“Haute for the Holidays,” by Jeffrey Steingarten, was originally published in the November 1994 issue of Vogue.
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Today we celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the most famous turkey in Franco American culinary history. I refer, of course, to the bird shot in October 1794 in the wilds of Connecticut by the great French gastronome and magistrate Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. For three years Brillat-Savarin had taken refuge from the French Revolution in an America of Edenic plenty, of sweet corn, squash, persimmons, and pumpkins, of lobsters and oysters and inexhaustible game—venison and turkeys, quail and geese, canvasback ducks and passenger pigeons, whose flocks covered the rivers and darkened the autumn skies.
"While I was in Hartford, in Connecticut, I had the good luck to kill a wild turkey," he writes in his immortal Physiology of Taste (M.F.K. Fisher s translation). "This deed deserves to go down in history, and I shall recount it all the more eagerly since I myself am its hero." He and a friend, Mr. King, rode out from Hartford on two hired nags and by nightfall arrived for dinner at their host s farm, five leagues—15 or 20 miles—away. Brillat-Savarin, Mr. King, and their host dined on stewed goose, a handsome piece of corned beef, a magnificent leg of mutton, and root vegetables of all kinds. At each end of the table were enormous jugs of excellent cider, and their host had four fine and radiantly healthy daughters, aged 16 to 20, whom Brillat-Savarin admired at every turn.
The next morning, Brillat-Savarin and Mr. King set out for the hunt. "I found myself for the first time in my life in virgin forest, where the sound of the axe had never been heard." He wandered about with delight. "First of all we killed some of those pretty little grey partridges which are so plump and so tender. Then we knocked down six or seven grey squirrels, highly thought of in [America]; and finally our lucky start led us into the midst of a flock of wild turkeys." As the turkeys rose into the sky, Mr. King fired first, missing entirely and scattering the rest. But one laggard turkey, lazier than the others, took flight just ten paces from Brillat-Savarin. "I fired at it through a break in the woods, and it fell, stone dead." Mr. King claimed to have hit a turkey too, but even his dog, leading them deep into boundless woods and impenetrable thickets, could not find it. Hopelessly lost, they were finally rescued by the silvery voices of their host s young daughters.
The partridge wings were served en papillate, and the gray squirrels were simmered in Madeira. As for the turkey, "I inflict on myself a painful sacrifice in leaving out the details of the elaborate preparations I made."
The modern reader has every right to feel disappointed. Earlier. Brillat-Savarin let us know that the tastiest turkeys are those stuffed with truffles. But he says only that the roast bird "was charming to look at, flattering to the sense of smell, and delicious to the taste." As the last morsel disappeared, there arose from the entire table a cry of praise: "Very good! Exceedingly good! Oh! Dear Sir, what a glorious bit!"
How to commemorate the bicentenary of Brillat-Savarin s historic turkey? I pondered at length a map of Connecticut, drawing a five-league circle around the city of Hartford and studying its circumference. At long length I discovered at the circle s eastern edge the little town of Storrs. This I recognized as the childhood home of my friend David Bouley, one of America s greatest young chefs. Could this also have been the site of Brillat-Savarin s turkey shoot? The history books have not yet provided me an answer. Would David be interested in planning a Thanksgiving menu around a wild New England turkey? The answer was a happy yes. As Brillat-Savarin once observed, "Poultry is for the cook what canvas is for a painter." And as David told me when I telephoned him with the proposal. Thanksgiving is the one day of the year he cooks even though his restaurant is closed.
A few days later, David and I met between the yellow fingerling potatoes and the long purple shallots at the greenmarket in New York s Union Square to talk about Thanksgiving. Two years ago, when he and some friends got together on Cape Cod, the menu began with cold, pristine oysters from Wellfleet and Cotuit, progressed through a terrine of foie gras and asparagus, and finished with a crisply roasted wild turkey. Last year he cooked dinner with a handful of friends in his empty restaurant kitchen and lit the dining room with candelabra.
And this year, for our joint Thanksgiving menu, he was thinking of squashes and chestnuts, root vegetables and quinces, maybe venison baked in a salt crust perfumed with pine needles, or wild game birds or maybe rabbit—David s French-born maternal grandmother cooked rabbit with prunes on Thanksgiving. David was born one of nine children to a French emigre family that settled in the farming area along the Connecticut-Rhode Island border. He remembers raking the fields with his brothers and sisters to collect the small onions, potatoes, squashes, and turnips that the farmers had missed, then wrapping them in foil and building a fire of tomato stalks. All day the vegetables were slowly roasted until they caramelized in their own sugary juices. David thinks that these outdoor vegetable banquets became the basis of his current cooking. Like Brillat-Savarin s wild turkey dinner in 1794, David s food is marked by the finest organic American ingredients and rigorous French technique. But unlike Brillat-Savarin, David thickens his sauces with brilliantly colored vegetable pulps and herb oils instead of cream and butter.
