11.26.2003
Turkey jerky
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here’s a tale.
I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey in the Czech Republic for a party of 15. Having for years watched my mother fret over our family bird, I’m not sure what inspired me to think I could attempt such a large feast unaided--my roommate being a vegetarian, and simply in charge of salad. I suppose it was, for us, a great opportunity to be culinary ambassadors--since turkeys aren’t often on the menu in Czech restaurants, I was excited to introduce my newfound friends to this traditional feast, moist turkey meat smothered in rich gravy, sitting on pounds of creamy mashed potatoes and savory stuffing.
My ambassadorial aspirations outstripped my abilities, however. I didn’t know how to make gravy. Stuffing chez Male was Stove Top. I did know how to mash a potato, thankfully. But to cook a turkey for 15? As most amateur cooks know, inspiration and confidence can be found readily in a bottle of red wine. To be sure, I drank a few, working up to and during that day.
My first fatal mistake was to let my roommate, the vegetarian, buy the turkey. I don’t know why I did this, but I must have had a good excuse at the time. What’s more, we had to buy the turkey at K-Mart. A three-story behemoth situated in the center of town, the American superstore carried everything a lonely ex-pat could want during the holiday season--turkeys, Christmas-colored M and M’s, eggnog. K-Mart had stocked up with icy turkeys shaped like bowling balls right before the holiday, to sate Americans who just couldn’t do with a duck replacement for the dinner table. Now, I like duck, but all my Czech friends could have duck anytime. I had promised turkey, and I was going to deliver.
When my roommate delivered the turkey, I blanched. It wasn’t a healthy, plump bird, injected with all sorts of synthetic hormones to make it uber-juicy, but a carcass, a thin, anemic, gawd-awful turkey that had surely been mocked in the barnyard. My turkey was sad. At least in death, it had been put out of its misery. I was informed that it was the last of the birds available. We had decided to postpone our feast until after the “official” Thanksgiving holiday for the weekend, when everyone could attend; in the meantime, the other Americans in Prague had picked the K-Mart clean, leaving this leftover for us late-comers. I tried not to cry, and in between gulps of red wine, decided it would have to be done. I would make the miracle turkey, or toss myself off the 10th story balcony of our Soviet high-rise trying.
My second challenge was my oven. It may be considered chicken to blame the tools, but I had a really miserable oven--by Western standards. By Czech standards, however, this was simply the oven everyone had, a good socialist model that fit well in small, cramped socialist apartments. It was half the size of a standard oven, but still had four burners on the stovetop which could accommodate a pot or two at a time. The five knobs, four for the burners and one for the oven, were worn smooth and blank with frequent use. Thus, the oven was either somewhat on, on, or really on, or inferno. This hadn’t posed too much of a problem in warming bread, but I feared that my lack of oven precision might prove challenging when cooking under pressure for my 15 hungry guests.
I got up early on our Thanksgiving Day--probably around noon--to start preparations. I salted and peppered the sad bird, and lovingly covered her with an ample layer of European butter. Following a trick I saw my aunt perform with resounding success, I flipped the bird over in the baking dish, breast side down, and poured about a quarter bottle of Czech white wine in to boot. I didn’t have a rack, so I rolled aluminum foil into small sticks to keep the turkey from bathing too directly in the booze. My efforts were scrappy, and somewhat sad, but I was determined. My first turkey would not be a failure.
It wouldn’t fit in the oven, however. There simply wasn’t enough turkey space; I removed one oven rack, and tried again. Still no go. I removed the other, and placed the dish on the oven floor; a perfect fit. Without really thinking, I shut the door and moved on to other preparations.
Guests arrived, one by one, bearing favorite dishes. We had Czech potato salad, a specialty of sweet yellow potatoes, carrots, pickles and loads of mayonnaise. We fried cheese, stuffed with salami and battered in flour and bread crumbs. There was spaghetti, salad with cucumbers and tomatoes, and so many sweets. People arrived early to drink, and in catching up with everyone, I let my sad turkey fall from my thoughts. About 40 minutes before we had agreed to sit down and eat, I went to the kitchen to check my bird.
