Treatise on Turkey

I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I don’t really like turkey. It doesn't really taste bad...it just doesn't taste like much of anything.My forty year history of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey has really been a quest to make it taste like something. We have bought fresh, local,  frozen,  heritage and butterball turkeys.I have slowly roasted turkeys  at low temperatures. I have quickly roasted turkeys at high temperatures and I have tried a carefully calibrated combination of both.  I have barbecued, deep fried, baked and gotten turkeys with a little button that pops up when it is cooked.

Newspapers and magazines this time of year are filled with recipes for preparing the Thanksgiving bird. There is a turkey hot line one can call when one forgets to put it in the oven at 7am or the cat drags the resting bird off the table.…I’ve marinated, brined, dismembered (spatchcocked) and basted. We’ve tried a variety of condiments... cranberry orange sauce, tinned cranberry jelly with the ridges still imprinted on it  as it glistens and jiggles in  Nana’s special cranberry glass bowl, and apple chutney to name but a few...to enhance the rapidly  cooling serving on the plate. 

It is a given which I accepted after years of frustration that it’s not possible to ‘rest’ the bird, carve it, warm up the variety of side dishes and get it all to the table piping hot.Thanksgiving dinner will always be lukewarm.  It is also a given that no matter what I do, it always seems that we carefully place in Tupperware or wrap in clingfilm more food than we began with. That’s because no matter how you cook it or what you serve with it, it’s still turkey.  

One year Dana and I decided that instead of turkey, we’d have paella. We’ve never lived it down. It was absolutely delicious, but the troops revolted. It was Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving you are supposed to have turkey, not paella. 

Matthew, one of the more outspoken proponents of eating the national bird on Thanksgiving, isn't coming this year. He has never cooked a turkey as far as I know, so he called yesterday and spent quite a long time talking to OilMan about how to do it.  confessing along the way that he doesn't really like it either. Joni is a vegetarian so she doesn't eat turkey, and when I was discussing the menu with Jim  last night, he told me that he likes turkey but would be happy with something else. Will chimed up from the couch that He doesn't like turkey.

After forty years of cooking turkey it turns out that most of the family doesn't really like it, but we are all attached to the rituals and traditions of Thanksgiving, so we will be having turkey this year.

Rain is forecast...that will give us a lot to be thankful for no matter what we are eating....