In the Same (Gravy) Boat

Where’s the mystery in Thanksgiving? That’s an easy one. It’s the gravy.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Why is it after so many years of making Thanksgiving dinner for various numbers of family and friends, every year on Thanksgiving morning I wake up with the burning (ouch) question: How do you make gravy?

Is it easy for you? I’ve been a TV reporter for the past 40 years.  I’ve wired myself with hidden cameras, gone undercover into tricky situations, confronted corrupt politicians and chased down criminals.

But the gravy thing? No can do.

First you have to wait til the turkey’s done, right? Then somehow, lift the huge and hot turkey out of the roasting pan without ruining the perfectly brown (if you’re lucky and careful) skin and transfer it to a platter. They never tell you exactly how to do that.

I always wind up putting a huge spoon into the stuffing cavity and using a spatula thing to boost the underside. The thing weighs 25 pounds after all—more, because of the stuffing I guess, right? So this is what they don’t say in the instructions...

Hurray.

The turkey is, once again, safely placed on the platter. The fragrance is tantalizing, amazing, irresistible, and people are ready to eat. Happily, there’s the “the turkey has to rest” rule, or else the gravy would never get made.

Into the oven goes the other container of stuffing, the sweet potato casserole, and the experimental dish I make every year that no one eats. Hoping that because there are three things in the oven trying to cook at 350 degrees at one time doesn’t throw off the temperature somehow.

My sister, a real chef, says real chefs just turn the oven to the highest possible temp and cook the food til it’s done. Thanks, Nancy. YOU come over and do this.

Anyway, praying for side dishes, you can no longer ignore the gravy. Balanced on two burners on the stove , that roasting pan sits, taunting. One recipe says “Skim off the fat.” You know how long that takes? And how difficult that is? I’ve purchased ever fat-skimming implement known to Sur La Table and I’m here to tell you, for me, they don’t work. So, for a couple of minutes, I pretend to skim off the fat.

 The turkey juices are beginning to bubble. I must make the oh-so-critical next decisions. Thickener. Flour? Cornstarch? Whatever arrowroot is? Maybe no thickener? Just clear gravy?

How did I do this last year?

Then the liquid. Wine? Water? Chicken broth? Did anyone buy chicken broth? (I guess “anyone” would be me.)

Back in the recesses of the left-hand cabinet, I find can of chicken broth. Does a little rust around the edges of the can make any difference?

Should I have saved the giblets? And what are those, anyway? But too late now. The turkey juices are bubbling. I whisk the brown stuff (what is that anyway? Do we want to know?) off the sides and bottom of the pan and into the mix.

Someone asks if there are appetizers, and if so, when we’re having them. Someone is about to get clobbered with a wooden spoon. Cornstarch it is. I dump cornstarch into a Pyrex cup of water—would it be better to put the water into the cornstarch? And make a little paste. I stir it into the pan juices. I think this is right. Whatever. No going back now.

Someone offers me champagne. Apparently, in the other room, the party is starting. I take a sip of the champagne—and dump the rest into the gravy. Stir stir stir. Add the chicken soup and a can of water. I’ve crossed the gravy Rubicon now. Wishing for more champagne. Stir stir stir.

Stir stir stir.

Stir stir stir.

  Oh. My gosh. Gravy.

I hope I remember this for next year.

 Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

And what hints to you have to make your gravy perfect? Or--hey--any Thanksgiving hints. All are welcome...and, um, needed...

Thanksgiving GOTTA HAVE IT

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Thanksgiving 19...75? May have been the most revealing ever.  Backstory: Every year that I could remember, we had two turkeys, and my mother made two kinds of stuffing. One turkey had the good kind, plain, from Pepperidge Farm, with the addition of sauteed celery and onions, which of course is the perfect stuffing. More on that in a minute. 

In the other turkey was the gross yucky stuffing. It was Pepperidge Farm-based—but

Mom, for some reason us kids could never comprehend, added oysters. (Not in the shells, of course. But the photo without them was disgusting.)

We DIED, even thinking about it. As  a ten year old, when my sister Nina was seven and Nancy was five, we would watch Mom put the oysters in the dressing and then hold our tummies in pretend agony. HOW, we wailed, could anyone eat that stuff? We were so grateful that there was the whole other turkey that had delicious plain stuffing.

So fast forward until 1975, when I was a nicely grown up twenty- something. I was back home in Indiana, in the kitchen, smelling all the Thanksgiving smells as Mom made the traditional two turkeys. She made up the big bowl of stuffing, it smelled fabulous, and then proceeded to dump the can of oysters into the big ceramic bowl.

MOM! I yelped. You put oysters in the whole thing!

Mom looked at me, like, dumb kid. “Honey,” she finally said. “You think I really made two different stuffings every year? I never did. You kids have been happily eating oyster dressing since day one.”

Well, I was shocked.  Parental deceit, and at holiday time, too! But—we happily ate it again. And the oyster stuffing story is one of our holiday traditions.

Liz loved the cranberry sauce from a can, you know, the kind where you could see the ridges? Yuck, but chacun a son gout.

