Ahoy,
I start cooking at 6am most years. It’s a tradition, a personal one, and it gives me pleasure to be awake early with a mission on my mind.
There’s little light available on a Thanksgiving morning in November. In Brooklyn, the sun creeps over the housetops and river, climbing past the chimneys of countless homes, a puff of smoke here or there dotting the horizon, and settles into place a few hours later. By seven the sun is blazing and by eight it’s severe and bright. But at 6am it’s still murky, a promise withheld.
My plan is simple. I usually make stuffing, potatoes, and some kind of odd side dish out of Bon Appétit or The New York Times Food section. I pretend to know what I’m doing on these mornings, pulling out knives, strapping an apron around my belly, shivering in the cold as I warm up the grill for the turkey. I slow cook the bird, usually a Turducken, so it takes all day.
The potatoes look dark and clean in the bowl. I peel them, saving the castoff eyes and brown casing for the worms who have by now burrowed to the bottom of the compost barrel outside. The hot water is bubbling, the room is warming up. I think about breakfast for the family by eight or so but they’re still asleep. It’s a holiday.
I learned to make potatoes from Roast Chicken and Other Stories, a book by Simon Hopkinson that is more meditation than cookbook. He uses olive oil. He talks about the little tail of the chicken, the tasty morsel that most ignore but is the cook’s gift. He writes about food with love. These recipes make me mindful for the first time in a year. I’m focused on making good things for good people. It’s hard and I am careful for the first time in months. I love cooking but on this day I love it most.
The stuffing is a fan favorite. We usually invite mostly Poles to our Thanksgiving dinner and they hadn’t had this weird bread dish back home. I introduced it probably twenty years ago and I can’t stop making it. It’s a strange cross between bread pudding, a casserole, and a pate. It’s weird and the versions I make — with breakfast sausage, chorizo, bacon — are decidedly American. If I do it right there are two consistencies in the dish, the soft delicious center and the crisp, salty stragglers who didn’t quite get subsumed into the chicken broth. Both are equally delicious.
I make dish after dish. Peas and pearl onions tumble in a soft roux and then suddenly turn cream and stock into gravy. The potatoes are in a foil pan in the garage, waiting to be rewarmed. The turkey is pinking and the corners browning. The edges of the day are coming into focus. The stuffing is waiting, studded with celery and sausage. The other sides (this year I’m trying corn and hominy pudding) are awaiting their verdicts. Desserts come out of the oven. Gravy is poured into the weird chicken-shaped gravy boat we got years ago from some unnamed source.
By 3pm I’m mostly done. The house is full of friends. The warmth suffuses things so deeply that we open a window, then two. The afternoon rolls into the evening and then into the night. A camaraderie born of years supplants the fear and sadness of the past year, the stress, the endless race. It’s gluttonous, sure, but what other time in America are we given leave to celebrate living and living alone? We’re a terrible people, a strange people, a people divorced from he rhythms of life and living so completely that we gave the year one day to feed us into sleep. One day a year to celebrate a bounty unparalleled.
And so on and so on and so on. The turkey lies picked clean, the stuffing gone. Desserts are passed, coffees buzz in the kitchen, lights go down and the voices settle into a chorus of drink and merriment.
I hate most holidays. My father died around Christmas and New Years. My birthday is a reminder of my mortality. We’re atheists so Easter is just another Sunday. Fourth of July is hot and smoky and crowded. But this holiday, this weird day that was written into law by that dour god, George Washington himself, is different. It expects little. It requires only a sharp knife, a glass of good wine, and a little money for food. It needs a group of friends who have joined together yearly for two decades. And it requires a single drop of sunshine to rise above some far off rooftop to set into motion a day of calm reflection, a day of celebration, a day of feasting in a time of sad uncertainty.
Best,
JB
In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain
Tom Vitale
I wanted to read this book in order to learn about one of my heroes. Bourdain is a deeply flawed man and his long-time director, Tom Vitale, doesn’t stint on these details. But he also talks about a man who was one of the best food writers in the world and a man who made TV magic in an era of TV garbage. Vitale tells the dirty secrets of his years behind the camera and he’s a wonderful narrator and storyteller. Well worth a read.
Kent Haruf
This is an older book but it’s lovely. I found it in my little library and pulled it out, curious. I’m glad I did. Haruf writes about the 1970s and 80s like they were another country and his sparse prose is wonderfully suited to his characters and stories. Imagine Raymond Carver if he actually loved the people he wrote about.
Jeannette Walls
I’m not certain why I wanted to read this again but I’m glad I did. Walls became famous for this little memoir about a two parents who led a merry band of children into financial ruin. The story, by now, is common: crazy parents beget kids who have to parent them, but Walls adds humanity to her drunk father and depressed mother in a way few other memoirists were able.
As always, I welcome recommendations. Just email me at john@biggs.cc.
Thankful for you, your cooking inspiration and your book recommendations.