Thanksgiving was explosive this year. I took no pictures, which means I can't show you the pie crust that won the contest I was holding in my mind. Check it: Martha Stewart's Pate Brisee recipe and a food processor produce the best crust I've ever had or made. Use actual ice water, and less of it than you think you need.
The turkey was delicious, again based in Martha's doctrine. I've never brined, just a big 24 pound Butterball thawed and coddled onto the rack of the thirty-dollar Martha Stewart roasting pan, delivered the day before Thanksgiving. Pour a bottle of decent white wine into a saucepan, add two sticks of butter and a large sprig of rosemary. Drench a folded square of cheesecloth in it, flop that on the seasoned (cracked black pepper, kosher salt) turkey and shove it in the oven for an hour at 375. Open, baste generously with the wine/butter mixture, turn the oven down to 325 and repeat the basting every forty-five minutes or so, until you run out of liquid. Then remove the cheesecloth (this should be around hour three and a half, if you're roasting a similar size bird -- reduce time accordingly), discard, and melt another stick of butter in the pot. Use a pastry brush to slather the pale, homely breast with it and continue doing that every forty-five minutes until burnished brown, and the turkey is 160 to 170. Tent with tinfoil and let the carryover take it to 180. You're golden, and so is the bird.
The whole operation is that much easier if you have a comrade, someone who fortifies everyone with her pear and black pepper bread that morning and gave birth to a baby a few months back, so you've got this little giggly, brown-eyed imp of a chublet being passed around while you throw down in the kitchen. I wandered off from the kitchen to get my fill of the baby smell, the soft cheeks and downy hair, the little fingers that burrowed into your mouth, eyeballs and nostrils then yanked like she was drowning. Dinner was ready by five, and we ate until the moaning began, then burrowed into the desserts. There are no desserts left, and we had four kinds.
Yesterday I was watching TV and then I passed out and woke up 2 hours later, disoriented and rosy cheeked. I don't like napping, and I never have -- they are not restful for me. I wake up sleepier than I was in the first place, with a smashed face and features, hair that angers people. I guess I needed the nap, though, and would have happily continued to let my body rot wrapped in my down comforter. But I got up, and did a little shopping with my sisters and mom, drank an eggnog latte that I did not care about and bought a bottle of my favorite vanilla extract.
So that was Thanksgiving. I hope yours was lovely, the loveliest ever. I've been so busy that I haven't cooked, and to just spend the whole day anchored in front of the stove, chopping herbs and browning sage sausage, it was comforting and a little disorienting, like I had Amnesia, like I was the heroine of an ABC Romantic Situation Comedy, all "How do I know how to use the grating blade for the food processor?".
Now I need to go eat some cold stuffing and risk intestinal parasites.
