First off, an apology. Writing about Thanksgiving in February is...well...not great. But I swear I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't have a very good reason and that reason is this recipe for roasted turkey stock, which is worth every single droplet of sweat, blood and tears you expend on Thanksgiving itself to make the feast. Every time I open my freezer and see the remaining turkey stock I made in November, I feel like I have money in the bank. And there's no reason to restrict the recipe below to turkey - it works just as well with a small collection of roast chicken carcasses.

The recipe comes from Suzanne Goin and is a study in the art of how to build flavor. You start out, of course, with a roasted turkey carcass (first layer). This gets returned to the oven the day after Thanksgiving to roast until it sizzles and is fragrant (second layer). Then you roast vegetables and aromatics in the turkey drippings (third layer). You add a pretty large amount of wine to the roasted vegetables and then reduce that wine until it's syrupy (layer four). At that point, it's time to add water and the seasonings and to simmer the stock until it's rich and flavorful (layer five!).

What results is a golden brown liquid that tastes absolutely amazing, both on its own or in things like risotto or other soups. But the very best thing you can do with it (besides freezing it and being delighted by it every single time you open the freezer, if you're like me) is to make turkey pho. Follow this fantastic recipe by Samin Nosrat, which adds even more flavor to your amazing stock by simmering it with charred ginger, onions and star anise - and copious amounts of fish sauce. Not to mention the fresh limes and bean sprouts and jalapeños and mint and cilantro...

Of course you don't have to wait until next Thanksgiving to try this out - the next two times (approximately, if you're using a 4-5 pound chicken) you roast a chicken, throw the carcass in the freezer. The third time, remove the frozen carcasses and add to the fresh carcass, then depart with the recipe below.

Suzanne Goin's Roasted Turkey Stock
Makes about 3 quarts/2.8 liters

1 leftover carcass from a 10- to 15-pound roasted turkey, preferably including neck, wing and leg bones
4 or 5 onions, peeled and quartered
2 large or 3 small carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
4 large or 5 small celery ribs, cut into chunks
2 cups white wine
2 large or 3 small garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
4 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 whole arbol (or another small dried red) chile
Kosher salt

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Using a sturdy knife or your hands, cut or tear turkey carcass into large pieces. Arrange in a single layer in a roasting pan and roast until brown and sizzling, 20 to 25 minutes.

2. Remove from oven and transfer pieces to a stockpot. Add onions, carrots and celery to the empty roasting pan and place over medium heat. Sauté briefly, just to loosen the crusty turkey bits from bottom of pan. Return pan to oven and cook until vegetables are browned around the edges, 20 to 25 minutes.

3. Remove pan from oven and place it over medium heat. Add white wine and cook, stirring, until wine is reduced to a syrup, about 3 minutes. Add wine-vegetable mixture to stockpot. Add garlic, thyme, bay leaves, black peppercorns and chile. Add 6 quarts water and place over medium-high heat just until mixture comes to a boil.

4. Immediately reduce heat to low, skim any foam floating on top and simmer, skimming as needed, for 3 hours. Add 1 teaspoon salt and taste. If stock tastes watery, keep simmering until stock is flavorful. Taste for salt again and add more if needed.

5. Strain stock through a sieve into a large container or containers. Discard solids. Let stock cool slightly, then refrigerate. Skim off any fat from the top of the stock. Use within 4 days or freeze.

Last fall, for the first time ever, I hosted Thanksgiving at my place. Max was traveling overseas at the time, so I hosted it solo to boot. Wah! There were 15 of us and although my guests (Joanie and her whole crew) brought plenty of delicious side dishes and some dessert, the big things - turkey! stuffing! gravy! pies! mashed potatoes! green beans! uh, cranberry sauce! - were on me. It wasn't the first time I'd done a full Thanksgiving dinner - I cooked one for 40 people at Soho House a few years ago - but that was in a professional kitchen with two sous chefs to help. Also, perhaps most importantly, I was being paid to do so. It was still one of my most insane days in the kitchen, except for that one time when we had to reshoot 11 of the Classic German Baking photos. In one day. While I had the flu.

