Shazzzam! Our favorite food holiday is all up on us, and we’re getting hungry. The tradition around our homes the last few years has been what can only be described as Orphan Thanksgiving. (In Portland, we hear they celebrate something similar called Sharksgiving?) Whatever you call it in your town when a bunch of ragamuffin vegans are left to fend for themselves on Thanksgiving with no families in town, we want to help! So we cooked up a new podcast — download the podcast after the jump below — to lend a hand in the kitchen this year. Listen in on how to make spiced seitan cutlets with root stuffing, and be sure to consult the following written recipes for specifics.

Click Here to Download The Hot Knives Thanksgiving Podcast

If that’s not enough Hot Knives jabber for you this holiday season, don’t worry: Our local radio-foodie-geek-show "Good Food" invited the two of us on their program last weekend to babble about winter beer, gravy recipes, and avocadoes the size of babies’ heads. The show is here, and our spot is toward the middle of the hour-long program (or scroll down for the spot by itself!)

Hot Knives Thanksgiving Menu

Root Stuffing (recipe below)

Spiced Seitan

Golden Oyster Gravy

Ginger Beer Cranberry Sauce

Winter Shivers Salad

Mashed Sunchokes or Squash Mash

Beverage: Flying Dog's Wild Dog
Soundtrack: The Second Marriage Records Compilation

Root Stuffing

Bread-less, wheat-free stuffing is a good way to lighten dinner plates that are already carb-laden from seitan, or other fake meats. Don’t get to caught up with finding Kohlrabi or weird roots if you’re stuck in a suburban supermarket with skimpy produce. Use what you can find: for instance parsnips could be replaced with turnips, rootabegas or even just a potato and a carrot. The important thing is the love with which you roast it!

(Serves 4-6)

2 stalks of celery
2 golden beets
2 parsnips
1 green apple
1 bulb celeriac
1 yam
1 Kohlrabi (optional)
1/2 lbs. raw cashews
1/2 lbs. raw almonds or pecans
1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbs. kosher salt
1/2 Tbs. fresh black pepper
1 Tbs. fresh sage leaves
2 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
2 Tbs. pomegranate molasses glaze (optional)

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Peel your roots, but do it “rustic” stylez by leaving on half the skin. Then chop all your ingredients roughly, except the raw nuts. Toss them with the olive oil and lay on a baking sheet — one that’s large enough that the stuffing isn’t piled too deep, you want it to roast evenly. Season, cover with aluminum foil, and stick in the oven.

2. After 20 minutes, remove pan and check to make sure nothing is smoking (turn your oven down) or sticking (scrape with a spatula and add a couple more Tbs. oil). Then douse with vinegar, and pomegranate glaze if desired. Remove the foil, to let it roast harsher, and return to oven and for another 30 minutes. If at any point the stuffing looks like it's drying out, have a Tbs. or two of vegetable stock handy to soak the pan. Once the yam is sufficiently cooked (gives way easily to a fork jab), remove and serve alongside seitan.

A Huge and Endlessly Reverberating Shout goes out to Meghan Delehanty, the genius behind our crystal clear pod cast glory and the Merrill Bros. for our new bitchin' ITunes system. Without them we are cavemen throwing rocks at typewriters.

Just last year, some mad hot pepper professor stumbled upon the Bhut Jholokia, now nicknamed the ghost chile. Subsequent lab tests have revealed that the little fucker is officially the hottest chile pepper in the world — nearly double the amount of "Scovile Heat Units" as the habanero. Apparently, the ghost chile is a naturally occurring species native to North Eastern India, where it's not unusual to use them as weapons. Armies in India and Myanmar use ghost chiles to make tear gas. It’s also not unusual to gnaw on one in between bites at the dinner table.

We think this is nuts. We know because we obtained a bag of the things and spent a recent Friday night passing a pepper around the room just barely licking it or, at the most, nibbling on it. (This is also about the time when we lamented the fact that “chile in my eye” was not an easily searchable phrase on the Internet).

So, after careful consideration, we came up with one simple recipe recommendation for you real chile heads out there: a ghost chile syrup that we’re calling Ghost Killah. Now you won’t find this pepper in your neighborhood store just yet, but don’t fret, you can order bags of them (we are being serious) from the Chile Pepper Institute: (505) 646-3028. But be prepared for the sting, they run more than $30 a pound!

Ghost Killah

2 cups agave nectar
1 ghost chile

1. Using latex gloves, slice open the chile and remove all seeds.
2. Put a small saucepan over medium heat and add agave nectar.
3. Toss in chile pieces and simmer for 10-15 minutes.
4. Fish out chile and serve with fresh fruit or baked goods.

Beverage: Port Brewing’s Hop 15
Soundtrack: Mogwai’s “Acid Food”

Here comes the comfort food, and unfortunately, that means a lot of mashed potatoes are about to be all up in our face. We like taters and all, but honestly, if you open a restaurant and all you can come up with for your dinner menu is garlic blue cheese mashed potatoes, you shouldn’t even be given a business loan.

We tried mashing squash last week as a sort of preemptive strike against mashed potatoes, and it worked pretty well. Gourds are right up there with goblins and witches, in terms of things that feel Octobery, so that’s a bonus. Here we roasted three kinds of pretty gourds and whipped their flesh into a hot, sweet and savory mash that could easily replace spuds beneath an entrée or swim alone in mushroom gravy. The recipe’s still a work in progress: you can use any combo of different squashes, also feel free to de-veganify by replacing the margarine with unsalted butter, and the soymilk with heavy cream or crème fraiche.

Squash Mash

(Serves 8)

1 butternut squash
1 acorn squash
1 spaghetti squash
3 Tbs. olive oil
1/4 cup vegan margarine
1 white onion, peeled and chopped
1 head garlic, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup white wine
1/2 cup vegetable stock
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. sugar
1 Tbs. kosher salt
1 tsp. fresh black pepper
1/8 cup celery leaves, chopped
2 cups yellow chard, roughly chopped
1/2 soymilk

1. To roast squash, preheat your oven to about 400 degrees. Cut all of them in half, lengthwise and scoop out innards. Place squash on one or multiple trays, rub each piece with olive oil and dab extra on the tray. Roast until completely cooked and a fork yields no resistance (about 40-50 minutes).

2. A few minutes before your squash is ready you can start the other veggies for the mash. Bring a large soup pot with the vegan margarine up to high heat. Once bubbly, add the onion and garlic. Cook until onion is translucent, about 3 minutes, and then add wine. Reduce for a few minutes and add all your spices and the stock.

3. Bring up to a boil before adding chard and celery. Bring to a simmer until squash is ready to join.

4. Pull out the squash pan and start separating the flesh from the gourd skins (you can keep some of them, but beware of crunchy shards in the mash). Using a large spoon or knife, simply run along skin and scoop out all usable squash meet. Place in a large mixing bowl and mash together.

5. Then add to the pot, stirring thoroughly and adding soymilk (or cream) as you go. The consistency should be gloppy like slightly wet mash potatoes, add more stock or soymilk as necessary. Serve as you would mash potatoes or sculpt with an ice cream scoop.

Soundtrack: Jacob Smigel's "Mandarin Oranges"
Beverage: Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot Barleywine