spirits people like and have them assemble their own shrub cocktail to taste.
posted by Mizu at 12:36 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I have made a few recipes from this New England Thanksgiving menu off epicurious.
posted by munchingzombie at 12:39 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hi, my family is so New England that we actually grow cranberries for Ocean Spray. :-)

For the past several Thanksgivings, an aunt and uncle have been bringing a steamed cranberry pudding for Thanksgiving; it's dessert-y, it features cranberries and is well received.

There's also a recipe I have somewhere for a chocolate-cranberry tart - it was a basic enough thing to hack: you bake a tart shell of your choice, and make a simple whole cranberry sauce while it's in the oven. Then, you melt down some chocolate, and when the tart shell comes out of the oven, you drizzle half the melted chocolate in, pour the cranberry sauce on top and drizzle the remaining melted chocolate on top of that.

Yes to the squash - go with acorn squash, it's simple to do a "serving size" and you can gild the lily by stuffing it with chopped apple and some whole cranberries before roasting.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:12 PM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Indian pudding is delicious, recommend.
Corn pudding is an eggy, cheesy, cornbread-y delicious option. Many recipes available.
I like to make curried squash soup - butternut squash, chicken broth, thickened with a roux, blenderized, your favorite curry powder. Top with sour cream or plain yogurt. and maybe some pancetta.
Roasted brussel sprouts with pancetta.
Cranberry ice.

Have fun!
posted by theora55 at 2:05 PM on November 19, 2015

I'm more sanguine about the lobster idea than backseatpilot. I've gotten lobster at any old supermarket, and always found it tasty. You want to make sure they look reasonably lively, but I figure if they're alive, they're fresh enough. The Stop & Shop website shows lobsters at $7 a pound, which is a fine price.
posted by Jasper Fnorde at 2:41 PM on November 19, 2015

As for the planning, I just started my Thanksgiving planning today. Browsed around a little (Pinterest's search function is by far the best for something like this), picked the menu, found the recipes I wanted to use, compiled a grocery list, and then started a day-by-day list of all the stuff I can do ahead of time so I won't be too exhausted to enjoy the day. I would mix in the standards with a couple of things you think you will really enjoy cooking and/or eating. Makes it more fun for you. Use your freezer whenever possible.

This year I'm using Evernote, but I've used a simple excel or word file in the past and it worked great.
posted by raisingsand at 3:59 PM on November 19, 2015

The following is a huge hit at Thanksgiving and you can make it ahead and freeze it, but it really needs a food processor:

Cranberry-Orange Relish

a pound bag of fresh cranberries
a large orange
a half a jar of ginger preserves (not always easy to find!)
about 1/2 cup of sugar (or to taste)

Wash the cranberries. Cut up the orange into about 8 pieces.
Combine all 4 ingredients, including the orange's peel and seeds!!! in a food processor, blending until smooth.

That's it! the only hard part is finding the ginger preserves. You need a little fancyish store. If you can't find them you might find ginger-orange preserves, which is fine.
posted by DMelanogaster at 6:04 PM on November 19, 2015

Lobster's kind of out of season at this point, unfortunately, so you won't be finding anything reasonably cheap and fresh.

I beg to differ, at least a bit. My mother got sick of cooking decades of turkey so one year she said "Fuck it" and we've been eating lobster for Thanksgiving ever since. You absolutely can get fresh, live hard-shell lobster right through the winter. It's not cheap, though.

I don't know if your family is seafood mad, but I would find clam showder followed by lobster to be heavy on the seafood. Thinking about it, I might be inclined to consider:

* Corn Chowder (NH)

* Lobster tails (ME)
* New England Potato Salad (VT)
* Maple Roasted Root Vegetables (VT)
* Mixed Greens with Cranberries (RI)

* Whoopie Pie (MA)
posted by DarlingBri at 10:42 PM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Boston Cream Pie for dessert! Hits the chocolate and Boston angles! (Park House Hotel in Boston claims credit for the original).

If you need an easier version, do a Boston Cream Pie poke cake.
posted by carrioncomfort at 11:37 AM on November 20, 2015