The Man Who Ate Everything (59 page)

And this almost makes up for the fact that I was able to salvage no more than a few square centimeters of crispy skin from the entire turkey. But not quite. If Thompson himself were alive today, I’m sure he could expand upon his written instructions and set everything right. Cousins Bonnie and Bill, who have cooked Thompson’s Turkey ten or fifteen times, seem to have given up on getting a satisfying yield of skin from a Thompson’s. But I am not willing to compromise. Until somebody tells me how to cook a Thompson’s Turkey with perfect skin, I will rely on a more traditional method of roasting.

“No meat can be well roasted except on a spit turned by a jack, and before a steady clear fire—other methods are no better than baking,” wrote Mary Randolph in
The Virginia House-wife
(1824), surely one of the five best cookbooks ever published in this country. (Please buy yourself a copy from the University of South Carolina Press in Columbia; although the book is 168 years old, you can cook right out of it, and the recipes are wonderful.) Having enjoyed spitted birds and mammals turned over and before wood fires throughout northern Italy and parts of France, I know that Mrs. Randolph is correct, and as soon as I get a house with a fireplace, I will write a column about it every month until
they stop me.

Just a year ago I bought a new electric Farberware Standard Smokeless Indoor Grill with Rotisserie (after prowling the flea
markets in vain for a used Roto-Broiler, an electric rotisserie in a streamlined, chrome-plated cabinet that could be found in every suburban home when I was growing up), and I’ve achieved magnificent results with four-pound chickens and ducks, especially when I trussed them tightly and compactly and put them as near to the electric coils as I could (and in the case of ducks, pricked their skin all over to let the fat drain). Besides the transitory pleasure of having juicy and crispy birds for dinner anytime I wish, I see myself in training for the day when a real fireplace comes my way.

The Farberware booklet envisions cooking a turkey weighing up to seventeen pounds, and that is the size I tried, with the bird unstuffed and tightly trussed and a roasting time of five hours. Less than one of the five hours had passed when the turkey’s wing slipped from under its string and caught on the electric coil, preventing the bird from turning further. Thus fixed, the turkey began to brown rapidly and then to blacken along a stripe from neck to tail; the string holding the legs against the body burned through, and both legs plunged into the glowing coils. It was the stench of charring flesh and the billows of smoke that attracted my attention and drew me back into the kitchen, where for the next hour I struggled with seventeen pounds of hot, greasy flesh and protruding bones as I retied and rebalanced the bird, and plugged the Farberware back into the wall socket. When I returned a half hour later, very little progress was visible because I had, in actual fact, plugged in the blender, whose cord eerily resembled that of the Farberware.

I consider my wife a highly cyclical person, like the inconstant moon, and one of her least pleasant cycles occurs around midnight when dinner is still nowhere in sight. But I resisted her terrible pressure to speed the cooking until the strings came loose again in a disastrous thump, whereupon I transferred the bird to a very hot oven. The result was neither pretty to look at nor scrumptious to eat, but I feel that we are that much better prepared for true fireplace cookery-Mary Randolph would never approve of the endless hour cooking time of the Farberware or Thompson’s Turkey-
The Virginia House-wife
recommends
an hour and a quarter
to finish a bird of medium size, presumably around twelve pounds. Her fire must thus have been extremely hot, unless she preferred blood-rare turkey. The reason she refers to roasting at a lower temperature as “no better than baking” is that it allows the bird to steam in its own juices.

Until somebody tells me how to save the skin of
a
Thompson’s Turkey, it is Mrs. Randolph’s high-temperature recommendation that I will follow in cooking my edible symbol for Thanksgiving. The easiest and most practical way to do this, I think, is Barbara Kafka’s astonishingly simple method, published just a year ago in
Gourmet
(and in her new book,
Party Food
[Morrow]). You put a large turkey into a 500-degree oven, jiggle it every so often to prevent sticking, and take it out less than two hours later. Your kitchen is probably filled with smoke, and the juices have burned in the roasting pan, but the meat is juicy (if bland) and the skin is as crackling and crunchy and intensely flavored as anything you’ve ever dreamed of. I’ll give you the details after the recipe for Thompson’s Turkey.

