by Nora Ephron on 24 November 2005 in www.HuffingtonPost.com
I
have a fairly serious theory about Thanksgiving dinner, and it's
this: don't mess with it. What most people make for Thanksgiving
dinner is what their mothers made, and you stray from this at your
peril. I believe that the yam was stuck into Thanksgiving dinner
to satisfy mankind's atavistic urge to change things; yams give
that urge a safe focus.Yams are delicious no matter what you do
to them. And they're powerful: if you make them slightly differently
from one year to the next, no one is really going to complain, because
yams are so fundamentally yammy that they survive experimentation
and novelty, which are, as I just said, the enemies of a successful
Thanksgiving dinner.
Anyway, the point is that I pretty much keep to the ways that were
pioneered in the olden days of Beverly Hills by my mother, who was
one of the first people I know to recognize that you can't do much
better than Pepperidge Farm stuffing and Ocean Spray cranberry sauce,
and who introduced scalloped oysters into our Thanksgiving ritual
with great success some fifty years ago. I make scalloped oysters
every Thanksgiving. No one eats them but me but I don't care.
The only aspect of my Thanksgiving dinner that has changed over
the years is my method of cooking turkey, and it's about to change
again. The year everyone brined their turkeys, I brined my turkey
and saw that it was good. The year everyone insisted that deep-fried
turkeys were some sort of breakthrough, I resisted, knowing that
the deep-fried turkey was a stupid foodie episode that would soon
pass. (I hoped it would soon pass because I have eaten deep-fried
turkey and it's overrated; what's more, deep-frying a turkey is
dangerous, more dangerous even than cooking beef fondu, which once
famously burned someone whose name I forget on the Upper West Side
in the l960s and was never served anywhere ever again as far as
I can tell.) This year I discovered a new way to cook a turkey in
the November Gourmet and it sounds worth trying -- you just season
a 16-pound bird, stick it into the oven at 450 degrees and take
it out two and a half hours later; you don't even have to baste.
Anyway, I was feeling smug and smart about my Thanksgiving dinner
until this morning, when I opened my copy of Women's Wear Daily
and discovered that I have completely missed the boat and ordered
the wrong turkey. Women's Wear contains several interviews with
major food people, all of them discussing what they're making for
Thanksgiving dinner, and as a result, I realized that I am supposed
to be cooking something called a heritage turkey. Until an hour
ago, I had never heard of a heritage turkey. But I just Googled
it and discovered that a heritage turkey is the turkey equivalent
of an heirloom tomato with a little bit of the free-range concept
thrown in: it's a bird that's been allowed to walk around, that
hasn't been bred to have an oversized breast, and has been allowed
to have sex, whatever sex is where turkeys are concerned (I've always
been confused about sex and poultry and exactly how eggs fit into
the equation). I feel bad about not having known about heritage
turkeys until it was too late. It's not easy being up-to-date, and
I've given up on most things, but I always thought I was capable
of staying on the cutting edge in the Thanksgiving turkey area and
now I see I haven't at all.
By the way, the other day I bought several heirloom apples, which
I also had never heard of until this week. They were extremely expensive
and absolutely inedible.
Another dish that's part of my Thanksgiving tradition is a jello
mold. I understand that no serious cook would ever serve a jello
mold, but I happen to love a jello mold; it's so deeply American,
so homely, so possibly ironic and yet not, so full of narrative.
I am jello, it seems to be saying, and on this fabulous holiday,
when we all get to be Wasps, I bring you just that much closer to
Waspdom. I am not just jello, it's saying, I am the food equivalent
of a red state, but in a good way. I am merely jello, it's saying,
but I'm here to remind you that a modest thing like me can make
its way into the greatest meal of the year. I'm sure my jello mold
is saying other things too, but I can't think of them right now;
anyway, the turkey that is not a heritage turkey has just arrived
and I'm going to go brine it.
GREEN JELLO
A magnificent episode in jello molds, boasting a color that does
not otherwise exist in nature.
1 small pkg. lime jello
1 cup water
8 oz. Cream cheese cut into small bits
1 cup baby marshmallows
l 16-oz. Can crushed pineapple and juice
Add l cup boiling water to jello and stir. Put into a blender with
the cream cheese and marshmallows and blend. Add to pineapple and
juice, and put into a Teflon jello mold. Unmold before serving.
APRICOT JELLO MOLD
The queen of all jello molds.
4 small pkgs. apricot jello
3 12-ounce cans apricot nectar
1/2 pint sour cream
l large can halved apricots
8-, 9- or 10-cup mold
To l package of jello add 1 1/2 cups boiling water and juice from
one can of apricots. Pour half the mixture into a ring mold or Bundt
pan, preferably teflon. Lay drained apricots top side down into
mold. Put into refrigerator.
Throw away the other half of the jello mixture.
Heat l can nectar to boiling and add one package of jello. Mix well.
Cool slightly and when mold in refrigerator is set, add this next
layer. Again refrigerate.
Heat the second can of nectar to boiling and add another package
of jello. Then add in sour cream gently to avoid air bubbles. Add
this layer again when other layers are gelled.
Heat the third can of nectar and add jello. This is your last layer.
Add when the last layer sets and put back into refrigerator.
Unmold before serving.
SCALLOPED OYSTERS
l pint oysters
6 TB cream and the oyster liquor
1/2 cup bread crumbs mixed with l cup cracker crumbs
1/2 cup melted butter poured over the crumbs
Grease a small baking dish and cover it with a layer of crumbs,
then a layer of oysters, then a layer of crumbs, then a layer of
oysters, then a layer of crumbs.
Pour the cream and oyster liquor over it, bake 20 minutes at 400
until bubbling. |
