This week it’s Thanksgiving Rules: turkey, cranberry sauce and cake versus pie. We chat with Stella Parks about her pumpkin pie secret and a fresh twist on à la mode; Vivian Howard invites us to her kitchen for North Carolina turkey and sides; Alice Waters, Erin French, Joanne Chang, Gonzalo Guzmán and more chefs, authors and friends recount their Thanksgiving tales of disaster, culinary wisdom and family memories; Dr. Aaron Carroll talks food safety and stuffing; we make a quick Cranberry and Candied Ginger Buckle; and Adam Gopnik explores the magic of leftovers.

This episode is brought to you by King Arthur Flour, Master Class and Ferguson.

Questions in this Episode:

“I stuff my turkey each year. I cut fresh bread and leave it out for a few days to get stale and cook an onions/peppers/celery/butter mix and stuff. But it always comes out soggy. Can you help me with this?”

“I work for a nonprofit where we create meals on wheels and frozen dinners to same day ship to rural clients. My question is, what can I use in a frozen meal to make it look more appealing to its recipient? Some of these meals are frozen for up to a month and fresh herbs simply cannot retain their color or integrity through this process and dried parsley is tantamount to throwing grass clippings on turkey. Any suggestions for innovative ways to give a remote client a great dining experience at home, days later?”

“Many years ago, my mom attempted to bake her go-to chocolate pecan pie recipe for guests, and was very upset to find it "ruined.” Essentially, the chocolate-pecan filling over-ran the crust and "ruined" the pie. I use quotes because it's perhaps one of the most delicious desserts I've ever had and I'm glad she didn't serve it to her guests. The effect of the filling over-run was that the crust came out closer to a toffee, which was rich and wonderful. My question is—if we wanted to do this intentionally, do you have any advice on how to make this a repeatable technique; are you familiar with any pies that do this that I could use as a model?”