A Louisiana Thanksgiving Dinner

This Southern Thanksgiving menu includes red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, creamed collard greens and buttery biscuits.

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Turkey Liver Mousse Toasts with Pickled Shallots

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This hors d’oeuvre is a Louisiana riff on traditional French chicken liver pâté. The Rushings create a silken mousse with livers from the quintessential American bird, turkey, but you can also use chicken livers. Instead of cornichons, the little French pickles, the Rushings add a sweet-and-tangy Southern accent—pickled shallots.

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Pumpkin Soup with Creole Lobster

PETRINA TINSLAY

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Most Thanksgivings include pumpkin in some guise. The Rushings’ version is a pumpkin soup topped with lobster bathed in a spicy butter. The natural brininess of the lobster helps bring out all the deep, earthy flavor in the soup.

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Slow-Smoked Turkey with Cane Syrup-Coffee Glaze

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If you have a grill with a lid and a bag of hickory chips you can smoke a turkey. Braising the bird first in a mix of coffee, apple cider vinegar and cane syrup or brown sugar results in marvelously complex flavors—sweet, bitter and herbaceous.

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Creamed Collard Greens

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This is the Rushings’ Southern interpretation of French creamed spinach. The collards add a pleasant bitterness to this lush side dish, but it’s important to shred them finely before you simmer them in the cream or they’ll never get tender.

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Satsuma Orange and Dried-Cranberry Chutney

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Crème Fraîche Biscuits

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When they’re not adding a Southern ingredient to a French recipe, chefs Allison Vines-Rushing and Slade Rushing are adding a French ingredient to a Southern recipe. Here, crème fraîche takes the place of buttermilk in these extremely fluffy biscuits.

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Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Ice Cream

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Southern red velvet cake is usually a tall layer cake, slathered with cream cheese icing and studded with pecans. In this deconstructed version, the cake is low (like a torte), the pecans are coated in caramel to make pecan praline and the cream cheese icing is transformed into cream cheese-flavored ice cream.

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A Louisiana Thanksgiving Dinner

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Turkey Liver Mousse Toasts with Pickled Shallots

1 of 7