The Art of Eating In

by Cathy Erway

  I asked around to see whether any friends had a big enough roasting pan that I could borrow. No one did—not even Sean, whom I could usually count on for the obscure kitchen tool. As it turned out, he didn’t let me down. The next day, he called me while shopping at Target to say he’d found a pretty big roasting pan there on sale for $12. He offered to buy it to save me the trouble, and I’d pay him back. Once I got the roasting pan home, I decided I could do without the basting equipment. Instead, I put my focus into what type of stuffing I would make.

  Stuffing is one of those fun dishes where you can really create any combination of flavors and it’ll still probably taste great. A little sweetness with savoriness is a hallmark of great stuffings, as far as I’m concerned. My family’s version at Thanksgiving always had dates, along with celery and onions. After some pondering, I decided to make mine a little spicy and smoky, too, by adding chipotle. For the sweet component, I chose to add a very fall-harvest-y fruit, apple. I was going for Mexican flair with this stuffing, so I used chopped corn tortillas instead of basic bread—a risky move since I had never tried it before.

  During these preparations on the day of the feast, Ben was mulling about at home. I’d wanted him to come to the Fall Harvest Feast, but he declined, saying he wasn’t feeling up to it. At noon, Matt arrived at my door with the turkey. He, Karol, and Maia had swung by the Union Square Greenmarket that morning, too, and the trunk of their borrowed car was filled with makings for the dinner. Ben helped me carry the enormous vacuum-wrapped bird into the apartment, and with a heavy plop, I eased it onto the cleared strip of counter space. Once it was taken out of its packaging and placed in the roasting pan, I could tell a few things were different about this turkey compared to the ones I’d seen over previous Thanksgivings. It had a longer, somewhat leaner overall shape, less rotund. It somehow looked more birdlike, more like an animal that had been living a short while ago, rather than a fully roasted, reddish Thanksgiving centerpiece. The legs had already been somewhat trussed, secured with a big piece of skin right below the cavity, saving me the trouble of tinkering with twine.

  Following the cues I had gathered from my turkey-roasting sources, I patted the bird down with paper towels and began seasoning it, both outside and in the cavity. Next I filled up the cavity with my stuffing. I had exactly five hours until I needed to be at Maia’s place, so I popped the bird into the oven and hoped everything would go all right.

  There are two camps of home cooks: the ones who follow a recipe word for word, no matter what, and the ones who sense how much of what is needed in a dish or how long it needs to cook. This disparity can be easily observed when cooking a Thanksgiving turkey. One type of home cook stands by as a turkey roasts and thinks to open the oven door only when the designated amount of time at the exact temperature that the recipe indicated has expired. The other type smells, hears, or sees something going on in the oven that lures them into checking it. My father inhabits the former personality; my mom, the latter. Over the phone, my dad had instructed that it would take at least four and a half hours to cook a twenty-pound bird. But only three hours into roasting, with basting every half hour or so (with much difficulty, since I had to use a large soup spoon and tilt the roasting pan to scoop up juices every time), my turkey was looking fairly golden brown and smelling wonderful. I had taken the advice I’d read somewhere to crank the oven to 500 degrees for the first ten minutes of roasting, to create a crisp, browned skin. This method probably shortened the necessary cooking time. Still, the turkey had an insert that would pop automatically when it was supposedly cooked through. I didn’t have it in me to trust the plastic device, so after the bird looked positively done—beautifully done—at about four hours, I removed it from the oven and placed it on the stove to admire for a good, long minute. Its skin was glistening a warm golden brown, looking crisp to the touch along the center of the breast and at the crests of the drumsticks. I had stuck a few lemon slices and sprigs of thyme underneath the skin of its breast, and they were visible beneath the orangish skin, which had turned slightly translucent and had molded around them. It looked like the cover of a fall cooking magazine. Just then, the white plastic insert shot out.

