When the Past Becomes the Present

What I like best about Thanksgiving. Also, the perfect pie for this moment. A crazily ambitious old menu. And the first offerings of the annual gift guide.

Last year, as I was standing in the kitchen, there was Mom, standing beside me. “Your turkey’s going to be overcooked,” she lamented as I set the timer for four hours.

“Mom,” I said, “this bird weighs 24 pounds!”

She shook her head. My late mother had some extremely strange notions about cooking.  Although no turkey on the planet will cook in under an hour in an ordinary oven, Mom refused to accept that. Let me just say that Mom’s turkeys were never dry.

“And what are you doing now?” she asked, peering over my shoulder. I was squeezing pomegranate juice. Nick, the grandson Mom never met, loves the sweet tart gravy I first made when he was six, and it’s been a staple on our table ever since. As I was silently explaining this to her, I was startled by a thought: this ritual meal is powerful not because we gather with our families, but because we gather with our ghosts. 

My kitchen grew increasingly crowded; as I creamed onions Aunt Birdie suddenly appeared. “Do you remember,” she asked, “the first Thanksgiving you ever cooked?” How could I forget? She was 100 years old, and we had to carry her up the stairs of our lower east side loft. “I don’t remember that” she sniffed. “What I do remember is that we were all thrilled when you agreed to do it. And that you were very nervous.”

Well of course I was! When the meal moved from Mom’s house to mine, it seemed like a major rite of passage and the first time I truly felt like a grown up. I fussed about, desperate to get every detail perfect. It wasn’t: as I remember, the turkey was dry, the mashed potatoes lumpy. But that was also the day I learned the most important fact about Thanksgiving, one every cook needs to know. “We didn’t come to eat,” Aunt Birdie told me gently, “we came to be together and share a meal. We’re grateful when the food is wonderful, but it really doesn’t matter. Remember that.”

Aunt Birdie departed, but as I was scrubbing sweet potatoes a few friends from my Berkeley years came through the door. “Remember,” Jules said, “that time we decided we were vegetarian?” I certainly did. It was 1976, and what I remember most is that as I prepared vegetables for fifty I suddenly understood why so many holiday meals involve a giant piece of protein. Thanksgiving that year was an exhausting production, and by the time it was over our vegetarian days were too.

I roasted chestnuts, crushed cranberries, peeled potatoes; with each step some old friend was at my side. As I sharpened my knife the late Michel Richard, one of the finest chefs I’ve ever known, suddenly appeared. “So slow!,” he said, watching me carve the turkey in careful slices. That man could carve a bird in ten seconds flat: I timed him once. Each slice was perfect. That was in the early eighties, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who could beat him. And here he was, restored to me, poking gentle fun.

My ghosts stayed with me, flitting in and out of the kitchen as the day progressed. Even later, doing dishes, I was not alone. A few years ago, when all the guests had gone, I handed Laurie a dish to dry. My old friend held it for a moment and then blurted out, “The doctors say I’ve only got a few more months. This is my last Thanksgiving.” I miss Laurie — I always will — but last year she was with me at the sink, just like always, another visitor from Thanksgiving past.

This gives me great comfort. Years from now, when I’m long gone, I know that Nick will be standing in a kitchen carving turkey. Maybe he’ll be an old man by then, cooking for his grandchildren. But it’s nice to know that I’ll be there.

There's not a log of wiggle room in our Thanksgiving meal.  Everyone's got a dish they simply have to have.  There are two stuffings Michael considers essential. Nick wouldn't be happy if we didn't have mashed potatoes. I want sweet potatoes with miso butter. Pat doesn't think it's Thanksgiving unless there's red cabbage. Peter requires a salad..... You get the point: it doesn’t leave much room for anything new.

Dessert, however, is different. While we always have pumpkin pie (for Michael), pecan pie (Michael again) and cranberry crostata (me), every year I get to make at least one new pie. This year has been a great apple season, and I’ve began experimenting.

If you’re at my house, you’ll be eating this pie.

Apple Crumb Pie with Sour Cream
Begin by making an all-butter crust.  Put a cup and a quarter of all-purpose flour into a bowl.  Shake in a bit of salt. Slice a stick of cold sweet butter and then cut it into the flour, either by hand or using a food processor, until the butter is reduced to the size of small peas.  Sprinkle in a couple tablespoons of ice water and a tablespoon of vodka, and keep adding liquid until the ingredients will just hold together in a ball. Gather it up, flatten it to a disk, wrap it in wax paper and put it in the refrigerator for at least an hour (or up to a few days). 

