Nancy Taylor Robson

While I love the meal of Turkey Day – mash, gravy stuffing, what’s not to love? – I actually like the days that follow more.  The meal itself, fairly hidebound in tradition, offers limited scope for creativity, but the day after, you can have at it with abandon. It’s like the difference between a formal ball and a hoedown.

The possibilities with leftover turkey are almost endless:  hot curried turkey salad, cold turkey salad with scallions, apples, toasted walnuts and celery, turkey croquettes with mornay sauce, plain old turkey sandwiches with a big slathering of garlic mayo on rye bread with sliced sweet onion and a beer (Dogfish Head Raison D’Etre), turkey and mushroom crepes with thyme, sautéed shallots and smoked gouda sauce, turkey wraps with lettuce, scallion, avocado and chipotle sauce, turkey tetrazinni, turkey pot pie and turkey soup.

This year, I must confess, that my turkey, stuffed and roasted (of COURSE with the stuffing inside the bird, we did it for years and no one has died of it yet!) wasn’t that great.  I don’t know whether it was the bird, which was free-range, organic, local and fresh, hitting all the foodie hot buttons, simply wasn’t flavorful. OR, whether I simply didn’t do enough to help it along. My sister-in-law’s turkey ( see previous post) was superb, flavorful, crisp-skinned, moist and absolutely delicious, was brined and fretted-over, so maybe I need to do some brining and more fretting for the next bird.

My sister-in-law, who flies out tomorrow, was handing over leftovers like door prizes as we walked out the door last night. Matt got the turkey carcass and gravy. With that, he will make one heck-of-a-stock. Which should always be the first order of culinary business the day after Thanksgiving.

To make stock, take whatever remains of the truly useable meat off the bone and throw the carcass into a big stockpot with every odd little bit of meat, skin, bone and fond (the gorgeously flavorful bits stuck to the bottom of the roasting pan that you get out with a little boiling water and wooden scraper) including the wing tips, and some leftover gravy.  Throw in carrots, celery, onion, a leek if you’ve got it, parsley, thyme, a sage leaf and plenty of water. Simmer it for a couple of aromatic hours on the back of the stove. (Want to sell your house? Have a pot of stock simmering when potential buyers arrive. Who can resist a house that already smells like home?).

Then, once the stock is going, assess. How much meat is left and in what configuration? Plenty of thin slices?  Perfect for turkey reubens, wraps, turkey sandwiches with cranberry chutney on whole grain bread, turkey-and-bacon club sandwiches, turkey and wild rice salad with nuts and dried apricots lightly doused with orange-and-mustard vinaigrette.

Little bits of wing meat, the oysters off the back and maybe some streamers of thigh in the bottom of the pan?  Turkey hash with finely chopped sautéed potatoes, sweet peppers and onion, maybe a little cayenne and a fried egg on top. Or curried turkey ragout with sautéed onion, celery, carrot, potato with peas added at the last minute, seasoned with curry and Worcestershire. For wonderfully retro croquettes, chop turkey very fine, grate some onion, and wrap it in a stiff béchamel made with a little milk and turkey broth. Shape them into patties or the classic little anthill-shaped mounds, roll them in bread or cracker crumbs and fry in a little oil. Dress them up with mornay sauce (thin béchamel/broth with grated gruyere and maybe a splash of white wine). Or use virtually the same beginnings and turn it into a turkey soufflé.

If there are bigger pieces, something that can be cut into chunks, it’s turkey salad of some kind – hot and curried with French’s Fried Onion Rings, almonds, water chestnuts and yogurt/mayo dressing, or cold salad with toasted nuts, parsley, apples, grapes and scallions dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

But my favorite, I think, is turkey pot pie. I do a fairly classic version, adding flavor not by adding tons of salt but by cooking the vegetables in rich turkey stock seasoned with celery tops, thyme and tarragon. After straining out the barely-tender veggies, I thicken the vegetable-and-herb-infused broth slightly to make the sauce. I usually buy the crust, since I can’t make one any better than Pillsbury.

