Don’t save all your cooking for turkey day — pour yourself a drink and start things off slowly this weekend with some easy side dishes that can be made ahead and kept or frozen until Thanksgiving.

1 Candied whole cranberries can hold in the refrigerator for two weeks. Or make some of Mama Stamberg’s famous cranberry freezer relish.

2 Pumpkin cheesecake freezes well or can be made four days ahead and stored in the fridge.

3 A toasted pecan vinaigrette makes a lovely dressing for Thanksgiving green beans — prepare them separately a day ahead and assemble when you’re ready to eat.

4 Mashed potatoes should be made on the day itself, but not necessarily at the last minute. Keep them warm by putting them in a heat-proof bowl, covering them tightly with plastic wrap or foil and setting them over a bain marie.

5 And if you really can’t stand the heat, this make-ahead gravy (secret: turkey wings) will get you out of the kitchen and to the Thanksgiving table in no time.

Are you spending this Thanksgiving with just one or two other people, or just don’t feel like a big traditional production, whole bird, side dishes and all?

These days you can buy the bird in so many forms — turkey pieces, turkey cutlets (or tenders), turkey sausages, smoked wings and legs, rolled or bone-in breast roasts — that there are endless options for cooking turkey.

With that in mind, we put together a simple, elegant saltimbocca that’s a take on the classic Italian veal saltimbocca. We substituted turkey cutlets, rolled up with prosciutto and sage, lightly fried, finished with a white wine pan sauce and served over a bed of pasta.

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In the 1500s, Europeans found turkeys in Mexico, domesticated them back at home and then repatriated them to America when they settled in the new world.

Our big, bland national bird was prized by pilgrims and it’s still the main event at our annual feast of shared blessings and family feuds. Modern culinary wisdom holds that brining is the path to a perfectly cooked turkey, but the pilgrims didn’t brine.

If you missed Root Source: Turkey, make sure you sign up to get the next one in your inbox. You can get Cookthink updates on Facebook by becoming a fan.

Browning onions takes patience: the heat must be relatively low, and you must remember to stir the onions from time to time in order for them not to brown too quickly.

Patience, unfortunately, is not my strongest virtue. I tend to hike up the heat, add more oil, and then get upset when the onions burn.

A colleague named Edward taught me to add a bit of water to the pan as soon as I think the onions are browning too quickly. The water not only prevents the onions from sticking and burning, but also cools the pan by lowering the temperature. (Plus, adding water instead of oil keeps the calories down.)

You can also apply this technique to cooking garlic, Brussels sprouts or any other vegetables.

-Olga

We love turkey as much as any American, and have spent our share of Thanksgivings wrestling with the best way to master that monster of a bird — brining it, smoking it, deep frying it, roasting it smeared with butter. But to be honest, we’re usually not convinced that the end result is worth all that effort.

This year, we decided to give Thanksgiving a trial run and experiment with a no-brainer preparation that puts a turkey on the table without the stress and in just a little over an hour.

We asked the butcher to cut up a whole turkey into pieces, and roasted them until perfectly crisp, juicy and flavorful.

Here’s how:

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Peggy Knickerbocker is a San Francisco-based freelance food and travel writer and a contributing editor to Saveur and Gourmet magazines. She is also the author of several cookbooks including Simple Soirees: Seasonal Menus for Sensational Dinner Parties. Learn more about Peggy at her website.

Sweet or salty?

Salty

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Good flaked salt and olive oil.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

The sizzle of meat once it hits a nice, hot pan.

What’s your favorite cooking smell?

Onions and garlic cooking in olive oil.

What are the qualities you most admire in a dish?

Simplicity and the use of the best possible ingredients. Read the rest of this entry »

A weekly column on the psychology of food and cooking.

I sometimes wonder why it is we make such a production out of Thanksgiving — slaving for hours over the proverbial hot stove, gathering family members who have nothing in common but DNA, eating too much of the same old unhealthy standbys.

But traditions die hard, and for every cheery well-adjusted person who is looking forward to sitting down a week from today and sharing a meal with friends and family, there is another who is working themselves into a frenzy of dread.

Got gravy anxiety? No idea how to roast a turkey? All out of recipe ideas?

Thanksgiving anxiety is a common ailment. Luckily, everyone wants to help: Oprah, Martha, Dr. Joyce Brothers. There’s advice for single dads. Working moms. Holiday stress is such a hot topic, it can apparently fill a book.

How do you cope with Thanksgiving stress?

Like just about any other root vegetable, radishes keep best the closer their storage conditions mimic their natural environment — the cool, dark, insulated underground. If you’re ambitious about making them last and have the space for it, you can fill a small storage container with sand, bury the radishes and keep the container in a cool place — like a basement or root cellar — for up to a month.

Otherwise, radishes meant to be eaten raw will last 4 to 5 days trimmed of their greens and wrapped in plastic or a damp towel in the coldest part of your refrigerator. Radishes meant to be cooked will keep a little longer — about a week depending on how long they were out of the ground before you bought them.

Either way, don’t clean your radishes until you’re ready to eat them. And if your radishes have gone a little soft (or you want to make them extra-crisp), just soak them in ice water for an hour or so. The cold water will firm them up. You can even store them in ice cold water in the refrigerator, but only for a day or two before they absorb too much water.

Related: How To Prep Radishes (Cookthink blog)
Related: Root Source: Radish (Cookthink)
Related: Radishes: The Raw And The Cooked (Cookthink blog)
Related: Two Easy Radish Appetizers (Cookthink blog)

For the past several months, we’ve been fortunate to have Olga Berman as a Cookthink editorial intern.

An economist by day, Olga moonlights as a food blogger, a Sur la Table kitchen assistant, and a recipe tester for cookbook author and nutritionist Robyn Webb.

In addition to working on our recipe database, recently Olga has begun contributing reference articles to Cookthink. (If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between a yam and a sweet potato, she’s got you covered.) Help us welcome Olga and be sure to visit her at her blog Mango & Tomato!

Vinegar pie sounds strange; but it is an old-fashioned American treat that tastes like butterscotch with a kick. It is a refreshing change from the usual pumpkin, apple pie or pecan pies at the holiday table. And guests and family will never guess the secret ingredient!

Related: More recipes by Barbara Kafka at Cookthink.com