Let's face it-- every election year, some of us feel more thankful than others. But no matter where one stands politically, the holiday of gratitude is upon us.
Politics and Thanksgiving don't mix, but the "elephant in the room" is bigger than ever this year.
However, if these two can play nice, so can you.
Like so many people, my sense of Thanksgiving was formed as a young child... the road trip to Grandma’s house, the seemingly giant turkey, and her scrumptious pies.
Who else recalls this jingle from second-grade music class?
Over the river, and through the wood, to Grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow.
Over the river, and through the wood, to Grandfather's house away!
We would not stop for doll or top, for 'tis Thanksgiving Day.
Over the river, and through the wood— oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose as over the ground we go.
Over the river, and through the wood— and straight through the barnyard gate,
We seem to go extremely slow, it is so hard to wait!
Over the river, and through the wood— When Grandmother sees us come,
She will say, "O, dear, the children are here, bring a pie for everyone."
Over the river, and through the wood— now Grandmother's cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done? Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!
(Lydia Marie Child, 1844)
The Norman Rockwell Museum is located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where the
artist spent his later years and where my grandmother was born. She hosted our
annual Thanksgiving dinner just a few miles to the north.
Of all the holidays that we Americans celebrate, secular and religious, none is as precisely focused around a specific meal as is Thanksgiving. Both of my grandmothers were fabulous cooks. My mother’s mother, with whom we spent Thanksgivings, put on the same exact spread each year–
Relish Tray (grown-up food)
Date-nut bread (dark, rich, and sweet)
Roasted Turkey (the breast was NEVER dry)
Mashed Turnips (secret ingredients: lots of butter and brown sugar)
Creamed Onions (individually hand-peeled, of course)
Mashed Potatoes (clouds of Irish perfection)
Basic Bread Stuffing (simply Bread, Celery, & Onion… and something magical that made it impossible to replicate)
Cranberry Relish (straight from the can)
Dinner Rolls (because there weren’t enough carbs otherwise)
Pumpkin Pie (my favorite)
Mince Pie (my father’s favorite)
Lemon-Meringue Pie (my oldest sister’s favorite)
Chocolate Brownies (my other sister’s favorite)
I know… starch, starch, and more starch… but my God, it was all so fabulous! She used the pumpkin pie recipe on the side of the ONE-PIE® can and the cranberry relish straight from the can itself, but everything else was completely from scratch, from the date-nut bread to her hand-rolled, old-school pie crust with lard shortening, et cetera, et cetera… and she made it all look so easy. And our dinner was uncannily similar to Norman Rockwell's version–
Meanwhile, just as we were enjoying Thanksgiving Dinner in 1965, this transpired a few miles down the road from us--
Arlo Guthrie's epic "ALICE'S RESTAURANT MASACREE"– another Thanksgiving-related work of art as equally dear to the hearts of us Berkshire County natives as Rockwell’s iconic masterpiece– was inspired by a local crime as reported in this November 1965 article in the BERKSHIRE EAGLE.
Year after year our routine was the same– after an abbreviated school day on Wednesday, we’d pile into our car and make the four-hour trip from our upstate New York home to my grandmother’s house in the Berkshires. Once we got close, we’d pass the same scenery that Rockwell painted, and we’d always find Arlo Guthrie's “Alice’s Restaurant” somewhere on the radio. We’d wake up on Thursday, enjoy our feast, and then, on Friday, we’d do some Christmas shopping. We’d visit other relatives on Saturday, and then head back home on Sunday.
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My Thanksgiving memories from earliest childhood through my teenage years and into adulthood reflect, I think, a widely shared American experience.
During those precious few years before adolescent hormones come along and skew our priorities, the joy we all find in Grandmother’s Thanksgiving is pure– more so, perhaps, than any we ever experience as adults. Our innermost brains, coded for storing memories of flavors and aromas, exactly and permanently transcribe those of the entire menu in detail. Our subjective impressions– like, say, the size of the turkey or the dimensions of the table– tend to grow over time, as if in proportion to our physical selves.
