Thanksgiving 2023

It's Thanksgiving once again and each and every Thanksgiving, I am blessed to be able to have so much for which to be thankful. But it seems this year of 2023, I really do have extra cause to be especially thankful. In particular, I do not know how I would have navigated two surgeries and the death of my father without Ann by my side. There are many, many other reasons I have to be thankful this year, but that is too long a list to compile and Ann trumps all of them.

Roasted Guanciale-Rosemary Turkey Thighs with Gravy
Pasta Flavored with Sausage, Leeks, Celery, Thyme, and Sage

I look back fondly at all our Thanksgivings past and have no choice to conclude that Thanksgiving at our house is not the raucous, noisy, and crowded affair it used to be. For decades, including before my time with Ann, Thanksgiving was always a feast involving a lot of people, family at times, but mainly people who did not have any other place to celebrate this holiday. A dozen people would have been a small crowd and one year, before Ann's time, we counted 35-40 people for the big feast.

Now that we are empty nesters, it's generally just the two of us and my heart really isn't in putting in a ton of work to not share it with others. My sister and I were lamenting the day before Thanksgiving that we'd much rather cook for a crowd than for two. At least she got to cook for 8 or 9 people this year. Don't get me wrong. I love cooking for Ann, but I think we both miss having company for our big holiday celebration.

Regardless, Ann and I had a great meal although much simplified from years past: turkey rillettes, roast turkey, and a Thanksgiving-flavored pasta. The goal this year was to do the prep (and dishes!) in the two days before the feast day and then let the oven do all the work on Thanksgiving.

This year, like many years, we started our feast day with turkey neck rillettes on crostini with cornichons. Rillettes are a spread of cooked meat in fat, similar to, but more rustic than pâté. They are a wonderful use for the neck meat leftover from making the stock that I use to make the gravy (and in years when Ann makes dressing, to moisten it).

Turkey Neck Rillettes on Crostini with Cornichons

Warming the Rillettes in Front of Fire

Rillettes need to be at room temperature (or in the winter, slightly warmer) so that they will spread easily. It was too chilly in the house to warm them on the counter, so I came up with a way to warm them gently in front of the fire. I got odd looks from my wife, but it was a success.

Sparkling Wine with the Rillettes

Rillettes, because of their fatty nature, need something acidic to work against that fat. So, I top them with cornichons and serve them with a bracing sparkling wine. Any high acid wine would work, but I think of all the choices out there, sparkling works best. This was Crémant d'Alsace.

Homemade Sausage for the Pasta

Two days before Thanksgiving, I made a small batch of sausage for the pasta that I would bake on Thursday. This is ground pork shoulder flavored with white wine, sage, thyme, rosemary, fennel pollen, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and salt.

The day before Thanksgiving, I assembled the pasta so that I could pull it, in ready to bake form, out of the refrigerator on Thanksgiving and put it in the oven while the turkey was roasting. The pasta started with cooked aromatics: leeks, celery, rubbed sage, and fresh thyme leaves.

Primary Pasta Flavorings: Celery, Leeks, Rubbed Sage, Fresh Thyme

Vegetables Sweated and Removed to a Mixing Bowl

Sausage Cooked, Then Mixed with a Spoonful of Flour

Pint of Heavy Cream, Cooked Until Slightly Thick

After cooking the vegetables, I browned the sausage that I made the day before and added a big spoonful of flour. Once the flour was cooked a bit, I added heavy cream and cooked it until the cream thickened a bit. The sausage and cream mixture joined the sweated vegetables in the mixing bowl with pasta that I cooked to just al dente and then cooled under running water. Everything all mixed, I adjusted the seasoning and put the pasta into an oiled baking pan. I topped the pasta with a lightly oiled mixture of panko and the breadcrumbs leftover from making the crostini for the turkey rillettes.

Thanksgiving Pasta, Ready for the Refrigerator

The End Result

Many years ago now, Ann turned me on to putting pancetta butter between the turkey skin and the breast meat to give extra flavor and to help keep the breast meat moist. I have continued that tradition ever since. This year, I made it out of what I had on hand, no longer in the business of curing belly after belly of pancetta for the restaurant. I had some smoked guanciale (pork jowl) and a bit of fresh rosemary in the refrigerator, so I made the butter from those two items. I do have to say that the firmer fat in the jowl (guanciale) chops much finer and more easily in the food processor than does the fat in the belly (pancetta).

Butter, Smoked Guanciale, Rosemary

Turkey Thighs with Guanciale Butter under Skin

Check out That Skin!

Another Thanksgiving in the books, I am beyond thankful for all I have, the people in my life, and the opportunities that I have had and will have in the future, and most of all, for a tremendously rewarding relationship with Ann without whom my life would have little meaning.

Turkey Neck Rillettes

Turkey neck rillettes are pretty common as an appetizer before our Thanksgiving feast and are a happy side product of making stock for the gravy and dressing to accompany our turkey.

Turkey Neck Rillettes on Crostini with Cornichons

Rillettes are a type of charcuterie, essentially a rustic form of pâté in which shredded cooked meat is mixed with fat to form a spreadable paste. I used to make all manner of rillettes for our charcuterie program at the restaurant, but mainly from pork, salmon, and duck, animals that have a really high fat content such that you can cook the meat and let it congeal in its own fat to make a great spread. Alas, turkey has no such fat, especially on the necks so you have to add fat to make the spread.

