Veggie Annie's Skillet: Sparkling Apple Salad (repost!)

Unusually delicious, quick-and-easy meat / vegetarian / vegan recipes for everyone.

It’s Thanksgiving Week! Every food publication in the US is currently posting useful food-prep timelines and matrixes (matrices?), easy pie recipes, impressive and tricky pie recipes, and debates about brining / not brining turkeys. (And let’s not forget the Butterball Hotline, which figuratively dries more anxious kitchen tears than a kindly Grandma.) 

Your old pal Veggie Annie is re-posting my most perfect Thanksgiving side dish ever, free, as my gift to you! 

Seeing as how Juliana and I are caterers, who make big-fancy meals almost every weekend for our living, the VERY LAST thing we ever want to do on Thanksgiving is make a big-fancy meal for potentially difficult relatives, with extra-fancy potential emotional minefields  -  AND have to clean the house first, just to add insult to injury. We like to just be together, be relaxed, be thankful, and maybe make some giant sandwiches, or get takeout. 

If you are hosting the Big Meal, or are going to a lovely Friendsgiving potluck, or staying home in blissful peace and solitude, we wish you love and happiness and pants with an elastic waist and solemn reminders of the Native land on which we live, and so much gratitude for being here and breathing in and out. We are endlessly thankful for you.

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This DELICIOUS dish is a fantastic addition to the Thanksgiving table! Bright, refreshing, crisp; an utterly perfect foil for all the rich, savory dishes on the menu. Another major plus: no oven required. You can take this pretty and delightful dish to someone’s house for dinner, and your hosts will be thrilled to know that you only require a serving spoon. (Make it just before you leave home, and wait to add the crystallized ginger until just before serving.)

If you’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner yourself, it’s a great dish to set an eager helper to making. If your assistant goes to get another glass of wine and doesn’t return, no worries - nothing will turn out scorched or lumpy, and you can finish it yourself in a jiffy. 

And the leftovers, a trifle softer and less crisp, will be a revelation on top of your breakfast oatmeal on Friday. Or accompanying turkey sandwiches. I have even been known, on occasion, to throw a spoonful of these leftover apples, without the juice, onto sourdough bread, between slices of Swiss cheese for an extraordinary toasted cheese sandwich. 

Serve this dish in a glass bowl to show off the pretty apples!

Sparkling Apple Salad with Crystallized Ginger

Takes 30 minutes

Serves 8-12 people, depending what else you’re having

• Gluten-free

• Vegan 

• Doubles easily

4-6 firm red apples (I like Cortland apples in this dish, as the flesh is very white, making a pretty contrast. Romes and Yorks are also great. Don’t bother with the boring Red Delicious.)

4-6 firm green or yellow apples (Granny Smiths will be more tart, with a sometimes pale green flesh. Gingergolds are divine here, or try Lodis if you see some.)

Zest and juice of 2 tangerines

Zest and juice of 2 limes

1 cup chopped crystallized ginger, a fairly small dice

Wash your tangerines and limes, then zest and juice them into a big bowl. 

Wash and cut up the 8-12 apples, putting them into the bowl with the citrus zest and juice and tossing them around every apple or two, to prevent browning. Transfer apples and juice to your serving bowl. Just before you put it on the table, toss again, and then scatter 1 cup of chopped crystallized ginger thickly over the top. 

Serve it just like that. Gorgeous. Delicious. Festive!