Thankless Thanksgiving

 

This hasn't been the best year, so I wasn't surprised when I checked with my various regular Thanksgiving dinner guests to find out that everyone had other plans. My overall luck of late hasn't been terribly good, and I've found that expecting the worst tends to dull the edge of constant disappointment -- a little bit. I've also gotten to the point where I'm just sick of the whole "bad turn of the Karma wheel," as I like to call it. It's time to spit in the face of the fates and decide I'm not going to be miserable no matter how crappy things are.

So I went ahead and ordered a nice, organic, free-range turkey from the local market, Westridge Market in Ojai. I got the smallest one they had. I made sure we had all the sides, although I cut back and only included the ones Rob and I really like. We also cleaned the dining room and I put out our festive Thanksgiving settings. I did cut back a bit. I only baked one pie, not the usual three. I only made one kind of cranberry sauce, instead of the normal two.

Dena told us she would be able to come over later -- she got off work around 7 p.m. in L.A., so she'd be here around 8. She had stopped by earlier and she told me she wanted some collard greens. I love collards green made with salt pork, but I know enough about them to convert them to a vegetarian version. Dena also loves sweet potatoes, so I got some. But because she was coming so late, we decided to eat earlier. In fact, Rob would prefer to eat around 1 p.m., while I insist on eating around 5 p.m. I'm the cook, so guess who wins that argument.

Rob and I decided we were going to make the meal a Big Deal even if it was just the two of us. Rob scrubbed the dining room. I managed to make all the sides, despite the fact that my bad foot is still quite tender. We had our usual turkey and stuffing (cornbread, almonds, celery, dried cranberries and currants). Rob is only interested in corn, turkey and mashed potatoes. He really doesn't like gravy, but it isn't Thanksgiving without a good giblet gravy for me, so that's what I made. So in addition to the mashed potatoes, we had creamed onions, turnips roasted in the turkey fat and sprinkled with rosemary, green beans with toasted almonds and pureed summer squash. Oh yeah, I also had some Rhodes rolls.

Dinner was ready at 5 on the Dot, which makes Rob happy -- well as happy as he can be not having his crack of Noon meal. We sat down to our full plates. Up til then, we really had been working on cheering each other up. But when we got to the actual meal the loneliness was crushing and we both lost our enthusiasm. I guess while other people count dollars in their bank account or karats in their rings, we count friends and family as our treasure and we were feeling quite depleted this year. So we finished our food in silence and I went to lie down, while Rob cleaned the kitchen.

Soon the phone rang and it was Gen of the comedy duo Gen and Sean, or Seanifer. They wanted to let us know that they missed us -- they go up to Gen's family Thanksgiving in Paso Robles -- about a three-hour drive each way, every few years and eat out at a restaurant. Then Tressa came over followed by Dena. I got up and made Dena her collard greens, which came out great. I also made the sweet potatoes with pecans, maple syrup and orange and served her the creamed onions she'd been hankering, along with green beans, squash and rolls. A friend of Tressa's came over and we sat around and chatted until almost 11 p.m.

No one had had any room for the pumpkin right after dinner so Rob and I had some after they left. Note to self: The King Arthur flour white whole wheat flour does NOT make a good pie crust, stick with unbleached. We both were in much better spirits. That's all we need, we decided, just someone to come by and hang out with us for a while and we're both happy. It's not that we don't enjoy each other's company, but we've been together so long, we've replayed conversations to death. Rob isn't one for idle chatter, and actually I find I'm not a big fan either, which is odd because I used to be such a chatterbox. It's nice to sit around with other people and just connect over a good meal.

Overall, it turned out to be a very lovely Thanksgiving and although it's been a bit rough here lately, we still have a great deal to be thankful for.

Vegetarian (vegan) collard greens

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 pounds collard greens. stems removed and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces -- roll the leaves and cut across in strips, then chop the strips.
3 shallots, chopped
1 quart vegetable broth
Tabasco sauce to taste (you can also use dried red pepper flakes)
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven and add the shallots, cook until translucent and add greens. Saute in the oil until the greens wilt. Add broth and salt and pepper and cover and cook for about 20 minutes. Add Tobasco to taste and cook and additional 10 minutes or until somewhat soft, but with some crunch.

 

Turkey talk

One thing I started thinking about was the evolution of the Thanksgiving turkey preparation over the years.

When I was a kid, we always bought frozen turkeys. That was all they seemed to have. It was always a big deal to defrost them on time, but in those days it was no big deal to leave them out until they were thawed. They were always filled with stuffing, which was made with eggs added and the stuffing stayed in the bird for days, or until the carcass disappeared. I think the reason so few got food poisoning from the stuffing then was because it got so nasty and gross so fast, no one would venture to try it.

Then in my 20s, we discovered that fresh birds were far superior. They were a specialty at first, and I always had to track them down. By this time, people had figured out that defrosting meat on the counter wasn't such a great idea and the turkey had to be defrosted in the refrigerator, which took days. But since I'd moved on to fresh turkey, it was OK by me.

A few years later, though I heard tell of a new-fangled kind of "best turkey," the free-range bird, which had lived a happy turkey life wandering around eating feed, not a horrible, crammed in pens and de-beaked existence. Plus they were supposed to taste better. Again, they were rare at first, but gained in popularity and soon I was fighting to get mine every year.

Now we're up to "heirloom' turkeys, which are supposed to hearken back to the breeds of yore when a turkey "tasted like a turkey (??????). Although I'm convinced it's all about making us spend more money on the turkey because I really haven't noticed a great deal of difference in the free range or heirloom brands.