Making Stock
Roasted Turkey Necks and Aromatics

To make my Thanksgiving stock, I use turkey necks because they are cheap and also delicious. First, I rub the necks with oil and roast them in the oven until they are brown and caramelized all over. Then the necks go into the stock pot with aromatics, in this case, carrots, celery leaves, parsley stems, shallot peels, and leek leaves. They cook until tender at which point, I separate the stock for use later to make gravy and to moisten stuffing. The necks, I let cool to touch before picking the meat from them. It is far easier to pick the meat from the bones when the necks are warm rather than cold.

Picked Turkey Neck Meat, Roughly Chopped

Because turkey neck meat is naturally long and stringy, really long pieces can be difficult to chew. To avoid this, I give the meat a rough chop to shorten the pieces, but as you can see in the photo above, I still leave a decent amount of texture.

At this point, it is time to mix in the fat and seasonings. I like to keep the seasonings really simple, so I seasoned to taste with fresh thyme leaves, salt, and a few scrapings of nutmeg. Next, I mixed in enough softened fat to make a smooth, spreadable paste. In the best of all worlds, I would have used duck fat to make the rillettes, but I'm no longer running a restaurant with gallons of duck fat on hand. (This is why our sweet-and-sour brussels sprouts were so good: seared good and hard in duck fat with pork belly scraps and shallots before being finished with caramelized sugar and white balsamic vinegar!). So I used a mixture of bacon grease leftover from some other meal and softened butter. Lard would have worked great too, especially lard leftover from making carnitas.

Turkey Neck Rillettes Packed Into a Bowl

If I were making rillettes for long-term storage, I would have packed them into jars and sealed the tops with additional molten fat to keep them from the air. In this case, I was serving them two days hence, so I packed them into the bowl in which I wanted to serve them and covered it with plastic wrap before putting it in the refrigerator. On Thanksgiving morning, I gently rewarmed the bowl in front of the fireplace to restore its unctuous texture.

Colorado Springs: Thanksgiving 2022

Carter has been stationed at Ft. Carson on the south side of Colorado Springs for a year or so now. Ann and I have been looking for an excuse to make the two-day drive from Oregon to visit with him and his new wife Emma to see their new townhouse and meet our new grand dog, Grace.

Carter, Ann, and Emma

Now that we have just finished the build-out of our new kitchen in our new house, a project that kept us anchored in Bend for the past six months, it seemed like now might be our best opportunity to visit. The real crapshoot in driving to Colorado this time of the year is winter weather in the Cascades, Intermountain West, and Rockies. Opportunities for car travel through the high passes are severely limited from November to April. In a stroke of luck, the long-range forecast seemed to offer a decent chance of passable, if not entirely snow-free, weather.

Moreover, we have just found out that Carter's brigade is being rotated to Korea in the first half of 2023, exactly when is obscure for operational security. With passable weather in the forecast and Carter's residence in the US coming to an end for the better part of a year, the trip to the Springs was basically now or never. More importantly, the timing meant that we could have a family visit for Thanksgiving rather than cooking the same old meal at home.

Grand Dog Grace

When we pitched the idea, the kids seemed pretty gung-ho and as neither has cooked for Thanksgiving before, seemed to be psyched about having us assist or at least offer moral support. And we were excited to help them pull the meal off while letting them put on their own show in their own house. We wanted to be the proud parents watching the kids grow up and take the reins for Thanksgiving in a reversal of our heretofore traditional roles.

From Bend to Colorado Springs

On Wednesday the 16th, 8 days out from Thanksgiving, I made a pork terrine with pistachios and dried cherries, Carter's request to me for Thanksgiving Dinner. Unfortunately, Ann and I would never get to taste it. I also made sandwiches for us to take on the road, which I subsequently left in our refrigerator in our haste to get out the door. Doh!

While the terrine was in the oven, I started packing the car for the long trip to Colorado Springs. We really didn't know what kind of weather to expect and the forecasts along the way were a mixed bag from sun to snow, single digits to fifties. So we packed for worst-case weather and the possibility of having to wait out a snowstorm in the car.

The next morning, we tried to get an early start on the two-day drive, but events conspired against us. As soon as we pulled the car out of the garage, it was apparent that the freshly changed oil was leaking onto the floor. After getting gas, we stopped into the quick-change garage where they replaced the leaking oil filter. We finally got moving at 8:45 to find that the roads were slicker than hell from overnight flurries and subsequent freezing fog that made it appear if someone had airbrushed everything with silver paint.

The first couple of hours out of Bend east to Burns required super-attentive driving; the foggy desert landscape was punctuated at regular intervals by pairs of ravens. We stopped in Burns to buy supplies to replace the sandwiches that I forgot to bring along. North of Burns, the ravens gave way to small groups of magpies as we followed the Malheur River on our way into onion and potato country in Ontario, home to a big Ore-Ida plant. A great memory is driving north along the river canyon and seeing not only a herd of 20-30 mule deer below us, but a Bald Eagle winging alongside us at eye level.

Idaho is all interstate driving southeast along the Snake River and we made good time through the southern tier of that state, hitting Utah about dark. We chose Ogden as our stop for the night and I booked a room downtown before taking the final shift driving to the hotel.

Serious construction on I-84 in northern Utah has reduced the highway to a single lane with barrels blocking off one of the lanes. These particular barrels were really beat and filthy to the point where they were barely reflective in the dark. At random times, I had to veer sharply around a barrel that had been knocked into the travel lane. And at other points, the construction crews decided to switch travel lanes seemingly without warning. It was truly a white-knuckle game of highway Frogger, driving where the nearly invisible barrels were not, making crazy lane shifts in the dark without warning.

