The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [76]
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