Thanks­giv­ing is just around the cor­ner so my mind is on our din­ner menu. The stakes are a bit high­er this year, as we are host­ing my son’s future in-laws, whom we will be meet­ing for the first time. They, like many peo­ple, eat a fair­ly tra­di­tion­al meal. And I, mak­ing Thanks­giv­ing din­ner for only the fourth or fifth time in my life, plan to make pret­ty stan­dard fare – turkey, gravy, stuff­ing, mashed pota­toes, sweet pota­toes, Brus­sels sprouts, green sal­ad, cran­ber­ry sauce, rolls, and three pies. Those of you who know me know that this is a big depar­ture from my usu­al style. First, that’s an awful lot of carb dish­es in one meal. Sec­ond, I am not incor­po­rat­ing a sin­gle eth­ni­cal­ly-inspired dish. Thanks­giv­ing is not a time to mess with people’s culi­nary expec­ta­tions.

Maybe it’s the con­flu­ence of Thanks­giv­ing, my husband’s birth­day (which he shares with my late father), Veteran’s Day, and a sud­den­ly uncer­tain world that got me think­ing about food lega­cies and tra­di­tions. My Ger­man-born dad loved a cake called bienen­stich, which means bee sting cake. It is filled with cus­tard and has a caramelized almond top­ping. In the absence of bienen­stich or read­i­ly acces­si­ble recipes when I was a kid, my dad adopt­ed the very Amer­i­can Boston cream pie as a new favorite. On his birth­day, Eric ate a Boston cream dough­nut and I was remind­ed of my dad. My mom evokes mem­o­ries of the rhubarb pie that we con­tin­ue to share every time I vis­it, mar­ble cake that she no longer makes, and a bar cook­ie we invent­ed called a scrunchy. What is my lega­cy? I don’t know.

I allud­ed to the fact that my cook­ing style is mul­ti-eth­nic. It start­ed long ago when my then-boyfriend and now-hus­band and I looked for com­mon ground on Jew­ish hol­i­days. We inter­sect­ed at the cor­ner of food and Jew­ish tra­di­tions around the world. Our tra­di­tion has evolved into host­ing fam­i­ly and friends on the sec­ond nights of Pesach and Rosh Hashana for an explo­ration of Jew­ish hol­i­day cui­sine around the world. Each year, we pick a coun­try that has been in the news (for Rosh Hashana) or whose Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion has a free­dom sto­ry (for Pesach) and we cook the entire meal with that country’s recipes. We explored Cuban cui­sine this past Pesach and Turk­ish on Rosh Hashana. I am noto­ri­ous­ly unsen­ti­men­tal so I’ve kept no records of what I made, except in those years when Eric cre­at­ed a menu for our guests. I am not proud of that.

I assume my kids have warm mem­o­ries of hol­i­day meals but I have no idea what foods they remem­ber from their child­hood. They might think about my home­made chal­lah, but Eric took that over years ago because he’s a much bet­ter braider. Maybe they remem­ber the hodge­podge of culi­nary explo­ration that defines the way we eat not just on hol­i­days but year-round. Maybe they remem­ber eat­ing lots of dish­es with fruits and veg­eta­bles, always hav­ing a bal­anced meal, and rarely eat­ing the same dish twice. But as far as asso­ci­at­ing me with a par­tic­u­lar dish on the hol­i­days, there’s not much there, except my gin­ger­bread cake on Thanks­giv­ing week­end.

Sev­er­al years ago, one of my friends made the most deli­cious gin­ger­bread from a Gramer­cy Tav­ern recipe. It is a dentist’s night­mare with its gobs of sug­ar and molasses, but it’s real­ly tasty. I start­ed mak­ing it a few years ago for Thanks­giv­ing and now make it every year, whether we have din­ner at home or not. Because it’s too soon for me to make it this year, I bor­rowed a pho­to post­ed by lunasea on GroupRecipes.com. For those who fol­low dietary laws, the cake is pareve. Try it – maybe it will become your tra­di­tion too.

And be sure to ogle this beau­ti­ful pump­kin pie in an arti­cle on Thanks­giv­ing food mem­o­ries that talks about my col­league Priscil­la Mar­tel.

gramercy-tavern-gingerbread-cake

Gramer­cy Tav­ern Gin­ger­bread Cake
Adapt­ed by Epicurious.com
Serves up to 16
1 cup oat­meal stout or Guin­ness Stout
1 cup dark molasses (not black­strap)
1/2 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
2 cups all-pur­pose flour
1 1/2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der
2 table­spoons ground gin­ger
1 tea­spoon ground cin­na­mon
1/4 tea­spoon ground cloves
1/4 tea­spoon fresh­ly grat­ed nut­meg
Pinch of ground car­damom
3 large eggs
1 cup packed dark brown sug­ar
1 cup gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar
3/4 cup veg­etable oil
Confectioner’s sug­ar for dust­ing
Spe­cial equip­ment:
a 10-inch (10- to 12-cup) bundt pan
Direc­tions

  1. Pre­heat the oven to 350°F. Gen­er­ous­ly coat a bundt or angel food cake pan with cook­ing spray and dust with flour, knock­ing out excess. (Mindy’s note – Be sure to coat well with flour on the sides and stem so that the cake comes out of the pan clean­ly. If you use an angel food pan, cut a parch­ment ring to fit on the bot­tom of the pan, then coat and flour.)
  2. Bring the stout and molasses to a boil in a large saucepan and remove from heat. Whisk in bak­ing soda, then cool to room tem­per­a­ture.
  3. Sift togeth­er flour, bak­ing pow­der, and spices in a large bowl. (Mindy’s note – I am going to use McCormick’s new gin­ger­bread spices this year.) Whisk togeth­er the eggs and sug­ars. Whisk in the oil, then molasses mix­ture. Add to the flour mix­ture and whisk until just com­bined. (Mindy’s note – I find that the bat­ter takes a fair amount of whisk­ing to incor­po­rate all the flour and pre­vent flour pel­lets in the baked cake.)
  4. Pour bat­ter into the pre­pared pan and rap pan sharply on counter to elim­i­nate air bub­bles. Bake in the mid­dle of oven until a tester comes out with just a few moist crumbs adher­ing, about 50 min­utes. Cool the cake in the pan on a rack for 5 min­utes. Run a plas­tic knife around the sides of the pan to loosen the cake. Turn it out onto the rack and cool com­plete­ly.
  5. Serve cake, dust­ed with confectioner’s sug­ar.