In our house Thanksgiving is the one day a year my wife is in charge of the cooking. Because I work at home, part of my day-time ritual is to shop for and cook our dinners. But for Thanksgiving, I’m her sous chef. She tells me the menu and I prep the mise en place, so everything is ready for her.
Besides corn bread stuffing with Italian sausages, dried apricots, and pecans, a 24-pound organic turkey with mushroom gravy, home made cranberry sauce, string beans sautéed with almonds, oven roasted Brussels sprouts, and an arrugula salad with persimmons, pomegranate seeds, and roasted hazelnuts, she makes garlic mashed potatoes.
This past year I’ve been experimenting with sweet potatoes. I made them for her to see what she thought. With a light dusting of cayenne, after you’ve enjoyed the sweetness of the sweet potato, your mouth is surprised with a hint of heat that drives you back for more. She agreed that the yams are delicious: sweet, salty, savory, “meaty” (from the mushrooms”), and buttery from the butter. For Thanksgiving they’ll be added to the menu.
Many of my childhood Turkey Day recollections remain centered on gravy. I know it sounds strange but I loved gravy as a kid. I remember pouring it, in somewhat epic proportions, making a gravy soup of everything on my plate. There never seemed to be enough to go around as the gravy boat made its way around the table; all my family members taking their equal share. Undoubtedly the gravy was also scarce for the upcoming endless week of heated up turkey and stuffing as well.
I love cranberries. I do. I love Ocean Spray whole cranberry cranberry sauce. It has to be whole berry and I’m addicted to it. I can’t even serve a roast chicken without cranberry sauce. We were once out of cranberry sauce (which I didn’t realize) as I put the chicken on the table and I started crying. Literally.
If by some chance you are looking for something really easy to do with your turkey leftovers, this is it. It's a variation of the chicken chow mein you used to be able to get at the Trader Vic's at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, which is now more or less out of business. Trader Vic's flameout was sad, because except for the mysteriously inept service, there were still wild and exciting things to eat there, starting with the classic Pupu Platter and including a curry served in a dish with room for about nine tiny little garnishes. But oh well. So it goes. Restaurants tend to break your heart. The chicken chow mein was divine, especially if you ate it with a double order of toasted almonds and lots of chow mein noodles, and it's even better with turkey.