David Rosengarten's Thanksgiving Dinner Menu

Two-Stage Roast Turkey with Southwestern Honey-Pepper Rub

This new recipe includes a technique I've been using for years: roasting the turkey in two stages. I do this because of the Big Turkey Problem: while you're waiting for the turkey's dark meat to cook (which takes longer), the white breast meat dries out.

Cilantro-Poblano Cream Sauce

Poblano chiles give this sauce an unexpected kick.

Smoky Chipotle-Mushroom Gravy

I love this deep, smoky sauce with the turkey—but it's also terrific with other long-cooked meats. If you had, say, some leftover pot roast in the fridge a second-day reheat with this sauce will probably be better than what you ate the first day.

Tortilla Stuffing with Sausage and Sage

I love this stuffing! It's warm, moist, soft, meaty, profound in flavor - all the good things. Who knew that taco shells could crumble up to make such a great dish? I do like to cook it outside the turkey, instead of inside the bird, to better control its cooking time. If you want a better flavor mingle between stuffing and bird, don't hesitate to dribble some turkey pan juices over the stuffing.

Cranberry-Citrus Relish with Pomegranate and Tequila

I gotta confess: I find this sprightly, tingly mixture ever so much more interesting than cranberry goop out of the can.

Individual Jalapeno Corn Bread Loaves

It is worth acquiring individual loaf tins just to make this recipe; everyone loves getting his or her own corn bread loaf at the Thanksgiving meal. However, the recipe can also be made in any single loaf pan - just as long as the uncooked batter fills the pan somewhere between halfway and two-thirds of the way to the top. The baking will, of course, take longer.

Classic Green Bean Casserole, Judiciously Updated

The canned-soup-with-stuff casserole in general became an American classic in the early part of the twentieth century, thanks to the recipes created and publicized by the Campbell Soup Company. In 1955 Campbell hit the jackpot—creating the most popular casserole of all time, the classic Green Bean Bake, made with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and topped with fried onions from a can. Things don't become classics because they're bad—and the combination of ingredients in this dish is really quite delicious. That's not to say that a tweak or two can't improve it.

Bourbon, Chocolate, and Walnut Pecan Pie

The richness of the nuts and chocolate with a kick of bourbon make this a great Thanksgiving dessert.

Southern Banana Pudding

For its amazingly high pleasure-to-work ratio, this dessert has most others beat. It is a totally unfashionable vestige of the old South, the kind of dessert you might find at those wonderful cafeterias: banana slices layered with a vanilla custard, vanilla wafers, and meringue. The way these ingredients fall together into a dreamy, creamy, utterly seductive whole is simply astonishing.