I was totally frazzled after this experience and happy to arrive safely in downtown Ogden. After taking our luggage to our room, we walked a couple blocks to a nearby brewpub and had absolutely forgettable beer and food.

Friday morning would see us on the road at 8:45, an hour later than we wanted, the result of the time change to Mountain Time. I noted when I gassed up in Ogden that it was cold, really cold. A few miles down the road, now in Wyoming and on I-80, I checked the temperature and found it was in the single digits everywhere. Laramie, across the Rockies and where we would leave I-80 and turn south into Colorado, got down to -12 the evening before.

Temperature When I Stopped
to Wash the Windshield Barehanded

In fact, it was so cold that our windshield washer fluid had frozen overnight and that was not a good situation what with all the slush on the roadway from overnight snow. The highway was a bit snowy, but the going was not all that bad. Interstate 80 has a reputation as a real bitch in the winter, but happily for us, we got off easy. At one point, we were forced to pull off the highway so that I could wash the windshield using washer fluid and paper towels from the car. At 8F, my bare hands were loving life while Ann was inside scoring some hot coffee for us! I was happy to wrap my hands around the steaming cup.

By afternoon, the day was sunny and cold, if gusty, and the travel lanes (but not the shoulders) on the highway were clear. We found ourselves on the notorious I-80 traversing southern Wyoming, one of the few passenger cars in a sea of semis. I would estimate that the highway carried 20 semis for every car or passenger truck. My hat is really off to these truck drivers who brave the winter weather conditions to get goods where they need to be. While the highway might be treacherous in the winter, it was gloriously beautiful winding through the mountains.

Interstate 25 from Fort Collins to just north of Denver is a fustercluck of construction and that coupled with Friday afternoon rush hour traffic made the drive along the Front Range a bit tense. We arrived in the Springs after dark.

Weekend in Colorado Springs

In cahoots with Emma who wanted to surprise Carter, we told him that we would be arriving Monday night of Thanksgiving week. In reality, we left Bend on the prior Thursday with plans to arrive on Friday night and surprise him at brunch on Saturday morning. As we were arriving after dark on Friday, Emma begged us to come straight to their house to surprise him. And he was well and truly surprised! Carter drove us downtown for greasy pizza and beer before we went to our B&B, about ten minutes away, for the evening.

Saturday Morning, Walking Down our Street

Saturday morning, we left the B&B for coffee downtown dressed for the weather that we had just been through. The temperature in Colorado Springs, however, was in the low 30s and we found ourselves roasting, way overdressed. We had excellent coffee and a bagel at Switchback Coffee Roasters before heading over to Carter and Emma's on the south side of town. 

Mid-afternoon, they wanted to go to the Oskar Blues pub downtown. I haven't been to Oskar Blues since visiting the original brewery in Lyons decades ago. The kids ate lunch, but Ann and I were not on their same schedule after a mid-morning bagel. After lunch, we headed back to their house where Ann and I would take care of dog Grace while Carter and Emma drove into Denver to attend a show. After they departed for Denver, we played with the dog, snacked a little leftover cheese and salami from the cooler in our car for dinner, and after a final dog walk, returned to the B&B for an early night.

Sunday morning, we reprised our leisurely coffee at Switchback, then returned to our B&B to await the kids, who did not get home from Denver until half past three in the morning. While they slept, we waited and lounged, not how we imagined we might be spending our time in Colorado Springs. Finally, we got together and went downtown for a late lunch of not terribly good ramen at the shop where Emma works. After enduring an awkward stint at Carter and Emma's, Ann and I needed some space and alone time away from the kids. We left to grab a quick dinner by ourselves at Old Colorado City Brewing before going back to the B&B.

Over the weekend, it became clear that neither Carter nor Emma had made any plans for a Thanksgiving meal. No matter how much we mentioned it, we seemed to get nowhere, so we dropped the subject. This was quickly turning out to be anything but the vacation that we had envisaged, a happy reunion and a shared celebratory meal, not to discount the chance to meet Carter and Emma's friends at a Friendsgiving on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Ann and I were feeling very awkward and confused about the situation.

In fact, it reminded me of the final time that I lived in my parents' home during the summer after my first year of college. We, my parents and I, led very different lives, with different priorities, and different ideas of what our roles were. I could not wait and I am sure that they could not wait until I departed for school again in August, never to live under their roof again.

Even though the circumstances were reversed in this case, the parents visiting the kids rather than vice versa and even though we were staying in our own place rather than theirs, the feeling was not dissimilar to my last summer with my parents. Ann and I were feeling ready to be gone, but we talked ourselves into staying for Thanksgiving. 

Thanksgiving Week in Colorado Springs

Carter had asked to be off the week of Thanksgiving, but his request was too late. He had to settle for the normal Thursday-Sunday 4-day weekend like most of the other soldiers in his unit. This was really fine with us; we expected both of them to be working during the week. We were content enough with seeing them on Saturday and Sunday and then again on Thursday and Friday before our departure on Saturday. During the week, Ann and I had planned to do some hiking (or snowshoeing, depending on the weather) and other activities around Colorado Springs. 

On Monday at noon, in the World Cup, the US would play their first match against Wales. On our visit to Oskar Blues, we learned that they would be showing the game, so we planned to watch it there. Before the noon start, we decided to make an early morning drive over to the stunning Garden of the Gods park near our B&B in west Colorado Springs. We had a wonderful walk before heading downtown. The match ended in a draw, not the expected outcome for the favored Americans. After the game, Ann and I felt like we needed more space from the kids, so we went back to the B&B to watch a movie before turning in early.

