Colored food contest

November 7, 2019 9:45 AM

You all were so helpful last year in my sister's Thanksgiving appetizer competition, here's this year's... Select a single color and make a dish. We need 2 for adults and 1 for a tween. Only green has been taken. Suggestions?
posted by k8t to Food & Drink (17 answers total)

Borscht is hearty and quite red.
posted by Beardman at 9:59 AM on November 7, 2019 [3 favorites]

Carrot souffle!
posted by nuclear_soup at 10:00 AM on November 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

Roasted purple potatoes
posted by carrioncomfort at 10:01 AM on November 7, 2019 [3 favorites]

Blue: Blue corn chips, bleu cheese and maybe even some dried blueberries
posted by soelo at 10:05 AM on November 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

Here you can buy purple potato chips (otherwise they can't be too hard to make), and pair them with a blackberry cream-cheese dip. It's a bit snack-y, but there is so much to eat at Thanksgiving.
posted by mumimor at 10:05 AM on November 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

Red: Beet Risotto?
posted by kittydelsol at 10:05 AM on November 7, 2019 [3 favorites]

Orange - candied yams.
posted by DoubleLune at 10:07 AM on November 7, 2019 [4 favorites]

Clarification request: is this still an appetizer competition?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:20 AM on November 7, 2019

purple crudite platter: Purple carrots, purple cauliflower, purple tortilla chips and a purple sweet potato hummus. Other purple foods (purple cabbage? figs? purple beans? grapes?), you could even make it a pretty ombre effect similar to this.
posted by vunder at 11:09 AM on November 7, 2019 [5 favorites]

Red - beets, red peppers, radishes, tomatoes, radicchio,garnish with pomegranate. There are plenty of red foods to make a surprise red salad, i.e., not green.
I make cranberry ice - 1 can cran jelly, add a canful of limeade and somefreshly squeezed lime, freeze. Mash with a fork every hour or so.
Sweet & sour red cabbage
Red velvet cake

Orange - curried butternut squash soup
roasted sweet potatoes
carrot cake

Yellow-corn pudding
yellow cake

White - mashed cauliflower
angel food cake(with chocolate to dip in.)
posted by theora55 at 11:49 AM on November 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you have access to a pressure cooker, caramelized carrot soup.
posted by slkinsey at 12:14 PM on November 7, 2019

This beet soup with coconut milk is more of a fuschia colour. It's also easy and delicious.
posted by noxperpetua at 1:31 PM on November 7, 2019

Response by poster: Yes it is supposed to be appetizers but it is flexible. Last year kid make an amazing cheese ball turkey and then did a dessert version.
posted by k8t at 2:05 PM on November 7, 2019

If I were running the contest, "Rainbow" would totally count as its own color.

Gradient mashed potatoes - get different color potatoes, mash separately, put in dish as potato rainbow.

- purple sweet potatoes/blue potatoes
- orange sweet potatoes or carrots
- yellow potatoes
- white sweet potatoes/potatoes

... and if you want a true rainbow representation, blend up foods of various other colors and mix 'em in to get other colors.
posted by aniola at 3:41 PM on November 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Ok, we are going with purple (that crudite!), red (husband wants tomatoes but I think beets), and kid has orange.
Keep them coming!
posted by k8t at 9:06 PM on November 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

Every year I make a thrown-together thing that I actually call "orange." it just has a lot of orange stuff in it. Sweet potatoes, fresh turmeric, thinsliced kumquats and/or oranges, butternut squash, carrots. It had mango one year. Whatever looks good in whatever proportions seem right at the time or are least irritating to try to deal with when you're having to devote your day to perfecting the turkey and other charismatic species of the Thanksgiving table. I throw it in a little dutch oven in the oven with a bunch of butter or olive oil and salt and pepper, maybe some garlic or sauteed onion, and I leave it there 'til everything else is done. It tastes good some years, not great others, indifferent most, but if I forget to put it out, people will ask, "Where's the orange?"
posted by Don Pepino at 9:09 AM on November 8, 2019

You can make a vegan mac n cheese using squash. Use annatto for color (I love the flavor, and it's in all the yellow cheeses). Either annatto powder, or grind annatto seeds in a mortar and pestle. All the cookbooks strongly warn against putting annatto in an electric grinder. Also annatto is oranger than turmeric, which is more yellow-orange.
posted by aniola at 1:20 PM on November 8, 2019 [1 favorite]