Written on Friday; posted on Saturday.
When I woke up this morning, my fingers smelled bad. I rubbed them together under my nose, trying to remember what I'd done.
Last night I celebrated Thanksgiving in New York for the first time in years. This year I've got a big role in a small play, and the producers scheduled a rehearsal for this evening, and better still, I have a Someone here to cook with. So I gave up my fond tradition of spending the holiday in Tampa.
I was in charge of the turkey. It was a ten pound fresh organic bird from Maple Crest, and I slid a mixture of fresh sage, ground black pepper, garlic, and brown spicy mustard--Gulden's, actually--under its skin, set it in a cheap aluminum roasting pan with two cups of chicken stock, and threw it, unstuffed, into the oven for a couple of hours. You're supposed to baste frequently, but we spent the first hour walking around the perimeter of the Pratt Institute, in glorious mild weather that seemed more Rincon than Brooklyn, so the skin caramelized a bit more than it should.
(While everyone insists that turkey should be removed from the oven when the center of the thigh reaches 165F, I never wait so long. By 145F, the breast was already dry and firm, and it had already cooked for two and a half hours, plenty long for a ten-pound bird without stuffing.)
I also made some unexceptional mashed potatoes, acceptable dressing and a serviceable gravy. Other cooks contributed pumpkin pie (impressively pumpkin-y despite the pulp coming from a can), roasted parsnips, a fresh cranberry salsa, and my two new favorites: Brussels sprouts roasted with olive oil, salt, and pepper; and sweet potatoes simmered with coconut milk, garlic, and red chillies and dressed with cilantro.
The recipe for the sweet potatoes came from Cook's Illustrated. When I first discovered Cook's, it thrilled me. I was living on a noisy street in a particularly soulless section of the Upper East Side, nerves still jangling from a bad choice of acting schools, and the careful, empirical approach of "America's Test Kitchen" soothed me. After a while, I discovered that the "Recipes That Work" didn't work any better than anyone else's, and that I could find better technique--and more poetry--in the pages of Julia Child.
The one thing I did learn from Cook's was that sea salt is a finishing salt, and belongs on top of food, where you can taste it. Whether it comes in fat, challenging boulders, or wispy flakes, the high surface area of sea salt hits the tongue differently than the uniform grains of Morton or Red Cross salt, and it tastes "saltier." Dissolve the salt in water, and the difference disappears. Here, the magazine really came through: there's so much babble and nonsense about how wonderful sea salt is, dispelled with a common-sense fact you can verify with your tongue.
The sweet potatoes went great with the roast turkey. A second success for "America's Test Kitchen."
In case you hadn't guessed by now, the awful smell on my fingers came from the garlic, sage, and mustard that I slid under the turkey's skin. It's one of the hazards of cooking, and, for that matter, eating certain foods. On a trip to France ten years ago, a good friend ordered and happily consumed lapin à la moutarde in a small restaurant in Lyon; his girlfriend wouldn't sleep with him for three days.
Sometimes I put myself on a purifying diet of brown rice and almonds, steamed greens and grilled chicken, and I feel (and smell) great. But it doesn't take too long to get sick of it.
The classic lapin à la moutarde, lovingly described.
A modified lapin à la moutarde.
Red meat makes you smell bad.
Rincon.
Michael is an actor, filmmaker, and occasional writer. He lives in Brooklyn.
Technorati Tags: cooking, mustard, memory, turkey, thanksgiving, acting
When I woke up this morning, my fingers smelled bad. I rubbed them together under my nose, trying to remember what I'd done.
Last night I celebrated Thanksgiving in New York for the first time in years. This year I've got a big role in a small play, and the producers scheduled a rehearsal for this evening, and better still, I have a Someone here to cook with. So I gave up my fond tradition of spending the holiday in Tampa.
I was in charge of the turkey. It was a ten pound fresh organic bird from Maple Crest, and I slid a mixture of fresh sage, ground black pepper, garlic, and brown spicy mustard--Gulden's, actually--under its skin, set it in a cheap aluminum roasting pan with two cups of chicken stock, and threw it, unstuffed, into the oven for a couple of hours. You're supposed to baste frequently, but we spent the first hour walking around the perimeter of the Pratt Institute, in glorious mild weather that seemed more Rincon than Brooklyn, so the skin caramelized a bit more than it should.
(While everyone insists that turkey should be removed from the oven when the center of the thigh reaches 165F, I never wait so long. By 145F, the breast was already dry and firm, and it had already cooked for two and a half hours, plenty long for a ten-pound bird without stuffing.)
I also made some unexceptional mashed potatoes, acceptable dressing and a serviceable gravy. Other cooks contributed pumpkin pie (impressively pumpkin-y despite the pulp coming from a can), roasted parsnips, a fresh cranberry salsa, and my two new favorites: Brussels sprouts roasted with olive oil, salt, and pepper; and sweet potatoes simmered with coconut milk, garlic, and red chillies and dressed with cilantro.
The recipe for the sweet potatoes came from Cook's Illustrated. When I first discovered Cook's, it thrilled me. I was living on a noisy street in a particularly soulless section of the Upper East Side, nerves still jangling from a bad choice of acting schools, and the careful, empirical approach of "America's Test Kitchen" soothed me. After a while, I discovered that the "Recipes That Work" didn't work any better than anyone else's, and that I could find better technique--and more poetry--in the pages of Julia Child.
The one thing I did learn from Cook's was that sea salt is a finishing salt, and belongs on top of food, where you can taste it. Whether it comes in fat, challenging boulders, or wispy flakes, the high surface area of sea salt hits the tongue differently than the uniform grains of Morton or Red Cross salt, and it tastes "saltier." Dissolve the salt in water, and the difference disappears. Here, the magazine really came through: there's so much babble and nonsense about how wonderful sea salt is, dispelled with a common-sense fact you can verify with your tongue.
The sweet potatoes went great with the roast turkey. A second success for "America's Test Kitchen."
In case you hadn't guessed by now, the awful smell on my fingers came from the garlic, sage, and mustard that I slid under the turkey's skin. It's one of the hazards of cooking, and, for that matter, eating certain foods. On a trip to France ten years ago, a good friend ordered and happily consumed lapin à la moutarde in a small restaurant in Lyon; his girlfriend wouldn't sleep with him for three days.
Sometimes I put myself on a purifying diet of brown rice and almonds, steamed greens and grilled chicken, and I feel (and smell) great. But it doesn't take too long to get sick of it.
The classic lapin à la moutarde, lovingly described.
A modified lapin à la moutarde.
Red meat makes you smell bad.
Rincon.
Michael is an actor, filmmaker, and occasional writer. He lives in Brooklyn.
Technorati Tags: cooking, mustard, memory, turkey, thanksgiving, acting
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