It was not pretty. The turkey was leathery brown, its skin taught and glassy. The wine had evaporated completely, letting the bird’s breasts broil directly on the bottom of the baking dish. Since I had placed the dish right on the bottom of the oven, the turkey had cooked to near-desert doneness--there wasn’t a moist morsel in sight. I quickly pulled the pan out of the oven, and attempted to flip the turkey over, to see what I could salvage. The breasts stuck to the pan, and I ended up with a half-cooked carcass in my hands, meat hanging off haphazardly like the leftovers of a Serengeti kill.
I had made turkey jerky! I had ruined Thanksgiving! Sweat poured off my forehead and pooled in my armpits. I quickly dispatched my closest Czech friend to the local store to buy a duck, and meanwhile, picked what I could off the charred bird. There was meat to eat, and surprisingly, the dark meat--my favorite--came out quite edible, even tasty.
My Thanksgiving became a series of courses. While people nibbled on fried cheese and turkey bits, I cooked a lemon-honey duck and served that with more salad. My friends told me that they loved the turkey. Although I think they were lying, in the smoky haze of our very warm Czech apartment, I felt accomplished. Music played, people talked and laughed, and empty wine bottles accumulated by the door. Just two months into what would turn into a year’s stay in the Czech Republic, I was thankful that I had a community with which to share food, and friendship. And next year, I’d buy the turkey.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here’s a tale.
I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey in the Czech Republic for a party of 15. Having for years watched my mother fret over our family bird, I’m not sure what inspired me to think I could attempt such a large feast unaided--my roommate being a vegetarian, and simply in charge of salad. I suppose it was, for us, a great opportunity to be culinary ambassadors--since turkeys aren’t often on the menu in Czech restaurants, I was excited to introduce my newfound friends to this traditional feast, moist turkey meat smothered in rich gravy, sitting on pounds of creamy mashed potatoes and savory stuffing.
My ambassadorial aspirations outstripped my abilities, however. I didn’t know how to make gravy. Stuffing chez Male was Stove Top. I did know how to mash a potato, thankfully. But to cook a turkey for 15? As most amateur cooks know, inspiration and confidence can be found readily in a bottle of red wine. To be sure, I drank a few, working up to and during that day.
My first fatal mistake was to let my roommate, the vegetarian, buy the turkey. I don’t know why I did this, but I must have had a good excuse at the time. What’s more, we had to buy the turkey at K-Mart. A three-story behemoth situated in the center of town, the American superstore carried everything a lonely ex-pat could want during the holiday season--turkeys, Christmas-colored M and M’s, eggnog. K-Mart had stocked up with icy turkeys shaped like bowling balls right before the holiday, to sate Americans who just couldn’t do with a duck replacement for the dinner table. Now, I like duck, but all my Czech friends could have duck anytime. I had promised turkey, and I was going to deliver.
When my roommate delivered the turkey, I blanched. It wasn’t a healthy, plump bird, injected with all sorts of synthetic hormones to make it uber-juicy, but a carcass, a thin, anemic, gawd-awful turkey that had surely been mocked in the barnyard. My turkey was sad. At least in death, it had been put out of its misery. I was informed that it was the last of the birds available. We had decided to postpone our feast until after the “official” Thanksgiving holiday for the weekend, when everyone could attend; in the meantime, the other Americans in Prague had picked the K-Mart clean, leaving this leftover for us late-comers. I tried not to cry, and in between gulps of red wine, decided it would have to be done. I would make the miracle turkey, or toss myself off the 10th story balcony of our Soviet high-rise trying.
My second challenge was my oven. It may be considered chicken to blame the tools, but I had a really miserable oven--by Western standards. By Czech standards, however, this was simply the oven everyone had, a good socialist model that fit well in small, cramped socialist apartments. It was half the size of a standard oven, but still had four burners on the stovetop which could accommodate a pot or two at a time. The five knobs, four for the burners and one for the oven, were worn smooth and blank with frequent use. Thus, the oven was either somewhat on, on, or really on, or inferno. This hadn’t posed too much of a problem in warming bread, but I feared that my lack of oven precision might prove challenging when cooking under pressure for my 15 hungry guests.