Watching the World Cup at Oskar Blues

Tuesday we had no firm plans, so we tried a different coffee house with a nice atmosphere but pretty lame coffee and food, despite positive reviews. During breakfast, we found something unique to visit: Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. After our walk at Florissant, we returned to town to find lunch and a beer, then joined Carter and Emma at their request at another brewpub after Carter got off work. We ended up eating so-so food and drinking a lame beer apiece.

Wednesday we had planned to head west of town again, this time to take the cog railway to the top of Pike's Peak on one of the very first trains of the day, timed to avoid the crush of visitors at the top. The hour and ten minute ride was relaxing and offered a great way to see the scenery. I have only been colder once in my life than I was at the top with low temperatures and a howling gale of wind.

After our return to Colorado Springs, we let the kids talk us into going out to a bar, not something we were all that keen on, on the number one party night of the year for college kids. They're all off for Thanksgiving and packing the bars. That said, we went to a really cool industrial mixed-use restaurant, bar, and entertainment space called C.O.A.T.I. I wish we were in a better frame of mind to enjoy it.

The next day being Thanksgiving and the kids having zero plan, Ann and I had decided that we would just grab a bite at whatever place was open. Just before we were ready to leave the bar for our B&B at about 9:30pm, Carter dropped a bomb on us, asking, "Aren't you cooking for Thanksgiving?"

I was stunned and of a mind to spew venom, but after slamming my beer, I headed for the restroom to calm myself. When I returned, Ann and I huddled and decided that we would try to make the best of the situation. We would try to find a grocery store that was open late on the night before Thanksgiving and piece together a simple Thanksgiving meal. She and I were so angry and upset that we fought all the way to the grocery store, arriving at 9:45pm, just 15 minutes before they closed for the holiday. Needless to say, many things we wanted were out of stock.

After purchasing what we could to put together a Thanksgiving-flavored pasta (using chicken instead of sold-out turkey, green onions instead of sold-out leeks, and dried sage instead of sold-out fresh herbs), we headed back to our B&B. I don't know who voiced it first, but we quickly decided that we were leaving for home first thing on Friday, Friendsgiving or no Friendsgiving.

Thanksgiving Day 2022

Thanksgiving was a somber experience for us. Ann and I were angry, tired, stressed out, and longing for home. The kids did not stop partying until after three in the morning, so they were not even functional enough to return our texts until early afternoon. Ann and I went over mid-afternoon with the plan to make an early dinner and get the hell out.

Dispiritedly, I made a pretty awesome rigatoni with roasted chicken and sage sausage that tasted like Thanksgiving (incidentally, it was the best food we would have during out stay in Colorado Springs), but my heart wasn't in it. As soon as dinner was done, I told the kids we were leaving at first light for home. They protested a little, but not terribly.

Tired, angry, hurt, and not very full of joy as we are usually at Thanksgiving, we returned to the B&B to get to sleep for an early departure. I was so out of sorts that I didn't even remember to take a single picture at Thanksgiving and I regret that.

Return to Bend

At 5:30 the next morning, we found ourselves awake and decided just to get up and go. By 5:45 we were on the road north along the Front Range, headed for home. Even before we left Colorado Springs, I think we both decided to jam the 17-1/2 hours to Bend without stopping for the night.

While we used the predicted bad Thanksgiving weekend collision of two snow-bearing frontal systems in the Pacific Northwest as our excuse to leave Colorado Springs early, it proved to be a beautiful day. We got to see both a delightful sunrise and an award-winning sunset. I found it particularly beautiful to have the sun rising and shining directly on the horseshoe-shaped Mile High Stadium in downtown Denver as we passed on the highway. I've never seen this iteration of the stadium in person; my days of staying in Boulder and calling on customers along the Front Range predate both the stadium and the new DIA airport. I flew in and out of Stapleton many, many times.

The drive back home was a good opportunity to see wildlife. In northern Colorado just shy of the Wyoming border, we saw a fairly decent herd of bighorns, perhaps 40 or 50 in number. Each of us, when we were not driving, spied a Bald Eagle sitting on a fencepost in the mountains, far from obvious sources of water, overlooking the highway. It's really gratifying to see that Bald Eagles have recovered in numbers sufficient that they are repopulating areas away from water. The Golden Eagles, Red Tailed Hawks, and Ferruginous Hawks may feel differently.

I had figured we might see a good many Pronghorns along I-80 in the southern tier of Wyoming, but I only saw one small group of 8-10. A large herd of elk, perhaps 100 in number in three separate groups, made up for that in northern Utah just below the Idaho border. Just over the Idaho border, we saw a Ferruginous Hawk on a fencepost along the highway; this is a huge hawk of the plains that we just never encounter. Finally, after dark, just shy of Bend in the middle of the desert, we almost collided with a Great Horned Owl that was flying across the highway.

Stunning Sunset Near Mountain Home, ID

We had concerns about a weather system moving in after dark, but once we reached Boise, we couldn't see a thing. Fortunately, we only ran into a few snow squalls as we entered Bend. The timing of the storm had it arrive in Bend on Sunday into Monday. Our decision to leave early and make a go of it in one day was a sound one. I would not have wanted to hit the Stinkingwater Mountains in Harney County on US 20 in the middle of a snowstorm as our original itinerary would have had us doing.

