19 November Saturday

A lot of people haven´t been asking me how I´m feeling about the Thanksgiving prep. Well, let me tell you.

It´s that strange moment, the horses are in their stalls, waiting for the gates to open. And, they´re off!! I want to cook right now, but right now is too soon. Too soon. Timing, we are told, is everything. So, how do we time things? I am asked, time and again, how the dishes come out in a moment at just the right temperature for serving? How do you plan a meal that may take several days to prepare? It´s high time I told you, but it may take a minute, so settle in.

Thanksgiving has expanded in the last several years, and I for one am a fan. It began with Obama. He made the day after Thanksgiving a national holiday, which meant that many began to take Wednesday as a vacation day because they no longer had to on Friday. This meant that because a lot of people began to travel on Wednesday, Tuesday became the new hot day to travel, and since it is a half day at many schools, why bother? This lead, logically, to what´s the point of going to school or work on Monday for a one day work week? Now, it seems, many schools don´t meet at all the week of Thanksgiving, which means many travel during the weekend, even leaving town on Friday, as many of my friends have.

So, here I am, a quiet Saturday, with lots and lots to do, but today is planning for the action. I have created a menu, a shopping list, a schedule of cooking the week of, beginning on Monday. Let me first address the notion of stress.

Stress. There are good kinds and bad kinds. Exercise, for instance, is putting controlled stress on the body for its ultimate improvement. Cooking is stressful in that you are preparing ingredients purchased with your money, to feed and nourish yourself and people whose thoughts and company you care about, and you don´t want to disappoint anyone, do you? Fine, OK. But if you absorb these feelings into your body, well then, dinner gonna suck. You will be unhappy, hate the holidays, entertaining, and ultimately, your family and friends. The preparation of the food is the joyful act of putting it all together. You don´t want to make three thousand dishes? Don´t make three thousand dishes. You don´t want to make dessert? Don´t make dessert. Buy it or ask someone else to bring it. You need a little help the day of? Ask for a little help the day of. But, whatever you do, don´t act out the stress. The raw turkey sits there, mocking you, taunting, ¨I´ll never be ready on time¨ you can hear it speaking to you. No. You are in charge of your kitchen. You are an intelligent person at least evolved enough to understand the concept of added heat to raw poultry equals cooked food, fit for human consumption.

The preparation of the turkey is one of most written about and varying in method of all foods. It is fascinating the variety of methods for what seems on the surface to be such a simple preparation. I can´t even get into the stuffed vs. non-stuffed varieties. I am talking about the roasting of the bird. We always want the same thing- crispy skin, equally cooked, moist breast and legs and thighs. Have you ever seen a recipe for roast turkey that guarantees flabby white skin, bloody, undercooked thighs, and tough, stringy sawdust breasts?

Every cookery writer seems to have their own, singular way of preparing the bird. Julia Child cut hers up into pieces before cooking and put them in to roast at different times. She reassembled it before serving. Jacques Pepin does something similar in that he makes an incision at the thigh joints above and below to increase the cooking time of the dark meat. He also flips the turkey over twice during the cook time. America´s Test Kitchen has done a variety of things, including covering the breast with foil for the same reason as the previous two, to prevent the breast from overcooking will the legs are getting there.

When it comes to skin crispy, there´s butter smothered, butter and herbs under the skin, Martha Stewart´s method of a wine and butter soaked cheesecloth (genius), or a mix of either cornstarch and water or baking powder and water all over the outside to dry out the skin and brown it. Of course, we should salt and pepper the turkey two days before and let it do its magic. I don´t like wet brine, I think it changes the texture of the cooked meat in a way that doesn´t appeal to me.

This year, I am going to do something old-fashioned. I am going to make a paste of butter and flour and rub it all over the well salted turkey. I will also spread some flour on the bottom of the roasting pan which will toast while the turkey juices and butter drip on top of it. This will be the pre-thickened mixture that will make the gravy. This is Fannie Farmer´s method from 1896.