We also obsess about food safety. Most experts say not to even stuff a turkey, because of food safety concerns. If you do, get the stuffing out right away. Also make sure to refrigerate the bird quickly to stave off illness. No leaving it on the counter for 5 hours, which my parents used to do.

Turkey preparation has also evolved. My parents stuck the thing in a roasting pan and let 'er rip. Then we had to use racks. The latest thing is brining. Every time you turn on the Food Channel, someone is talking about the joys of soaking the bird and all the magazines have brining tips.

I've found brining to be a logistical nightmare, especially if it's a really big bird. I bought a "brining sack" at Sur La Table a few years back and tried to put the turkey and the water in it and place it in a pan, but it leaked all over the place and was useless. This year I brined the bird by placing one cup of kosher salt (BTW did you know kosher means the meat is already brined? I didn't, but it's true), one lemon and herbs de provence along with enough water to fill up the roasting pan with the turkey in it. I flipped the bird every four hours for about 16 hours and then dried it off and let it sit on a rack that I had propped off the ground with aluminum foil, overnight, because the Chinese always air dry their poultry to get crispy skins. (You heard it here first, air drying is going to be the Next Rage).

The turkey came out great, moist and tasty. I need to brine because I tend to overcook the turkey a bit because I really really don't like underdone poultry.

Isn't it odd that as time goes on food becomes less and less safe? You'd think it should be the other way around.

Chickpeas and Chowhound

 

For those of you who don't know Chowhound is a site "For those who like to eat." There are really cool forums where you can sound off about a variety of topics. I'd heard, however, that their moderating is highly subjective and arbitrary. I've posed a couple of questions -- innocuous things like
what are your guilty pleasures -- and so forth.

But I apparently have run afoul of the whole Jane Goldman operation when I posed the following question:

What would be your ideal TV cooking show if you could create one?
Personally, I'd like a little less "personality" and gimmicks -- BAM, EVOO, y'all, etc. -- and a return to the Food Channel shows of yore. I really liked Ready, Set, Cook with audience members buying ingredients for chefs to transform in 20 minutes. I'd also really like to see more shows where true chefs show how to work in a kitchen -- I totally love Ming Tsai and Mario because they know so much about food. The current crop of TV hosts leaves me cold. What do you think?

I thought this would be thought-provoking and would shy away from the Chowhound aversion to "bashing" TV hosts, putting a positive spin on what people want from television. I got this in my mail box after several people had provided some really interesting answers to my query:

Hi Fuser, you've been sent the following by a Chowhound moderator:

Dear Fuser:

Chowhound's goal is to help people sort through their myriad chow options to find the most delicious food available to them - or in the case of the Food Media and News board, current TV shows, books, magazines etc. Speculation about what one's ideal TV cooking show would doesn't help anyone watch better now, so to speak, so they're off topic for our boards - just as discussions about what restaurants an area needs are.

The Chowhound Team
Chowhound.com

I don't know if others follow such things, but I do and Rob and I saw a recent Chowhound segment that featured the legendary Jane Goldman -- the editor of Chowhound -- ostensibly "reviewing" a local (to the Bay Area) restaurant. But as the piece progressed, it became apparent the review was, in fact, a fawning advertisement for the place.

It's too bad Ms. Goldman, like so many editors these days, is terrified of public opinion and works mightily, and with futility, to control the discourse. A small group of people has been in charge of what the public knows for a long period of time. I've worked for many of them -- petty men and women who make decisions out of fear for their positions, not out of any journalistic ethic -- and know that they are terrified of losing what has been their only power -- a huge power at that -- the power to control information.

To me, this is the greatest gift and curse of the new age of information we are venturing into. We can bypass the traditional sources of information and opinion and find them on our own. I don't know if anyone is following the case of the Missouri girl who committed suicide after being taunted by neighboring adults. The media has decided not to name these people because they haven't yet been changed with any crime. But if you follow this link, you can find out those names. Personally, I look beyond the law to determine what I think is right or wrong. Even if there's no law against adults harassing a child, it's wrong. It's especially wrong when that child then acts out in a tragic way as Megan Meier did. It is not the province of the media to decide whether these people whould be identified or not. If you don't want your name associated with a heinous act, then don't commit it.

The tide has turned and it no longer the domain of a very few to decide what the rest of us can or can not discuss; what we can or cannot know. I've heard all the arguments they give about how they are "being fair," but fairness tends to be the last consideration in a newsroom and all "news judgements" are ultimately arbitrary depending largely on the editor's whims.

On the other hand, there was a really cool recipe on Chowhound that I tried the other day. It was for fried chickpeas and it was really tasty. I've tried to make these before, but they always come out kind of chalky, chewy gross. This made them quite delectable with a nice crunchy crust and soft, warm insides. The fried sage melts in the mouth and is delicious.

Fried chickpeas

1 can chickpeas
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
salt to taste
10 or so large fresh sage leaves cut into one-half in strips

Rinse and drain the chickpeas. Mix the flour, paprika, and salt and place on a plate. Roll the chickpeas in the flour until they're covered. Heat 1/2 inch canola oil in a sturdy skillet. Add the chickpeas and fry until they are a golden brown, about 3 5o 5 minutes and drain on paper towels. Fry the sage, about a minute and drain on paper towels. Serve warm.

So despite the rather lock-step approach to message boards, there is still some good there. Just steer clear of any of the Chowhound TV shows -- they're AWFUL.