Thanksgiving

Use this fresh blend of spices and herbs to add pep to the Cajun-Spiced Turkey and Crawfish Gravy , or to season blackened redfish or gumbo.

Plan at least one day ahead to let the turkey—seasoned with the homemade Cajun Spice Mix—cure overnight.

The inspiration for this salad came to chef Hugh Acheson as he spoke to a friend who'd eaten at the Spotted Pig in New York City. "He'd had a salad and was telling me all the components," says Acheson. "It sounded wonderful, so I came up with my own version of it, using local ingredients from Georgia."

Slice the red beets last and keep them separate until serving so their color won't bleed onto the other vegetables.

Lo's take on cranberry sauce makes citrus the star by soaking mandarins in fragrant elderflower syrup before caramelizing them. You can use any of your favorites: tangerines, clementines, satsumas, honeys, or Minneolas. Begin this recipe 1 day ahead.

"Brining the turkey overnight keeps it moist and seasons the interior of the meat," says Lo. "The ingredients, except the cider, are classic 'red-cooking' flavorings used in Chinese cooking to braise and glaze meats like pork or duck." Tent the turkey—especially the wings—with foil if it darkens too quickly while roasting.

The addition of airy brioche gives this aromatic spiced stuffing a less dense texture than most holiday casseroles.

If you manage to have any leftovers, this moist spice cake makes a nice afternoon treat with a cup of tea. For an extra-tart garnish, serve with Citrus-Cranberry Compote .

Look for kohlrabi, a mildly sweet purple or green vegetable in the cabbage family, at better supermarkets. For a creamier, smoother purée, pass the boiled ingredients twice through a potato ricer or food mill.

Wassail is a deeply rooted tradition in the Midwest and a popular regional staple throughout the cold-weather season. Every winter as the holidays approach, many Wisconsinites still take part in the age-old "wassailing of apple trees," a ritual dating back to the fifteenth century that involves sprinkling wassail on apple trees to ensure a strong, healthy harvest and to keep the trees safe from evil spirits. Wassail always blends apples and winter holiday spices, but the sweeteners and spirits often change from recipe to recipe. This version comes from the Rittenhouse Inn in Bayfield, an area that leads apple production in Wisconsin. The cranberry juice is a perfectly tart counterpart to the sweetness of the apple cider and brown sugar, and the bourbon lends a full, rich quality, and the ginger, pepper, and spices offer a final kick of flavor.

An excellent cocktail all fall and winter long.

Francis Butler grew up on the family ranch and continues to preside over the dry, windy land. The lonesomeness of ranch life, she says, was offset by "group cooks" such as the annual Thanksgiving tamale making: "Wild turkey hunting has been a West Texas sport for as long as anybody remembers, and tamale-stuffed turkey may have been an early tip of the hat to the Mexican ranch hands who've been around for at least as long as the turkey. This recipe dates back to the early 1900s. I got it from a family whose grandmother was German but had been raised in Mexico. I make it most often in the cold months, but I've been known to put a tamale-stuffed turkey in the roasting pit in my time, as well. You can use commercial tamales, of course, but I like the two-day ritual of making tamales and then making the turkey. I always double or triple the tamales and freeze the extra. These days people use more barnyard turkey than they do wild. Before you go thinking that's a sorry thing, let me tell you this. You feed your chickens or turkey some chile peppers before you decide. That spicy sweet flavor gets into the meat and you know what they mean when they say it doesn't get any better." This stuffing is also delicious in chicken and squab. Serve with high-quality corn chips, salsa, and sour cream.

This fantastic dessert is perfect for the cool months of late fall and winter. Cubes of tender pumpkin bread are baked in a rich custard laced with bourbon and maple syrup. Crisp apple cider is the base of a buttery caramel sauce spiced with fresh ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and star anise. Forget about serving the same-old pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving and put this out instead for a new twist on two old classics. The recipe includes directions for making your own pumpkin bread to use in the pudding, but you can of course also use a loaf of pumpkin bread from your favorite bakery. Brioche or cinnamon-raisin bread would also work perfectly.

I grew up calling any side dish of seasoned, moistened, and baked bread cubes "stuffing," but I've been corrected enough times to have changed my ways: If it goes inside the turkey or chicken, it's stuffing. If it's cooked in a dish of its very own, it's officially dressing. As it so happens, I like to serve this side with more than just poultry, and I especially love the browned crust, so dressing it is! Two other key factors in delivering dynamic texture are to toast the cubes of tangy sourdough bread first and to use a combination of thinly sliced and coarsely chopped mushrooms. Roasting the mushrooms before mixing with the other ingredients heightens their deep earthy flavor while cooking off any excess liquid. Studded with salty bits of bacon and fresh herbs, this side dish is destined to become a favorite of your Thanksgiving—or any dinner—table.

Cranberries are transformed with sweet, subtly earthy dried figs and velvety, slightly spicy Pinot Noir into a chunky, jamlike chutney. Orange zest infuses the mix with its bright citrus flavor and essential oils. Ginger works well in both savory and sweet preparations, and its touch of heat bridges the wine and fruit here. You can serve this chutney instead of the standard cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, but it is also wonderful with pork and venison dishes, spread on a sandwich, or as an accompaniment to a cheese plate.

Thanksgiving is hands-down my favorite holiday. Bar Americain is open each year for Thanksgiving, and we typically serve about six hundred people before the day is over. No matter how many wonderful selections we offer on the abbreviated holiday menu, without fail turkey is the biggest seller—partly because people love it and partly, I think, out of a sense of tradition. This is the turkey that I serve at Bar Americain, with only the dressing and sides changing from year to year. This year I am pairing the all-American bird with all-American ingredients: wild mushrooms and Pinot Noir from the Pacific Northwest, figs from California, cranberries from Maine, bacon from Kentucky, and sweet potatoes from Georgia.

Daigaku Imo Hanamaru Market, a highly successful, long-running Japanese television talk show, opens with a short cooking segment every weekday morning. Finding ways to make impressive classic cuisine simpler and less technically demanding is the theme of many of the episodes. In the autumn of 2008, one of the broadcasts featured an innovative recipe for daigaku imo (candied sweet potatoes) that topped all previous viewer-rating charts. Indeed, as of this writing, nearly a year later, it remains the all-time favorite. Syrup-glazed, black sesame-studded sweet potato first became a popular snack among university students at the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, that is the origin of the name of the dish: daigaku means "university" and imo is "potato." Most recipes for daigaku imo instruct the cook to deep-fry sweet potato chunks first and glaze them afterward. Although delicious, the classic version results in a high-calorie snack that is messy both to make and to clean up. In contrast, the Hanamaru Market version offers a (relatively) healthy snack.

My most coveted pie is of the apple variety. To me, nothing says an afternoon out by the grill than having an apple pie to finish off the experience. What sets this pie apart from your normal apple pie is that I use a whopping thirteen apples that I slowly cook down with Vietnamese cinnamon and brown sugar, creating a collection of flavors so distinctively comforting, you'll never search for another apple pie recipe. Use Maker's Mark bourbon as it is currently the only gluten-free bourbon available.

By the turn of the century, the North American turkey had become familiar British fare, replacing the traditional goose at many an English Christmas table. Here it is presented in classic American style with bread stuffing and accompanied by cranberry sauce, which at this period was more like a sauce than a preserve.