Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Eater - All

Eater - All

What Did Mugs Ever Do to Martha Stewart?

Posted: 16 Nov 2021 03:01 PM PST

You Definitely Can’t Fly With Gravy in Your Carry-On

Posted: 16 Nov 2021 10:12 AM PST

An xray overhead view of a full pie in a suitcase.
Alyssa Nassner

But green bean casserole is fine. These are the rules of flying with a Thanksgiving feast.

Editor's note: Thanksgiving traces its origins to an uneasy, temporary alliance between 17th-century English settlers and members of the Wampanoag Confederacy. This year, Eater is choosing to acknowledge that history in our coverage of the holiday.

Now that Thanksgiving is just a week away, many people across the country are already planning their turkey day spread. That's especially true for the 53 million Americans who are gearing up to travel to visit family with food in tow.

In addition to figuring out how to make your Thanksgiving food fit into a suitcase and keep it at food-safe temperatures in transit, plenty of folks across the country are also trying to figure out which foods they can — and can't — bring on an airplane. That's evidenced by the onslaught of food-related questions directed to @AskTSA, a Twitter account operated by the Transportation Security Administration that can help you figure out how to pack everything from a can of cranberry sauce to a literal panini press.

"We know that when people are traveling, especially for Thanksgiving, they oftentimes want to contribute something to the holiday table," says Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration. "We encourage people to really think about how they're planning to transport these items."

According to Farbstein, it's possible to take pretty much anything that you might find on a Thanksgiving table on an airplane. What you do have to figure out, though, is whether or not the item is allowed in carry-on luggage. As you've undoubtedly heard a disembodied voice at the airport say one thousand times over the loudspeaker, the TSA's guidelines stipulate that liquids, gels, aerosols, and creams can only be carried onto a plane in one single quart-sized plastic bag, in containers that are smaller than 3.4 ounces. Considering the size of most Thanksgiving feasts, those logistics just aren't workable for turkey and dressing. But it's still theoretically possible to transport an entire turkey and all the fixins as long as it's packed safely inside your checked bags.

What exactly constitutes a liquid, though? Farbstein uses a handy (and jingle-ready) rhyme to help figure out how to pack: "If you can spill it, spread it, spray it, pump it, or pour it, and it's larger than 3.4 ounces, it has to go into your checked bags," she says. "Anything that's liquid, gel-like, or spreadable isn't allowed in carry-on luggage."

Notably, items that are liquid but have frozen completely solid, like a pint container full of turkey stock, are considered to be solids by the TSA, and can be packed in carry-on bags. So are baked goods, like pies and cakes, and even slightly sloshy common Thanksgiving sides like mac and cheese or green bean casserole. Fresh vegetables are also okay to bring through security in carry-ons, as are chocolates and spices.

Here's where things get complicated: cranberry sauce. Even though the texture is mostly solid — especially those classic cans — it's still considered a liquid for the purposes of making it through a TSA checkpoint, even if it's still totally sealed. The same goes for gravy, and other canned goods like candied yams or fruit cocktail, as well as homemade jams and preserves.

"Keep in mind: You can still bring all these things," Farbstein says. "We're just saying please, please pack it the right way. If you show up at a checkpoint with a prohibited item, you're not going to be allowed to take it through."

Even if you do perfectly parse out TSA's guidelines and pack your Thanksgiving bounty appropriately, it's possible that certain items could still trigger an alarm when being examined by an officer. As such, you should plan to arrive at the airport early if you're traveling with food, and don't be surprised if your food storage containers of sweet potato casserole are swabbed down to ensure that they don't contain any traces of explosives.

When it comes time to fly home, these rules also apply to the leftover pie and stuffing you're planning to smuggle back from grandma's house. If the dishes require refrigeration, you'll want to make sure that you've got an ice pack that's still frozen completely solid to make sure that your food doesn't spoil in transit.

"Even in checked baggage, food items regularly trigger alarms and when the agent goes to open it, it's rancid," she says. "You definitely want to make sure you have a nice, solid, non-melted ice pack."