Yet even with a store-bought crust, there’s something distinctly comforting about pot pie.  It catapults me back to childhood, to a time when it felt like the world was filled with attainable riches. A good life could be had in exchange for effort and an appreciation of the simple pleasures.

Served on a Friday evening by the fire, turkey pot pie is the reassuringly low-key end to a fraught week. Brought to a candlelit table, its crust the golden color of a beach at dusk, the juices just starting to rise up and drip tantalizingly down the side, and banked by a good sauvignon blanc, it’s downright elegant.

Turkey Pot Pie

1 pie crust

1 cup cooked turkey, cubed

¾ cup carrots, sliced

¾ cup onions, chopped

¾ cup potatoes, cubed

1 cup frozen peas

¼ tsp dried tarragon

¼ tsp dried or fresh thyme

1 ½ cups rich turkey stock

4 tblsp corn starch dissolved in 4 tblsp cool water

salt and pepper to taste

Cook the carrots, potatoes and onions in the turkey stock gently until barely fork tender. Dip out the vegetables and put into a casserole or soufflé dish along with the frozen peas and the cubed turkey. Lightly salt and pepper the veggies and meat. Taste the stock for seasoning. Put thyme and tarragon in the stock and bring to the boil. Dissolve the cornstarch in the cool water, and whisk into the boiling stock. It should thicken and turn clear in a matter of a moment. Once it’s thick and clear not cloudy, pour over the vegetables and meat. Top with a crust. Put a few slits in the crust. (As one of the characters in the John Wayne movie, The Cowboys, said: Cut three slits in the top –two to let out the steam and one more because your mama said so).  Bake at 375F for 35 minutes or until the crust is browned and completely done.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Turkey-Potpie-with-Cheddar-Biscuit-Crust-240566

http://www.hellmanns.us/promotions/therealfoodproject/recipe_collection.aspx?Category=SandwichesWraps

http://www.hellmanns.us/promotions/therealfoodproject/recipe_detail.aspx?recipeid=11641&version=1

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/michael-chiarello/next-day-turkey-soup-recipe/index.html

Complaining about the cooking to be done for Thanksgiving has gotten to be something of a national pastime; more and more blogs and advice columns offer commiseration larded with helpful hints on ways to circumvent what they consider the ‘worst’ of it. And indeed, if I had a family who sprawled on the sofa while I, who work too, did all the heavy lifting, I’d be supremely pissed (as in: majorly annoyed, not overly-lubricated, though if unhelpful couch potatoes were what I was facing, I’d probably be that too!). But I’m not. My family cooks. All of us, in our own kitchens and together in a single milling throng on the actual day. Additionally, I’m married to a Provider, a forager in field and stream, who ran out at 0-dark-hundred this morning with his enthusiasm and his shotgun and came home with dinner.

Additionally, I grow and then put up a large portion of our vegetables and some fruits — a labor of love, but a labor nonetheless.  It makes me mindful of the luxury we have in the country at this country at this point in history.

I stand in a kitchen that has heat, running water, an embarrassingly well-stocked frig, and a stove and oven that turn on and off at will, and reflect, with a combination of awe and humility, on those who sat down with what must have been enormous gratitude at whatever makeshift communal board for the first Thanksgiving to share a meal that they had foraged, grown, snared, shot and prepared. It was a labor of love, but also an act of survival in a tenuous time.

The contrast between then and now is sharp — when we think of it. Which is the key. Gratitude is conscious, knowledge of what we have contrasted with what could be.  I understand that not everyone likes to or wants to cook. But for that one meal each year, the one that should take us back not only to the food that was on that makeshift communal table, but what the food cost the Pilgrims and Indians in skill, energy, patience, determination and hard work to put there, together, in the face of an always uncertain future, there should be no complaints.