Thompson’s Turkey

[Except for the sentences in brackets, these are Morton Thompson’s own words. His recipe was published numerous times. This version appeared in a collection of his columns entitled
Joe, the Wounded Tennis Player
(Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1945). My invaluable tips and suggested changes appear in brackets.]

The turkey should not be less than sixteen pounds and not more than twenty-two. If it is eighteen pounds or more, buy a hen. You will get more breast. … [With today’s breeding practices, it is not necessary to insist on a hen, even if your butcher knows what a hen looks like.]

[Remove all loose fat from the inside of the bird and render it by chopping it finely, putting it in a small saucepan with 1
/2
cup of water, bringing to a boil, and simmering until all the water has evaporated and you are left with clear fat and pieces of solids. Reserve the fat for the stuffing, and brown the solids for a treat.]

Rub the bird inside and out with salt and pepper. In a stewpan put the chopped gizzard and the neck and heart, to which add one bay leaf, one teaspoon of paprika, a half teaspoon of coriander, a clove of garlic, four cups of water, and salt to taste. Let this simmer while you go ahead with the dressing. [If you oil the turkey’s skin before rubbing it with salt and pepper, you will find that the blackened coating later lifts off almost as easily as Thompson claims!]

Dice [a peeled, cored] apple, [a peeled] orange, [put them] in a bowl and add to this bowl a huge can of crushed pineapple, the grated rind of one half lemon, one can of drained water chestnuts, [and] three table-spoons of chopped preserved ginger. [Try 10 ounces of drained, coarsely chopped water chestnuts and 20 ounces of crushed pineapple.]

In another bowl put two teaspoons of Colman’s mustard, two teaspoons of caraway seed, three teaspoons of celery seed, two teaspoons of poppy seed, two and a half teaspoons of oregano, one well-crushed large bay leaf, one teaspoon black pepper, one half teaspoon of mace, four tablespoons of well-chopped parsley, four or five finely minced cloves of garlic, four cloves minus the heads and well-chopped, one half teaspoon of turmeric, four large, well-chopped onions, six well-chopped stalks of celery, one half teaspoon marjoram, one half teaspoon savory (summer savory if you can get it), and one tablespoon of poultry seasoning. [“Well chopped” means “medium-fine.”] Some like sage, some like thyme. Nobody, apparently, objects to poultry seasoning, which, ironically, contains both. Salt to taste. [I object to poultry seasoning. And I find the quantity here of ground dried herbs overpowering and acrid. For the poultry seasoning, I substitute 1 tablespoon each of fresh thyme and fresh sage. And I use three times the specified amount of finely chopped fresh oregano, fresh marjoram, and fresh summer savory. A teaspoon of salt should be enough.]

In another bowl dump three packages of breadcrumbs, bought at a bakery. [A pound and a half of fresh bread crumbs seems just right.] Add to this three quarters of a pound of ground veal and one quarter of a pound of ground fresh pork and a quarter of a pound of butter and all the fat (first rendered) you have been able to find and pry loose from the turkey. [I have explained this earlier.] Mix in each bowl the contents of each bowl. When each bowl is well mixed, mix the three of them together. And mix it well. Mix it with your hands. Mix it until your forearms and wrists ache. Then mix it some more. Now toss it enough so that it isn’t any longer a doughy mass.

Stuff your turkey, but not too fully. Pretty full, though. Stuff the neck and tie the end. Skewer the bird. Tie the strings. [Sewing up the bird and sewing the wings to the body are better than skewering.] Turn on your oven full force and let it get red-hot. [Do this an hour beforehand—the stuffing should not sit in the turkey while you wait.] Put your bird on the drip pan, or, best of all, breast down in a rack. In a cup make a paste consisting of the yolks of two eggs, a teaspoon of Colman’s mustard, a clove of minced garlic, a tablespoon of onion juice (run an onion through your chopper and catch the juice), a half teaspoon of salt, two pinches of cayenne pepper, a teaspoon of lemon juice, and enough sifted flour to make a stiff paste. Take a pastry brush or an ordinary big paintbrush and stand by. [Triple all the quantities for this paste or you’ll run out too soon. If you wrap the rack in heavily greased aluminum foil, it will not tear the turkey’s skin.]