To minimize time spent in the security screening line, Farbstein suggests removing food items from your luggage and placing them directly into the bin that slides through the X-ray machine. (Bring a plastic trash bag to line the bottom of the bin before placing containers inside.) In addition to packing correctly, these tips can help reduce the likelihood that a TSA officer will ask you open up your bag for a lengthy search.

If, for whatever reason, you need to travel with cookware, items like baking dishes and nonstick skillets of any size can be carried on planes, but hefty cast-iron skillets are out. "No tools over 7 inches are allowed, and that includes cast-iron skillets," Farbstein says. "Somebody could conk somebody else on the head with it, and then it becomes a bludgeoning instrument." That rule also applies to rolling pins over 7 inches, which must be packed in checked luggage.

Few things are worse than being told you have to throw something valuable or, worse yet, delicious away at an airport security checkpoint, and being prepared for what TSA will and won't allow will help avoid both losing your precious bowl of Nana's cranberry sauce and holding up yourself and your fellow travelers in line.

"We know that people want to travel with food, and we want to make sure that nothing that you're bringing through that could cause a catastrophic incident on the plane," Farbstein says. "It's going to be more crowded than usual, so do yourself a favor. Get there early. Oh, and wear a mask."

Chicago Bar Owner Allegedly Used Home Spy Cameras to Record Nude Footage of House Sitters

Posted: 16 Nov 2021 10:09 AM PST

Hear Me Out: There Should Be More Bread at Thanksgiving

Posted: 16 Nov 2021 10:00 AM PST

A sourdough bread in the shape of a turkey sits central on a dinner table surrounded by baskets of rolls. Illustration.

Often relegated to filler, it deserves a rightful place as part of the feast  

Editor's note: Thanksgiving traces its origins to an uneasy, temporary alliance between 17th-century English settlers and members of the Wampanoag Confederacy. This year, Eater is choosing to acknowledge that history in our coverage of the holiday.

Bread is frequently the best part of any meal, but you wouldn't know that at Thanksgiving. Relegated to second fiddle in stuffing, or as a side of side dishes in cornbread and dinner rolls, bread is as sidelined and forgotten at Thanksgiving as those wilted green beans that your aunt keeps bringing but no one ever eats. When they're done right, stuffing, cornbread, and dinner rolls can be the height of the Thanksgiving form, but for those of us who love Thanksgiving sides more than the big show, a fluffy dinner roll can do the irreparable damage of filling you up too fast.

Bread at Thanksgiving should not be filler, leaving you with little room for mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and pie. Instead, it should shine in its own right, be celebrated for its charm, and given its rightful spot at the adult table. No more shitty airless fluff. There are a number of ways to include bread in your Thanksgiving dinner menu that go beyond pale white buns. You just have to believe enough in the power of bread to make it happen. Here are a few suggestions to help you achieve that very worthwhile goal.

Artichoke Dip with Ripped Bread Dippers

When all your guests are arriving but you're still running around cleaning bathrooms and basting turkey, the best distraction is artichoke dip. Throw the dip in a decorative bowl, rip up a loaf of sourdough bread, and arrange the jagged chunks around the bowl. Aside from being delicious, this will keep your guests from asking you over and over again: When is dinnertime?

Soup in a Bread Bowl

Bread bowls aren't just for clam chowder at Fisherman's Wharf: If you're planning any kind of soup dish for your first course at Thanksgiving, bread is the best vessel. Whether you've got butternut squash soup on the boil or you've made Italian wedding soup in advance (as my family does, for whatever reason), no one will be disappointed to be eating it from inside a tiny loaf of bread. If you're crafty and have some green pipe cleaners, you can even make it vaguely resemble a pumpkin.

