🍠 3 Thanksgiving recipes Boulder cooks swear by

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Today’s weekly feed includes classic family Thanksgiving side dishes. Plus: A much-loved Boulder bakery and brewery are closing.

Send comments and information about Boulder County restaurants, food classes, events, tastings and tours to nibbles@boulderreportinglab.org.

— John Lehndorff

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Thanksgiving is my favorite communal meal of the year, sparking dreams of specific feast-day flavors. Forget about the turkey and gravy — the side dishes are the real stars of the meal that connect back to family and our cultural origin stories.

For me, Thanksgiving must include my family’s famous turkey stuffing. When I asked chef Johnny Curiel, owner of Boulder’s Cozobi Fonda Fina and a bevy of other award-winning eateries, he immediately said: “Sweet potatoes.” For Phillippa Clark, the owner of Moxie Bread Company, the answer was: “Pie.”

However, these are not conventional dishes.

The Lehndorff bird is always stuffed with an awesome combination of Italian sausage and potatoes created by my grandparents in the apartment above the grocery store they owned in Connecticut.

Michael and Vincenza Mazzola knew nothing about Thanksgiving when they arrived in Connecticut from Sicily. Having never seen a turkey before, Nanna sought stuffing advice from a French-Canada-born woman who lived down the hall. She recommended a meat-and-potato stuffing like the filling in tourtière — pork and potato pies.

Nanna decided to use the spicy and sweet Italian sausage Papa crafted in his market — an all-American tale of immigrant ingenuity.

John Lehndorff’s maternal grandparents, Michael and Vincenza Mazzola. Courtesy of the Lehndorff family

I didn’t know there was another kind of stuffing – made with bread cubes – until I was 10 years old. That was about the time I realized my father, who grew up in Austria, had a German accent. He dearly loved everything about Thanksgiving and his adopted home.

Chef and restaurateur Johnny Curiel was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, but raised in the mountains near Breckenridge.

“In Guadalajara’s street markets, there are camoteros, which are street carts that roast sweet potatoes — camote asado, and serve them warm, often with honey or condensed milk. It’s one of my favorite dishes whenever I travel back home, so it felt fitting to bring a piece of that to Colorado with me,” Curiel says. 

His agave-roasted sweet potatoes are served with fennel and cumin requesón, salsa macha and salsa seca de semillas.

Phillippa Clark grew up in London, England, in a foodie family but didn’t discover Thanksgiving until she arrived in the United States and did not develop a taste for pumpkin pie. 

“My family always celebrates Thanksgiving with old friends and I always like to bring pie. It’s not a traditional pie, but one I make up based on fruits I find growing in our backyard. It reminds me of home. This year I foraged and saved tart heirloom apples, rhubarb and mulberries for the pie,” Clark says.

John Lehndorff’s Italian Sausage and Potato Stuffing

5 pounds (approx.) Colorado potatoes (mixed Yukon Gold and red, peeled and chunked)

4 pounds (approx.) bulk Italian hot or sweet sausage

3 or more large cloves garlic, minced

1/2 pound butter (or more)

Salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste

2 tablespoons poultry seasoning or ground sage, turkey broth, as needed

Boil the potato chunks in salted water until barely tender, not mushy, and drain. Mash the potatoes in a large pot over low heat while adding butter.

Crumble sausage in a frying pan with garlic until barely cooked. Drain the fat. Add sausage to mashed potatoes and thoroughly combine with seasonings. Season to taste and add broth or water as needed.

Push this mixture into the bird, filling both ends, and roast as usual. Scoop out and serve to oohs and aahs.

Chef Johnny Curiel of Boulder’s Cozobi Fonda Fina. Credit: Cozobi Fonda Fina
Johnny Curiel’s Camote Asado

2 large sweet potatoes

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons agave nectar

1 cup fennel & cumin requesón

4 tablespoons salsa macha (store-bought)

2 tablespoons salsa seca de semillas

2 tablespoons agave nectar

Fennel & Cumin Requesón

4 cups whole-fat ricotta cheese

½ teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted and ground

2 tablespoons agave nectar

1 teaspoon fennel seeds, toasted and ground

2½ teaspoons salt

Combine all ingredients well.

Salsa Seca de Semillas

1 cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds), toasted and crushed

1 cup black sesame seeds

1 cup white sesame seeds

1 cup peanuts, toasted and crushed

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cumin

Combine ingredients well.

Note: Salsa macha is a traditional Mexican condiment made from dried chilies, oil, garlic and often nuts and seeds.

Roast sweet potatoes for about 30 minutes in a 325 degree oven or until tender. Makes four servings.

To serve: On a plate, spread spoonfuls of requesón. Slice the warm sweet potatoes in half and place cut-side up. Top with spoonfuls of salsa macha, sprinkle with salsa seca de semillas and drizzle with agave nectar.

Foraged fruit pie by Phillippa Clark. Credit: Courtesy of Phillippa Clark
Phillippa Clark’s Foraged Fruit Pie

6 to 8 cups peeled, prepared ripe fruits and berries

3 cups (approx.) flour (50/50 mixture of Turkey Red and White Sonora wheat flours)

1½ teaspoons salt

1½ cups frozen salted European butter, cubed

Ice water

Egg wash

Brown sugar

Stew the fruits in a pan on the stove for about 10 minutes. Grate butter into flour and salt, then work through with a pastry cutter or fork. Splash some ice water in when needed to help dough form into two balls — one a bit bigger than the other.

Roll out the bigger dough ball and form and crimp into a glass pie dish. Make some fork marks in the crust and bake in a 325-degree oven for 15 minutes to prevent a soggy bottom.

Strain the stewed fruit and fill the pie.

Roll out the other dough ball and cover the pie and crimp together. Cut steam vents in the top. Brush top with egg wash and sprinkle with brown sugar. Bake in a 325-degree oven for about 45 minutes, or until golden brown.

‘Orgullo de Colorado’ debuts, and Breadworks and Sanitas Brewing to close

For decades, foods grown or produced in the state have been identified with a “Colorado Proud” logo. On Nov. 17, the Colorado Department of Agriculture debuted a Spanish-language Orgullo de Colorado logo.

Credit: Colorado Department of Agriculture
Closings

Since it opened on Valentine’s Day in 1995, Breadworks Bakery & Cafe, 2644 Broadway, has supplied Boulder with artisan bread, baked goods and meals, as well as a community gathering space.

“It is with equal measures of sadness and gratitude that we must inform you that the final day of operations for Breadworks will be November 22,” according to an announcement from owners Larry Domnitz and Colleen Doran.

The owners of Sanitas Brewing Company have announced that their Boulder, Lafayette and Englewood locations will close on Dec. 20. 

“It is no secret that the state of the craft beer industry is proving to be difficult to sustain a business in. … Please trust that closing is the right, albeit bittersweet, thing to do now,” according to an announcement from the brewery.

Anniversaries

The Garden Gate Cafe is celebrating 25 years of serving breakfast and lunch at 7960 Niwot Road in Niwot.

Boulder’s Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts hosts a Nov. 25 hands-on class in cooking and serving Thanksgiving dinner, including side dishes.

Registration here.

“Any time we eat it’s holy. We should have ritual and ceremony, not just gobbling down some food to keep alive.” — from “The Art of Eating” by M.F.K. Fisher

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