In other words, I know from stressful kitchen days. So on Thanksgiving, I outsourced my children to my sainted parents, blasted The War on Drugs (excellent getting-shit-done tunes, among other things), put my head down and just did it. And, wow, is it different to be the Thanksgiving cook in your own home than it is to just show up with a few side dishes and a pie in hand, my usual role.

(A million seasoned home cooks roll their eyes and yawn, while mouthing ya think, genius?)

I learned so much. Like to err on the side of having a too-big turkey, rather than a too-small one (insert chagrined emoji face here). That baking an apple pie for close to two hours really is revelatory. To stay away from, how should I call them, newfangled variations on cranberry sauce. And that you can't have too many mashed potatoes, as long as you know about this way to use them up: Aloo Tikki, also known as Indian Potato Cakes, also known as my favorite kitchen discovery of 2017.

On Thanksgiving, propelled by some hard-to-articulate terror that we wouldn't have enough food, I made - hold tight - almost 9 pounds of mashed potatoes. After our feasting, this is what I was left with:

Woah.

I couldn't figure out where to begin re-purposing what looked like about 5 pounds of leftover mashed potatoes. So I took to Instagram to ask for help, and almost 200 comments rolled in with ideas. I mean, people, the wealth of inspiration! It was incredible. (It's here, but warning: don't click on that if you're hungry and not in possession of an obscene amount of leftover mashed potatoes.)

The thing that most tickled my fancy was the idea of combining fresh, hot Indian flavors with the potatoes. Not only did it sound delicious but I was pretty sure it was going to be the best way to get excited about working through leftovers after that first obligatory meal of Thanksgiving leftovers (you know, pretty great the first time, pretty heinous the fifth). Also, they seemed dead easy and if you know anything about me at this point, you know that I will always, ALWAYS choose the easiest way.

So. Aloo tikki. You take a whole bunch of leftover mashed potatoes. You mix in some chopped red pepper and scallions, some cumin, coriander and turmeric, and an egg and flour for binding. Then you make little cakes out of the mixture. Fry them in oil. Whisk up an yogurt sauce (NON-NEGOTIABLE, DO NOT SKIP, PRACTICALLY THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS WHOLE POST). Serve them together and watch your mashed potatoes disappear faster than the speed of light. Magic!

Now a quick word of caution. I do not know authentic this recipe is. I found it on Genius Kitchen, which is the new home of the old Food.com. Some cursory searches online turned up other recipes for Aloo Tikki that certainly sound even better - with fresh ginger and garam masala and peas (PEAS!). But let me put it like this: this basic recipe already was the greatest thing I made all year, perhaps precisely because it was such a cinch. So don't let it stop you and then make the ones with peas (wherein the journalist calls aloo tikki Pakistan and India's greatest street food I REST MY CASE) and report back. Deal?

I am in Boston right now, visiting my family, and it is Thanksgiving, of course, and we are invited to my father's second cousin Bob's house, where Bob's daughter Julia and her newborn daughter Sylvia will be present, so if you're doing the math, Hugo gets to meet his fourth cousin today, and how many of us can claim to have ever met our fourth cousin? Hugo has been "writing" shopping lists for the baby all week. We are all very excited.

My stepmother Susan and I have made two pies to bring - her fantastic apple tart, which, according to her notes, she's been making at least since the 1970s (it's a tarte sucrée shell filled with freshly made applesauce and topped with thin slices of apples decoratively arranged, then run under the broiler and glazed), and an experiment of sorts, a free-form galette filled with spiced, sliced persimmons (nutmeg, ginger, brown sugar, orange peel). 

BUT. 

What I'm really writing to you about today is salad. And while I understand that following the description of two Thanksgiving pies with a post about salad might seem, what's the word, unfair, bear with me. This is no regular salad.

I'm talking about Melissa Clark's recent recipe for a tangle of radicchio and arugula dressed with a tangy, garlicky, creamy dressing (buttermilk! tarragon! lemon juice!) and tossed with slices of delicata squash that have been roasted with honey and chile (or smoked paprika, as I used, in case you have small eaters in your home who don't want to eat 'picy things) until sweet and fudgy.

