A very non-traditional Thanksgiving

For me, Thanksgiving means beaujolais nouveau, this year Louis Tête which was quite good and went well with the near east food.

"Beet-ziki"

Most people are familiar with tzatziki, the Greek/Syrian/Lebanese salad of yogurt, cucumber, garlic and salt. What a fewer people know is that the yogurt-loving folks in the Near East will shred most vegetables they have -- carrots, spinach, zucchini, whatever -- and mix with strained yogurt to make a salad/condiment. This one was make with cooked, shredded golden beets and immediately christened "beet-ziki" by my wife.

Recipe from Paula Wolfert's Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, but also found in many Arab/Middle Eastern cookbooks. Unfortunately, the picture I took of the beet-ziki didn't come out.

Marinated Cheese Salad

This is a modified version of another Wolfert recipe. I modified it for a couple of reasons, the main one being that I forgot to bring my spice sumac with me, and it's pretty much impossible to purchase in the Rogue Valley. Since sumac is tart and spicy, I added pomegranite syrup and pomegranite seeds to the salad, plus some paprika.

I also use haloumi cheese, because I thought it would take a marinade better than feta.

Halibut with Moroccan Spices

This was part of the meal for two reasons: first, my mother-in-law is on a low-carb diet due to diabetes risk, and second because I'd brought some preserved lemons I made with me and darn if I wasn't going to use them! I just loved the combination of saffron, ginger, olives, capers, preserved lemons and parsley and so did everyone else.

This recipe was from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Red Pepper Paste

I just love Turkish red pepper paste. It's probably my favorite condiment, even more than mustard or Chilean pepper sauce, and that's saying a lot. I made up the "quick" version from Wolfert, since the "traditional" version takes 3 days. Even this is delicious and most of its cooking time is passive so it's easy. I augmented Wolfert's recipe by adding some interesting peppers, including jarred piquillo peppers and some dried peppers sent to me by Dave Pepperhead.

The pepper paste is a condiment for the centerpiece of the meal: kibbe.

Pumpkin Kibbe with Chickpea/Spinach/Walnut Stuffing

Kibbe is strictly a dish for holiday food, preferably one where you have a whole day of prep, unless you have an Arab or Bulgarian grandmother whom you can get to do all the work for you. I'd estimate that total kibbe prep was four to five hours, plus a lot of chilling time between components.

This was another Wolfert recipe. Kibbe actually refers to any dish based on a mixture of bulgur wheat and something else (usually ground lamb) as a shell or layer around a filling, which can be anything. Paula includes 14 kibbe recipes in her book and says that she has 35 more if you write to her ... I'm still trying to find her address! Again, since I don't eat meat, this is a vegetarian version.

First, I made the filling and chilled it overnight. Thanksgiving day, I had to assemble the kibbe. The "paste" of pumpkin puree and bulgur was very fragile, and I'd say that it took a couple minutes of delicate work to shape and stuff each little oblong dumpling. Further, because the kibbe were easier to handle when cold, I make them on the outside porch where it was 48F so that they could stay chilled. Maybe that's why I have a cold now.

Next, I pan-fried them, blotted them, and then served them on a platter.

Cooked, these veggie kibbe were very fragile but completely delicious; not one of them was left over.

Since the dishes all complimented each other, we served them all at once rather than in courses. Not your usual turkey-and-carbohydrate-laden Thanksgiving plate, is it?

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Since I've had some bad experiences with rice pudding (it's what they feed you in Nepal when you have dysentery), my wife decided on a different Arab-inspired British dessert: sticky toffee pudding.

We were surprisingly lucky to find medjool dates in Medford Oregon, thanks to Food4Less. The recipe came from Sticky Chewy Messy Gooey, plus her family butterscotch sauce recipe.

By the end of dessert, we were very full ... but not uncomfortably stuffed the way I've felt in the past at more "traditional" Thanksgivings. Maybe there is something to be said for minimizing the carbohydrates in a large meal, or at least for dishing up small portions.