Poilâne's Thanksgiving Bread Turkey

Though technically made with so-called "dead dough" (or bread that is yeast-free, as to be manipulated into artful forms without spoiling its shape), decorated bread will set you apart from even the most Stewart-esque of Thanksgiving hosts. Take a tip from the queen of French bread, Apollonia Poilâne, in her cookbook Poilâne: "Decorating a loaf of bread in bas-relief, with, say, sheaves of wheat, is a venerable French tradition." You can follow in those French footsteps by making a sourdough boule, baking it for one-third of the time, applying your dead bread decorations to it with a spritz of water to the surface, and then returning it to the oven to bake until it's done. Sheaves of wheat or a jaunty-looking bread turkey will please any crowd.

Gigantic Cheddar Biscuits

Why wait for the next-day sandwich when you can have something better on Thanksgiving Day itself? A batch of gigantic cheddar biscuits — made with jalapenos or chilies or any other flavor you fancy — means your family and friends can assemble sandwiches themselves on the big day. Forget filling up a plate: try stacking up a biscuit sandwich.

Bread and Butter Pudding

Like stuffing but sweeter, bread and butter pudding is an excellent way to finish any Thanksgiving meal, not only because it's the perfect canvas for any number of flavors (from pineapple and coconut to cinnamon and raisin, to start), but because it's a wonderful way to use up the extra bread you have from making stuffing. Were you gifted a panettone too early in the season? Now you can turn it into bread pudding. Put your guests on pie duty.

Hoagie Rolls for the Next-Day Turkey Sandwich

For many discerning holiday enthusiasts, the day after Thanksgiving is the highlight of the season. The crowds are gone, the leftovers are plentiful, and it is finally time to eat your next-day sandwich in silence. When you're doing your grocery shopping for the big meal on Thursday, make sure to pick up a dozen long sandwich rolls for the day after. The best way to enjoy your triple-stacked turkey-mashed-potato-gravy-cranberry sandwich is on a hoagie roll, accept no substitutes.

Cindy Echevarria is a freelance illustrator based in Miami. She's inspired by bright color palettes, badass women, and the tropics.

How to Catch Your Own Dungeness Crab, According to a YouTube Sushi Chef

Posted: 16 Nov 2021 09:53 AM PST

Hatch Are Fine, But Have You Tried the Chiles of Northern New Mexico?

Posted: 16 Nov 2021 08:31 AM PST

It's time to try the sweeter, hotter cousins of the chile state's lesser-known heritage pods

"Chile growing started up here," says Danny Farrar of Rancho La Jolla, a chile farm in the small town of Velarde. By "up here," he means northern New Mexico, not the southern part of the state — a distinction he feels compelled to draw in light of the ubiquity of the almighty Hatch, which is what most people think of when they think of the New Mexican green chile.

The southern New Mexican village of Hatch has a massively popular chile festival every year, and, as a result of one of the most successful agriculture marketing campaigns of the last century, the "Hatch" name has become something of a catchall for New Mexican chiles, despite the wide variety of strains found throughout the state. "A lot of those 'Hatch chiles' aren't even grown in New Mexico," says Matt Romero, who farms chiles in northern New Mexico's Espanola Valley. Farrar and Romero are among a handful of chile farmers in the northern part who are devoted to growing traditional, unaltered strains via small, mom-and-pop operations. "Up here," Farrar says, "it's truck farming: I can put everything I grow in the back of my pickup and go to the farmer's market in Santa Fe." By contrast, southern New Mexican chile farmers might need a fleet of trucks and farm dozens of acres.

A scattering of small homes dot a desert landscape with a tall mesa in the background.
Farmers say the high altitude and cooler temperatures of New Mexico are ideal for growing chiles.

Of course one need not dismiss the Hatch chile to appreciate the chiles of the north. Real Hatch chiles are delicious — they were bred way back in 1907 to be mild, meaty, and flavorful. But the heirloom northern New Mexico chiles are equally worthy of attention, and while they don't have anything close to the same name recognition (or marketing budget) as the Hatch, their underground status is part of the appeal. "In certain areas of California, there's great wine, but most people don't know about it," Romero says by way of analogy, referring to the state's smaller winemaking regions. "Those wines are consumed by a local, knowledgeable group of people, and the best varieties never leave the region. It's the same up here with the chiles. We grow small boutique acres. We sell locally."