Sounds good, right? I am here to tell you it is even BETTER than you think it will be. We had it for lunch today (incidentally, it's sort of the perfect pre-Thanksgiving lunch, since it's fresh and satisfying without being too heavy) and basically spent most of lunch exclaiming, out loud, to each other, about how good it was. Bitter greens, sweet-spicy squash, creamy-sour dressing…you see what I mean? Oh, and roasted pecans, too! Soft, crunchy, cool, delicious.

I happen to think delicata squash might be the most delicious squash, sweet and nutty, and it's definitely the easiest to deal with. If you can't find it, I would substitute slices of kabocha squash (or hokkaido, for you Europeans). Melissa calls for smoky chile powder (like New Mexico or chipotle), which will give the squash some lovely heat. I substituted sweet smoked paprika, for that same smoky flavor, but no heat. Whatever you do, make sure you don't skip the dressing, which ties the slightly unwieldy and boisterous greens together with the squash wedges just beautifully. And the roasted pecans! If you don't have them, I guess you could use walnuts, too. Just don't skip the nuts entirely.

And with that, friends, I'm off to have a cup of tea and go give thanks, for, well, everything. For you too. xo

Melissa Clark's Roasted Squash and Radicchio Salad with Buttermilk Dressing
Serves 3-4

2 delicata squashes (10 ounces/280 grams each), halved lengthwise, seeded and cut into 1/2-inch half-moons
1 tablespoon honey
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
¼ teaspoon smoky chile powder or smoked sweet paprika
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
⅓ cup/80 ml buttermilk
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons finely chopped tarragon
1 large garlic clove, grated
1 small head radicchio, cored and shredded
4 cups arugula
⅔ cup/85 grams chopped toasted pecans (see note)

1. Heat oven to 425 F/220 C degrees. In a large bowl, toss squash with honey, 3/4 teaspoon salt, chile powder or paprika and 2 tablespoons olive oil. Transfer to a large rimmed baking sheet. Roast, tossing occasionally, until tender and golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together buttermilk, lemon juice, tarragon, remaining 3/4 teaspoon salt and the garlic. Whisk in remaining 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) oil.

3. In a large bowl, combine radicchio, arugula, squash and pecans. Toss in buttermilk dressing; taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.

Note: To toast pecans, heat oven to 350 degrees. Spread nuts on a rimmed baking sheet and toast until they deepen in color and turn fragrant, 7 to 10 minutes. Cool before chopping.

A few weeks ago, I came home to a cardboard package waiting in the mail. Inside was Sam Sifton's slim book titled simply: Thanksgiving, and then, further down on the jacket, How to Cook it Well. Well, I thought, sliding the book onto the coffee table, who needs a whole book on this subject?

But later that evening, I opened the book and started to read. After all, it was just 125 pages long and I'd long been a fan of Sifton's writing. When, by the end of the intro, I had started to laugh out loud as I read - a book about how to prepare Thanksgiving dinner, people - I know he was onto something.

Sifton's manifesto is a total delight. It's bossy and funny and endlessly useful. I'd say it deserves a spot on every wedding registry or housewarming gift list. It covers everything: the turkey, yes, and the sides and dessert. But it also tells you what to do with turkey stock and how to use up the leftover food. It tells you what not to eat on Thanksgiving (salad! garlic! chocolate!) and how to avoid disaster if you decide to deep-fry your turkey (braver souls than I). It has RULES and IDEAS about things as varied as the music you'll be listening to when you start to cook to just how cheap the cookware you use can be. It is, at turns, soothing and stern, funny and very focused. I have not enjoyed myself as much reading a book on food in a very long time.

And as I read, I realized something crucial about this book. Yes, it's true that you might not need all the recipes Sifton proposes. You may already be devoted to your aunt's cranberry jelly, your father-in-law's stuffing or your grandmother's candied yams (although I cannot wait to try Sifton's Braised Brussels Sprouts with Buttered Bread Crumbs and Pecan Pie, not to mention his Turkey Gumbo the next day). But the far larger deal is this: bringing all the elements of a Thanksgiving feast together, not just food, but everything, from the prep work to the drinks you serve to the seating arrangements, is a daunting endeavor. I would dare say just the thought of it has scared plenty a would-be hostess or host off the idea altogether. But Sifton has set out to make you feel brave and capable. With this book, he holds your hand and cheers you on all the way. It's a total kitchen essential.

