The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Library puts creative spin on Thanksgiving
The South Branch hosted a demonstration offering up some new creative twists to traditional dishes.
The Lorain Public Library System’s South Branch hosted a Thanksgiving cooking demonstration on Nov. 14 offering up some new creative twists to traditional dishes.
The demonstration was led by Mark Peters, a library associate at South Branch, who was a chef for 20 years prior to switching careers. He walked guests through how to prepare some Thanksgiving side dish staples with some new flavorful additions.
“I’m going to go back to my past. Even though I don’t do as much cooking now as I once did I still know my way around a kitchen fairly well,” he said.
Peters prepared a selection of dishes with assistance from his wife Rachel who served as sous chef for the evening.
Dishes included fresh cranberry sauce with blackberries and ginger in addition to bacon and shellfish stuffing, and Peters brought out some flavorful delight
for guests who were looking for some inspiration in planning their own Thanksgiving meals.
“One of the great things about cranberries is that they’re so tart and they go well with the turkey,” he said. “Ginger is also very tart. It is almost like a pallet cleanser.”
He encouraged guests to get creative in looking for ways to made traditional Thanksgiving new. Cooking
with a lot of emphasis on texture and feel, Peters emphasized ingredients which elicited different contrasting flavors and got the audience in on the action with the smell of the bacon flavored stuffing filling the room.
“I said, if I’m doing some sort of cooking demonstration I’m cooking bacon. It really gets the aroma going in the air,” he said. “Who doesn’t like bacon?”