I got up early on our Thanksgiving Day--probably around noon--to start preparations. I salted and peppered the sad bird, and lovingly covered her with an ample layer of European butter. Following a trick I saw my aunt perform with resounding success, I flipped the bird over in the baking dish, breast side down, and poured about a quarter bottle of Czech white wine in to boot. I didn’t have a rack, so I rolled aluminum foil into small sticks to keep the turkey from bathing too directly in the booze. My efforts were scrappy, and somewhat sad, but I was determined. My first turkey would not be a failure.
It wouldn’t fit in the oven, however. There simply wasn’t enough turkey space; I removed one oven rack, and tried again. Still no go. I removed the other, and placed the dish on the oven floor; a perfect fit. Without really thinking, I shut the door and moved on to other preparations.
Guests arrived, one by one, bearing favorite dishes. We had Czech potato salad, a specialty of sweet yellow potatoes, carrots, pickles and loads of mayonnaise. We fried cheese, stuffed with salami and battered in flour and bread crumbs. There was spaghetti, salad with cucumbers and tomatoes, and so many sweets. People arrived early to drink, and in catching up with everyone, I let my sad turkey fall from my thoughts. About 40 minutes before we had agreed to sit down and eat, I went to the kitchen to check my bird.
It was not pretty. The turkey was leathery brown, its skin taught and glassy. The wine had evaporated completely, letting the bird’s breasts broil directly on the bottom of the baking dish. Since I had placed the dish right on the bottom of the oven, the turkey had cooked to near-desert doneness--there wasn’t a moist morsel in sight. I quickly pulled the pan out of the oven, and attempted to flip the turkey over, to see what I could salvage. The breasts stuck to the pan, and I ended up with a half-cooked carcass in my hands, meat hanging off haphazardly like the leftovers of a Serengeti kill.
I had made turkey jerky! I had ruined Thanksgiving! Sweat poured off my forehead and pooled in my armpits. I quickly dispatched my closest Czech friend to the local store to buy a duck, and meanwhile, picked what I could off the charred bird. There was meat to eat, and surprisingly, the dark meat--my favorite--came out quite edible, even tasty.
My Thanksgiving became a series of courses. While people nibbled on fried cheese and turkey bits, I cooked a lemon-honey duck and served that with more salad. My friends told me that they loved the turkey. Although I think they were lying, in the smoky haze of our very warm Czech apartment, I felt accomplished. Music played, people talked and laughed, and empty wine bottles accumulated by the door. Just two months into what would turn into a year’s stay in the Czech Republic, I was thankful that I had a community with which to share food, and friendship. And next year, I’d buy the turkey.
11.04.2003
Eating cake
In my first food writing class we wrote about cake, generously prepared by our instructor, Jeannette Ferrary. We lined up with paper plates in the chilly classroom to nibble on our first assignment.
It was to be our first restaurant review, our instructor explained, and we had to pretend that we had finished an entree or two and were now contemplating dessert--the final bite that could potentially sum up our entire dining experience. Jeanette pointed out that often restaurant reviewers save their sweeping statements for after the sweet course, as a dessert can often make or break the meal. It was up to us, as we flaked off small forkfuls of the cake with a plastic utensil, to make or break our imaginary restaurant.