Thanksgiving during one’s freshman year of college is a particularly important milestone, often a moment for inner conflict. After perhaps going a little wild here and there once beyond parental observation, you have to balance your new-found (and irreversible) sense of independence with some measure of domestic tranquility… after all, depending upon your major, you might wind up living in your parents' basement for a few years. Maybe you’ve brought home your vegan roommate or, even worse, someone who hates football… but you make it work, you learn a thing or two about diplomacy, and it gets easier through the next few years of college.
After you graduate and take a demanding entry-level job in a far-away city, you’re overwhelmed with an unexpected surge of sentiment and nostalgia when you make it to your family’s Thanksgiving table and suddenly feel like a child again. And then Grandma is getting on in years, and she grudgingly relinquishes the cooking to the next generation. But her recipes themselves are as sacrosanct as ancient prayer text, and the succeeding generation of sons and daughters and their spouses diligently reproduce to the last molecule the flavors and aromas so indelibly etched into their memories.
One year, finally, it is your turn to don an apron in the Thanksgiving kitchen. Another big moment for inner conflict– You’ve been raised with far more food awareness than the previous generations; you feed your own kids a steady diet of healthy dishes from a variety of cultures, made always from organic produce, cage-free poultry, and sustainable wild fish. They even eat your gluten-free kale lasagna without reporting you to Child Protective Services.
Outwardly, your siblings and in-laws seem united in wishing to strictly preserve the family traditions, particularly in the aftermath of Grandma’s recent passing. But even though you all agreed to ban dinner table politics right about when the Supreme Court handed down Bush v. Gore (2000), you know darn well that a sister-in-law or two share your views about food and a few other touchy topics. Dare you broach with them, ever so delicately, the topic of Thanksgiving dinner? Dare you speak up and call for a healthier re-imagination of this most hidebound of secular holidays?
Or should you simply remain silent, carbs and calories be damned for a single day of the year? Because what kind of heartless monster would blithely revamp the multi-generational menu for the one meal that has long transcended adolescent awkwardness and politics and hundreds of miles of separation… the meal that sometimes functioned as the only glue that held your extended family together?
OR– might there be a middle way… a Thanksgiving menu that honors Grandma’s traditional recipes and decades of selfless kitchen toil while simultaneously incorporating modern developments in artisanal agriculture, heritage animal husbandry, and current nutrition theory? Is such a union of seemingly polar opposites even remotely possible?
Ladies and gentlemen, dearest friends, neighbors, sisters, cousins, and in-laws around The Table– this is exactly why I’m here…
Hold my Merlot.
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Here at Danny’s Table we’re having a special Thanksgiving feast. Forget everything you know about Thanksgiving dinner… well, almost everything. We’re still having turkey, and green bean casserole, and pureed yellowish-orange stuff, and pie, kind of. You’ll surely recognize the flavors, if not the dishes.
FIRST, THE BIRD–
While a golden-brown whole roasted turkey is certainly a majestic sight, it is time, I think, to finally acknowledge a glaring if heretofore unthinkable reality– at the risk of horrifying everyone from the trustees of the Norman Rockwell estate to the time-and-a-half Thanksgiving Day staff at the Butterball Hotline, turkeys are not really designed to be roasted whole! That’s because white (breast) meat cooks much differently than does dark (leg) meat, and they fairly cry out for very different cooking methods. Every year we hear of people injecting and brining and tenting and roasting their turkeys in various yoga poses in a vain effort to get these two very different types of meat to cook identically… never happens, never will. Stay with me here, keep your mind open, and I promise you delicious results.
But first we must buy the bird. In terms of naturalness, turkeys run the gamut– at one extreme we find flightless genetic Frankensteins cruelly reared in small cages and treated with all kinds of artificial flavor components, some of which ostensibly keep the breast from drying out in your oven. At the other extreme you don camouflage face paint and hunt down a wild turkey. I’m guessing that your choice, like mine, will fall somewhere between these options.