Nearly every Sunday, David and his family traveled over the Rhode Island border to his grandmother s 40-acre farm for a daylong feast. Her example taught David that sharing a meal has the power to "close the gap that separates us from our true selves and from our deeper relations with each other," as he puts it. "This in essence is the reason I do what I do in my work, providing the occasion to draw people together." And this is why Thanksgiving is important to him.
David has worked in restaurants since the age of fifteen. In 1977, he began traveling to France and Switzerland, apprenticing himself to many of the greatest chefs of that generation—Girardet, Bocuse, Lenôtre, and especially Roger Vergé at the Moulin de Mougins on the Riviera. Starting in 1986, David and his brother built one of the most beautiful restaurants in New York City—with vaulted ceilings, creamy walls, and an eighteenth-century door from Provence in a loft building on Duane Street. Restaurant Bouley was opened in 1987, when David was 34, three inauspicious weeks before the October stock market crash that would doom so many eating places in New York City. But within three years, David had begun to win every accolade the profession had to offer four stars from The New York Times, awards from the James Beard Foundation for the city s best restaurant and the nation s best chef, the highest rating in Zagat, and a reservation book that rarely has a dinner opening closer than two or three weeks away.
Over the next week, I waited impatiently for David to draw up our Thanksgiving menu. One evening he invited me for dinner at the restaurant. Between the blue Spanish mackerel with parsnip puree and the rouget with a potato crust, a printed sheet of handmade paper arrived at the table. It was a proposed menu for Thanksgiving 1994, an overwhelming twelve courses:
• Maine Belon Oysters Steamed in the Shell with Fresh Bay Leaves, Rosemary, and Lemon Hyssop, Garnished with Golden Osetra Caviar
• Taos, New Mexico, Cèpes Roasted with Baby Fennel with Flourless Parmesan Chips
• Hookneck Squash Soup with Maple-Glazed Fall Sour Apples
• Cape Cod Steamer Clams Served with Tokay Wine Broth and Maine Scuba-Dived Sea Scallops Roasted with Lemon Thyme
• New England Wild Turkey Roasted with Aged Black Walnuts, Baked Quince Stuffing, and Organic Fingerling Potato Puree
• Wild Maine White-tail Rabbit with Bibb and Arugula, Green Herb Mustard Carbonnieux Sauce, and Grilled New York State Foie Gras
• Blond Organic Wild Rice and Fall Wheat Berries with Clementines
• Baked Comte Cheese inside a Loaf of Corn and Persimmons
• Wild Blackberry, Fig, and Rhubarb Soup with Organic Yogurt Sorbet and Cascade Grape Sorbet
• Agen Prune in a Verveine Flan with Burnt Muscovado Sugar and Gingerbread with Armagnac Ice Cream
• Hot Valrhona Chocolate Soufflé with Chocolate Sauce and Vanilla, Maple, Caramel, and Coconut Ice Cream, Chocolate Sorbet, Warm Banana Tart
• Homemade Chocolates and Cookies
The next day David and I provisionally substituted his grandmother s stewed rabbit with prunes. Then we removed it.
For the following two weeks my kitchen was filled with the warm fragrances of Thanksgiving—cinnamon and nuts, fresh herbs and winter fruit, brown sugar and honey. Each day saw faxes and phone calls and roasting and baking as my assistant, Tara, and I trimmed down the menu to something manageable for home cooks like my readers and me: the steamed oysters and squash soup, the wild turkey and lemon flan, and something new, a maple walnut bread.
Every day David sent his schematic recipes (with desserts by his long-time pastry chef. Bill Yosses), and we adapted them to domestic cooking habits and equipment. In the end, Tara bicycled down to the restaurant carrying bags of food to make sure that our versions met with David s or Bill s approval.
