Maybe you’ve pulled yourself away to scroll through Instagram or check your email or revel in an ephemeral moment of peace and quiet amid the holiday chaos. Or perhaps it’s Friday when you’re reading this, and you haven’t known silence since at least Tuesday afternoon. Wherever you are, whenever it is, I hope you have, are having or had a wonderful Thanksgiving — or just a lovely Thursday afternoon in the twilight of November.
Given the fanfare that precedes this holiday, it can be easy to forget that there are still meals to cook in its aftermath. What does one eat after Thanksgiving? There are, of course, the leftovers, and you should not even for a moment hesitate to make Sohla El-Waylly’s stuffing panzanella with cranberry vinaigrette.
But if you’re anything like me, you just want something really tangy, really crunchy and really fresh. Yewande Komolafe’s tangle of grapefruit and herbs, topped with coconut and crispy shallots, calls to me like some sort of salad siren.
It’s inspired by yum som-o, a Thai pomelo salad. While it’s not strictly vegetarian as written, the dried shrimp are wholly optional and the fish sauce is easy to substitute. Simply swap in soy sauce or a combination of soy sauce and rice vinegar, as some readers have suggested in the comments beneath the recipe, or purchase a vegan fish sauce. That, with some of Eleanore Park’s puffy air-fryer tofu on the side? That’s inspired post-Thanksgiving eating.
An especially simple noodle dish can also really hit the spot after all of that toiling in the kitchen. I’m thinking of Eric Kim’s minimalist gochujang buttered noodles, which offer the kick I always miss from my own Thanksgiving spread. And if the other folks in your household are still content to work their way through leftovers, Eric includes instructions for preparing a single serving of the dish at the very end of the recipe.
But maybe the reality is that you need to find a creative way through the containers of roasted squash and potatoes stacked in the fridge. If that dilemma speaks to you, consider pairing leftover roasted sweet potatoes with sheet-pan crisp tofu, à la Melissa Clark. With the potatoes already cooked, all you have to do is glaze and bake the tofu and then whisk together thinly sliced scallions, rice wine vinegar and a little sugar for the topping (and drizzle it all with a little chile oil).
A similar strategy is applied in Melissa’s recipe for sweet-and-spicy roasted tofu and squash, if you have any delicata or acorn varieties hanging around. If you’re working with prepared squash, just glaze them with a little of the honey-soy mixture before reheating in an oven.
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