Despite farming at high altitude, Romero and other locals claim that the growing conditions of the Espanola Valley — which straddles unceded traditional homelands of the Pueblo, Tigua, Jicarilla Apache, and Ute people — are just right for chiles. "We're at 10,000, 12,000 feet," Romero says. "We have four seasons. It gets cool at night even in the dead of summer. And our days are longer. In the south, those regions weren't originally farming areas — they irrigated. Here, the Indigenous have been farming forever."

But the biggest part of the appeal of northern New Mexican chiles is their flavor. "Green chile's why you move here; red chile's why you stay," says Romero. But "the really good chile comes from the heritage varieties," says Gillian Joyce, executive director of Alianza Agro-Cultura de Taos, a local agriculture advocacy group. She's talking about the non-hybridized chiles that families sling from roadside stands between the north New Mexico towns of Velarde and Rinconada, 23 miles south of Taos; that local farmers sell at farmer's markets, and northern New Mexicans bring in bushels to dinner parties. Despite their beloved status among northerners, these are largely unnamed chiles — chiles that, like heirloom tomatoes, aren't the result of large-scale commercial agriculture, but the product of history.

"They're all a little different," Farrar says. "They could be from Santo Domingo Pueblo. Sandia Pueblo. San Felipe Pueblo. Each little village has its own strain. But in general, the northern New Mexican green chile is thinner-skinned, maybe because we have a shorter growing season. And it's a little sweeter, especially when it turns red." (Red chiles are just green chiles that eventually change color.)

A man with a graying ponytail stands amid rows of chile plants.
Danny Farrar grows chiles along with other fruits and vegetables on his farm outside Velarde, NM.
Bushels of red chiles hang from a tree.
New Mexico's state question is "Red or green?" but red chiles are just green chiles that have been left to mature.

To say that New Mexicans take chiles seriously would be an understatement. The official state question (the only one in the nation) is Red or green?, and local enthusiasm for the chiles is especially high in fall, when green chile season is at its peak.

Like New Mexico itself, the green chile symbolically fuses the cultures of the Hispano and Indigenous peoples that have inhabited the land for centuries. "New Mexico has its own distinct culture," says the state's poet laureate Levi Romero, who teaches Chicano studies at the University of New Mexico. "Especially in the northern part of the state, where our origins are European and Mexican." (New Mexico only became an American state in 1912.) "We are a mix of Native Indigenous blood and Spanish blood. That makes us New Mexican, and so does our food."

A canopy of trees hangs over a small country road.
Fall is peak season for chile harvesting.

Of course, the so-called green chile is not a monolith. Throughout New Mexico there are maybe 100 strains of the long green pods the state is known for, and connoisseurs like Farrar could probably Pepsi Challenge them. Northern chiles tend to be sweeter and also hotter (though not exclusively so). And it's because of that heat that it can be hard to find local chiles served at restaurants in northern tourist centers like Taos and Santa Fe — restaurants often prefer to play it safe by serving milder southern chiles to out-of-towners.

Visitors who want to experience the northern New Mexican chile can hit the weekend farmers markets in Santa Fe, Espanola, and especially Taos, where they can sample the work of local celebrity chile roaster Marcos Cortez at Cid's Food Market. Cortez's family has been growing chiles here since the 1980s; he learned the art of roasting at 13 and, now at 38, he's a veteran 20-year employee of Cid's and a chile-roasting purist.

A man in a red cap and mask stands over a smoking metal chile roaster in a parking lot, with boxes of chiles in the foreground.
Marcos Cortez has been roasting chiles for Cid's Food Market for more than 20 years.

"You have to keep an eye on your chile," Cortez tells me. "You have to pay attention so it doesn't burn. I use an old-school hand-held roaster that Danny [Farrar] sold us and it gives me control when I'm flipping." He knows by the sound of the whooshing when his flame has reached the ideal temperature. "The main trick," he says, "is sweating it, cooking it in a plastic bag. That helps to blister the skin."