***

I sadly won't be cooking a Thanksgiving meal this year - we'll be in Kassel in a too-small kitchen - but these are my perennial Thanksgiving must-haves, in case your menu still needs fleshing out:

Hashed Brussels Sprouts

Peas with Onions and Mint

Roasted Squash Purée with Apple and Ginger

My stepmother's Cranberry Orange sauce

Butternut Squash Pie (but with this crust)

I always have to read a little before I go to bed. I get all ready - brush my teeth, wash my face, put on my cashmere bed socks (the best birthday present a girlfriend ever gave me) - and then I get in bed, adjust my pillow, fluff the blanket and open a book. If I don't read before turning off the lights, I'm guaranteed to toss and turn for a long while before falling asleep, if I'm able to do that at all.

For the past few nights, I've been re-reading Farmer Boy. I can't tell you how many times I've read it, but we can all be sure it's a fairly high number. The Little House series was my reason for living when I was a child (until Narnia came long and then Anne of Green Gables and Diana Wynne Jones and, oh, let's stop this right now, otherwise we'll be here all day) and when I was at my friend Joan's last year, gripped with writer's block and worry, she pulled Farmer Boy off her shelf and handed it over to me. "Remember this?"

The pleasure I get from going back into Almanzo's world is hard to put into words. Every other sentence plunges me back in time to when I was first reading about how the Wilder men cut and stored ice, packed in straw, until summertime, how Almanzo and his siblings made candy while their parents were out of town, using up all the good sugar their mother warned them not to finish, how Almanzo longed to be given the responsibilities of caring for the family's horses while his father continued to command him to stay away. And, of course, how little, 9-year old Almanzo put away in one regular weeknight dinner what most of us could barely manage on a holiday like Thanksgiving.

None of us (well, as far as I can imagine) are doing anywhere near the amount of physical labor that he was at nine years old. But still. Here's what Almanzo ate on one winter's evening:

1. Sweet, mellow baked beans
2. Mealy boiled potatoes, with brown ham-gravy
3. Ham
4. Velvety bread spread with sleek butter
5. A tall heap of pale mashed turnips
6. A hill of stewed yellow pumpkin
7. Plum preserves, strawberry jam and grape jelly
8. Spiced watermelon pickles
9. A large piece of pumpkin pie

And then (oh, you didn't think he was done, did you?), the family retired to the fireplace and Almanzo ate popcorn and apples and drank apple cider, and he took such pleasure in this and his family and his life that when I read that bit I always fairly burst with the longing to reach out through time and space and dimension to touch his sweet little self or give him a hug. And also eat a handful of popcorn with a glass of cider in the other hand.

Books, man. They kill me.

We think Thanksgiving is such a busy time and we overwhelm ourselves with grocery lists and cooking strategies and forums on whether to brine or not to brine (actually, this lady doesn't), so reading about how the women in Almanzo's family did that kind of work every day, in addition to churning the butter and curing the ham and dying their own wool and cloth so they could sew their clothes and their own rag carpets, among a hundred other daily chores and duties, well, it's humbling.

The resourcefulness and thrift and sheer doggedness is particularly inspiring, as well as mortifying, of course, because I think nothing of throwing out a stale heel of bread or letting those two stray carrots in the fridge whither into sponginess. While I'm far away from ever wanting to move to a house in upstate New York and become a self-subsistent farmer, what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that Farmer Boy is as enchanting to the adult me now as it was to the little me then.

I made pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving feast (we celebrated on Saturday instead of Thursday), but due to a little, er, mathematical error, I roasted about six times too much squash in preparation for the pie (this one, in case you're wondering, which was once again demolished in one fell swoop, but with this crust recipe, the second half of which I used for this tart, which was eaten even faster than the pumpkin pie).

