Nothing finer
Is there anything better than a holiday that celebrates a bounty of food? I don’t think so. From the contrived fall drinks that are marketed by Starbucks (gingerbread latte, anyone?) to Food Network specials about holiday cooking traditions to the smell of roasted turkey bones boiling in a pot of water, we collectively celebrate our love of eating foods that remind us of the late autumn – harvest time. And while most of us are (or ought to be) routinely thankful for the fact that we can enjoy pork tenderloin, perfectly cooked green beans, fair trade dark chocolate, fresh cherries, or dried mango; this is the time of year when we say it loud and proud: “thank you [deity] for all of this [explicative] great food and for the absolutely gluttonous way I’m about to eat it.”
I particularly enjoy learning about and participating in food traditions. Thanksgiving is an obvious one. There are many other food traditions that may be less festive or involved but still important to a person’s cultural fabric. Every time I visit North Carolina I try to have some pulled pork. Many people I know make a point of visiting their local state fair every year. Here in the big city, there are seasonal or annual events featuring specific food genres or seasonal ingredients. My mother regularly made a seemingly odd but very comforting dish when I was a kid (something my sister still loves): spanish rice, chopped hot dogs, and corn. Every morning I wake up and boil water to make a pot of green tea.
Lately I’ve been working to establish a new food tradition: weekly bread baking. It’s an early success. Thanksgiving has inspired me to consider adding a second periodic activity: making stock.
Boiling turkey carcass
After the Thanksgiving turkey meat is finished, we are left with the bones. Bones are the base of a good stock. This year, I searched for some advice on how best to utilize the bones. I stumbled upon a goldmine of cooking thought and trivia: Michael Ruhlman’s blog. Ruhlman is a food writer and (like Alton Brown) advocates skillful yet practical home cooking through the acquisition of basic cooking fundamentals. I devoured (pun intended) his book “The Making of a Chef” and am very interested in his latest offering, “Ratio”. Combining information from his posting about turkey stock with information from “The Professional Chef”, I simmered the turkey carcass for a few hours. Once the apartment was thoroughly saturated with the aroma of turkey (again), I added chopped onion, green onion, celery, marjoram, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, garlic, and a little bit of soy sauce. After another hour of simmering the mixture was poured through a metal colander into a bowl and then ladled from the bowl through a strainer lined with cheesecloth into a clean pot for cooling.
I have zero experience with stocks. I don’t know the difference between a good one and a bad one in terms of color or flavor. My turkey stock has a pretty good color. The flavor is a little weak, but I can’t say if that’s due to a lack of salt. It possesses a nice turkey essence. Perhaps that’s the goal. Once it’s cooled, I can figure out what to do with it.
If the stock is a success, I hope to repeat the process with chicken. For the normal price of cheap, boneless chicken breasts ($3.99/lb), I can buy a whole organic chicken at a Whole Foods market. Roasting chicken shouldn’t be any more difficult that roasting turkey. Once I’ve cleaned the bird for all the meat (which can then be used in any number of week-day preparations), I’ll boil the bones and see if the result is any better than the canned chicken stock I get from the store.
Browsing around SOHO today (we went to Crate and Barrel and Sur La Table), I reflected on how much joy is possible through good cooking. The end product is only the final shade of joy (unless you count the pleasant feeling of fullness that follows). The whole process of conceiving a meal, planning a recipe, obtaining ingredients, preparing them carefully, and serving them to yourself and others is an endeavor that engages creativity, challenges the body, and satisfies the senses. And anything you’ve made on your own tastes better for the effort applied. I also feel a connection to history. There is my own childhood (watching my mother cook, or eating something my grandmother’s made) as well as the centuries of food prep knowledge upon which modern cuisine is based. While the methods change over time, the preparation and consumption of food in a human society – dare I say, ‘gastronomy’ – is always worthy of a bit of grateful celebrating.
So thank you, [deity], for the good fortune of fine food and folk to share it with.