This is what I’ve used for my recipe tests–
A huge step up from the Walmart Butterball is the $2.79/lb. turkey that’s not all shot full of chemicals and crap… not bad, especially as compared to a free-range, air-chilled (no retained water) heritage breed turkey that you can acquire for a mere $18+/lb from the online gourmet purveyor D’Artagnan.
We start our bird on the day before Thanksgiving, and the first thing we do is dismember it. (A store butcher should do this if you ask nicely.) We want to keep both sides of the breast together on the bone. Leave the drumsticks attached to the thighs if you wish to roast the dark meat; otherwise separate them. To cook the breast, we use a technique partially based on a classic French recipe known as Bresse-Style Poached Roasted Turkey.
If you happen to have 2 quarts of turkey stock in your freezer from your last turkey, great; if not, you'll need to make some. Arrange the backbone, neck bone, and wings on a bed of sliced yellow onions and roast in a 375º oven until well browned. (I occasionally purchase and freeze extra turkey necks for this purpose.) Add the body parts and onions to a large stockpot with a pair each of coarsely chopped carrots and celery sticks and a couple of bay leaves. Simmer for an hour or so until you have a flavorful stock. While this is happening you can start the arduous process of browning (not caramelizing) 3 medium onions for the thigh recipe. (See Cry, Baby, Cry– The Wonderful World of Onions for info on onion cookery.)
When your stock is sufficiently rich, leave the veggies but remove the bones (long tongs come in handy) and add 1 Tablespoon each salt and brown sugar, a teaspoon of Bell’s Seasoning, and a pair of bay leaves. Raise it to a rollicking boil. Add the breast, and the boil should immediately subside. Reduce the heat to low and poach for 45 minutes.
DO NOT EVER allow the pot to actually boil! Keep it at or below a low simmer, or the meat will quickly and permanently toughen. (I like my glass lid for this step.) After your 45-minute timer goes off, check the internal temperature of the breast meat. The USDA strongly suggests cooking avian breast meat to 165º; many a recipe, however, suggests cooking it to 150º, turning off the heat, and then letting the temperature "coast" upward. Because we re-heat the breast at service time, I actually stopped at 125º with excellent results. Whatever your preference, remove the pot from heat and let it sit. When it is cool enough, put it in the fridge and keep the breast in the stock overnight.
And now the thighs… if you wish to roast them, do so with the drumsticks attached in a gentle 325º oven on Thursday. Dark meat is far more forgiving than white; you’ll use far less oven space than would a whole bird, and your house will smell like Thanksgiving should. However, if you want a foolproof and delicious treat, try braising them Osso Buco-style. Truth be told, I personally invented this dish… then again, so did a lot of other people, because it’s really a no-brainer. That’s why all the recipes are pretty much the same. Mine uses only the thighs, as braising turkey drumsticks turns them into an unappetizing snarl of inedible white tendons after the meat slips away.
Pre-heat your oven to 325º, the magic temperature for braising. Brown the thighs on both sides in grapeseed oil. This is messy and smoky, but necessary. Try to keep the skin intact by using sufficient oil.
For a pair of thighs, finely dice 1½ cups each carrots and celery. (You already have the 3 onions all browned, right?) You’ll also need 3 or so garlic cloves, coarsely chopped. Saute the carrots in grapeseed oil until they become fragrant. Add the celery and garlic and cook briefly. Combine carrot/celery/garlic mixture with half a 14 oz. can (more or less) of petite diced tomatoes and the browned onions, and add to your Dutch oven.
Add the browned thighs. Steal two cups of stock from the pot with the breasts, replacing with water if necessary. In a medium saucepan, simmer the stock with an added glass of red wine and a teaspoon or more of demi-glace. (This link is for the gluten-free version.) When the demi-glace is thoroughly dissolved, add to the Dutch oven with a couple of bay leaves and just a little salt and pepper. (You can add more later.) Braise for 3 hours and then allow to cool for an hour. The thigh bones should slip out easily without disturbing the meat. Refrigerate overnight.