Here is our sumptuous and delectable menu. Please feel free to make (and eat) the ethereal oysters tomorrow instead of on Thanksgiving, when the last-minute effort might be a strain; collect the ingredients several weeks in advance, as some may be difficult to find; add a green vegetable or two; decide that wild turkey is too chewy for your taste; and agree with me that the squash soup is the best you have ever had. The quince stuffing was not perfected by press time, so make your favorite kind and bake it outside the bird. David suggests filling a pumpkin with it. The dessert is a three-part masterpiece, but the elements are simple. You can easily make the gingerbread and the Armagnac ice cream the day before and assemble everything at the last minute.
Maine Belon Oysters Steamed in the Shell
32 fresh Maine belon oysters or other variety (see Note)
8 fresh bay leaves, cut into quarters
4 to 6 sprigs fresh rosemary, cut with a scissors into 32 one-inch segments
32 leaves fresh lemon hyssop, or substitute 32 leaves lemon verbena or 32 small branches lemon thyme
3 ounces golden osetra caviar or other caviar of comparable quality
Rosemary sprigs or seaweed for decorating the plates
Wash the oysters and carefully open them, keeping all the juice in the shells. Loosen the oysters, but do not cut through the muscle. Distribute the bay leaf quarters, the rosemary sprigs, and the lemon hyssop leaves among the oysters. Replace the upper shells and wrap each oyster completely in a square of plastic wrap.
Preheat one or more steamers, place the wrapped oysters into them, cover, and steam for three minutes. Unwrap the oysters, discard the upper shells, remove the herbs, and arrange the oysters on eight appetizer plates that have been decorated with seaweed, rosemary sprigs, or the like. Immediately garnish each oyster with a heaping quarter teaspoon of caviar. Serves eight.
Note: If you would rather not open your own oysters, ask your fishmonger to do it for you, that morning or the day before. The oysters can be removed from their shells and placed in a plastic container with their liquid. Wash the empty shells, keeping the upper and lower shells together. When you are ready to assemble the oysters, drain their liquid and strain it through cheesecloth. Place the oysters in the shells and distribute the strained liquid among them. Then add the herbs. This works best with large oysters.
Roast Hookneck Squash Soup with Maple-Glazed Tart Apples
4 hookneck squash or other fall or winter squash such as butternut or acorn squash, about 6 pounds
2 tsp. sea salt freshly ground black pepper
2 T cinnamon
1 T ground nutmeg
1 cup honey
4 T (½ stick) unsalted butter, plus 1 tsp. for the apples
2 yellow onions (2- to 3-inch diameter), chopped medium fine
3 large carrots, chopped medium fine
2 stalks celery, chopped medium fine
4 tart apples such as Granny Smith
¾ cup maple syrup
1 tsp. ground mace
¼ cup white wine plus ¼ cup Calvados (or use all white wine)
1 small cinnamon stick
1 small sprig fresh rosemary
Preheat the oven to 350°. Wash and scrub the squash, trim the ends, cut in half lengthwise, and scrape out the seeds. Place the squash in a roasting pan. cut side up. and season with salt, six turns of the pepper mill, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Dribble three-quarters of the honey over the squash and dot with two tablespoons of the butter. Pour one-and-a-half cups of water around the squashes to keep them and the honey from burning. Roast in the oven until the squashes are soft, about one hour. The wonderful flavor of this soup depends on how well the squashes are browned and their natural sugars are caramelized. Add more water to the pan. as necessary.
When the squash is done, remove from the oven and allow to cool. Scoop out the flesh and place in a bowl, adding the cooking liquid from the roasting pan. Place the skins in a two- to three-quart pot with eight cups of water, simmer partially covered for an hour, strain out the skins, and reserve the liquid.
Melt the remaining two tablespoons of butter over medium heat in a four- to six-quart pot, add the onions, carrots, and celery, and cook until soft, stirring, about 15 to 20 minutes. Add the remaining quarter cup of honey and continue cooking until it darkens to a caramel color. Add the bowl of squash flesh and roasting liquid. Cover with some of the water in which the squash skins were simmered, bring to a boil, and simmer for a half hour, skimming the foam that rises to the top and stirring occasionally. Let cool a bit.
Meanwhile, prepare the apples: Wash and core them, and place them in a small baking dish. Brush them with half the maple syrup and dribble the rest of the syrup inside them. Put a quarter teaspoon of butter inside each and sprinkle with the mace. Pour the wine and Calvados around them and add the cinnamon stick and rosemary to the wine. Bake at 350° for about 40 minutes, until the apples are soft. Baste often with the cooking liquid.
