This weekend, The Food Network aired a special episode of "Iron Chef America," the Thanksgiving Showdown, which pitted two teams of Iron Chefs against each other to create a Thanksgiving feast. During the judging, restaurateur Donatella Arpaia said that Thanksgiving "is like a culinary marathon."
Donatella, you hit the nail on the head.
Thanksgiving is a chance to show off your skills to family and friends, the spectators in this culinary sporting event, and you can receive the accolades of a champion or the looks of pity deserving of someone who gave it their all yet came up short. The prep — crafting the meal, running to various markets for ingredients — is the training portion of the marathon. T-Day itself is a rollercoaster of emotions, ranging from endorphin-induced joy to utter despair. All of your planning seems to have paid off until you get to the Heartbreak Hill of Thanksgiving: dessert. You're exhausted and already filled to the brim, but you keep pushing forward. You finally see the Citgo sign in Kenmore — it's just after-dinner drinks and a sprint to the finish.
Like all marathons, Thanksgiving has its casualties. There are the first-time contenders who didn't train enough, the veterans who are cocky and don't pace themselves properly, the unforeseen injuries, the fans that get in the way of the runners (read: pesky relatives who don't know when to get out of the kitchen) and countless more routine blunders. I've experienced two memorable Thanksgiving bloopers; both involve poor training procedures and equipment failure.
Thanksgiving is a three-ring circus in my family. There is a minimum of 30 people, all with various dietary needs and restrictions (if anything even comes close to touching my aunt's peanut butter cookies I won't go near it), and all with different ideas about what makes the perfect Thanksgiving meal. No matter how much food everyone prepares, with that many people, there are never leftovers, so my mom always cooks a small turkey for the two of us to eat during the week. It's a smart game plan.
During my junior year of high school, we got a new oven and the first time we used it was to cook our turkey. Three hours into the cooking process, when the bird should have been done, it was still pink. We thought the new oven wasn't heating properly, so we left the turkey in for longer. Five hours in, we gave up, took the turkey out of the oven and carved it. Most of the meat was still pink and looked underdone, but that turkey was so dry and so overcooked we couldn't even get one bite down. It turns out we had ordered a Kosher turkey, and the salt used in the Koshering process gave the meat its pink hue. Every year my mom still complains about "that damn tie-died turkey."
The second blunder involved a much, much, much larger bird. To feed all of those hungry relatives, we usually buy two small turkeys and cook them separately. About five or six years ago, my aunt decided at the last second to buy one whopping 30-pound bird. Needless to say, the turkey did not fit into her oven; everyone tried their hand at shoving the turkey into the hot box, but no one succeeded. We only ate ham that year, but watching my uncle trying to grease up the turkey to slide it into the oven is a priceless memory.
As you prepare for Thanksgiving this year, remember Donatella, my oven and the giant 30-pounder: Cooking and eating for Thanksgiving is a marathon, and even with the slip-ups, poor planning or equipment failures that happen along the way, you will make it to Copley in the end.
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Caryn Horowitz is a junior majoring in history. She can be reached at Caryn.Horowitz@tufts.edu.