I always figure if you have cauliflower in the frig, you’ve got dinner.  I realize not everyone sees it that way. I ran into a friend at the Chestertown farmers’ market last week. I was carrying a cauliflower the size of a bowling ball that I’d bought from Lockbriar Farms — a great find from my point of view — but Anita wrinkled up her nose a bit when I showed it to her.

“I don’t like it that much,” she confessed – if confessed is the right word to use in our let’s-all-eat-healthy-and-love-local-veggies-mindset – yeah, confessed is the right word for it. “A little cauliflower goes a long way with me,” she said, still staring at the massive crucifer I was hugging.  “What do you do with it?”

“Stir-fry it with tomatoes and celery and curry, cauliflower soup with mushrooms and shallots and gorgonzola, roast it with parmesan and garlic, steam it for lunch  with hot pepper cheese, layer it with beans and sautéed peppers some white wine and gruyere and buttered crumbs  and run it under the broiler, eat it raw with something sinful like spinach veg dip…”

“Oh!”  she laughed. “You REALLY like cauliflower!”

Yeah.

I love its raw crispness, I love the shape and texture of the head itself – curds some people call them, but that grosses me out, like the curds of clabber (aka curds and whey) my father used to make on the windowsill. I love cauliflower’s vitamin and mineral boost – huge vitamin C, plenty of K, folate and fiber, and more. There are now purple and cheddar cheese colored cauliflower varieties that have only mildly discernable differences in flavor to my palate (though the purple ones come closer in flavor to their brassica cousin, broccoli), but each is superb and superbly versatile.

I don’t just like cauliflower; I LOVE cauliflower (as one young friend corrected me when I asked about his fondness for snakes).  Mostly because it’s the basis for one of the best and easiest-to-make comfort-food meals of all time. Cauliflower gratin.  Like mac and cheese but better for you and quicker – it takes about 12 minutes start to finish.

CAULIFLOWER GRATIN

 1 medium head of cauliflower

3 tblsp sweet butter

3 tblsp flour

1 ½ cups of milk, anything from whole to skim

1 ½ cups of fresh-grated parmesan (use the real stuff; it makes all the difference)

salt, pepper and nutmeg

Put the cauliflower whole into a pot with about an inch of water and steam-boil it until just tender but not falling apart, which will take about 8 minutes. Meanwhile, make a roux. Melt butter in a pot, stir in flour and cook for a few minutes. Whisk in a cup of milk until smooth. This will be thick. Add salt and pepper and a dash of nutmeg, about a ¼ tsp.  Add more milk if the béchamel is too thick – it should be about as thick as a smoothy right now. Add more milk if you need to thin it some. Whisk in a ½ cup grated parmesan.

As soon as the cauli is just-done, take it out of the pot, otherwise it will get too soft, and break it into pieces in a gratin dish or oven-proof dish of some kind. But be sure you save the boiling water. Add some of the water from the boiled cauli to thin the bechamel and add flavor. It should now be the consistency of good rich cheese sauce. Pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower, covering everything. (Enrobed is the way some of the more hopefully pretentious restaurants used to describe this.) Then cover that with about a cup of grated Parmesan cheese and run it all until the broiler until it’s browning and bubbly. Serve with a bottle of rich red wine. Heaven.

http://www.bigoven.com/glossary/Cauliflower

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/roasted_cauliflower/

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/simple-cauliflower-recipe.html

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/01/cauliflower-soup/

Jean Sanders, erstwhile illustrator and art director for  my former gigs at the Chestertown Spy and Talbot Spy, has put together some of my Sunday Cooking essays and recipes into a cook pamphlet (which is not large enough to be a cookbook, but it’s fun and definitely worth your time and available right now for the  low, low price of $0). Check it out at the link below.

http://issuu.com/jeandsanders28/docs/spythanksgivingbook_web2

http://www.chestertownspy.com/food-garden/