Puree the soup, in batches, in a blender or food processor until silky smooth. Strain through a medium sieve into a clean pot. Adjust the seasonings, and add more of the water in which the skins were cooked to bring the mixture to a souplike consistency.
To serve: Reheat the soup over medium-low heat, and warm the apples in their liquid. Remove the skins from the apples and cut them in half, or in quarters if they are large. Pour approximately one cup of soup into each of eight warm soup bowls, and place a piece of apple in the center of each. Spoon a tablespoon of the apple-baking liquid over the apples. Serves eight.
Roast Wild Turkey
5 or 6 pears
2 T vegetable oil
1 8- to 10-pound wild turkey
2 tsp. fine sea salt
freshly ground pepper
2 tsp. butter
4 tsp. olive oil
2 medium carrots
3 stalks celery
1 large onion
6 cloves garlic, peeled
6 slices smoked bacon
2 sprigs thyme
2 branches rosemary
In a food processor or by hand, grate the pears—peel, seeds, core, and all. Mix with the vegetable oil in a very large bowl, set the turkey in the bowl, and pat the mixture on the turkey, inside and out. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour. Remove from the refrigerator and let come to room temperature for another hour. Wipe off the pear puree from the skin and remove it from the inside of the bird, and dry thoroughly. Sprinkle with the salt and a dozen turns of the pepper mill, inside and out.
Put the butter and olive oil in a heavy roasting pan, set it over medium heat on the stovetop, and brown the turkey very well on all sides, about ten or fifteen minutes. Remove it from the roasting pan.
Preheat the oven to 350°. Chop the carrots, celery, and onion into half-inch pieces. Add them and the garlic to the roasting pan, and over medium-high heat brown the vegetables, stirring occasionally, for about fifteen minutes.
Meanwhile, wrap the bacon slices around the legs of the turkey, tying with a string. Truss the turkey. When the vegetables are well browned, add the thyme and rosemary, push the vegetables to the middle of the pan, and place the turkey on top of them. Roast in the preheated oven for fifteen minutes, then turn down the heat to 300°.
Roast for a total of about twelve minutes a pound, until a thermometer inserted into the thigh, next to the body of the turkey, reads 150° to 160°. (Wild turkey should be roasted to a lower temperature than the domesticated variety; overcooking will make it unpleasantly tough and stringy.) Remove from the oven and let rest for 20 to 30 minutes before removing the string and carving.
Lemon Verbena Flan with Gingerbread and Armagnac Ice Cream
2 T butter, softened at room temperature
4 Agen prunes, cut in half (see Note)
½ lemon, juiced
2 cups light brown sugar, preferably muscovado, firmly packed (see Note)
1 quart whole milk
10 leaves lemon verbena, fresh or dried
¾ cup (generous) granulated sugar
5 egg yolks
5 whole eggs
Armagnac ice cream
a pan of gingerbread
The gingerbread and the Armagnac ice cream can be prepared the day before. The flan is a version of creme caramel; it can be cooked early in the day and reheated. The flan is cooked in individual baking dishes ramekins, small soufflé dishes, or straight-sided coffee cups—with a capacity of about three-quarters of a cup. You will need eight of them.
Preheat the oven to 300°. Prepare a bain-marie (hot water bath) by placing the eight baking dishes in a roasting pan and adding enough cold water around them to reach three-quarters of the way up their sides. Remove the dishes and wipe them dry. Butter the inside of the baking dishes and place a half prune in the bottom of each one, cut side up.
Make a caramel with the brown sugar: Put the lemon juice in a heavy one-quart pan with two tablespoons of the brown sugar and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until the sugar turns a deep caramel color. Continue adding brown sugar and cooking until all the sugar is liquid and caramelized. Pour immediately into the prepared baking dishes, over the prunes, about two tablespoons of caramel in each one. Allow to cool.
Prepare the custard: Put the milk into a two-quart pan. Crush the lemon verbena leaves and add them to the milk, along with a generous half cup of the granulated sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring, remove from the heat, and allow to cool for five minutes.
Whisk a generous quarter cup of the granulated sugar into the yolks and eggs in a two- to three-quart bowl until the mixture lightens. Then slowly whisk the hot milk into the egg mixture, stirring vigorously. Pour this custard through a fine strainer and distribute it among the baking dishes, pouring it over the prunes and the hardened caramel.
On the stovetop, heat the prepared roasting pan until the water is very hot. Set the filled baking dishes into the hot water and put the roasting pan into the oven. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the flan has set. Remove the baking dishes from their water bath, allow to cool for five minutes, and unmold them in the center of eight dessert plates.