We had six minutes to write. I scribbled in my worst/best hand, and afterwards, volunteered to read my piece. My voice shook and I stumbled over my poorly composed sentences. Funny how school can transform one into a shivering 5th grader, reciting with squeaky voice her book report. The cake was good, but my piece wasn't...but here's my stab (with minor 11th hour edits):
Barely able to finish the last of our entree, we stumbled on to dessert. I'll be honest and say that the first bite of what seemed to be a simple, square piece of cake with a slightly tacky, caramelized covering was disorienting; I couldn't identify the dessert sitting in front of me on this simple china plate. Was it really cake? Perhaps pudding? Yesterday's couscous, soaked in clover honey? I glanced at my dinner partner; he shrugged too. Taking a sip of coffee, I considered our human preoccupation with naming and identifying; hemmed in by definition, we're often blind to pure experience, or as business marketing types put it, thinking outside the box. We couldn't identify our dessert, sure--but it was disappearing quickly in the trying. We knew it was good, and that was all that mattered between forkfuls. I recently witnessed a friend's one-year old child taste a cake for the first time; his virgin taste buds unknowing of whipped cream, pound cake, strawberry jam. With the first taste, he was shocked, eyes wide and alarmed; the second, curious, a faint smile gathering at the corners of his small lips; the third, and he was wild, the cake all over his cheeks, small fingers and high-chair table. He still doesn't know the word for cake, but he now understood the concept of sweet, of delicious. He cried as we took the empty plate from him. Back in the restaurant, we had options. We ordered seconds.
The cake? It was a Crete specialty, called chalva (sounds similar to halvah), and made with semolina and sugar syrup. Jeannette added a bit of brandy for flavor, she admitted, and the semolina was actually Cream of Wheat. It was a recipe adapted from an American tourist who had visited Crete, she explained, and who in returning had tried to recreate the dessert with domestic ingredients. So far I've been unable to find a similar recipe on the Web; next stop, the Main Library.
In my first food writing class we wrote about cake, generously prepared by our instructor, Jeannette Ferrary. We lined up with paper plates in the chilly classroom to nibble on our first assignment.
It was to be our first restaurant review, our instructor explained, and we had to pretend that we had finished an entree or two and were now contemplating dessert--the final bite that could potentially sum up our entire dining experience. Jeanette pointed out that often restaurant reviewers save their sweeping statements for after the sweet course, as a dessert can often make or break the meal. It was up to us, as we flaked off small forkfuls of the cake with a plastic utensil, to make or break our imaginary restaurant.
We had six minutes to write. I scribbled in my worst/best hand, and afterwards, volunteered to read my piece. My voice shook and I stumbled over my poorly composed sentences. Funny how school can transform one into a shivering 5th grader, reciting with squeaky voice her book report. The cake was good, but my piece wasn't...but here's my stab (with minor 11th hour edits):
Barely able to finish the last of our entree, we stumbled on to dessert. I'll be honest and say that the first bite of what seemed to be a simple, square piece of cake with a slightly tacky, caramelized covering was disorienting; I couldn't identify the dessert sitting in front of me on this simple china plate. Was it really cake? Perhaps pudding? Yesterday's couscous, soaked in clover honey? I glanced at my dinner partner; he shrugged too. Taking a sip of coffee, I considered our human preoccupation with naming and identifying; hemmed in by definition, we're often blind to pure experience, or as business marketing types put it, thinking outside the box. We couldn't identify our dessert, sure--but it was disappearing quickly in the trying. We knew it was good, and that was all that mattered between forkfuls. I recently witnessed a friend's one-year old child taste a cake for the first time; his virgin taste buds unknowing of whipped cream, pound cake, strawberry jam. With the first taste, he was shocked, eyes wide and alarmed; the second, curious, a faint smile gathering at the corners of his small lips; the third, and he was wild, the cake all over his cheeks, small fingers and high-chair table. He still doesn't know the word for cake, but he now understood the concept of sweet, of delicious. He cried as we took the empty plate from him. Back in the restaurant, we had options. We ordered seconds.
The cake? It was a Crete specialty, called chalva (sounds similar to halvah), and made with semolina and sugar syrup. Jeannette added a bit of brandy for flavor, she admitted, and the semolina was actually Cream of Wheat. It was a recipe adapted from an American tourist who had visited Crete, she explained, and who in returning had tried to recreate the dessert with domestic ingredients. So far I've been unable to find a similar recipe on the Web; next stop, the Main Library.