Joe Marcoline, owner of the small-batch farm-to-bottle hot sauce brand Taos Hum, grows 20 different kinds of chiles at Walking Trout Farm, his 26 acres in Velarde, outside Taos. He picks one of the classic northern New Mexico green chiles and holds it up to the light. "It's darker green," he says, comparing it to the Hatch. "Hotter, with a real distinctive, robust autumn flavor."

With the exception of Farrar and a scattering of others, most farmers don't even attempt to grow chiles this far north in the state, but with his background as a hydrogeologist, Marcoline located what he considers a "rare microclimate that's perfect for peppers," and built his own irrigation system, greenhouses, wood-fired bed systems, and pumps. "The harvest is predictably abundant," he says of the area, "and the colors are always vibrant, just like the Taos sunsets."

A man walks through a green house full of plants.
Joe Marcoline grows chiles for a series of hot sauces in north New Mexico.
Red and green chiles with char marks are piled in a plastic bag.
Sweating roasted chiles in a plastic bag is key to getting blistered skin, says Mario Cortez.

The divide between the northern and southern chiles is indicative of a larger cultural divide within New Mexico, one that goes far beyond matters of heat and pod color. "Northern New Mexico is unique," says Farrar. "We were isolated for hundreds of years, but [culturally] southern New Mexico is more like Texas. The state's divided in half."

The split is largely economic, as well. Matt Romero claims that in the north, "Santa Fe is really the only wealthy city. A lot of people have been here a long time and have become farmers by necessity." In his county of Rio Arriba, the poverty rate hovered around 24 percent in 2019. The chiles, then, have become an important point of pride for Northern New Mexicans, especially for the small-scale farmers who've persisted here in the face of bigger-budgeted, commercial-scale operations in the south.

"I was an electrician for 20, 25 years, but I returned to farming," says Farrar. "Farming is how I grew up. But you have to love it. It's a lot of work. We get hailstorms, frost. It's risky. But it's my connection to my grandparents. And there's something about watching things grow," he says. "If you're ever irrigating under a full moon, the trees shimmer and shine."

Diana Spechler is a novelist and essayist based in Texas. Adria Malcolm is a photojournalist and cinematographer based in her hometown of Albuquerque, NM, focusing on long-term immersive stories.

The Case for Thanksgiving Side Salad

Posted: 16 Nov 2021 07:26 AM PST

A basket cornucopia abundant with greens of all shapes and sizes; cabbage, kale, broccoli, and carrot greens spill out. Illustration.

On a holiday of abundance, a bite of crunchy greens can offer its own rewards

Editor's note: Thanksgiving traces its origins to an uneasy, temporary alliance between 17th-century English settlers and members of the Wampanoag Confederacy. This year, Eater is choosing to acknowledge that history in our coverage of the holiday.

A few years ago, a chef friend introduced me to the concept of salad. Not the actual leafy pile, but the purpose that salad can serve when it's not presented in massive quantities as your entire desk lunch. She had been to dinner at Porsena (RIP), and between the meat and pasta and foie gras, there had been an escarole salad that she couldn't stop raving about. The greens cut through the richness of everything else that was being served, providing some much-needed roughage and, amazingly, letting everyone eat more than if their stomachs had been full of only animal fat and cheese.

This is why I'm begging my families to include salad on the Thanksgiving menu from now on.

My families have mostly treated Thanksgiving salad as something that would take up precious plate space that could otherwise be occupied by potatoes, turkey, and mac and cheese. The point of this holiday is abundance, and salads, according to their logic, are anathema to abundance. I don't blame them — or myself — for thinking this. For my entire childhood, salad was spoken of as "diet food," alternately a virtue-signaling or self-punishing order. Yes, I enjoyed running rampant at the Pizza Hut salad bar, but that was mostly to fill my wooden bowl with shredded cheddar, those little crunchy breadsticks, and ranch dressing. If you dined on anything that was overwhelmingly lettuces, you had an agenda.

