PITTSBURGH—Who better to ask about Thanksgiving vegetables than the people who grow them?
Megan Gallagher, be.wild.er Farm
For Megan Gallagher, this is the season for root vegetables. Gallagher owns be.wild.er Farm in Natrona Heights, Pennsylvania.One of her favorite Thanksgiving dishes is a simple roasted root vegetable medley of carrots, parsnips, celeriac and onions, all at their prime at local farmers markets. It’s easy to make—cut vegetables into similar-sized hunks, lavish with olive oil and salt, and roast for 20 minutes or so.
“I’m a huge parsnip fan. I pretty much grow them so I can have some for Thanksgiving,” she says.
If she’s “feeling a little fancy,” Gallagher might make a parsnip puree or a mash with celeriac. Of that knobby root, she advises to treat it like a potato.
As for the salad course, Gallagher has some straightforward wisdom.
“Adapt your salad choices to the greens that are best right now. Radicchio is awesome, kale is excellent. Everything like that is sweeter this time of year because of the cold,” she says, noting she’s likely to serve a radicchio salad this year.
Making your pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin or winter squash is a treat, too. It’s a not-too-challenging proposition if you have the oven space or are willing to work a bit in advance. Roast the squash, scoop out the insides and puree them, then use as you would if it came from a can.
“It’s a little more labor intensive but it’s not that much more, and you get the satisfaction of knowing you made it from scratch,” she says.
Although Gallagher’s meal is highly seasonal, she says some traditions can’t be passed up even after their growing season.
Tara Rockacy, Churchview Farm
Every year, patrons stream to Tara Rockacy’s Churchview Farm in Baldwin, Pennsylvania, for a series of exceptional dinners prepared by the farm’s executive chef, Csilla Thakray, as well as an entire armada of regional hospitality industry superstars for events ranging from six-course dinners to happy hours, all centered around vegetables grown on the farm.With the season done, it’s not time for Rockacy to enjoy the late bounty of her family’s homestead. Her secret to success: Brussels sprouts.
“They’re something I didn’t love or appreciate until I grew them myself. Now I see how good they are,” she says.
Her number one rule is to avoid cooking them into a mush. Instead, roast the wee brassicas until just tender, hopefully with a nice exterior caramelization. Rockacy says never throw away the greens and tops—those are unsung heroes if you prepare them correctly.
“I always tell people it’s a waste to throw them away. They have everything you love about those cool weather greens with the sweetness of a Brussels sprout,” she says.
Massage them, chop them, add some lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Maybe she'll add some kale. To the salad, too.
If you’re having a meandering, all-day Thanksgiving or an evening meal, Rockacy says to turn those greens into a pizza or flatbread alongside some chunks of winter squash roasted with sage and buffalo mozzarella. Finish with a drizzle of honey once it’s out of the oven.
“It’s so flippin' good,” Rockacy says.
Ebony Lunsford-Evans, Farmer Girl Eb
Ebony Lunsford-Evans, better known as Farmer Girl Eb, has a simple secret for Thanksgiving: “Don’t forget the herbs. I just harvested so many of them. They’re the staples.”Lunsford-Evans developed a love for growing vegetables teaching her children to garden in their backyard. That planted the seed for the longtime educator to bloom into a new career. She grows food on several plots, runs the Farmer Girl Eb store in the West End and operates a youth-focused non-profit, Out of the End, all while continuing to foster excitement in emerging farmers.
She says that fresh herbs such as sage, rosemary and thyme play a starring role in many of her Thanksgiving dishes, as do herbs she picked and dried earlier this year. One of her big go-to’s is infusing those herbs into oils, often with homegrown peppers.
“It’s just exceptional. They add a burst of flavor to everything,” she says.
Lunsford-Evans says that as a grower, she has a lot of things on her radar when it comes to vegetables for Thanksgiving, but she and her family love to prepare many of the classic side dishes. She grows the celery, onions and peppers that go into some dishes such as stuffing, but she says it’s also important not to stress too much about being perfectly seasonal.
“We use all the vegetables we can, but those traditional dishes like sweet potato pie, mashed potatoes and corn are so big for me and my family around the holidays,” she says.
There will be an addition to the family and Friendsgiving tables this year: okra.
Rafael Vencio, AmBoy Urban Collective
Farmer-chef Rafael Vencio of AmBoy Urban Collective has sweet potatoes on his mind this year.“I can’t get tired of them right now. They’re just spectacular. They have so many uses beyond a sweet potato pie, too,” he says, adding that sweet potato pie, even with marshmallows if that’s your thing, is a wonderful addition to any Thanksgiving dinner.
Vencio’s favorite way to cook them is a long and slow bake. He says it’s a bit more time-consuming and perhaps a little impractical on a day when the oven is in heavy use, but the robust flavor that develops with the extra time adds an element of luxury to the table.
He draws from his native Philippines for a deep-fried sweet potato dessert using sugar cane, a significant crop of the Southeast Asian archipelago. Vencio can’t grow it here, so he'll use muscovado or raw sugar for the treat, which involves frying whole (smaller) sweet potatoes until tender and then adding the sugar until it caramelizes around the outside.
“It’s crunchy, sweet, with a little burnt flavor,” he says. “You’re essentially making creme brulee of the entire sweet potato.”
He’s big into chicories, radicchio and other bitter greens as the centerpiece of a holiday table salad.
“When it’s cold I get into the bitter mode. Not emotionally. With flavor,” he says. “It’s a good counterbalance to all the rich and sweet-tilting food that’s served.”
The rest of Vencio’s table is rounded out with a mix of traditions that eschew seasonality. He says that as a Filipino, rice is going to make an appearance at just about any meal, even if it’s a starch not commonly found at an American Thanksgiving.
On the flip side, green bean casserole, even though it’s not seasonal, is an American staple that’s a must-do for him.
“It’s the one dish in the entire Thanksgiving spread that I hands down love. It’s very Americana. We have a lot of green bean dishes in my culture but nothing with the crunchy onions and creamy sauce. It’s so good,” he says.
