The New York Times: Thanksgiving With Padma

Genevieve Ko wrote about cooking a buttermilk-brined, savory-sweet turkey with Padma Lakshmi.

By Sam Sifton | Nov. 10, 2021

Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. Prop Stylist: Christina Lane.

Good morning. Genevieve Ko has a lovely story in The Times this morning about cooking Thanksgiving turkey with Padma Lakshmi, whose second season of “Taste the Nation” is streaming on Hulu. Lakshmi’s turkey (above) offers a riot of delicious savory-sweet flavors and incredibly moist meat: buttermilk-brined, then roasted slowly over seasonal fruits and vegetables. The apple gravy that provides — tangy and rich — will be a holiday game-changer for some.

As may be Eric Kim’s lovely evocation of Stouffer’s mac and cheese, a childhood memory he’s brought into the modern age.

Also looking into the past, our old colleague Amanda Hesser has just released the 10th anniversary edition of “The Essential New York Times Cookbook,” a collection of Times recipes that runs back decades. We’re excited to see a number of excellent Thanksgiving recipes within it, including a Florentine dip from 1959, red cabbage glazed with maple syrup from 1991, Edna Lewis’s 1992 recipe for sweet potatoes baked with lemon, and a fresh ginger cake from 1999.

And we’ve got Priya Krishna on Liberian Thanksgiving (Liberian chicken gravy, please, and pan-fried collard greens!), Eric Asimov on choosing Thanksgiving wines and Yewande Komolafe on the recipes that introduced her to American Thanksgiving: cornbread dressing and citrus-glazed sweet potatoes.

But maybe you came here for a recipe to make tonight? We’ve got that as well: an incredible dinner of pork chops in lemon-caper sauce that I learned from Toni Tipton-Martin. Serve that with rice and rejoice.

There are thousands more recipes for this evening and for Thanksgiving waiting on New York Times Cooking. You do, yes, need a subscription to access them and to use our features and tools. That’s good value, we think. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. I hope, if you haven’t already, that you will subscribe today. Thank you.

We are on YouTube and Instagram, too, if you’d like further inspiration. And we’re standing by to help, should anything go strangely with your cooking or our technology. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. We will get back to you. (If you want to share an apple or deliver a worm, you can write me as well: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every letter sent.)

Now, it’s not about recipes nor Thanksgiving, but I think you’ll love reading Daniel Fromson’s excellent report in The New York Times Magazine: “The Untold Story of Sushi in America.”

You may loathe “The Last Kingdom” on Netflix, soapy Saxon-Dane violence with lots of horses and fire. But I float down its narrative as if I’m in the lazy river at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and there’s nothing I can do but keep watching, my brain on pause.

Those of you who thrill to the sensible, wry and helpful notes on our recipes may want to explore the theory and practice of healthy online conversation when my colleague Shira Ovide convenes a virtual event on Nov. 18 to talk about civil and informative internet discourse. Learn more and sign up to take part here.

Finally, and also in The Times, see what you think of Jason Farago’s review of the Hunter Biden show in New York, “rather random, rather personal, rather ingenuous.” It’s a nice piece of work. And I’ll be back on Friday.

Sam Sifton is an assistant managing editor, responsible for culture and lifestyle coverage, and the founding editor of New York Times Cooking. @samsifton