Working on it.

She’s okay, and I want to tell you about the two terrific Thanksgiving dinners she almost had.

But first, I’m reanimating a Thanksgiving column I wrote about her a few years ago.

VEGGIES UNLIKELY TO BEAT SPREAD

Unlike the holidays of spring and summer, which require charcoal lugging or propane lighting — and sometimes keg tapping and cherry-bomb throwing — Thanksgiving is leisurely.

It asks for only the energy to fall away from the dinner table …

and then waddle or crawl to the living or family room, whichever has the bigger TV set.

It is a sturdy holiday, standing on its own. Unlike its nearest neighbors, Halloween and Christmas, Thanksgiving gets no advertising campaign, no help from retailers — except for grocers, who are not exactly opinion leaders.

While most holidays have run off to live with a certain seductive day of the week (beginning with M), good old Thanksgiving has been faithful to Thursday. This has its benefits. You can take Black Friday off and have a great four-day weekend, or roll the dice, go into the office and hope that your boss took a four-day weekend. These are good possibilities.

For all these reasons, plus turkey and football, Thanksgiving has been recognized by the National Commission on Days Off as one of three annual holidays that matter. The other two are Christmas and my birthday, which involve presents.

(The NCDO dismissed applications from President’s Day, The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Days of Wine and Roses, saying they were obviously invented by somebody in the marketing department at Hallmark.)

The NCDO also investigated that complex charade involving women, turkeys and bread cubes. It found the actual preparation of the main event to be a simple, five-step process:

1. Turn on oven.

2. Insert turkey.

3. Look at clock.

4. Open bottle of white wine, preferably a Pinot Grigio.

Assuming you have followed the standard protocol of one bottle of wine per cook, when wine is gone, turkey is finished.

5. Serve.

The rest, as they say, is vegetables, and who cares?

Not me. If vegetables are so yummy, would they need cheese and cream sauce? Why do we have green beans with pimentos, and broccoli casserole, and peas flambe and tournedos of squash. See what I’m saying? Pick one.

Potatoes, of course, are not vegetables. Mashed potatoes, perfectly achieved, crowned with butter, still hot, are a divine gift worth praying over — one of the things for which we say thanks.

Yes, these are the basics. The most basic is thanks.

As a leisure-time activity, the giving of thanks actually ranks above changing flat tires in popularity, but not by much. So on this designated day, here’s an extra reason you should be thankful: You’re not at my house, where, today, in a crowded kitchen, the main course may be fireworks.

My mother-in-law is coming.

Now . . . it’s not what you think. I like my mother-in-law, whose name is Velma. She is a dear woman, and a tough cookie. (Her daughter, who is fairly ornery, got most of that from Velma.)

I am fond of ornery people. Smiley, easy, gushy people with great handshakes don’t even register on my radar. The few friends I have are crusty and contrary, with good hearts.

I often flirt with cantankerous women. I married one. I got two. They look alike. They’ll both be there in the kitchen.

Lesser males would pale at the thought, but I work in Features. It’s an estrogen-based department. It consists of women writing about music and art and fashion, and business writers muttering ‘the AMP is falling, the AMP is falling . . . ‘ So I’m used to both women and chaos.

I’m also the cook. That’s my turkey recipe, above. It results from years of trial, error and meat thermometers. Stunning in its simplicity, it needs nothing but the eating.

‘But how can I help?’ my mother-in-law will say, and loose the leash of chaos.

Because it’s not really a question. It’s a call to action. There must be something to be done. Out of habit, Velma favors action. Somewhere in her Depression-bred, hardship-trained, woman-at-work approach to kitchen life, she knows her son-in-law should not be cooking. And is not enjoying it.

Except that I do.

Cooking is to me what running used to be. It is a well-known, repetitious action that is a vacation from thought. I never argue with recipes. I surrender and rest my brain, which is half a century old and necessary for the continued acquisition of paychecks.

My back doesn’t work well anymore, so I can’t run, but my mouth works just fine. And when the work of cooking is done — well, there’s the eating.

So cooking satisfies my requirements, and anyone who wants to help can . . . set the table. Otherwise, I do not take kindly to help.

Irresistible force, immovable object. A recipe for crisis.

Or it would be, except for the social magic of Thanksgiving, that wonderful holiday!

It giveth warmth to the stranger and serveth food to the needy, it blesseth the family that is full of thanks, and it sendeth the Steelers to Detroit for a 12: 30 p.m. start on CBS.

And I won’t be back in the kitchen until 4 p.m., at the earliest.

Take your time, Velma.

The vegetables are in the fridge.

We thought we had a winner when The Quarter finally opened up downtown on Second Street after months of buildout, but the NOLA look was only a facade. No Cajun food, no Creole food, no beignets with cafe au lait.

Now then … move on up the road to the 1500 block of Second Street, and Bayou will show you wheah y’at, darlin’. It was Chef Matthew Black’s summer entry in the city’s culinary contest.

Dee and I went for lunch with arts editor Arthi Subramaniam, who ordered the Pecan Fried Chicken. She passed some my way. It almost floated off the platter, it was so delicate. Dee had a fried oyster po boy — half the size of a New Orleans po boy, but with all the taste and a side of creole potato salad.