Finally after 17-1/2 hours on the road, with me jamming white-knuckled from Boise to Bend along the curvy and hairy US-20, we arrived back at home. As we walked in the back door, we were both surprised to walk into our brand new kitchen. I know that in my mind, I was picturing our old kitchen. In any case, it was good to be home and off the now slick road, awaiting the arrival of the snowstorm on Sunday.

Thanksgiving 2021

Like last year and thanks once again to COVID, our Thanksgiving this year was subdued, just Annie and me. For weeks, Ann had been asking me to reprise the Thanksgiving lasagna from last year, so I made it once again this year.

The ingredients and method are all outlined in last year's post, so I won't be going into them again here. Once again, it was an awful lot of busy work (spread over three days, although nothing difficult) for a dinner for two people, and still, the reward was worth the effort.

Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes and Ham, Salsa Verde

Mid-morning, we were starting to get hungry and knowing that we would only eat two meals today given the caloric weight of dinner, I decided to make a substantial breakfast to carry us through to dinner. In about five minutes, I whipped up two bowls of scrambled eggs with ham and tomatoes, topped with salsa verde, thanks to the ever-present container of salsa verde in the refrigerator.

Salsa Verde

This salsa is so delicious and so simple that I generally keep a batch in the refrigerator to adorn any dish that needs a little pick-me-up.

1 can of whole tomatillos (14 ounces net wt.), drained
1 bunch of cilantro, stems and all, roughly chopped
1 large clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Add all the ingredients to a blender. Starting on low speed, blend to a smooth sauce. Season to taste with salt.

After breakfast, we started watching Peter Jackson's new Beatles documentary, Get Back, which feels entirely different from the original Let it Be film that I saw decades ago, much happier in tone. As I look 60 years of age straight in the face, I realize that the Beatles really have been a huge part of the soundtrack of my life.

Our watching was interrupted periodically sending and receiving Thanksgiving wishes to and from friends and family. After the movie in the early afternoon, Ann and I got started on our mini celebration with me opening a bottle of Prosecco and Ann setting the table.

Prosecco poured, we got to work on dinner. I had done all the prep on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, leaving only the last-minute items for Thursday. I started by using the drippings from roasting the turkey thighs to make a batch of gravy with double turkey stock. I mixed the gravy with a mixture of pulled neck and thigh meat for one of the layers of the lasagna.

The stock was slightly different this year in that I made a double stock, the first stock made from roasted turkey necks. After picking the meat off the necks and thighs, I roasted the bones and then used them to make a second stock using the first stock instead of water.

Making Roux for Gravy

Turkey layer complete, we then went on to the béchamel layer, making it pretty much like country sausage gravy. I fried up the country sausage that I made on Wednesday (ground pork shoulder, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, sage, thyme, garlic) with chopped porcini mushrooms that I rehydrated the day before as well. Then in went a bit of flour and a quart of milk, and voilà, sausage-mushroom béchamel. Or fancy sausage gravy, depending on where you come from.

Meanwhile, we brought a big stockpot of salted water up to a boil and then par-boiled our lasagna noodles for four minutes, many minutes shy of being done. We layered up the lasagna: turkey, herb and vegetable ricotta, béchamel, turkey, béchamel, cornbread crumbles. While it was baking in a 375F oven, 45 minutes covered, 30 minutes uncovered, we opened a bottle of 2016 WillaKenzie Pinot Noir Triple Black Slopes to have with our dinner.

Thanksgiving 2020: Lasagna

Once again, it is Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. While this infamous year of 2020 has been terrible for many reasons and thankless in many regards, we should all be able to find something in our lives to be thankful for. Despite all the negatives this year, Ann and I are grateful that we and our kids are well, that the girls have not contracted COVID despite working in healthcare, that Carter has chosen a direction for his life by enlisting in the Army (and is currently at boot), and that we are able to make ends meet, even if times are lean.

Our 2020 Thanksgiving celebration will be truly odd, one spent without friends and family. None of our friends want to risk exposure by coming for dinner any more than we want to by going to their homes. Ditto for family, but our family is all back East and getting together wouldn't have been possible anyway. Still, Thanksgiving is a time to gather and celebrate and we will miss that this year. Damn this virus!

Back in September, Ann and I got to kicking around Thanksgiving and what to do, knowing that hosting friends and family was a long shot. I had, some years ago, proposed doing an off-the-wall Thanksgiving meal: a paella, all the traditional turkey and flavors rolled into one totally non-standard pan of rice cooked over a fire in the back yard. That didn't fly at the time and we shelved the idea for the future, maybe next year. In a similar spirit this highly non-traditional year, Ann asked, "Why not make a lasagna?"

Thanksgiving Lasagna: Delicious!

Why not? Ann and I have cooked decades of traditional Thanksgiving dinners, so really, why not something totally off the wall?

For me, a lasagna will be almost new territory, my experience with lasagna being scant. It's not a dish that I ever eat and the first and only lasagna that I ever made was in 1985! You cannot count those times at the restaurant when we would cook a two-foot long sheet of pasta and weave it back and forth in a bowl, putting a filling between each fold, and rushing it to the dining room. Giant pain in the rear to plate? Check. Cool dish and fun presentation? Check. Lasagna? Definitely not.

After a couple days of imagining what a Thanksgiving-style lasagna could be, I proposed to Ann to do two layers of turkey in gravy, and between those a layer of sage pork sausage in béchamel and a layer of "turkey stuffing" ricotta, ricotta flavored with all the aromatics that go into traditional Thanksgiving stuffing. Ann said, "It needs mushrooms." And so I will add some dried porcini to really amp up the pork sausage béchamel (you know that's a fancy term for what we call sausage gravy and put on our biscuits down South!). Finally, I decided to top the whole shebang with cornbread breadcrumbs to give it a great top crust.