Now all the hard work is done. On Thursday, roast the poached breasts in a 400º oven to an internal temperature of at least 150º. Allow to rest, then slice the breasts as thinly as practicable, using a very sharp knife. Place the sliced breast meat in an aluminum foil roasting pan. Half an hour before serving time, boil some stock, add to the pan, and cover with foil. Hold in a 200º oven until service. Transfer to a serving platter and slather with your best gravy if desired. Meanwhile, slice the braised thighs. Correct the seasoning of the now soup-like braising veggies as needed, add the sliced thighs, and gently heat it all up. (You can do this right in the Dutch oven and then transfer it to a nice clean serving dish.)
And what about the drumsticks? Well, you can roast them separately… down south they smoke them to great effect… and, you perhaps should know, wild turkey hunters tend to just leave them for the foxes. I have found that drumsticks from large turkeys roast perfectly well, but the smallish ones are hardly worth the trouble and usually wind up in my stockpot.
NEXT– THAT GREEN BEAN THING
Long after my grandmother had solidified her Thanksgiving menu, the iconic green bean casserole became a Thanksgiving staple on tables other than ours. The Campbell Soup Company invented it in the 1950’s after they figured out that people often used their Cream of Mushroom Soup as an ingredient in comfort foods-- so commonly in Minnesota that this particular soup became known as "Lutheran Binder." Campbell's efforts at creating a new staple were hugely successful-- this green bean casserole currently graces some 20 million American tables every November.
The traditional version, simple to cook and certainly soothing to palate and soul, is an easy-to-prepare combination of canned green beans, canned cream of (Campbell's) mushroom soup, and canned “French-fried” onions. It provides a measure of nutritional cover as technically a “green vegetable,” a category unapologetically absent from my grandmother’s annual spread.
Modernizing this dish to current sensibilities seems like low-hanging fruit to many a chef. Martha Stewart published this intriguing version. I’m not saying mine is better, but here’s what I came up with–
Large Bag (2 lbs.) Trimmed Fresh Green Beans
20 oz. Package of “Baby Bella” Mushrooms
2 Cups Heavy Cream
3 oz. Malmsey (or Malvasia) Madeira
2 Large Sweet Onions
It doesn’t need to be BLANDY’S brand of Madeira, but it absolutely needs to be Malmsey, a.k.a Malvasia.
Blanch the beans, then toss with clarified butter and roast them until they become tender and start to shrivel. While that’s happening, coarsely chop the onions and saute them in clarified butter in a pot or large saucepan. When they begin to brown, add mushrooms and continue stirring. When the mushrooms are nicely cooked, add the Madeira and keep stirring. Add 2 cups of heavy cream to a separate pan and reduce by half, being careful to keep it from boiling over. Add reduced cream to onion/mushroom/Madeira mixture. Add salt and pepper as desired, then combine with beans and then transfer to an appropriately-sized Pyrex dish.
Up to this point you can do everything the day before. For service, I recommend microwaving the casserole and then browning the top just prior to service.
AND A YELLOW VEGGIE–
Puree of one root vegetable or another has long been a staple on the Thanksgiving table. My grandmother made fabulous mashed turnips. Down south they love their sweet potatoes… I’m not sure where, when, or how marshmallows ever found their way into that dish. The Silver Palate Cookbook popularized sweet potato & carrot puree, though I don’t think they actually invented it.
I’ve taken my grandmother’s mashed steamed turnips and combined it with mashed roasted butternut squash, providing the dense richness of one with the snappy bitterness of the other to create a whole that is better than either component alone… kind of like the way the great Bordeaux estates marry their sharp and crisp Sauvignon Blanc with fat and rich Semillon to create a balanced and well-rounded white. I use a ton of butter like my grandmother; I take a cue from The Silver Palate and jazz it up with nutmeg (and a touch of ginger) and I add a splash of heavy cream to smooth it out a little and a similar quantity of dark amber maple syrup from nearby to put it over the top.