  I grabbed Ben for a hand at heaving the bird out of the pan so that I could begin making the gravy from the juice. He had stayed at a good distance while I took over the kitchen the entire day. I asked him again why he wouldn’t come to Maia’s. I was sure there would be a person or two he knew there. He used the defense of saying that he wouldn’t be upset if I didn’t want to come along to something where mostly his friends were involved. I argued that since Karol was such a close friend of mine, she was his friend by now, too. He pointed out that he’d come to so many other cooking events with me and Karol. I knew Ben wasn’t crazy about Matt, even though he’d met him only once or twice, and I accused him of this, too. I also got down on him for never wanting to come to my family’s Thanksgiving dinner, since they were so close. But Ben was loyal to spending his Thanksgivings with Richard and Sam, as he had been ever since moving to New York City six years ago for college. The three of them and a host of other friends whose families also lived too far away to justify a plane ticket for the short holiday annually gathered at Richard and Sam’s apartment for a Thanksgiving feast. There was no pulling him away from that tradition.

  In the end, no one left this fun little conversation happy, and I got into a cab to go to Maia’s alone, with the fully roasted turkey, gravy, and my extra side. Yes, I had found time to prepare another side, while cooking the turkey that day. I wanted it to be a surprise for the others.

  Cooking was in full swing when I arrived at Maia’s. A spare door had been propped up on the floor with piles of books and covered with a tablecloth to create the dinner table. It had already been set with appetizers and a plate of Maia’s perfectly golden, fluffy-looking biscuits.

  Maia and Karol were scuttling about preparing their dishes in the open kitchen, and I squeezed in to warm the gravy and prepare the rest of my side course. Matt was fussing over his pumpkin, bean, and corn succotash, which was served out of an enormous hollowed half-pumpkin bowl. The pumpkin bowl was too large for the dish, so Matt carefully carved off some of its height at the top so that he was left with a ring of pumpkin. He wore it around his neck for most of the night. On the stove, an enormous pot of mulled apple cider was steaming. The drink of the night was a hot toddy, mixed with Bourbon and topped with mint sprigs, and I helped myself to one. After an hour or so of cooking around the kitchen and living room, we all sat down to help ourselves to a meal.

  Even the vegetarians in our group joined in the chorus of aahs as the turkey was ceremoniously placed on the table. I began scooping the stuffing from the cavity into a bowl, though, and some turned away with uncomfortable expressions. Someone had brought paper turkey frills to place on the ends of the drumsticks. Once they were slipped on, they instantly made it look like something out of a comic strip. Lined up on the table were both Matt’s vegetarian stuffing and mine, the pumpkin succotash, garlic-sautéed kale, mashed potatoes, gravy, an elaborate ravioli dish that Matt’s friend David was still assembling, and my extra side of the night: a salad of roasted beets and fresh orange wedges with fresh mint leaves and candied orange peel. After all that, we’d have to save our appetites for the desserts: Karol’s chocolate peanut butter tart, Maia’s Indian corn pudding, and Jessica’s sour cream apple pie.

  My only concern was whether the turkey was thoroughly cooked. Matt helped me carve the turkey, and after the first few slices of breast meat, close to the surface, I held my breath. But one after another, the slices came out clean, ivory colored, and moist.

  “I can’t believe it’s cooked,” I said.

  “And it’s so good,” Karol said, mopping up some gravy with a piece.

  After having seconds of both white and dark meat, I knew there was something very different about this turkey, both inside and out. It had a prominent, savory flavor, and its meat was utterly moist thr
oughout. I’d never go back to regular grocery-store turkeys again, I vowed. (It was too late to order one for my parents’ upcoming Thanksgiving, though.)

  After all the frustrations I’d been through with Ben during day, it felt great to be with friends who really appreciated the work I’d put into the food that I made. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that kind of genuine respect from Ben for something I had cooked. Then again, he saw me cook every single day, and my friends were reacting to a rare treat.

  There was so much food, especially so much turkey thanks to the huge bird that Matt had gotten, that we had enough for continuous munching throughout the night, even after we declared ourselves full several times over. The desserts were polished off the quickest. Karol’s tart, with its chocolate cookie shell, smooth peanut butter cream filling, and milk chocolate topping, didn’t last very long. I had more than my share of the wonderful sour cream apple pie—and of the perfect complement to it, Bourbon-spiked apple cider.