This plan entails a bit of prep work: roasting turkey with our traditional pancetta butter under the skin, making cornbread and cornbread breadcrumbs, making turkey stock, making turkey gravy, prepping and sweating the mirepoix for the ricotta, making the sausage, and then the sausage béchamel. This is all before par-cooking any lasagne and building and baking the lasagna, the fun part in which Ann and I will make a little mess in the kitchen.

Fortunately, almost all of the work can be done in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, leaving just the easy and fun part for the day of. The best thing about spreading the prep out over several days is spreading the resulting dishes out over several days too. There is nothing quite like making a complicated meal requiring hours of work only to be confronted by mountains of dishes afterward.

The results were fantastic. Sometimes dishes that take a lot of effort to prepare are not worth the effort. This was not one of those times. A highlight for the both of us were the super crunchy cornbread breadcrumbs on top.

Monday November 16, 2020

Because of COVID, I have no desire to be out at the grocery store shopping along with the crowds the week of Thanksgiving, so I am doing all my shopping the week before. Everything will keep or can go in the freezer. The turkey parts that I want, necks for the gravy and stock and thighs for the turkey layers, are frozen when I buy them at the store, so they go right back into the freezer once home.

My timing at the grocery store proves to be impeccable. After searching for turkey thighs without luck but having been told that they would be for sale, I approach a man stocking a meat case and ask him about them. As he finishes slicing open the box in front of him, he reaches inside and pulls out a package of frozen turkey thighs for me. I am almost too early to get them. I am so glad that I do not have to make another trip to the store with COVID spiking again.

Sunday November 22, 2020

Thanksgiving prep begins today, five days out from the big event. I take the turkey thighs out of the freezer to thaw over the next couple of days. Today's job is making the stock from which I will ultimately make the gravy. First thing this morning, four pounds of turkey necks that I thawed over the last couple of days go into the oven at 350F to roast. After an hour or 90 minutes, I flip them over and roast them another 45 minutes to an hour. Timing is not critical as long as they brown well on all sides.

Turkey Necks Ready for the Oven

Turkey necks are one of my favorite parts of the bird and are a source of fine and flavorful dark meat. I always make my stock from them and after picking the meat from the roasted necks, the meat goes into my Thanksgiving gravy, as it will this year once again. Besides being great for stock, necks are also delicious eating on their own. One of my favorite ways to prepare them is to brine them and then smoke them low and slow until they are deliciously golden and falling apart, a sinful treat.

Turkey Stock Mise en Place

Great gravy requires great stock and great stock requires a lot of patience. After the necks roast for the better part of the morning, the stock takes the entire afternoon, coming down from a gallon to about five cups, all told.

To make the stock, the roasted necks go into a stock pot with all their pan drippings; the tough outer leaves of a leek; a medium onion, chopped with peel on; a heart of celery, chopped; two of my last remaining sprigs of lovage; a bunch of English thyme; and a sprig of sage. This gets covered in water and left to simmer all afternoon. The house smells like Thanksgiving which is so appropriate because it is gray and 37 degrees and raw and miserable outside. The kitchen should be and is a haven, a pleasant respite from outside.

Turkey Stock and Neck Meat

After cooking at the barest simmer all afternoon, the stock is ready. Ann helps strain the stock and I put it into containers for the refrigerator. Once the necks cool enough to handle, I start picking the meat, a favorite task of mine because it reminds me of picking necks with my mother. It is extremely difficult to pick all the meat from the neck bones with your fingers, leaving delicious morsels to eat for anyone willing to suck on the bones. I helped my mom picked neck bones just for this reason, so that I could snack on the remaining meat. I give Ann a few necks bones to try; they are delicious.

Monday November 23, 2020

Today I just have a couple of things that I want to get done: making the cornbread for the cornbread breadcrumb topping for the lasagna and making the pancetta butter to use in roasting the turkey thighs.

Cornbread Hot out of the Oven

Cornbread is a thing of beauty and I have some locally milled corn that will make delicious cornbread. This cornbread is destined to be crumbled and dried out in the oven for a topping, so I am not worried about making hipster, fluffy, tender, melt-in-your-mouth cornbread by adding a lot of leavening and fat. In fact, I am making old school pioneer-grade cornbread: equal parts flour and cornmeal, a bit of baking powder, a bit of salt, an egg, and enough milk to make it into a batter. I measure nothing: this is how I always make cornbread, by feel. The result is outstanding and Ann and I cannot resist nibbling.

Pancetta Butter

It is tradition now at our house, our 12th Thanksgiving together, to stuff pancetta butter between the skin of the turkey and the meat before roasting it to yield a moist, tender, and flavorful result. Being empty nesters, we no longer cook an entire bird to feed a crowd of friends and family. We switched to thighs a few years back because they are so much better than breasts which are prone to dry out and be flavorless. Even so, our tradition remains and we put pancetta butter under the skin of the thighs. All the resulting pancetta-flavored fat in the roasting pan becomes the base for amazing gravy.

I put four ounces of diced pancetta in the food processor and process until I cannot get it any finer. This ancient Robot Coupe from Ann's mother is not even close to being in the same league as the dual 2.5 horsepower processors we had at the restaurant, but it suffices for the few times a year when I actually use a machine to prep food. Those big commercial machines are just too big for home use, but I do miss the horsepower.