But I'm not 10 anymore, and I've come to enjoy salads on their own terms, whether it's a garlicky, pungent Caesar, spinach in a warm vinaigrette, or whatever vegetables I have in my fridge thrown in a bowl with some yogurt sauce and a hard-boiled egg. Every adult I know agrees vegetables are good! And yet, when it comes to Thanksgiving and other heavy-eating holidays, everyone seems to go right back to saying salad is a waste of effort and space, and the only good vegetable is one cooked to hell in bacon.

I'm not saying I want salad at the Thanksgiving table to provide a "healthier" option on a night of riches. I'm saying that a crucial component of those riches is a variety of flavor and texture, something that salad does an incredible job of providing when it's not treated like an afterthought or a punishment. I think of how hearty and refreshing a broccoli caesar would be, or a corn chowder salad, or something cooked, like a grilled eggplant salad with coconut milk dressing. And I cherish every holiday where a cousin has brought a bowl of shredded brussels sprouts with toasted almonds.

Having a salad on the table also helps me enjoy the rest of the food more. Bite after bite of scalloped potatoes, gravy-doused turkey, and my family's Bengali shrimp masala is delicious, but I have to stop too quickly, my mouth slick and my stomach heavy. A bite of crunchy greens offers a bright reset, letting me go back for seconds. Which is basically the whole point of Thanksgiving. So maybe this year, it's time to stop considering salad as a waste of space.

Cindy Echevarria is a freelance illustrator based in Miami. She's inspired by bright color palettes, badass women, and the tropics.

The Gift for a Host That I Always Return To

Posted: 16 Nov 2021 06:25 AM PST

Two golden serving spoons on a marble background.
Little Adventures/Shutterstock

Trust me, everyone you know could use a pair of serving spoons

This post originally appeared in the November 15, 2021 edition of The Move, a place for Eater's editors to reveal their recommendations and pro dining tips — sometimes thoughtful, sometimes weird, but always someone's go-to move. Subscribe now.

I don't have enough spoons. The degree of the shortage truly hit home during the pandemic, when 100 percent of my family was suddenly eating three meals a day plus snacks at home, the vast majority of which involved cereal, soup, or something that required targeted scooping. But it's also something I've been aware of for years — mostly whenever I was entertaining and I suddenly realized that, uh, well, no, I don't have three serving spoons. Or any presentable tongs, for that matter, or at least ones that aren't currently crusted in whatever I was just cooking. I don't really have any of the utensils needed for all the "rustic, effortless, family-style" dishes I'm about to plunk on the table. So I would always end up frantically running around at the last minute, digging up whatever worked — several times that included sticking some silicone baby spoons into the dips and an ice cream scooper in the mashed potatoes. (Which honestly wasn't a bad look.)

So yeah, I need more serving utensils. But every year, as soon as the holiday entertaining season is over, I forget this fact and go back to buying myself all kinds of other nonsensical impulse purchases like closet organizers and some magic purple Instagram lipstick — but never a damn spoon. Why? Because it's just one of those things that everybody needs, but nobody ever buys for themselves — too utilitarian to count as self-care. And this is where you can be the hero we all need. Please, the next time you're invited over to someone's house for a meal, you can and should bring serving utensils as a hostess gift.

Unlike that nice bottle of wine that the host feels obligated to share with the group but actually wants to hoard, the serving utensils can be put to use right away without diminishing in value. Is it a potluck? Even better! Bring your dish along with some cute designer spoon and tell the host it's theirs to keep. And yes, cute designer utensils, it turns out, are everywhere. Check out these incredible glass spoons, or this chic glazed stoneware pair that's perfect for salads. You can go vintage, with a whole set of colorful melamine, or go a little rococo with actual friggin' silver. Even some basic tongs can make a statement in the right color. Hear this: Gifting flowers is fine, but they die; good tongs are forever.

At a time when there isn't much to be certain of beyond climate change and Pete Davidson's dating prowess, you can be 10,000 percent sure that whoever invited you to that dinner party a) is unprepared for the night's utensil needs and b) will think of you every time they're looking for something to scoop Brussels sprouts out of a casserole dish. (They may even remember to invite you for the next one.) And when it's your turn to throw the shindig, you better hope your guests do the same.

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