CRANBERRIES
The Mayflower settlers found cranberries growing wild on vines in Massachusetts, but it is highly unlikely that cranberry sauce appeared on the first Thanksgiving table. Although recipes for it appear in cookbooks from the 1700’s, commercially-produced cranberry sauce first appeared in the early 20th century as a solution to a problem– when the Ocean Spray company figured out that vine-grown cranberries could be harvested much more cost-effectively in bogs than on dry land, they became more widely available and way less expensive. However, wet harvesting damaged a portion of the yield, making them unsellable as fresh fruit… and so they combined the damaged berries with enough sugar to balance their excruciatingly high acidity, they relied upon its naturally high level of pectin to jellify it, and presto! An instant classic–
Meanwhile, numerous cranberry sauce recipes are available for the ambitious home cook. Veteran NPR host Susan Stamberg has famously shared her mother-in-law’s controversial recipe with her listeners every November. Martha Stewart, meanwhile, hews much closer to the original version, simply jazzing hers up a touch with orange zest and cinnamon. Every celebrity chef, it seems, has a version available on-line. I have nothing to add to this particular discussion because I dislike cranberry ANYTHING. Indeed, I see cranberry sauce as the equivalent of the dreaded Christmas fruitcake– something ubiquitous at a specific holiday that wouldn’t be missed had it never been invented. My sense is that cranberry sauce has become a Thanksgiving tradition because A) it functions as gastronomic first aid for dried-out turkey breast; and B) the cranberry industry (i.e., Ocean Spray) hyped the crap out of it– just like Campbell’s did with their Beans & Mushroom Soup Casserole– and it caught on well beyond all expectations.
That being said, if you must have cranberry sauce on your table, you’ll certainly take a measure of satisfaction making your own. Start with a bag of cranberries, just enough water, and a cup of sugar. Cook it. Done. Adjust sweetness as needed, and add your own touches– spices, orange zest, even booze– as you see fit.
THANKSGIVING WINE
Thanksgiving was never a big wine holiday until recently, and I can think of only two exceptions. Back when White Zinfandel was all the rage, it seemed like a perfect fit for this holiday– it was low in alcohol and thus better for daytime consumption, and its fruity sweetness at least partially redeemed a dried-out turkey breast. As a rosé, not even cranberry sauce could ruin it. And does anyone remember Beaujolais Nouveau, the light and fruity French quaff that was always the first taste of a given vintage? Up until a couple of decades ago, its mid-November release was not only met with much anticipation and fanfare, but also its timing was perfect for Thanksgiving. As of late, the release of Beaujolais Nouveau is no longer a big deal; furthermore, the wine itself has morphed into a much darker and more ponderous version of its former self at the expense of the uniquely joyful and innocent appeal that had made it so much fun to drink. (Significantly, I think, neither White Zinfandel nor Beaujolais Nouveau are noteworthy for any particular food pairings.)
Fast-forward to today. Americans are, by several orders of magnitude, more wine savvy than previous generations. A lot of us now extend our culinary sensibilities to Thanksgiving dinner, and the menu has become correspondingly more wine-friendly. Back when I was a retailer I used to recommend Conundrum White, an unusual blend of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, and Semillon for Thanksgiving. In a world of fish-friendly whites, supple and rich Conundrum paired quite nicely with the turkey dinner. But if a red better suits your taste, an obvious choice is Pinot Noir… especially if you are splurging for a fancier grade of turkey. Pinot Noir, the sole component of France’s great red Burgundies, is a natural fit with all manner of game birds. As such (and in case a persnickety food critic sits among your guests) you might even consider offering a Pinot Noir rosé with the breast meat and a full-bore Pinot Noir red with the dark meat.
All in all, as long as the turkey and all the side dishes are nicely prepared and serious food (i.e., not some sweet potato-marshmallow slop) it’s hard to go wrong with the wine.
POTATOES?
Yes... I recommend perusing these recipes for a few favorites of mine.
AND FINALLY, DESSERT
I am not a baker, nor do I intend to ever become one. I therefore have little to add at dessert time… just two ideas, really.
My bride Andrea has successfully weaned me from nearly all sources of gluten, and thus far I’ve managed to assemble a perfectly good Thanksgiving dinner without any. I was accordingly delighted to learn that I could make pumpkin pie without a crust– just follow the directions on the can and bake the resulting mixture in a Pyrex dish instead of a crust. Here is the easiest, simplest recipe I know for gluten-free pumpkin custard… even non-bakers like me can make it.