  Once we’d dug far enough into the turkey to reveal the wishbone, we carefully removed it. Matt and I decided to face off over the age-old wishbone pull. We each gripped one end and pulled. As our shaky feet began to lose their balance and we stumbled about the room, it was clear that this bone was too rubbery to break apart. It had barely spent any time outside the still-warm turkey. We continued to twist and stretch at the ends for what seemed like five minutes before giving up. A truce.

  I don’t have a clue what I had been wishing for anymore, but looking back, I don’t think there’s anything more I could have wished for on that night. I had everything that I loved about life: good people (and not too many of them) and really good food (too much of it, but that was okay). It was a wonderful night. Also, some of the people I became closer with that night at the Fall Harvest Feast, Matt and Maia especially, have remained some of my very best friends.

  A week later, it was Thanksgiving morning. I had taken the train to New Jersey the night before and arrived late, along with my brother, my aunt Ellen, and my cousin Phoebe. But I woke up early, fixated on food preparations, and walked downstairs to my parents’ kitchen in my pajamas. I put a big pot of coffee on. In the fully stocked fridge, I found a package of Greek feta, a somewhat squashed tomato, and a full carton of eggs. There was a wholesale club-sized bag of yellow onions in a drawer at the bottom of a kitchen cupboard. I decided to make a big frittata for breakfast, to share with everyone once they had woken up.

  In The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “The preparation and distribution of food necessarily brought the whole family together, the fathers apportioning to their children the results of the hunt, and the grown children then doing the same to their aged parents.” It’s funny, even though Brillat-Savarin was writing in eighteenth-century France, he might as well have been describing the Thanksgiving dinners of the Erway family tradition. That is, if you can call a thirty-pound turkey wrapped in plastic from the supermarket the “hunt”

  At holiday gatherings with my family, rarely does cooking cease to be the center of activity. I don’t see this as a strange quirk, or as archaic. Cooking and feeding one another are ways of playing out family roles as much as they are acts of necessity when you are with a big group of family members all at once. They were also an expression of hospitality for our guests. Right then Ellen and Phoebe were asleep in the spare guest room upstairs.

  My mom came downstairs.

  “What’cha making?” she asked. I had a large saute pan of sliced onions on the stove, which I was in the process of slowly caramelizing before adding them to the eggs.

  “A frittata,” I replied.

  “A what?” she said.

  “This egg thing, sort of like a quiche but without a crust.”

  “Oh, yes, do that,” she said. She looked at the clock. “Dad needs to wake up and start the turkey.”

  I suddenly remembered one of my favorite Thanksgiving snacks.

  “Can we cook the gizzards now?”

  “Yes, let’s do that,” said my mom. Nobody loved eating the entrails of the turkey as much as my mother and I. I particularly liked the neck. Boiled for at least an hour in plain water, and sprinkled with just salt, the tender muscles peeled off with a fork in delectable dark-meat shreds. It’s a flavorful part of the bird and tastes a little like braised duck, if you ask me.

  After a little while, my father came bumbling down the stairs, eyes bloodshot and darting as if he had just been dragged from a dream.

  “Where’s the turkey? Did someone start making the stuffing yet?” he said.

  I helped bring the bucket that the turkey was brining in from the porch into the kitchen. My frittata had just gone into the oven, which my dad complained about.

  “The turkey needs to go into the oven now if we’re going to eat at three,” he insisted.

  “We’re not going to eat at three; we never do. It doesn’t matter anyway. We have plenty of appetizers. Breakfast hasn’t even been served, and it’s already ten,” said my mom.

  Indeed, we had a full day’s schedule of food to pass through our mouths, and seemingly not enough time for it all. In anticipation, I started to make my next dish, a turkey liver mousse. I had never made it before, but I followed a recipe that called for chicken livers in a savory pate-like spread.

