Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that Americans like to do by the book.  Turkey, potatoes, stuffing.  Something orange, something green, something cranberry.  Throw in a few creamed onions, a pumpkin pie, and a pecan pie too.  There’s comfort in tradition, and also in knowing that if you looked in your neighbors’ windows at mealtime, they would be eating exactly what you are.  Tradition is the tether that anchors us to the past and to each other.

I too like the parameters of the Thanksgiving dinner: a bird, a starch, a vegetable, a pie.  But for me, the menu is an outline waiting to be filled in with my interpretation of traditions.  Still, no matter how I like to shake up the menu year after year, family members insist on keeping one thing constant: a simple bread stuffing.  Year after year, I give that to them.  It’s delicious, everyone likes it, but sometimes – even with stuffing – I feel like straying from the usual. 

Then, in November 2007, I found a really great recipe for stuffing in the newspaper, one adapted from Chef Ana Sortun of Oleana in Cambridge, and I have made it for many holiday dinners ever since.  It is a family-pleasing simple bread stuffing, but elevated to the slightly exotic through Sortun’s Arabic-Mediterranean way with spices.  I have further adapted the recipe from what I found in the newspaper, but I think my results stay faithful to the original.  If it seems like a lot of ingredients, note that most of the spices are used to infuse the broth; there’s really not a lot of work involved beyond that.