I froze some of the squash, but with all the Advent tea times ahead of us in the next month (the Germans are big on Advent Sunday tea time), I decided to get resourceful and bake something to have on hand during the next few weekends. Pumpkin bread from a monastery in Los Angeles that sells loaves for $9 a pop seemed like a good place to start.

The recipe hasn't changed since the early 1970's, which is a pretty good pedigree, if you ask me. It's a basic sweet bread or tea cake or whatever you'd like to call it, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg (I also added some cloves) and is quiveringly tender and moist. If you, like me, use Hokkaido (or red kuri) squash, your batter will seem practically fluorescent.

I promise, though, that it will mellow in the oven, turning an agreeable, gingerbread-y brown. The crumb is velvety-soft and fragrant with sweet squash and the spices, while the crust gets all caramelized and toothsome. Some bits of it even crunch. It's a lovely thing to eat. I wanted to add walnuts to the batter, but mine were all rancid, so I threw in chopped pecans, the last of a precious stash from the States, instead. Their earthy crunch is a nice thing to happen upon as you work your way through each soft slice of bread.

My only advice would be to try and make as many loaves out of this one batch of batter as you can. I crammed all of the batter into one 13-inch long loaf pan and ended up having to bake the loaf for an hour and a half, nearly burning the edges. If you bake it in smaller loaf pans, the baking time reduces to one hour.

I let it cool completely, then I wrapped it carefully in plastic wrap and foil and put in the freezer where it'll rest until this Sunday when we have friends over for tea in the candlelight.

But next Sunday, I've already decided, there will be popcorn and apples and cider. And in addition to being grateful for my family's good health and my good fortune in life, I'll be saying a little gratitude prayer for books, my constant companions in this life.

Tell me, readers, what were the childhood books that you loved the most?

Monastery of Angels' Pumpkin Bread
Makes 1 13-inch long loaf or 2 smaller loaves
Original recipe here

3.5 cups of all-purpose flour
3 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1.5 teaspoons salt
4 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
2 cups puréed pumpkin or squash
1/2 cup chopped pecans tossed with a spoonful or two of flour

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour loaf pan(s). Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, oil, water and pumpkin and mix well. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until the batter is smooth and there are no streaks of flour left. Fold in the pecans.

3. Scrape the batter into the buttered and floured loaf pan(s). Bake for 1.5 hours or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Cool the pan(s) on a rack for half an hour before turning the loaves out to cool completely. Wrapped tightly, the bread keeps for at least three days.

I think it's time to admit a simple truth to myself. I'm just not that into pecan pie. Either that, or I keep picking the wrong recipes. Sigh.

Okay, I went the lazy route. I chose a recipe in which you don't even need to dirty a bowl. Come on! Wouldn't you have done the same? Plus it had apple cider and brandy in it, two things that always make my ears perk up.

It looked quite pretty and the people eating it were polite enough - no leftovers, you know - but I couldn't help but find it too squishy, too sweet and altogether rather insipid. You know something isn't right when you'd rather just eat a plate of whipped cream. Mmmm.

Cider Pecan Tart
Serves 8

2 1/2 cups fresh apple cider
4 tablespoons soft butter
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons Calvados, bourbon or brandy
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 eggs, lightly beaten
Pastry for 8- or 9-inch tart or pie
1 1/2 cups pecan halves, lightly toasted
1 cup heavy cream, whipped (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the cider in a saucepan and cook over high heat until reduced to 1 cup. Remove from heat and stir in butter and brown sugar until dissolved. Then stir in spirits, vanilla, nutmeg and eggs.

2. Roll out pastry and line straight-sided tart pan with it. Pie pan can be used, too. Spread pecans over pastry.

3. Pour in cider mixture. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until surface is fairly firm and pastry is golden. Allow to cool to room temperature. Serve with whipped cream, if desired.

I am, shall we say, a little distracted these days. I'm leaving for Germany in a little less than three days. And I'm not coming back until the first days of January. That's the longest vacation I've taken in a good bit and I'm sort of agog at the prospect of so much (badly-needed) time off. Time to see old friends, show more bits and pieces of Berlin to Ben, figure out where and when we're getting married, have my mom cook me dinner, spend time with my family, literal and figurative, and simply be in my hometown. I've missed it so much this year that Heimweh turned into a perpetual ache in my chest. I'm ready to be rid of that.

