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pot luck

“Happy Accidents on Thanksgiving”

I usually don’t cook Thanksgiving Dinner. It’s often relegated to my Bibi, my cousin Dalia, or Craig’s mom Marjorie (who is a spectacular cook). But this year, it was my turn. Craig’s parents were in town and we were planning a feast for my Dad’s house for Friday evening. (Thursday was spent with my mom’s side of the family for our traditional Persian Thanksgiving—two turkeys (one fried, one roasted) in the center of the table surrounded by plates of all different kinds of Persian rice and two kinds of choresh—savory meat and vegetable stews that are poured on top of the rice). Delish.

While my dad can make a turkey, his ability to "make" sides or soups is really limited to heating up food from the Vinegar Factory or Park East Kosher Butcher. So he signed up for making the bird and I volunteered to make the sides and desserts.

I was excited for the chance to cook for my family, something I don’t get to do very often. But I wasn’t sure what to make. I was sort of all over the place, but when I read New York Magazine’s Holiday Food Issue, I was inspired. I decided to make most of their Greenmarket-inspired recipes—the herb sausage stuffing from Bill Telepan, the Brussels sprout and potato gratin from Butter’s chef Alex Guarnaschelli, and the maple-whipped sweet potatoes from Forge’s Marc Forgione. To start, I'd made my own recipe for butternut squash and ginger soup. And for dessert, I was making another of my own creations (and my dad’s favorite): pumpkin pecan cupcakes with cream cheese icing. And I cheated and bought a pie from Dawn and Dave at One Girl Cookies.   

Friday was spent cooking and listening to music, and it was just a perfect day. By 4pm, everything was cooked, packed and ready to go, and I took a cab from my place in Brooklyn up to my dad’s apartment on the Upper East Side. I unloaded the bundles filled with Tupperware containers and casseroles and went about heating up our dinner. Everything smelled and looked great and I was feeling like maybe dinner wouldn’t be that bad, and we wouldn’t need to order in Chinese.

But when I poured the soup into the stockpot to heat up, something was wrong. It was surprisingly thick and almost lumpy. I knew I might have to thin it out a bit, and I had about a pint of chicken stock with me just in case, but this was ridiculous. It was practically the consistency of mashed potatoes. I should have realized that this was precisely what my “soup” was —my mashed and whipped sweet potatoes—but I didn’t. I was convinced I was heating up my butternut squash soup. And so I thinned and thinned and tasted and seasoned (still not realizing I was eating sweet potatoes) until it was a perfectly creamy smooth soup.

Then I pulled out the rest of the contents of my bags and discovered that I had indeed just lost one of my side dishes. I had turned Marc Forgione’s maple whipped sweet potatoes into maple whipped sweet potato soup. Since we didn’t need both soups, I told my dad he would have soup for the week, and stashed it the half gallon container of butternut in his fridge. But I was pretty upset with my self. How could I have done this? Mistaken sweet potatoes for butternut squash soup? And those sweet potatoes tasted so good when I tried them at home! I could not believe I turned them into soup. In any case, I decided to serve the soup and pray for the best.

Once everyone had found a seat at the table and started in on their soup, I braced myself for bowls left uneaten with polite excuses to follow: “WOW, Andrea, this soup is so good but my doctor said no more soup,” or “Sweet potatoes give me hives, sorry I can’t have any.” Instead, the soup disappeared, one slurp at a time. Perhaps my family was just being nice, but I think they may have actually really liked it.

I’d heard of kitchen accidents yielding great results, and I have to say, this was one of those times. So, if you’re looking for a great winter soup, check out the recipe for Marc Forgione’s Maple Whipped Sweet Potatoes, just add a pint of chicken or vegetable stock to the finished recipe (without the butter sauce), heat and serve. You might garnish with a dollop of spiced yogurt just to cut the sweetness of the soup, but we liked it just fine the way it was. And thankful we all were. 

Do you have a kitchen accident to share? Tell me about it! Share your two cents, below!

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Posted: November 30, 2008

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