I looked up at the specials board and saw a softshell crab etouffee, but I gasped at the price: $27. For lunch. It’s just not soft shell season on the Susquehanna. A guy at the next table named Big Mike saw my consternation and mentioned he’d just had the dish, and it was worth the price.

It probably was, but part of my love for New Orleans food is that it’s not expensive. Oh, there’s an Emeril’s or two, but you don’t have to go there to eat well.

So I went for BBQ Shrimp with Dirty Rice and a Black Pepper Biscuit.

The shrimp were wonderfully juicy, the rice tangy, the biscuit took me back to buttery breakfasts on the bay.

Yeah, baby.

“The cigar is the perfect complement to an elegant lifestyle.”
– George Sand

The first Hilton cigar night was soft and cool, with Steve Rudolph on the jazz keyboard.

(Name everyone in the Mike Fernandez photo above and win a Don Lino cigar at RAE’s Tobacco … on me.)

Executive chef John Reis organized the hors d’oeuvres buffet at the Outdoor Grill as kitchen staff put together the centerpiece appetizer of grilled chicken, shrimp and scallops in an adjoining tent. Al Baker of RAE’s Tobacco sold Africas and Auroras at a side table. Paul Flores of Miami Cigar Company rolled cigars with the Cuban pigtail, by hand.

Grilled New York strip steak was the main plat, served with a booming Plaisir de Merle Cabernet Sauvignon. It was an easy, talky night.

” When I’m sitting with a cigar smoker, face to face, I can have a good long conversation.”

– Ginny Roth, PPOS

But when Sue Gleiter Food Writer invited us to a demo night, we decided to go. As with so many things, once you add friends and a bottle of red wine it gets better.

And the demo food was tasty. After we put together our Grilled Herb Chicken, we ate Roxane Morgan’s version of Ratatouille Provencal with Cheesy Chicken Fries. Odd combo but good eating, good enough to lure us into making a reservation for a Saturday afternoon of meal prep work.

Roxane opened A Meal In Minutes after at least one meal assembly franchise on the East Shore went belly up. AMIM is not a franchise, and it’s very well done: stainless tables, fresh ingredients, simple directions, convenient wash-up and a cooler to store finished meal packages while you go on to the next station.

On our Saturday, we went to meet Cate Barron and her personal chef, Bob Vucic, along with Pauline and John Clea, who are hard at work in the photo above. We opened a bottle of Red Bicyclette, washed our hands, put on the annoying saran-wrap glove thingies and stepped up to the prep table.

For my wife and I, it was a test. We split a 12-dish meal plan with the Cleas for about $60, just to see if we’d enjoy it. We made:

* Black Bean and Cheese Burritos with Colby Jack and Cotija cheese;
* Bourbon-Molasses Pork Tenderloin, spiced with lemon juice, crushed red pepper and unspecified herbs.;
* Ginger Glazed Salmon, with ginger, pineapple and soy sauce. The marinade becomes the sauce;
* Grilled Herb Chicken, boneless, skinless breasts in a Dijon, lemon juice and fresh herb marinade, ready for the grill;
* Pan-Seared Tilapia with Chile-Lime Butter
* Cajun Smoothered Pork Chops with jalapenos and onions.

So far we’ve had the salmon and the chicken, both grilled. Very good. And – did I mention the easy part? Nice and easy, with a salad and corn on the cob.

A Meal In Minutes

]]> http://paddydear.wordpress.com/2006/10/10/a-meal-in-minutes/feed/ 0 paddydear The Cleas at Work http://paddydear.wordpress.com/2006/10/10/where-to-start/ http://paddydear.wordpress.com/2006/10/10/where-to-start/#comments Tue, 10 Oct 2006 18:01:38 +0000 paddydear http://paddydear.wordpress.com/2006/10/10/where-to-start/ ]]> Where to start?

“To make a start
out of particulars …”

If I could go back in time, I might be able to tell you the day my taste for cooking began. I had a great job when I was a kid. All through high school, I worked in the kitchen at Holy Spirit Hospital. My friend Tom Scheffey and I washed dishes, helped the ladies at garde manger and worked the service line.

The service line, that was intense. Especially at breakfast.

The head dietician was a nun, Sister Georgia, and her morning service line was a conveyor belt about 15 yards long. Every tray on it had a checklist of salad, soup and main plate and those plates were put on by the salad ladies and our chef, Mr. Paulie, as the tray moved toward Sister Georgia at the end of the line. There, just before the tray entered the dumbwaiter, she would snatch up the checklist and snap out, “coffee … cream … sugar … butter … jelly … salt and pepper …” and I would just get the coffee poured into the small stainless carafe and be grabbing for the creamers when she started on the next checklist, “tea … extra cream … salt substitute …”

At that age, I’d never seen Lucille Ball’s conveyor belt skit.

Unless someone knocked a tray askew and it crashed to the floor, the belt did not stop. The food was hot. It had to get to the aides on the floors upstairs and they had to get it to the patients. Absent a crisis, the belt didn’t stop. If you weren’t working fast enough, you worked faster and better – or you got replaced on the line.

It’s more fun as a memory than it was as an experience, but it gave me a taste for decent food presented professionally … even in an institution.

]]> http://paddydear.wordpress.com/2006/10/10/where-to-start/feed/ 0 paddydear