Thanksgiving is about tradition. Old habits die hard, and when it comes to cooking the holiday meal, many of us return to what we know, even if that calls for topping sweet potatoes with mini marshmallows or scooping jellied cranberry sauce out of a can.

Growing up in the 1970s, our Thanksgiving celebrations always were huge. Lots of food, lots of family, lots of fun. This year I plan to resurrect some of the nostalgia by recreating at least a portion of my family’s traditional menu. I’m not ready to tackle the turkey, but for the first time I’m going to try my hand at my dad’s famous stuffing. My father, who passed away in 1997, was the executive chef at The Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. His stuffing was out of this world.

I’ll round the meal out with mashed potatoes, a vegetable and a Southern Pecan Pie with Toffee Crunch for dessert. In case I get stumped along the way, I’ve got tips from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Amanda Gold to help. So clear the kitchen, I’ve got some cooking to do.

The key to a good stuffing is in the bread, but the effort lies in cutting the vegetables. Most stuffing recipes require chopped onions as a base ingredient, even if you’re using a boxed mix. If done properly, this can be very simple.

Cut off the stem end of the onion, trim the root end, then halve the onion from top to bottom. This will give each half a flat side to place on the board.

Leave the root end (which will be tighter than the stem end) intact to hold the onion together, peel off the skin and make vertical cuts along the onion half, spacing them according to the desired thickness of the dice. Don’t cut all the way through to the root.

Next make horizontal cuts. With your knife parallel to the cutting board, slice the onion, spacing according to your desired dice size.

Finally, cut the onion cross-wise, releasing the diced onions in each layer as you cut toward the root end. When you’ve reached the final piece, lay it flat on the cutting board and make cuts in both directions to finish the dice.

ROBERT TROHER’S THANKSGIVING STUFFING

8-10 cups cubed French or Italian bread (about 16 slices)

1 cup chicken broth

6 slices bacon

2 cups celery (about 4 ribs), chopped

1/2 cup onion, chopped

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

1/2 cup green onion (mostly the green part), chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine bread and broth in a large bowl. Cook bacon, remove from pan and place on paper towel. Saute onion and celery in bacon fat. Add bacon (crumbled) and onion/celery/fat mixture to the bread/broth mixture. Add pepper, salt, eggs and green onions.

Gently place into a greased casserole dish or 9-by-13-inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

Note: It takes about 45 minutes to assemble because of all the chopping. The celery and onions can be coarsely chopped. The amount of bread depends on how much liquid gets absorbed. Start with the 8 cups, you can always add 1 or 2 cups more. Don’t press the stuffing into the pan — keep it kind of loose.

The difference between light, fluffy mashed potatoes and a gummy mess is in the tools. For very smooth potatoes, put the cooked potatoes through a ricer, which forces out the lumps. For a more rustic dish, use a handheld masher. A standing mixer or food processor will over-activate the starch in the potatoes and cause the gumminess.

It’s also a good idea to warm up the cream or milk with the butter before adding it to the potatoes; this helps to eliminate lumps and ensure a creamy texture. Taste as you go, adding salt, pepper, butter or liquid as needed.

MASHED POTATOES

4 pounds russet potatoes

1 tablespoon kosher salt plus salt to taste

1 cup whipping cream

8 tablespoons butter, sliced

Freshly ground pepper to taste

Peel the potatoes and cut into eighths. Place in a large pot and cover with cold water. Add the tablespoon of salt and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Simmer until the potatoes are cooked through, about 12-15 minutes. Drain potatoes in a large colander and shake to remove excess moisture.

Meanwhile, warm the cream in a saucepan over low heat, or pour the cream into a microwave-safe container and microwave for 30 seconds.

Transfer the potatoes to a large bowl and mash with a handheld potato masher until they reach the texture you like. Fold in the butter and cream and season with pepper and more salt, if desired.