(If you choose to cook the flans earlier in the day. reheat them on a baking sheet in a 300° oven for ten or fifteen minutes, covered with one large sheet of aluminum foil. Then unmold onto the dessert plates.)
Cut three-eighth-inch slices of gingerbread and cut each slice into triangles. Place two triangles on each plate to one side of the flan. Place a scoop of Armagnac ice cream between the triangles. Decorate the other side of the plate with leaves of lemon verbena, if you have managed to find fresh lemon verbena. Serves eight.
Note: Agen, in southwest France, is the world s prune capital. The most wonderful Agen prunes are stuffed with prune puree; Bill Yosses uses them in the verbena dan. You can order stuffed Agen prunes from Dean Deluca in New York City (212/431-1691) or from Joie de Vivre in Riverbank. California (800/648-8854). In default, you can use any moist, sweet, plump prune.
Muscovado sugar is imported, unrefined, light brown cane sugar, available under the Billington label and sold at Balducci s in New York City (212/673-2600). Domestically produced brown sugar is said to be white sugar with molasses added; it has a less pure taste than muscovado but makes an acceptable substitute. For a delicious alternative. Bill Yosses substitutes maple syrup that has been cooked until it caramelizes.
Armagnac Ice Cream
1 quart whole milk
1 cup (generous) granulated sugar
9 egg yolks
¼ cup Armagnac (the brandy of southwest France)
Bring the milk and sugar to a boil in a heavy saucepan. Remove from the heat. Whisk the yolks in a two- to three-quart bowl and slowly pour the milk mixture over the yolks while whisking vigorously. Pour back into the saucepan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring continuously, until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. It will have reached 180° on a candy thermometer. Strain immediately into a cool bowl. Allow to cool, stirring occasionally, and then refrigerate until cold, for six hours or overnight.
When cold, add the Armagnac and freeze in an ice cream machine.
Gingerbread
3 ½ cups sifted cake flour (measured after sifting)
1 T baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. salt
1 cup unsalted butter (two sticks), plus 1 T for buttering the cake pans, all softened at room temperature
1 cup dark molasses
1 cup honey
2 T fresh, finely grated ginger
1 cup water
1 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
Preheat the oven to 350°. Sift together the sifted cake flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Butter two nine-inch round cake pans.
Place the butter, molasses, honey, ginger, and water in a large bowl, place the bowl over a pan of simmering water, and whisk until the butter is melted and everything is warm and well combined.
In another bowl, whisk together the brown sugar and the eggs. Whisk this mixture, bit by bit, into the warm butter mixture. Remove from the pan of simmering water and gradually whisk in the dry ingredients until you have a smooth batter. Pour into the prepared cake pans.
Bake for about one-and-a-half hours; cover with foil for the last fifteen minutes. The gingerbread is done when a toothpick plunged into the center comes out clean. Leave it in the pan for fifteen minutes before unmolding. Then cool completely, top side up.
Maple Walnut Bread with Corn and Persimmon
1 ripe persimmon
2 ears fresh corn
1 T olive oil
1 cup walnut pieces
3 eggs
⅔ cup maple syrup
⅔ cup whole milk
½ cup vegetable oil
1 ⅓ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
7/8 cup cake flour
7/8 cup rolled oats (not quick oats)
1 T baking powder
¾ tsp. kosher salt
Preheat the oven to 350°. Peel the persimmon and roughly chop its flesh. Boil the com in salted water un- til barely tender and still crisp, about two minutes. Cool under running water for a few seconds. Pat dry. Cut the kernels from the cob.
Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat, and sauté the corn kernels for a minute or two. Add the persimmon and continue cooking, stirring for about five minutes. Remove from the heat.
Toast the walnuts on a baking sheet in the oven for ten minutes. Stir into the corn-and-persimmon mixture and let cool.
In a two- to three-quart bowl, whisk the eggs and add the maple syrup, milk, and vegetable oil, mixing energetically with the whisk.
In another bowl, mix well the unbleached all-purpose flour, the cake flour, the rolled oats, the baking powder, and the kosher salt. Gradually add these dry ingredients to the egg mixture, mixing completely. Finally, stir in the corn, the persimmon, and the walnuts.
Pour into a greased loaf pan approximately nine by four-and-a-half inches. Bake for about an hour and a half, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Unmold to a rack after fifteen minutes.