Thanksgiving:

Here it comes again! With cranberries, fish chowder & a plate of Tuscan beans

Please take a moment to tap one of the little hearts you’ll find at the top or the bottom of this post. It gives me credibility with the people who count. And thank you!

The way life used to be: November 2014, over the river & through the woods

I started working yesterday on a post about Thanksgiving, it being the season for such, but then I went back to look at what I had written a year ago. My ideas and my opinions have not changed, and what I wrote back then still seems very much to the point, so I offer it up as a rerun, with apologies to readers who’ve been with me a while. At least by conning you like this, I’ll have time to make cranberry sauce to go with the salmon my family insists is appropriate for Thanksgiving dinner. (Scroll down for cranberry sauce directions.)

THANKSGIVING is a complicated festival, loved and hated, dreaded and anticipated, in equal measure and sometimes all at the same time, in a singular blend of cognitive dissonance.  As celebrated in 21^st century America (that is, the United States—Canadians do it too, but typically in a more modest way), the holiday is linked to blatant, barefaced over-consumption, whether in the lavish profusion of food on the day’s groaning board or in the following day’s rush to rise with the sun and head to the nearest big-box store to buy-buy-buy, acquiring yet more plastic in a world already overwhelmed with the stuff.

It was not always thus. Back in Martha Ballard’s time, Thanksgiving was sometimes just a quiet note in her diary: “It is Thanksgiving Day.” Pure and simple. Mr. Ballard might go to the meeting house for a service, but Martha stayed home and tended to her chores. This was on the Kennebec River in Maine in the late 18^th century. Over the years it got a little more elaborate. On December 1, 1803, she wrote: "We roasted a goos, boild Beef, Pork and fowls for Diner," a lavish feast that included several guests among family and friends. And in 1809, Martha and her husband Ephraim apparently dined alone, but: "My Childn Sent us in pies."

Back then, Thanksgiving was a uniquely New England celebration, patterned on the old English Harvest Home, a gathering together in the sanctity of the family after the harvest had been reaped and the winter stores were safely tucked away. In the words of the old hymn: “All is safely gathered in/Ere the winter storms begin.” That was long before Thanksgiving became a national holiday, instituted by President Lincoln in 1863 at the request of Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, who urged the President, in the midst of the devastating Civil War, to make it an official day of observation. Lincoln’s declaration set the last Thursday of November as a day to “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.”

That doesn’t sound much like the Thanksgiving we celebrate today, but you could say the same about Christmas and Hanukkah too. Still, Thanksgiving remains awkward and not just because of over consumption. There’s that sticky problem of indigenous Americans, tribal communities that were wiped aside and destroyed in the surge and wake of European settlement. Many tribes today prefer to observe Thanksgiving as a day of mourning for what they have lost, seeing it as a symbol of the European take-over of their place, their space in the world. And yet, indigenous people, no matter where they find themselves on this great continent, have always offered thanks for the harvest. It’s simply what farmers do. Agricultural societies—and name me a society that isn’t agricultural in its foundation—recognize and honor the hard work, the prayers, and the sheer luck that all contribute to a harvest of whatever kind, bountiful, meagre, or somewhere in between. In honoring together that fundamental relationship, whether descendants of European colonists, or indigenous tribespeople, or enslaved Africans, or more recent arrivals, we can all benefit from stopping a moment to think about what we owe to our poor planet.

I would offer a theory that our modern ideas about what constitutes a proper Thanksgiving meal derive from the Colonial Revival movement that began with the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, celebrating the centenary of the United States of America. At a time of national upheaval somewhat similar to what we experience today, with massive immigration, an unpredictable economy, and a nation still suffering the wounds of the Civil War, the country turned back to what seemed like a simpler time, romanticizing the pioneering, patriotic spirit of early colonists and ignoring the turmoil and the suffering of the displaced. So in the late 19^th century, Thanksgiving, which had been heretofore a pretty much local, New England festival took on national implications, covering up the nastiness and disruption of changing times and looking back with nostalgia to the past.

But roast turkey and pumpkin pies were very early stars. Read this from the New-Bedford Mercuryin 1836: “Thanksgiving week. . . is the crisis of a turkey's life. The dinner is the all-important item...turkeys, geese, and chickens...stuffed and roasted for the occasion...Then come puddings and pies...among the most prominent of which is that savory dish, peculiar to New England--that sine qua non of a Thanksgiving dinner--the well filled, deep and spacious pumpkin pie.” Forty years later, in 1870, it was similar but more so as the holiday went national: "Thanksgiving Dinner. Oyster soup, cod with egg sauce, lobster salad, roast turkey, cranberry sauce, mixed pickles, mangoes, pickled peaches, cole slaw, and celery; boiled ham, chicken pie ornamented, jelly, mashed potatoes browned, tomatoes, boiled onions, canned corn, sweet potatoes, roasted broccoli. Mince, and pumpkin pie, apple tarts, Indian pudding. Apples, nuts, and raisins." That was the suggested menu from Jennie June’s American Cookery Book.