  An hour or so later, the frittata was taken out of the oven, and fruits and croissants were spread out on the kitchen table for breakfast. Everyone else had trickled downstairs in their pajamas, too. Although he loved to eat food, my brother wasn’t terribly inclined to cook it. He was more interested in stealing time on the upright piano whenever he was at our parents’ house.

  “That’s Chris’s song,” I said to Ellen, who had joined us in the kitchen for breakfast. “He composed it.”

  “It sounds lovely. Play some more,” she shouted into the living room.

  After showering and dressing, I went back downstairs to help prepare sides and serve midday appetizers. I copied Sean and Meredith’s baked-Brie-and-mango-spread dish, which turned out to be a huge hit. The turkey liver mousse came out nicely, too. I had sauteed the livers with onions, a fresh rosemary sprig, and a splash of white wine, and then removed the rosemary and blended the mixture with chunks of cold butter. With all the cholesterol naturally in liver, it was a rich and incredibly fattening snack. After snack-time, I was already full, with a couple of hours left till dinner.

  As we sat on stools around the kitchen eating Brie and crackers, my aunt began telling me about a self-help book she was reading. Ellen had separated from her husband earlier that year, and she’d recently begun seeing a new guy. The book was called The Five Love Languages, and it described five distinct ways people showed affection for each other in relationships. The point of understanding this, Ellen explained, was to see whether your methods of communication work with, or are appreciated by, your partner. Reading a quiz at the beginning of the book was supposed to show one which “languages” he or she uses most: acts of service, giving gifts, physical affection, and so on. Ellen said that the one she rated most important to her was acts of service—helping out around the house, being there to support each other, that kind of thing. The one she ranked least important was giving gifts. What did I think my favorites were? she asked. I thought about this for a while.

  “Well, can’t giving gifts be sort of similar to acts of service?” I asked. I moved on to the pate, spreading it onto the remainder of the cracker that I’d just eaten part of with Brie.

  “How so?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m thinking of cooking something really special for someone—which is kind of like a gift, in a way. But it’s also ... a meal, or necessity, too. Right?” I said.

  Ellen shrugged. “I guess so. You should read the book. I’ll lend you my copy when I’m done.”

  My cousin Zoe arrived as we were finishing the last of the cooking. Zoe lived in New York City and was in her first year of residency as a doctor, so she wasn’t able
to travel upstate in time to make it to her parents’ Thanksgiving dinner. She almost couldn’t make it to ours. We had thought that her brother, Elliot, who also lived in the city, was spending Thanksgiving with his girlfriend’s family. Then at five o’clock we got a call from Elliot, who was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike with his girlfriend, Meredith. What exit were we? he asked.

  “What? What?” my mom sputtered. “Elliot and Meredith are coming?”

  “Yeah, they should be here in about twenty minutes,” Chris said as he hung up the phone.

  “Guess we should bring out the extra leaf for the table,” said my dad.

  “Do we have enough food?” My mom panicked.

  “Of course we have enough food,” I told her. Aside from the basics—turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and green beans—I was braising some Brussels sprouts in white wine and shallots and roasting a root-vegetable medley with celeriac and sweet potatoes, my dad was making an acorn squash dish he’d seen on a cooking show, and we had five—yes, five—pies, which were baked the night before with the help of Phoebe and Chris.

  Okay, maybe we could use some more potatoes. I got started on boiling more potatoes to add to the mound already keeping warm in the oven. When the garbage disposal clogged with potato peels and whatever else had been in the sink before them, Chris was called upon to get on his back on the floor, unscrew the pipes beneath the sink, and scoop out the mess. That was another thing he was good at: fixing just about every mechanical and technical issue the family encountered.

  There was a full crowd seated around the dinner table when it came time to eat. With Elliot and Meredith, there were nine of us total, not much smaller than our family Thanksgivings in years past. We served the food in the kitchen, buffet style, and we all carried our plates to the table. Our group was small enough, though, for everyone to hear the same conversation at once. Compliments on the food went around the table as we ate and talked. At one point, Elliot asked me how my blog was going, and how long I was going to keep writing it. I told him that I didn’t intend to stop anytime soon.