Happy Thanksgiving!

Good morning and happy Thanksgiving! I'm sitting on my couch watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on television, which I can also hear out the window since we live only half a block from Central Park West, where the parade is proceeding south.

My sister also lives just off the parade route, on West 81st Street between Central Park West and Columbus, one of the two streets that are used as staging areas to inflate the famous parade balloons. In theory, only people who live on West 81st Street, and their guests, are permitted onto the north side of 81st Street. Everyone else has to walk along the much more crowded south side. Last night Kristy invited us over to share her balloon-viewing access. Given the crowds on the north side of the street, I find it hard to believe that the residents-only policy was being enforced too strictly by the NYPD, many of whom were happily snapping photos with the balloons themselves.

For pre-balloon viewing nourishment, Kristy served pizza (made during our class at Pizza A Casa and reheated on her pizza stone last night), a delicious prosciutto and mortadella ravioli which she'd picked up at Eataly, and a mixed green salad with shaved pecorino cheese, cherry tomatoes, and one of my favorite salad dressings: a brown butter and truffle oil vinaigrette. Here's the recipe for this super-rich dressing:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons truffle oil

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Cook until it begins to turn a nutty brown color and the foam subsides. Remove from heat and let cool until room temperature, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a bowl, combine the vinegars. Drizzle in the cooled butter and the oils, whisking until the dressing is well blended. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

I'll have a full report on our Thanksgiving dinner sometime this weekend.

best. bolognese. ever.

Hello long lost readers! I have been a very delinquent blogger lately and we have a lot of catching up to do. I'll start by sharing my favorite bolognese sauce recipe which is actually a hybrid of two versions of bolognese sauce from Mario Batali, one from "Molto Italiano," and another that I downloaded from the Food Network all the way back in 2000.

Ragu Bolognese

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 medium onions, finely chopped

4 stalks celery, finely chopped

2 carrots, peeled and finely chopped

5 cloves of garlic, minced

1 lb ground beef

1 lb ground pork

1/2 lb ground veal

1/4 cup pancetta, ground in a food processor

1/2 cup whole milk

8 oz canned diced tomatoes

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 cup dry white wine

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

salt and fresh ground pepper

In a large heavy-bottomed pot, heat olive oil and butter over medium heat. Add onion, celery, carrots, and garlic and cook over medium heat until vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add beef, pork, veal, and pancetta and stir until vegetables. Cook over high heat, stirring occasionally until all meat has browned, 15 to 20 minutes. Add milk and simmer until mostly reduced, about ten minutes. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, wine and thyme leaves. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer for at least two hours and up to two and a half hours, until you get the desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper.

This recipe yields more than 2 quarts (8 cups) of sauce. You'll only need 1/2 that amount for one pound of pasta. The rest can go right in your freezer.

I like to add a little of the pasta's cooking water to the sauce and add the pasta to the simmering sauce when it's still pretty al dente and finish cooking it in the sauce before adding lots of grated cheese.

roasted sweet potato and cauliflower curry

Sinus infection. Ugh. I prescribed myself something simple but spicy and made a roasted sweet potato and cauliflower curry inspired by the recipe on page 53 of "Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers," a fabulous cookbook full of flavorful but light and easy to make dishes, mostly of the vegetarian variety.

Serves 6

2 large or 3 small sweet potatoes, peeled

2 onions, peeled

1 head of cauliflower

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

1 13.5 oz can of unsweetened coconut milk

2 cups diced tomatoes

2 tablespoons peeled and grated fresh ginger*

4 tablespoons curry powder

salt and pepper

*a microplane grater is excellent for grating ginger

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Cut onions and sweet potatoes into 1" pieces and spread out onto a baking sheet. Drizzle with 1/2 the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss the vegetables around on the baking sheet to make sure they are coated with the olive oil. Cut cauliflower into bite-size florets and spread onto a second baking sheet. Drizzle with remaining olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and mix to coat the cauliflower florets with the oil.

3. Place both baking sheets in the oven and roast vegetables for at least 20 minutes, maybe up to 25 or 30 minutes for the sweet potatoes and onions. You don't want them to burn, but you do want them to get browned and be fully cooked. Mix the vegetables around on the baking sheet after the first 10 minutes, and then every five minutes thereafter.

4. In the meantime, heat coconut milk, diced tomatoes, ginger, and curry powder in a large pot until just simmering. Season with salt and pepper.

5. When the vegetables are roasted to your satisfaction, turn off the heat on the curry sauce and add the vegetables. Stir to combine and season. Serve with rice or brown rice.

This curry is really not that spicy, (I did use a fairly mild store-bought curry powder though the Moosewood cookbook has a recipe to mix your own), but I will have to confirm that later this week when I can smell/taste things normally again.