And though I'm not sure if this is entirely related to my distraction, my luck in the kitchen lately has been abysmal. Almost funnily so, though if you'd seen me yesterday, attacking an innocent pizza that had soldered itself to the baking stone in less than 25 minutes and was thus burned to an absolute crisp, rendering our casual late-afternoon lunch a blackened, unpleasant mess, you might have handed me a towel to mop my brow and commanded me to go take a walk around the block. Happy to oblige, thanks!

Not to be outdone, there was also a lackluster savory rice pie that I loved when my stepmother made, but that ended up a bland, insipid, tragic waste of Carnaroli rice when attempted in my own kitchen, and the unforgettable pickled endives that had such promise, but were a deeply unpleasant combination of sweetness, bitterness and spice that was not meant to be eaten by anyone, at least not anyone in my home.

Kitchen disasters, please be gone, would you?

But Christmas comes early this year: a holiday dinner tonight with friends, a liquid dinner of cocktails tomorrow, one meal airborne over the Atlantic and then - boom - I'm absolved of the rest of the year's meals. Strangely enough, I'm sort of pleased. I think my kitchen and I need a break. (Oh, except there's this one amazing soup I have to tell you about before I leave...).

I'm bringing my camera cable with me to Europe, since I'm going to be (finally!) documenting the annual Springerle bake-off with my friends Joan and Ann, and Ben's first encounter with a Currywurst (it might not happen, but I'll try - and in any case, after years of loyalty to the stand at Wittenbergplatz, it's time for me to branch out and try Konnopke's. Are there any Berliners out there who want to weigh in?). Then, best of all for you hungry folks, I'll be in Brussels for the last week of my holidays with my family who never fail to introduce me to some kind of stellar food. Last year, I brought back the focaccia di patate; this year, who knows? It will be delicious and I will share it: that is my solemn holiday promise to you.

Oh! And these potatoes! Well, for those of you for whom Christmas is not Christmas without mashed potatoes, and for those of you who find leftover mashed potatoes - formed into patties and fried, for example, or eaten cold from the fridge - to be your own personal nirvana, this is the recipe you must make this year. It is, in a word, insane.

After all, not only is there browned butter and fried sage (dreamy!) but there is Greek yogurt, too. Luscious, I tell you, and pleasingly different without being weird. Also, it makes mountains of mashed potatoes. Mountains! That is not an exaggeration. You will be inundated with thick, creamy, tangy, herby mashed potatoes. The good thing is they're so easy to keep eating, day after day. Croquettes, potato soup, shepherd's pie - is there anything that cannot be done with these leftovers? I have yet to find out.

Brown Butter Mashed Potatoes with Sage
Serves 6 to 8 with leftovers

3 pounds baking potatoes, scrubbed, skin on, cut into 1-inch chunks
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
24 fresh sage leaves
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Put the potatoes in a large pot or Dutch oven and cover with cold water by at least half an inch. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat and simmer until tender, about 15 minutes.

2. While the potatoes are cooking, heat the butter over medium-high heat in a medium skillet. When it begins to foam, add the sage leaves and gently fry until crisp, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon, place on a paper towel and reserve. Continue to cook the butter until it's golden brown and nutty, watching so that it doesn't burn, an additional 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from heat and reserve.

3. In a small saucepan, heat the milk over medium-high heat just until hot, careful that the milk does not boil. Remove from heat and reserve in a warm place.

4. Drain the potatoes and place them into a large bowl. Using a masher, mash the potatoes to the desired consistency. Stir in the hot milk, yogurt, salt and pepper and browned butter, making sure to get all the dark butter solids. (Recipe can be prepared to this point a day in advance; refrigerate the potatoes tightly sealed and keep the sage in a tightly sealed container at room temperature.)

5. Garnish with the fried sage and serve. (If you have refrigerated the potatoes, gently reheat the mashed potatoes before serving, thinning if needed with additional milk. Garnish and serve.)