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By Root 1158 0

with seventeen pounds of hot, greasy flesh and protruding bones as I retied and rebalanced the bird, and plugged the Farberware back into the wall socket. When I returned a half hour later, very little progress was visible because I had, in actual fact, plugged in the blender, whose cord eerily resembled that of the Farberware. I consider my wife a highly cyclical person, like the inconstant moon, and one of her least pleasant cycles occurs around midnight when dinner is still nowhere in sight. But I resisted her terrible pressure to speed the cooking until the strings came loose again in a disastrous thump, whereupon I transferred the bird to a very hot oven. The result was neither pretty to look at nor scrumptious to eat, but I feel that we are that much better prepared for true fireplace cookery.

Mary Randolph would never approve of the endless five-hour cooking time of the Farberware or Thompson’s Turkey. In The Virginia House-wife she recommends an hour and a quarter to finish a bird of medium size, presumably around twelve pounds. Her fire must thus have been extremely hot, unless she preferred blood-rare turkey. The reason she refers to roasting at a lower temperature as “no better than baking” is that it allows the bird to steam in its own juices.

Until somebody tells me how to save the skin of a Thompson’s Turkey, it is Mrs. Randolph’s high-temperature recommendation that I will follow in cooking my edible symbol for Thanksgiving. The easiest and most practical way to do this, I think, is Barbara Kafka’s astonishingly simple method, published just a year ago in Gourmet (and in her new book, Party Food [Morrow]). You put a large turkey into a 500-degree oven, jiggle it every so often to prevent sticking, and take it out less than two hours later. Your kitchen is probably filled with smoke, and the juices have burned in the roasting pan, but the meat is juicy (if bland) and the skin is as crackling and crunchy and intensely flavored as anything you’ve ever dreamed of. I’ll give you the details after the recipe for Thompson’s Turkey.

Thompson’s Turkey

[Except for the sentences in brackets, these are Morton Thompson’s own words. His recipe was published numerous times. This version appeared in a collection of his columns entitled Joe, the Wounded Tennis Player (Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1945). My invaluable tips and suggested changes appear in brackets.]

The turkey should not be less than sixteen pounds and not more than twenty-two. If it is eighteen pounds or more, buy a hen. You will get more breast.… [With today’s breeding practices, it is not necessary to insist on a hen, even if your butcher knows what a hen looks like.]

[Remove all loose fat from the inside of the bird and render it by chopping it finely, putting it in a small saucepan with ½ cup of water, bringing to a boil, and simmering until all the water has evaporated and you are left with clear fat and pieces of solids. Reserve the fat for the stuffing, and brown the solids for a treat.]

Rub the bird inside and out with salt and pepper. In a stewpan put the chopped gizzard and the neck and heart, to which add one bay leaf, one teaspoon of paprika, a half teaspoon of coriander, a clove of garlic, four cups of water, and salt to taste. Let this simmer while you go ahead with the dressing. [If you oil the turkey’s skin before rubbing it with salt and pepper, you will find that the blackened coating later lifts off almost as easily as Thompson claims!]

Dice [a peeled, cored] apple, [a peeled] orange, [put them] in a bowl and add to this bowl a huge can of crushed pineapple, the grated rind of one half lemon, one can of drained water chestnuts, [and] three tablespoons of chopped preserved ginger. [Try 10 ounces of drained, coarsely chopped water chestnuts and 20 ounces of crushed pineapple.]

In another bowl put two teaspoons of Colman’s mustard, two teaspoons of caraway seed, three teaspoons of celery seed, two teaspoons of poppy seed, two and a half teaspoons of oregano, one well-crushed large bay leaf, one teaspoon black pepper, one half teaspoon