Newsletter: Counter: The Thanksgiving edition
Food and drinks for Thanksgiving.
Next week is, of course, Thanksgiving. It's our annual cook's holiday, the one feast that many of us go all-out on, by cooking traditional family recipes, favorite comfort-food dishes or maybe recalibrating recipes for new people or new ingredients and ideas. Regardless of how we celebrate the day, we cook, and we gather together — to a specific table, and to an idea of what that means.
So this week, we have essays and recipes from all of us here at the Food section: turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pie.
We also have thoughts on what to drink with all of us, specifically craft ciders, as well as beer suggestions. If you want to let someone else cook for you, we have a list of restaurants open for the big day. And Jonathan Gold reviews Mexicano, the sister restaurant of La Casita Mexicana, because sometimes you just want to eat very good Mexican food, holiday or no holiday.
And be on the lookout for Wednesday's In the Kitchen newsletter, with cooking tips and news, including new recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen.
The cook's holiday
Thanksgiving means many things to many people — you may be planning on deep-frying your bird in a vat somewhere outside, making a turducken or forgoing the bird altogether. This year (big surprise), we've gone with traditional comfort food.
Russ Parsons considers his favorite turkey, his "Free Bird," as he calls it around the office. Jonathan Gold gives us his go-to stuffing recipe, and Noelle Carter adds a hefty dose of garlic to her mashed potatoes. Jenn Harris has re-created cranberry sauce in a can, and I get up way too early to bake pumpkin pie. To drink with it all? S. Irene Virbila considers the joys of hard craft cider.
Mexican cuisine heads to the mall
In this week's review, Jonathan Gold heads to the mall — specifically the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, where chefs Jaime Martin Del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu have opened a brother restaurant to their much-loved Bell restaurant, La Casita Mexicana. La Casita is, of course, one of Jonathan's favorite restaurants, and thus he reflects on what happens when those chiles en nogada he loves so much in Bell appear somewhere else.
(Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)
More food and drink for Thanksgiving
Because not everybody wants to spend the holiday in the kitchen, Jenn Harris catalogs the area restaurants that will cook Thanksgiving dinner for you, both those serving the holiday meal and those offering to-go dishes. S. Irene Virbila finds 13 wines for $25 or less that you can bring to the feast. And beer writer John Verive suggests four coffee beers that would pair pretty well with all that pie, as well as five beers that some pretty great brewers recommend for the holiday table.
(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
Egg Slut heads to Vegas
Jenn Harris reports that Egg Slut, chef Alvin Cailan's insanely popular Grand Central Market stall, is heading to Las Vegas. The Vegas iteration of the egg-sandwich place will open at the Cosmopolitan Hotel sometime next year. Does this mean that those lines will get any better? Probably not, but maybe you'll be able to drink while you stand in line at the new place.
Dana Cowin leaves Food & Wine
Jonathan Gold talks to Dana Cowin, the editor at Food & Wine, who is stepping down after 21 years at the magazine. She's leaving to become an executive at Chefs Club International, a company with restaurants in Aspen, Colo., and New York. It was a "logical next step," Cowin says.
Dana Cowin attends the 2015 Food & Wine best new chef party.
(Bennett Raglin / WireImage)
40-plus dosas in Artesia
If you love dosas, the southern Indian crispy crepes, you might want to head to Little India in Artesia. That restaurant-jammed stretch of Pioneer Boulevard is home to the recently opened Chennai Dosa Corner, where Linda Burum tells us you can find dozens of dosas on the menu.
Jonathan Gold's 101
The 101 is here! Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers. Find the list at latimes.com/jonathangold. Official hashtag #JGOLD101.
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