And we also always had black cherry Jello with black cherries in it. Weird, dark dark red jello, made in a bundt cake mold, with marble-sized black cherries floating in it. "Black cherry" is a kind of weird flavor not found in nature (I guess Bing cherries are the closest) but if my mother tried to serve Thanksgiving dinner without Black Cherry Jello mold, my little brother Chip (now a handsome and dashing attorney--age 55--in Colorado) would have a fit. We ALWAYS had Jello.

So what about you, Reds? And Thanksgiving must-haves, deceptions, or family necessities?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: This is Texas, so cornbread dressing is a MUST. With lots of sage, celery, and onion. I love my cranberry relish recipe, although I suspect that no one else likes it as much as me... My daughter and I LOVE fresh Brussels sprouts, sauteed with bacon, but we are in the minority. My aunt still does Thanksgiving dinner, and there is no weird jello, thank goodness!

HANK: Hey, talk to Chip! And Brussels sprouts are now a definite necessity, I’m with you. 

RHYS BOWEN: The one thing I can NOT have is sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on it. I ate my first one when I was pregnant, felt violently ill and can never face one since. I adore good stuffing with lots of herbs. John likes sausage meat stuffing. Clare makes the best mashed potatoes and everyone insists on the family recipe apple crumble.

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Gourmet family that we are, we require Pepperidge Farm herbed stuffing in our turkey. No oysters or cornbread stuffing for us. It’s got to be from the bag, using the recipe ON the bag and following their suggestion to add onions and celery.

HANK: Exactly! Exactly! Hallie, we

should have come to YOUR house.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Now see, I make stuffing from scratch, following the recipe my mother used and her mother used. It's so economical, I suspect it was a Depression-era-or-earlier thing.

I take an entire loaf of white bread - cheapo white no-fiber bread we all ate back in 1964. Leave it out two days til it gets nice and stale. Saute onions and celery in butter while boiling the celery leaves, onion ends and carrot trimmings with the turkey neck for a quick stock. Tear the stale bread in pieces, toss with the onion-celery  mix, sage, and dampen it well with the stock. You must have enough to stuff the bird and make a separate casserole dish, because everybody knows some people like stuffing wet and some like it dry.

Oh, and the must-have from Ross's side of the family? Birds Eye green beans and spaetzle. Not hand-snapped fresh green beans, God forbid, but veggies and sauce frozen in a microwaveable dish. Oh well, at least it frees up one of the burners for my latest attempt at a fancy cranberry sauce that someone might actually eat.


 HANK:  So how about you, Reds? What’s your Thanksgiving must-have? What’s your vote on mashed potatoes? Lumpy or smooth? And sweet potatoes with marshmallows? Yea or nay?

And coming up this week: tomorrow, Gravy!  Wednesday, cooking secrets for emergencies!  And then, surprises.

(And Breaking news: TRUTH BE TOLD  is an RT BookReviews nominee for best suspense thriller of 2014!)

Craving soup! Hallie's minestrone with chorizo and Thai basil

HALLIE EPHRON: In the cold, a body craves soup. And though Boston's "cold" hasn't held a sputtering candle to the cold you all in the middle of the country have had over the last week or so, I've hauled out my fingerless gloves and cozy shawl and furry slippers, fired up the space heater, and started making soups.

First up, minestrone with white kidney beans and orzo and chorizo. Topped with handfuls of chopped Thai basil. I'd had Thai basil with the Phos we can get at any of our local Vietnamese restaurants.  It turned out to be spicier and even more fragrant than Italian basil, exquisite in this soup.

My "recipe," such as it is, was based on what was in the kitchen.

HALLIE'S MINESTRONE WITH THAI BASIL
(Generously serves 6 for dinner)

Ingredients:
2 T olive oil
1 package (about 3/4 lb) of chorizo (Portuguese sausage - you can find it in the supermarket near the Kielbasa) cut into 1/2" pieces
1 large onion chopped
3 carrots chopped
3 stalks of celery (with the tops) chopped
1 can of large white kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 large (~35 ounce) can of peeled WHOLE Italian tomatoes, cut up into pieces, along with whatever juice etc. is in the can with them
About 1/4 cup of uncooked orzo
4 cups of vegetable or beef (or mixed) broth

For topping:
Chopped Thai basil
Parmesan cheese

Directions:
1. Do all the chopping and cutting up beforehand.
2. Over medium heat, sautee the chorizo in a large (~4 qt) pot until it's browned. Remove the chorizo from the pot and set aside. Leave all the brown bits and fat in the pot.
3. Add about 1/2 cup of broth to the hot pan, and as it bubbles, scrape up all the lovely brown bits so they're no longer sticking to the bottom of the pan. 
4. Add chopped onion and carrot and celery to the scraped-up bits and cook until the onions are translucent.
5. Add tomatoes and juices from the tomato can and the rest of the broth to the pot; cook for about 45 minutes.
6. Return the chorizo to the soup along with uncooked orzo and drained kidney beans. Cook until the orzo is just done.
7. If it's too thick, add water.
8. Ladle into bowls and top with chopped Thai basil and grated Parmesan cheese.

Serve with crusty French bread.