Remove the dough from the refrigerator, let it rest for about 20 minutes, then roll it gently out on a floured surface. Fit it into a deep-dish 10 inch pie pan, flute the edges and put the crust in the freezer while you prepare the filling.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Mix a cup and a quarter of sour cream with a half cup of sugar.  Whisk in a couple of eggs, 3 tablespoons of flour, a bit of salt and a couple teaspoons of vanilla.  Grate in a small shower of lemon rind. 

Peel 5 large interesting apples - Cox’s Orange Pippins are good, as are Ashmead’s Kernel, Knobbed Russets, Arkansas Blacks and Esopus Spitzenbergs.  (If you're stuck with supermarket apples, opt for Granny Smiths.) Core the apples, slice them and fold them into the sour cream mixture.  The aroma, as you pour it into the chilled crust, will make you very happy.

Mix a half cup of flour with a quarter cup of sugar.  Sprinkle in some salt and about a teaspoon of cinnamon. Cut in 1/4 to 1/2 cup of butter until it’s crumbly, pick it up and shower it evenly across the top of the pie.

Put the pie on the bottom shelf of the hot oven.  After 10 minutes turn the heat down to 350 and bake for another hour or so, until the top has puffed into a lovely golden dome.  Cool on a rack before serving.

I remember my parents talking about Cafe Chambord, which opened in 1936; Mom said it reminded her of the bistros she went to in Paris when she was at the Sorbonne. It was, she said, small and rather rustic. At least in the beginning.

Then, in 1942, owner Roger Chauveron got his hands on a great wine cellar at a bargain price.  He'd worked at all of New York's one-named big-deal hotels - The Ritz, The Plaza, The Astor, The Commodore - and now he raised the level of the food to match his swell new wine list. Before long it had become a favorite haunt of the French emigrés flooding into the city to escape the war. They were soon joined by prominent New Yorkers (the Rockefellers), and movie stars (Greta Garbo was a fan).  

Chauveron sold the restaurant in 1950 and went back to France.  He didn't stay long; in 1955 he was back to open Cafe Chauveron.  I never went there either, but here's Gael Greene's paean to that restaurant (some wonderful sentences in there like “the great shriek of chic”.)

And some great words on this menu too, like those oeufs pochés Pere Benedict. And just look at the price of avocados!

Next week La Briffe will feature a whole slew of gift suggestions - some old, some new - but I wanted to start off with a couple of old-fashioned products.

Every year I buy a Christmas Pudding from Talbott and Arding. I am not alone; here in the Hudson Valley they’ve become a tradition. The puddings went on sale this week, and since they’re made in limited quantities, they’re sure to sell out fast.

The shop’s co-owner Kate Arding may have traded her native England for upstate New York, but she brought her holiday traditions with her. “When we were growing up,” she says, “we couldn’t wait until Christmas and Mum’s plum pudding.”

The recipe includes three kinds of raisins, candied orange peel, organic eggs and suet from grass-fed local cows. Lots of spices and brandy too. It's hard to think of a better finale to a festive holiday feast.

Brushed with booze, it is meant to be carried to the table swathed in flames. The cakes, dense with ginger and other spices are a true taste of the past. And they come in lovely little ceramic bowls that are not only endlessly useful, but also a lasting reminder of Christmas.

It’s becoming harder and harder to find unusual gifts for the cooks who have everything. But here’s one you can be pretty sure they won’t have stashed in the larder: sorghum syrup.

I had my first taste of this classic American product in Kentucky, and found myself so fascinated I came home laden with jars of the stuff. At first I was just looking for an organic ingredient to replace the nasty corn syrup that goes into recipes like hot fudge and pecan pie, but once I began tasting the sorghum syrups of the various producers, I was hooked. True sorghum is an artisanal product with a distinct taste of terroir, and it changes enormously from one producer to the next.

Since then I’ve experimented with recipes: it did wonders for the pecan pie at Thanksgiving. Mixed with butter (1/4 cup sorghum syrup blended into a stick of unsalted butter), it makes a spectacular spread for a warm biscuits. Sorghum’s great on pancakes, it makes wonderful caramels, and it lends a whole new flavor to tea and coffee. 

 I’m really hooked on the orange sorghum made by the Holbrook Brothers in West Liberty Kentucky but I think you have to go there to get it. But I also love the barrel-aged sorghum from Bourbon Barrel Foods (and while you’re on the website, check out the terrific Bluegrass Soy Sauce).

Americans now make excellent prosciutto, mozzarella and kimchi, and that makes me very proud. But isn’t it time we rediscovered native products that have been made in this country since Colonial times?