Indian Pudding– served warm so it melts the requisite scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Secondly, I’m frankly surprised that the dessert known as Indian Pudding has never become wildly popular for Thanksgiving. It is a wonderful marriage of Old World and New– the British technique for hasty pudding executed with American ingredients (i.e., cornmeal and molasses.) If it makes you feel better, go ahead and call it “Indigenous Peoples Pudding.” Just don’t serve it without ice cream.
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Dear friends around The Table, I sincerely wish all of you a peaceful and fabulous Thanksgiving. Please feel free to reach out with any questions. I'm here to help.
Best,
DannyM.
NOTES:
SOME MODERN IDEAS ABOUT TURKEY SHOPPING & COOKERY
Wild turkeys are avidly pursued by hunters, and yet they aren't particularly prized for their edible flesh. I'm reliably told that most successful turkey hunters return home with only the breast meat and perhaps some feathers and claws for the trophy shelf, leaving the rest for the foxes and coyotes. Meanwhile, the domestic turkey cultivated from the wild version is a flightless and comparatively flavorless freak that seems purpose-built to dry out when roasted. This tendency is commonly mitigated (in cheaper birds, anyway) by the injection of a salt, sugar, & chemical solution. (Always, ALWAYS read the labels on anything you eat... a surprising number of them read like the Periodic Table.)
You can usually find supermarket turkeys at various stages of naturalness, e.g., with labels indicating "no added solution," "antibiotic- and hormone-free," "organic," "heritage breed," and even "raised on a vegetarian diet." (As designed by God and/or nature, turkeys are omnivorous.) Unfortunately, the more "natural" the turkey, the greater its tendency to toughness and dryness. Some people have come to simply not bother with the bird and opt instead for ham or even prime rib, both of which seemingly cook themselves to perfection with little effort from the family chef. But if you MUST have a bird for Thanksgiving, here are some pro-tips:
BUY TWO SMALL TURKEYS INSTEAD OF ONE HUMONGOUS TURKEY.
Moms out there, what would you consider preferable-- giving birth to two 6-lb. twins, or to one strapping 12-lb. baby? The same reasoning applies here... it is WAY easier to maneuver the two smaller birds in and out of your oven.
BRINE YOUR BIRD(S).
Brining is an easy process that makes the bird more flavorful and moist... which is why those cheap turkeys are pre-injected with the aforementioned salt/sugar/chemical solution. But by purchasing an un-injected bird and brining it yourself, you assert control of two key variables: the length of brining time (24 hours is good) and the composition of the brine itself. I'm not bothering to list a specific recipe here because hundreds of them will appear in your google search; they will all contain salt, some will contain one form or another of sugar, and still others will include herbs and other seasonings. I recommend perusing a few and then picking one that strikes your fancy.
CONSIDER COOKING THE TURKEY IN PIECES.
White meat and dark meat cook differently... so why not cook them differently? Much of Thanksgiving cookery revolves around the contradictory challenge of thoroughly cooking the thighs without turning the breast meat dry and stringy. It is perfectly okay to quarter your bird and then cook each part to individual perfection. In a related story...
CONSIDER POACHING THE BREAST.
It is downright difficult to dry out a turkey breast if you gently simmer it in a flavorful stock as the thighs roast. Just make sure to keep the temperature safely below boiling, which will toughen it. If you can poach an egg, you can poach a turkey breast. (It is best to poach it on the bone.)
START A POT OF TURKEY STOCK RIGHT AFTER DINNER.
This integrates nicely into the cleanup process-- Fill your biggest stockpot halfway to the top with water (along with the breast-poaching stock, if applicable.) Glove up and pull all the remaining turkey meat from the bones and pack it in zip-lock bags. By simmering the bones and scraps for an hour or more, you wind up with a healthy bone broth that makes a killer soup. You can also cook it WAY down, freeze it, and use it for future sauces and braises.
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