Put your bird into the red-hot oven. Let it brown all over. Remove the turkey. Turn your oven down to 325 degrees. Now, while the turkey is sizzling hot, paint it completely all over with the paste. Put it back in the oven. The paste will have set in a few minutes. Drag it out again. Paint every nook and cranny of it once more. Put it back in the oven. Keep doing this until you haven’t any more paste left.

To the giblet-neck-liver-heart gravy that has been simmering add one cup of cider. [Better to add 3 cups of cider and 1 cup of water.] Don’t let it cook any more. Stir it well. Keep it warm on top of the oven. This is your basting fluid. Baste the bird every fifteen minutes! That means you will baste it from twelve to fifteen times. After the bird has cooked about an hour and a half turn it on its stomach, back in the air, and let it cook in that position until the last fifteen minutes, when you restore it to its back again. That is, unless you use a rack. If you use a rack don’t turn it on its back until the last half hour.

[I found the multiple rotations that Thompson calls for to be unnecessarily arduous and damaging to the bird. I would modify the previous three paragraphs by browning the bird, breast down, for about 15 minutes and the same time on its back, on a rack opened nearly all the way. Then paint the bird without turning it and leave it on its back for the rest of the roasting time.]

It ought to cook at least four hours and a half to five hours and a half. [Use the shorter time for an 18-pound turkey and the longer for 22. Begin timing when you turn down the oven to 325 degrees. An instant meat thermometer will read about 180 to 185 degrees in the thigh between the leg and body, 170 degrees in the breast, and 160 degrees in the stuffing.]

When you remove it the turkey will be dead black. You will think, “My God! I have ruined it.” Be calm. Take
a
tweezer and pry loose the paste coating. It will come off readily. Beneath this burnt, harmless, now worthless shell the bird will be golden and dark brown, succulent, giddy-making with wild aromas, crisp and crunchable and crackling.

High-Temperature Turkey

[These instructions come from Barbara Kafka’s column, “An Opinionated Palate,” in the November 1991
Gourmet.
Her method miraculously roasts a large turkey in under two hours. I have found it most successful with a fifteen-pound turkey, unstuffed and untrussed, in a roasting pan with shallow sides and an oven at 500 degrees. But a friend at
Gourmet
tells me that the method was successfully tested with various sizes and types of turkeys. Again, my own advice appears in
brackets.]

The most important thing is to order an unfrozen, untreated bird. Start by removing the packet of innards from the turkey [and make a broth with the neck and gizzards plus some onion and garlic]. Put your oven
rack at its lowest level and boost the bake-setting temperature as high as it will go. You might have some smoke in the kitchen, but you will be rewarded by the juiciest, most quickly roasted turkey—with the crispest skin—you have ever made.

I don’t use a rack in the roasting pan; the bottom skin is hardly worth bothering about. I don’t truss, either. Untrussed, both the white meat and the dark will be properly done at the same time.

Bring the turkey to room temperature. Remove any gobs of fat. Either stuff the cavity or just salt and pepper it and insert a couple of onions… . Fifteen-pound turkeys are about an ideal cooking size. If you have a very large family, I would suggest two smaller turkeys rather than one King Kong.

Slide the turkey, legs first, into the oven. After fifteen minutes move the turkey around with a wooden spatula so that it doesn’t stick. Repeat moving the bird around every twenty minutes. If the bird seems to be getting too dark before it is cooked, cover it with a tent of aluminum foil. Roast until the thigh joint near the backbone wiggles easily. Remove the turkey from the oven about ten minutes before it is fully cooked. [An instant meat thermometer makes this easier; a wobbly leg joint can sometimes mean overcooked meat. Figure on a temperature of 175 to 180 degrees in the thigh meat, measured deep between the leg and the body, and breast meat between 165 and 170 degrees; these are 5 degrees lower than the usual prescription.]