12 November Saturday

The turkey has been reserved. I have committed myself to this project. Because the family will be visiting for Christmas, I am hosting dinner for several friends at Thanksgiving, which gives me a little more lee-way over what I serve. I wrote earlier that I would serve all the traditional side dishes, but that was old Benji. New Benji is excited and ready to shake it up. Now, I am love with edible art once again and it’s time to come up with the menu. Thanksgiving dinner is usually a big thing like an opera and keeping everyone interested and looking forward is key. Here’s the way I like to do it.

The Welcome Hour. I intend to serve the main course at 6pm, working backwards, the house will open for business at 3pm. At 3pm, the bar such as it is ready for action and the first nibbles are set out. I use three rules when putting a menu together: 1. Don’t repeat major ingredients. This not only applies to things like pumpkin or cranberries, but items like cream and cheese. Note your ingredients and in what order guests will be consuming them. 2. Let one type of flavor dominate each course. As the main course is butter savory, let other courses be spicy, sour, acidic. 3. Don’t serve any food without the intention of guests eating it. This last one is something many don’t think about enough. You might open a can of nuts, a jar of olives, a bag of peppermint patties, a log of salami, chips and dip, and a few wheels of El Presidente, and VOILA! you are well on your way to ruining people’s appetites, and cheapening the experience. The first dishes should stimulate the palate and make the guests want more. This is important- put out only a few things no more than three nibbles, let’s say. If you don’t want too much work, olives and pickles are really good. I like the work, so tapenade crostini. It’s a great time for a light seafood cocktail with a tangy dip. Spicy toasted pumpkin seeds are enticing. Gougeres or cheese straws are really nice, although I will not serve other cheese, sausage, bread, or sweets at this time. Think spicy, sour, light. Saliva inspiring. Bloody Marys and mulled cider to drink.

To the table. Soup’s on. This is where we made add a little heft. How about Butternut Squash with a swirl of olive oil and fresh thyme? Cream of Mushroom? This year, I want Oyster Bisque with a dollop of Dungeness crab meat on top. That sounds good to me. Another tip- when you pull the finished turkey out of the oven, and the gravy and stuffing are ready to go, that’s when you heat the soup. The turkey should rest for thirty minutes before carving and allow thirty minutes between the soup and main course. Why not have them be the same sixty minutes? You can add time to that and serve another dish: an arugula salad with pomegranate seeds and goat cheese. Bring forth the dinner rolls.

Then the big plate. Roast turkey stuffed with sausages and chestnuts, a bread and sage dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, Brussels sprouts, cranberry compote.

After that, we need a break. This would be a great time to serve the salad, but because a lot of people won’t eat the salad after the main course, I won’t serve one. If the salad is light with no cheese or cream dresssing, this is a great digestive aid and palate cleanser.

Finally, now hold tight to the reins, dessert. There should be a good hour between finishing the main course and tucking into that pie. I’ve seen too many times the abhorrent practice of serving dessert with the main course or immediately afterword. You may have heard “now save room for dessert!” perhaps not remembering that you can wait a little bit for your body to digest, make a space, and put us in mind for pumpkin pie. Put the coffee on, Helen. Why then, does the dessert become part of the main course?

I read recently that the average American family spends five minutes a day actually eating the food at dinner. This means that we are not accustomed or entirely comfortable with longer meals. We don’t know what to do except eat constantly until we run out of items to eat, then leave the table. We want to eat the food, but we also want to go away. Eating dinner is the activity. Eating dinner is the activity. Eating dinner is the activity, not the impediment to the activity. I have been to meals where eating is rushed manically, horrible things like cleaning plates as guests finish, or guests leaving the table to go back to what they were doing before after they finished, everyone leaving, one by one.

Calm, Benji, calm. Eating dinner together is good for your family, it’s good for your life. Eating dinner is the activity.

Back to the dessert. If you have prepared traditional fruit pies like apple or cherry, great. If you’ve made the ubiquitous pumpkin pie, pecan pie, sweet potato pie, remember not to duplicate those ingredients in other dishes. People will become tired of pumpkiny things if there are too many of them, by which I mean two. I’ve made a spicy ginger pumpkin cheese cake, which is absolutely heavenly, but is so dense and all the things, that a sensible cook would avoid using either cream cheese of any kind or winter squash of any kind in the rest of the meal.

So there are meals to prepare before Thanksgiving, and tonight I did another stir fry.

I used to be a fella that just couldn’t cook rice, but by ignoring other people’s advice, I’ve gotten pretty darn good at it. Here are a few thoughts about rice, by which I mean a standard rice that you make regularly to go with anything. My favorite is jasmine-more flavorful than typical short-grain, and sturdier, more toothsome than basmati. Of course, we’d use different rice for different preparations, we’re talking the everyday steamed rice that’s easy, a recipe you can memorize.

First, many cooks will tell you must ignore the rice whilst it is cooking. This is not a good idea. Always use twice the water to rice, let is come to a rapid boil, turn the heat down, put a towel on top of the pot, and cover the pot with the lid. Leave it alone for about ten minutes. Then, sweet, gentle, caring friends, remove the lid and very gently stir it to determine the water to rice ratio. The other cooks don’t want you to break up the grains, but I know you, gentle reader, will lead with the shoulder, not the wrist, and just make loving, slow, stirs in your rice. At this point, it will either be a little watery or look like it’s almost just right, starting to dry out. It will not, repeat not, be gloopy or thick. If it’s wet, let it cook uncovered, if it’s drying out, what do you think? Put the lid back on, and please turn off the heat. Browning rice that adheres to the bottom of the pot indicates a careless cook who thinks everything will be ok, and all the guests will tolerate the outcome, whatever it may be. Wet, chiffy rice indicates a neurotic who is afraid of being thought to be the former. Hide your flaws. Check the rice occasionally, but own it when the cooking is done. Toss it with a fork, get some air in, taste it to make sure you like the consistency, salt if you must, no pepper, serve. Nothing else, no butter, no olive oil, or anything. Rice.

As for the stir fry? Garlic, ginger, onion, red chili flake, soy sauce, chili oil, sesame oil. ‘Nough said.