Note: To reheat mashed potatoes, place in a microwave-safe bowl, cover with plastic wrap and microwave on high for 2 minutes until heated through.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Anything that you can do in advance of Thanksgiving Day is a good idea, and prepping vegetables is a no-brainer. You don’t want to pre-cut them too far in advance, as that can affect the flavor, but vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts and green beans require blanching to par-cook them.

Blanching simply means to drop the vegetables in boiling water — salted is better — for a few minutes until they turn crisp-tender. Remove them and immediately plunge into ice water, which will stop the cooking. The vegetables will hold at this stage in the fridge for at least a day, until you’re ready to finish cooking and seasoning them.

Even the most experienced baker can have trouble rolling out a piecrust and getting it into the pan.

Start with the flattened round of dough that has been chilled in the refrigerator. Have a pile of flour on hand for dusting, so that nothing sticks. Starting in the center of the dough, make short strokes toward the edges in different directions, turning the dough often as it becomes thinner to maintain a circular shape. Sprinkle the work surface and dough with flour as needed.

Stop rolling when the dough is about 2-3 inches larger than your inverted pie pan. Place the rolling pin on the edge of the dough that’s farthest away from you, and roll the dough around the pin toward you, until you have about half of it on the pin. Gently move the rolling pin over the pie pan, and slowly unroll the dough, draping and centering it over the pan, and gently lift and coax down into the edges.

Trim the excess dough around the outside of the pan, leaving a 1/2- to 1-inch overhang that you can roll under the border to create a thick edge. Decorate the border as desired, either with the tines of a fork or your fingers. At this point, it’s ready to fill and bake.

PIECRUST

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 cup vegetable shortening

1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

3 to 4 tablespoons ice water

Additional flour for rolling

Mix together the flour and salt in a bowl. Add the shortening and butter, and work it into the flour with your fingertips or a pastry blender or pulse in a food processor until the mixture resembles fresh breadcrumbs. Sprinkle in the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring lightly with a fork after each addition. Use enough water so the dough holds together.

Form the dough into a ball and flatten the top to form a disk. Wrap the dough completely in plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface or between 2 sheets of waxed paper until it is about 1/8-inch thick and 2 to 3 inches larger than your inverted pie pan.

Transfer the dough to the pan, then trim edges to make about a 1/2- to 1-inch overhang. Roll the edge under and crimp decoratively.

Yields one 9-inch pie shell

Source: Adapted from the “Fannie Farmer Baking Book,” by Marion Cunningham (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984).

Note: Use trans-fat-free shortening, substitute lard for the shortening or use all butter. An all-butter crust will have great flavor, but may not be quite as flaky.

Troher tip: If you have trouble keeping your dough together, try this tip I got from my sister Marianne Murphy, of Naperville, Ill. I called her with a stuffing emergency, and after tackling that, she share this suggestion about pie crusts.

After mixing your flour and salt, scoop out about half a cup and set it aside in a separate bowl. Add your tablespoons of ice water to that half cup of flour/salt, and mix it until it forms a paste. In that first bowl of flour, add the shortening and butter as you normally would, and once you get it to that breadcrumb consistency, add your flour paste. By following this process, your dough will be so easy to shape and roll out that you can skip the refrigerator step if you’re short on time.

SOUTHERN PECAN PIE WITH TOFFEE CRUNCH

1 piecrust (see Piecrust instructions, above)

1 1/4 cups dark corn syrup

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups pecans, halved

1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled slightly

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 cup toffee pieces, divided use

1 tablespoon flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll pastry into a 12-inch circle on lightly floured surface. Fit into 9-inch pie plate. Fold edge under and flute edge.

Combine corn syrup, eggs, pecans, butter and vanilla in a medium bowl. Toss 2/3 cup of toffee pieces with flour and stir into pecan mixture. Pour entire mixture into pie pastry.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove pie from oven and place on a cooling rack. Immediately sprinkle remaining 1/3 cup of toffee pieces over the top. Cool completely before serving.

Source: Butterball