Twain's Feast - Andrew Beahrs [102]
There are a lot of serious chefs at the cook-off; they’re cooking the best their states have to offer. But Tory wins.
SHEEPSHEAD À LA CRÉOLE
Casburgot à la Créole
Prepare the Sheepshead as for boiling. . . . When quite done, take out of the water and flake off all the flesh from the bones. Have ready a quart of boiled cream or milk. Beat the yolks of four eggs and mix with the cream. Chop one large onion, a bunch of parsley, a sprig each of thyme and bay leaf, and add to the cream and eggs. Let it boil up once, and while boiling, throw in three tablespoonfuls of flour, rubbed perfectly smooth, in a little cream, and about two tablespoonfuls of butter. Remove from the fire. Have ready a deep dish, well buttered, and put in a layer of fish and then a layer of the sauce, until the dish is full. Sprinkle over with bread crumbs. Place in the oven and bake about a half hour, or until brown. This is a very delightful method of preparing Sheepshead.
—The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book, 1901
Though Twain’s return to the Mississippi began as a joyful reminiscence, seeing so many changes often left him despondent. But the thing that brought him to tears was the most seemingly humble: the mud of Hannibal, Missouri. “Alas!” he wrote. “Everything was changed in Hannibal—but when I reached third or fourth [streets] the tears burst forth, for I recognized the mud. It, at least, was the same—the same old mud.” By the trip’s end, he seemed near true depression, writing to Livy, “That world which I knew in its blossoming youth is old and bowed and melancholy, now; its soft cheeks are leathery & wrinkled, the fire is gone out in its eyes, & the spring from its step. It will be dust and ashes when I come again.”
Twain remembered an ever-changing river, a kaleidoscope of muddy water. Now it ran flat as though between walls. Now his home was Hartford.
Seven
IT IS MY THANKSGIVING DAY
Cranberries
TWAIN WAS NEVER ONE FOR SELF-RESTRAINT, especially in his fantasies—his ideal breakfast of porterhouse steak, biscuits, and coffee was to be delivered by “an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land.” So when faced with “roast chicken, as tasteless as paper” in European hotels, his imagination went large; he thought of “a vast roast turkey, stretched out on the broad of his back, with his heels in the air and the rich juices oozing from his fat sides.” But this, even he had to admit, was asking a lot, and he ended resignedly: “I might as well stop there, for they would not know how to cook him. They can’t even cook a chicken respectably; and as for carving it, they do that with a hatchet.”
It’s true that turkeys can be daunting. They’re big birds; trying to roast one that doesn’t end up either raw or dried out is the biggest challenge many home cooks face in a year. There’s a reason there are holiday turkey hotlines.
But you only have to brine a turkey once to realize that the days of devising intricate Thanksgiving Day roasting strategies, of planning your day around flipping and basting, are done. The debate is over; the code has been cracked. You submerge the bird overnight in a salt-and-sugar solution, with whole garlic cloves and plenty of fresh thyme. In the morning you dry it and smear the breast with butter. You roast it in a hot oven until it’s as bronze as an ancient hoard. Salivating desperately, you force yourself to let it rest while the juices distribute. At last you cut through the skin and find that brining has turned the turkey into a loving bird, a forgiving bird—moist, flavorful, and full of compassion for cooks with aunts and uncles who should really have stayed in Boca Raton or Pismo Beach or Scottsdale but instead are walking up the front steps right now. On Thanksgiving brining is a cook’s best friend.
Historically, that distinction has probably gone more often to cranberry sauce. My grandmother spent decades trying to roast a good, moist bird. Still, her turkeys were dry enough