Thanksgiving Potato Recipes

I'm sure there is going to be at least one potato dish at your Thanksgiving table tomorrow evening. Our family loves potatoes and we're planning on splurging on many variations. There is a myriad of culinary possibilities for preparing the vegetables: roasted, boiled, steamed, baked, fried, or mashed. 

Butternut Squash Potato Mash Recipe

After roasting butternut squash yesterday to flavor a fromage blanc spread, I came up with a another dish where this method would be applicable. I mixed the roasted butternut squash into a simple potato mash. The subtle sweetness, the color; everything about this side dish screams Thanksgiving.

If you're planning a potato feast for Thanksgiving, I strongly suggest (shameless plug) that you try recipes from my first cookbook, Haute Potato. You'll find all sorts of dishes ranging from luxurious lobster chowder, delicious samosas to gourmet potato desserts. If you order it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble now, it should arrive before the holiday!

Pumpkin Chestnut Puree Recipe

I prepared a pumpkin with fresh chestnuts today for baby Aria and she absolutely loved it. The texture was a little too thick, so I thinned it with mashed plantains and a bit of milk. The pumpkin chestnut purée was as nutritious as it was delicious.

Who said "baby" food can't be tasty? I’ve made an effort to prepare homemade baby food ever since Aria started eating solids. She's already 16 months old and loves trying new foods. My motto is that I won’t serve anything to her that I wouldn’t eat myself. She seems to appreciate it and has become quite the little foodie! She even says “mmmmm” when we’re watching The Cooking Channel. Bobby Flay and the Iron Chef are her favorites!

Purée de Petits Pois Recipe (Mashed Peas)

Mashed potatoes are my guilty pleasure. For this version, green peas complement the flavor of this version and gives a beautiful color and wonderful texture to the purée.

My baby girl is already over 5 months old and I've started introducing solid food to her in the past 2 weeks. I've given her a diversity of vegetables already. Today, I tried feeding  her legumes and made some baby food for her using peas. They're perfect because they're starchy and have a wonderful texture. I passed them through a large mesh sieve to remove the "skin" from the peas, which gave me the idea of making something similar for the family.

Broccoli Puree (Mashed Broccoli)

Mashed potatoes are my guilty pleasure. I've flavored them in the past with garlic, pesto, plaintains, olives and purple sweet potatoes, just to name a few. This time, I used broccoli. It complements the flavor and gives a beautiful color to the purée.

My favorite way to make this dish is to simply mash them using a potato masher, then add milk, cream and lots of butter. It might not be the healthiest approach, but it's certainly the most delicious for creamy mashed potatoes!