Next I add four ounces of butter and process until smooth. I pull a rock hard stick of butter out of the fridge and set it near the vent for the oven to soften a bit while the necks roast. To process a compound butter, you want the butter pliable but not soft; room temperature is great. In another flash back to the restaurant, I think how weird it is to have butter in quarters. We used to get one-pound solid chunks of butter in 36-pound cases and we'd use several pounds a day. You can imagine what a pain in the neck it would be to unwrap all those quarters which is why the trade uses whole pound or larger blocks.

I put the pancetta butter on a sheet of film wrap, roll it into a log, and put it in the refrigerator for use tomorrow in roasting the turkey.

Tuesday November 24, 2020

I have a few things to do today: roast the turkey thighs, make cranberry sauce, and toast cornbread breadcrumbs. None of these things take a lot of time and in between, I have plenty of projects around the house to keep me busy. 

Turkey Thighs with Pancetta Butter Under Skind

My four turkey thighs weigh 6.6 pounds, exactly 3 kilos, will take 3 hours to roast at 350F, and will yield a 2-liter container stuffed full of pulled turkey. I put an ounce of pancetta butter under the skin of each, give them a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and put them in the oven. Despite not setting a timer, there is no possibility that we could forget them and overcook them: after 45 minutes, the smell of roasting turkey is driving us insane!

Cranberry-Orange Relish

My old standby cranberry relish is a single orange, a bag of cranberries, and enough sugar to bring the relish into balance. Since when did cranberries start being packed in 12-ounce bags? They used to be a pound, but I admit that during my restaurant days, we would buy them by the case, probably 10 or 15 pounds at a pop. It has been a very long time since I handled cranberries in retail packaging.

Cranberry-Orange Relish

1 seedless orange
12 ounces of fresh cranberries
1/2 cup (or more) granulated sugar, to taste

Quarter the skin-on seedless orange lengthwise and then halve each resulting quarter widthwise into eighths. If you see a large core or area of pith, cut it out; otherwise, into the food processor it goes, skin and all. Blitz the orange into small pieces as you can see in the photo above. Then in go the cranberries and a half a cup of sugar. A few brief pulses is enough to create the sauce you see above. Taste and adjust the sugar to your liking. Ann and I like our sauce rather more tart than sweet. This sauce is better after it has worked in the refrigerator for 48 hours, so don't be afraid to make it well in advance.

Cornbread Breadcrumbs

The cranberry sauce made, I crumble the cornbread onto a sheet tray and put it in the oven below the turkey. I turn the crumbs at ten minutes and remove them at 20 minutes. After they cool, I put them in a seal-top bag so that they will not go stale on contact with our rain-laden air.

Roasted Turkey Thighs: That Skin!

At two hours and twenty minutes, I check the turkey thighs. The skin is a little pallid and a knife does not pierce to the center as easily as it should. I go off and do some work in the garage, coming back to remove the thighs after three hours. The smell on coming back into the house is intoxicating. Just look at that skin! I confess that Ann and I did sample a bit. We may be watching what we eat very carefully, but this is Thanksgiving and were we to pass on eating some crispy insanely good turkey skin, you would have to revoke our foodie cards!

After the turkey cools for a couple hours, I pull it off the bone and put it in the fridge. Then I pour all the fat into a container and deglaze the pan with hot water, scraping all the bits up. The water goes in with the fat and the whole thing into the refrigerator. I will pull the fat off the top of the juices when I go to make the stock. The fat and the leftover pancetta butter along with flour will form the roux and the roasting juices and stock I made yesterday will finish the gravy on Thursday.

Wednesday November 25, 2020

With one day left before Thanksgiving, I have a relatively small list of things to get done with most of the work devoted to prepping vegetables and herbs. I knock out two trivial tasks first: rehydrating porcini and grating pecorino romano for the top of the lasagna.

Rehydrating Porcini

Grating Pecorino

Next up is the vegetable prep for the stuffing-flavored ricotta cheese layer. Our stuffing always includes leeks, onions, and celery. For herbs, I go out to the yard and cut parsley, sage, lovage, and thyme.

Veg for the Stuffing-Flavored Ricotta

Once I prep the celery, onions, and leeks, I start in on the herbs by first chopping the parsley and lovage and adding that to the vegetables. I then start in on the thyme and sage, part of which will go in the ricotta vegetables and part of which I will use in seasoning the sausage.

Sausage Seasoning: Garlic, Red Pepper Flakes, Sage, and Thyme

Over the years, I have made a lot of sausage of many kinds. The one that reminds me most of my childhood in Virginia is flavored simply with garlic, red pepper flakes, thyme, and sage. But surely, I use much greater quantities than most people for I love assertive sausage. Garlic is not common in Virginia sausage, which tends to sage and black pepper, but I have to have it.

Ricotta Veg and Herbs and Sausage, Ready for Tomorrow

After all the prep is complete, Ann and I make a run to the wine store to pick up a case of local Pinot that has come in as well as to look for a bottle of Barolo to accompany our lasagna. We drink local Pinot all the time, but for this special meal, we want to drink our splurge wine, Nebbiolo. If we could afford it, we would have a cellar full of Gaja Barbaresco. We can't and rarely can we even pop for a good bottle of Barolo, but for Thanksgiving, we take the plunge.

Ricotta Mix

Back home, I get to sweating the vegetables and herbs and then mix them with the ricotta. After I season the ricotta with salt, I mix in a couple of eggs and put the mix in the refrigerator to await tomorrow. Tomorrow, the ricotta mix will taste twice as good as it does today.