So we cooks continue to struggle with the demands of the feast. I’ve done that many times over the years but I’ve also on occasion just given up and served what I felt like cooking. One year, in Brooklyn, it was an elaborate Moroccan couscous with Paula Wolfert,  no less, as guest of honor. Another year, at my children’s request, it was Bud Trillin’s famously revolutionary suggestion of pasta alla carbonara (see this from the New Yorker in 1981:

The first Thanksgiving came about when the Pilgrims invited the Indians to dinner to thank them for helping them survive. The Indians, who had some experience with Pilgrim cuisine, took the precaution of bringing one dish of their own. That was the origin of the covered dish supper. The dish they brought was spaghetti carbonara. Their ancestors had gotten the recipe from Christopher Columbus. The Pilgrims hated it. On their way back from dinner, one of the Indians remarked about the Pilgrims, 'What a bunch of turkeys!'"

I’ve observed the feast in various parts of the world, almost always with some local angle to make up for the loss of cranberry jelly in a can. In Beirut it was always a leg of lamb; in Hongkong, whatever it was (if memory serves, it was Julia Child’s recipe for a very rich veal Prince Orloff), it was offered on the deck of a junk anchored in Sham Wan Bay off Lamma Island; and in Madrid one year it was a roast piglet from a nearby restaurant, complete with an apple in its mouth. So it goes: we’ve had lobster in Maine, spit-roasted arista di maiale in Tuscany, and a fine poulet de Bresse in Paris, back when it was still possible for a small French family to afford them.

So it doesn’t have to be a turkey. But if it is, just remember this:

My old friend, San Francisco culinary professional Mary Risley once said: “It’s just turkey, it tastes like cardboard.” If things get really dire in your kitchen, pour yourself a glass of wine, sit down for a moment with Mary on your computer, and watch her greatest, most memorable performance, “Just Put the F*cking Turkey in the Oven!” You can see it here:

And if you don’t die of laughter, you will pick yourself up off the floor and happily go back to basting that bird.

Meanwhile, let’s get to cranberry sauce, which is the easiest thing in the world to make. Scroll down for the recipe. If you don’t know how to boil an egg, you will still be able to make cranberry sauce. Another plus: You can make it several days (even two weeks) before Thanksgiving and just keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to bring it to the table or take it to a friend’s table. Some of us are convinced it even grows better with age.

I use Maine cranberries, grown by Margo Moody on her cranberry bog in Lincolnville, and they are, as we say in Maine, the finest kind. Unless you live in Midcoast Maine, however, you probably won’t be able to find Moody Bog Cranberries, but I note that fresh organically grown cranberries are widely available, even from Ocean Spray which seemed to have cornered the market a few years ago but is now facing competition—always a healthy place to be.

Another fine meal to think about around the holiday gatherings is a very hearty but plain Maine fish chowder.

Why is this recommended? Again, like the cranberry sauce, you can make it ahead; it only seems to improve if it’s kept for a day or two to let the flavors blend more thoroughly. Moreover, it can be made for a crowd and heated up quickly to serve to whomever needs restoration. A cup of chowder after a morning of rolling out pie crust and stuffing the bird is often all it takes to revive the kitchen help and get them in shape for the important work ahead. As a simple supper for the night before the big feast, fish chowder is a fine choice, and any leftovers make an equally fine breakfast the next day. (I’m not joking—soup for breakfast can become a habit!)

For this chowder, I took my inspiration from the one served at the Christmas Fair of the First Church in Belfast, Maine, where fish chowder is the soupe du jour by long-standing tradition. It’s very similar to my mother’s recipe but with some fancy additions from me. Recipe is at the end of this post.

Giving Thanks for Extra-Virgin

I don’t want to let Thanksgiving get in the way of celebrating the olive harvest, which is going on right now all over the Mediterranean, even, possibly in embattled Palestinian villages on the West Bank where Israeli settlers are threatening a take-over and in south Lebanon where Israeli bombs are unstinting. Wherever the olive trees grow, stalwart farmers are out there, as their ancestors have been, going back untold generations, harvesting patiently, hauling the fruits to the local mill, and processing them into that golden oil that is so comprehensively nourishing—and so incredibly delicious.

Inhale the grassy fragrance of that fresh, green oil!

A classic way to enjoy new oil is simply to pour it over a crisp-crusted slice of country-style bread (preferably toasted over wood embers) that’s been rubbed with a cut clove of garlic. A delicate sprinkle of coarse sea salt on top of the olive oil and that’s all that’s required for a bruschetta all’olio, or fettunta (literally, “anointed slice”) as it’s called in the Tuscan hills. Second best way to savor it is over a plate of beans, simmered slowly until very soft, sometimes mixed with grains of farro, sometimes just on their own. Then the fresh oil gets poured over warm beans, so that all the complex fragrance of the oil rises to entrance you as you dip your spoon into the mix. Do I need to give you a recipe for those beans? You’ll find one if you scroll down.

Bean & farro soup (zuppa frantoiana) with new oil