Thanksgiving Meal + Recipe For Wild Rice Salad (v, gf)

With a focus on indigenous ingredients, plus gluten-free and easy to make vegan

I had our neighbors over for dinner (finally! It took me months to get settled enough) and made a spread that could easily be a Thanksgiving dinner. We started with amaranth crackers with cheese and fruit, the main course included smoky beans, baked spinach, sorghum corn muffins, and wild rice salad with acorn squash, tofu, halloumi, and fried sage. Instead of pie for dessert, I made Melek Erdal’s recent recipe in Vittles for candied pumpkin with tahini and walnuts, which was sweet and savory and complex and finished off the meal so much better than a heavy carb-load, IMO.

I’m including most of the menu below, with a full recipe for the wild rice salad for paid subscribers at the bottom. I’d love to gather a few more paid subs this season, so if you’ve been liking my newsletters and/or want access to all the recipes I’ve published in the last four (!) years, please consider upgrading!

A couple considerations went into this menu: I focused on North American indigenous ingredients, like squash, pumpkin, wild rice, corn, cranberries, and pecans. Orienting the holiday as a celebration of the foods of this continent feels like a positive way to recognize Thanksgiving, without discounting the violence and propaganda of its history.

I’ve also been dealing with ongoing (presumably pregnancy-related) gastro issues, and lately I’ve cut gluten almost entirely out of my diet, so this menu is gluten-free. It was mostly but not completely vegan as I cooked it, and I’ve made notes below about how leave animal products out. Finally, almost everything can be prepped the day before, which makes the whole meal portable if you’re traveling for the holiday, or lets you avoid the kitchen on the day-of to keep things low-stress.

Snack Spread (1-5 days ahead if you want)

The amaranth crackers were based on Sean Sherman’s method in The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen. Essentially, you cook some amaranth (I’d recommend ½ cup, with 1½ cups water and ¼ teaspoon salt) on the stove until thick, then mix in 2 teaspoons sunflower oil. I added about 2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme. Preheat the oven to 300°F and line a baking sheet with a Silpat. Sherman says to spread the amaranth as “thinly as possible,” but I found that too thin made them crack easily, so I’d say go for something like a pie dough. Bake for about an hour, until crispy. (You can form the “crackers” into one giant cracker and break it up after baking, if you want to make things easier on yourself.)

I served the crackers with sliced Anjou pears, seedless Mars grapes, a hard cheese, and a simple goat cheese log I made by rolling chèvre in chopped toasted pecans, rosemary, and thyme. (Yes, pecans show up in many dishes here — I don’t think there’s anything wrong with repeating the same nut, and this way you can toast a big tray once and sprinkle it onto everything. You could use pecans for the dessert as well, if you only want to buy one nut.)

Smoky beans (1-2 days ahead)

I wanted plenty of savory protein on the table, so I kept this simple: I soaked 2 cups of pinto beans overnight with 3 pods of black cardamom (you can use any sort of bean — this is a good dish for highlighting your nice Rancho Gordo beans or anything special or local). The next day, I diced an onion and sautéed it in oil in a medium-sized pot, then added the beans and cardamom pods (discarding the soaking water), and enough Better Than Bouillon mushroom stock to cover them. The amount of time it takes to simmer the beans will depend on your variety, but usually around 1-2 hours. Taste and season with salt (smoked salt if you have it).

I reheated the beans before serving and tried to remove all the cardamom pods (just warn guests if you haven’t).

Baked Spinach (assemble 1 day ahead, bake day-of)

I followed this old Smitten Kitchen recipe for Julia Child’s baked spinach, with a few modifications. Instead of dealing with fresh spinach, I used 2 1-lb bags of frozen cut spinach, which lets you skip ahead in the recipe to the second paragraph (butter-melting step). I made it gluten-free by using 2 tablespoons of brown rice flour, and gluten-free breadcrumbs. I used Better Than Bouillon mushroom stock as the liquid. Finally, at the seasoning stage before baking, I added a couple tablespoons of vinegar (white wine vinegar would be good, but whatever you have on hand).

I did use a little butter and Gruyere, but you could easily use olive oil and leave out the cheese to make the dish vegan (just add more breadcrumbs in that case).

Corn Sorghum muffins (day-of)

I made these King Arthur butter-pecan corn sorghum muffins, which are already gluten-free. I substituted half the butter for sunflower oil and increased the amount of pecans. I haven’t messed around with this recipe enough to make it vegan, so if you’re building a vegan menu, I’d recommend this sweet potato maple milk bread I shared last month.

Sweet Potato Maple Milk Bread (v)

Candied pumpkin with tahini and walnuts (1-2 days ahead)

As I mentioned, I followed Melek Erdel’s excellent recipe for dessert, which can be accessed through a paid subscription to Vittles. I used a sugar pumpkin, which was easy to find and worked well. I found that I could cook the pumpkin with only half the amount of sugar as the recipe states (you might need to flip the pieces while they are candying). I think my candied pumpkin ended up more sour as a result, but I liked that.

Another note I’d add is to remove the pumpkin slices from the parchment to a wire cooling rack soon after you take it out of the oven, because if you let them cool too much they’ll stick (you can always reheat the pumpkin to release the slices if the sugar has hardened). I dressed the final dish with pomegranate molasses because I didn’t have carob/mulberry molasses.

The leftover pumpkin syrup was a nice topping for the corn sorghum muffins at the table. We also ate it later mixed into yogurt, sometimes with tahini and walnuts.

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Before getting into the wild rice salad, here are a few more ideas for Thanksgiving:

Template Recipe: Vegetable Pie

Buttery cabbage with lemon, artichokes, & capers (gf)

Yuzu Ginger Tart in Pecan Crust

Recipe: Wild Rice Salad With Squash, Halloumi, Tofu, and Fried Sage (1 day ahead) (v, gf)

Even though this dish doesn’t look like a turkey or come packaged in some kind of buttery crust like most vegetarian Thanksgiving centerpieces, it’s savory and substantial enough to be a great vegetarian main course. I found that I liked it best with a mix of halloumi and tofu cubes, but you can easily go all tofu to make it vegan, or all halloumi if you’d prefer.