And that's it. That's all the prep that I can do in advance, spread over four days. Tomorrow, I have to make gravy and mix it with the turkey, cook the sausage with the mushrooms and make a thick béchamel, and par-cook the lasagne. After that, Ann and I will assemble the lasagna and put it in the oven.

Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2020

Ann and I decide that we'd like to eat late afternoon, four or so, which means that we need do nothing in the kitchen before one in the afternoon. After working out in the garage and doing some yard work on the first non-rainy day in many days, I come in, wash up, and get to cooking.

Roux for Gravy

Step one today is to make the gravy which will sauce the pulled turkey meat. The roux (flour) base of the gravy will help set the turkey layers. First, I separate the fat from the top of the container of pan drippings from roasting the turkey. The fat layer is solidified from its stay in the fridge for a couple of days, so it comes out easy enough. I put it on high heat and let it cook for several minutes as it boils off all the congealed stock clinging to the fat.

When the pan stops crackling, I add the flour, two big heaping spoonsful. A word of warning: adding damp flour to smoking hot fat is not something you should do haphazardly. The hot fat will flash the water in the flour to steam immediately and it may erupt violently in a volcano of superheated roux. There is a reason in the bayous that they call roux Cajun Napalm. Perhaps you should add flour to cool or cooler fat.

I cook the roux as I have for thousands of gravies and pots of gumbo until it becomes a pretty brown. When it reaches my desired color, I add all the roasting pan drippings and most of a quart of turkey stock. In no time over high heat, it has become gravy. I season it and mix all but a tiny bit into the turkey. Then, I let my taster-in-chief sample and season the turkey-gravy mix while I move on to the béchamel layer.

I spray my lasagna pan, a standard half hotel pan, with pan spray and smear the remaining gravy on the bottom of the pan to keep the first layer of noodles from sticking and/or drying out.

Pork Sausage, Rehydrated and Chopped Porcini, and Pancetta Butter

To start the béchamel layer, I first must cook the sausage that I made yesterday. I put the sausage, the leftover pancetta butter, and chopped porcini into a large skillet and start it cooking.

I rehydrated the porcini yesterday and first thing today, I drained and chopped the porcini, then started bringing the porcini stock down to concentrate it. Alas, I got caught up in doing errands outside and my flame was higher than I thought it was. I came in just as the smoke detector started blaring, the first time for a good reason, of all the hundreds of times it has gone off. I have a burned pan and no mushroom stock to show for my backyard chores. There's a lesson in here somewhere. I move forward without any porcini stock to add to the béchamel, though I could have made more simply enough.

When the sausage is cooked through, I stir in a spoonful of flour well as it cooks for a couple of minutes. Then I add milk, probably a pint or so, maybe a couple ounces more. I cook the béchamel until it becomes very thick. My official taste tester checks it out and proclaims it awesome. She says, "Make this next time we have biscuits and gravy!" I am proud that a Manhattan-born Italian girl recognizes it for what it truly is, what we Southerners call gravy. The Italians would call this besciamella and the French béchamel. 

Sausage Gravy Cooking

All three of the layer fillings complete, there's only one thing to do and that is cook some noodles and get after it. I count out 22 lasagne, four for each of the five layers, and two spares. I cook my noodles until they just become pliable, four minutes, rather than the 8-10 minutes the package suggests. I cool them immediately under running cold water to stop them from cooking further. I have no fear that the noodles will not finish cooking in the oven: I have cooked literally tons of pasta in my life, one, two, or five pounds at a time.

The noodles done, I build the lasagna. I thought Ann would help assemble, but instead she was filming it all live for her friends on Facebook. The layers went in in quick succession from bottom to top:

gravy

pasta

turkey

scant layer of mozzarella

pasta

ricotta

pasta

béchamel

pasta

turkey

scant layer of mozzarella

pasta

very thin layer of béchamel (to keep the pasta from getting hard)

pecorino romano

cornbread breadcrumbs

The oven preheats to 375F while I assemble the layers and is at temperature just as I am ready to put the lasagna in to cook. I cover it with foil and set the timer for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, I uncover the pan and let it go for another 20 minutes to brown the top.

Lasagna Ready to Bake

Lasagna out of the Oven

After cooling for an additional 20 minutes, the lasagna is ready to serve. I cut it into 12 portions, each of which is a massive meal for one person. We head to the table, a pretty table that Ann has set for just the two of us, and start in on our pieces of lasagna. After all the work, it turns out so well, but is so filling that we immediately feel the need to walk around the block before dusk turns to dark.

Thanksgiving Napkin Rings

We sip on glasses of Barolo while the lasagna bakes and finish the bottle with dinner. Though we mainly live on Pinot Noir, we are Nebbiolo fiends. We love it for what it has in common with Pinot: light body and high acidity. And we love it more for how it differs from Pinot: firm tannins and extraordinary complexity of nose and flavors. For us, this particular bottle is in the middle of the pack of all the Nebbiolo we have tasted. It ranks even lower on the price-to-value scale. We are spoiled: we judge it an adequate wine, but the unspoken verdict is that we are disappointed. It should be much better for the price we paid. Still, a bottle of Nebbiolo in a sea of Pinot Noir is a breath of fresh air.

Barolo: It's What's for Thanksgiving

And so ends Thanksgiving 2020. Maybe, just maybe, I'll fire up the paellera and do a Thanksgiving paella next year. We'd need a crowd though: one of my paellas feeds 12-16 people. Now where can I get some turkey wings to put in the paella?