Tasting notes on the Heritage Thanksgiving Dinner:
The bird is the center of the meal, no matter how many side dishes you provide — make one mistake and no one will ever forgive you. No pressure. And there’s Tom Colicchio’s voice in your head, saying, “better to serve it one way, and make sure it’s really good, than serve it three ways and give yourself three chances to do it wrong.” But Dan Fox decided to go for a trio anyway, and not just any trio, but three radically different turkey presentations: You get a classic Thanksgiving turkey breast, a hey-look-at-me confit turkey thigh, and a downright rustic smoked turkey leg. So, how are they?
No point in faffing about, they are all glorious. And all are (cue Life of Brian chanting in unison) completely different.
The breast is, to allay one’s first concern, achingly moist, full of flavor, and in short everything white meat, particularly turkey breast, is expected to fall short of. The only thing that makes it better is when you dunk it in the gravy.
The thigh delivers because of course it delivers. It’s turkey thigh, provided to you through the miracle of confit. It cannot be improved, except by dunking it in the gravy.
The leg is beautifully smoked, to that exquisite point of sweetness, and by itself, it would be too much. Happily, you have two other turkey preparations, and superb sides, to refresh your palate. Excellent, and cannot really be improved, except by dunking it in the gravy.
Now, I haven’t really mentioned the gravy yet, which is a terrible disservice. It has the sheen of having just been finished with butter, but it wasn’t just finished with butter, I reheated it the day after it was handed to me cold. It has the body of something absurdly rich, but instead of being gloppy, it is clean. You get the Reisling without the heat, the mustard without the bite. You get a friend with a marvelous character who makes every savory thing better, who elevates the already quite good stuffing so far up the ladder that it stands head to head with the bird. This is one recipe I would properly steal, given half the chance.
Speaking of marvels not found elsewhere in this mortal sphere, the deviled eggs are far more than special — but none more so than the seafood one. We couldn’t agree on what that magical bite was — lobster? — but what a way to start! The other two were also top-notch, but you want to finish, as we did, with that soy soaked one, as it’s saltiness might blow your palate for the delicacy of the others.
As for the sides: The slaw provides an excellent counterpoint of relief from the richness of the main stars of the dish; the squash gives a nostalgic sweetness that provides a different sort of relief when wanted; the roasted potatoes provide crispy starch that rounds out the plate; the haricot vert provides its own note of variety. All belong, all are excellent. The entire meal ranged from somewhere above Grade A to best-thing-ever greatness.
As for dessert, well, nothing wrong with it, but the apple pie simply was not at the level of all the rest, even with the ginger cream I made, even with the caramel I didn’t. A high bar, to be sure, but still, better a dish be left off if it can’t hang with the Michelin-star-worthy rest.
Now, some people are going to have a quibble with some of this, I expect after problems with preparation. And I expect preparation will have to do with cooking skill, which in turn will be blamed on the directions.
And I will give those people this much: Reading the directions, I was reminded that I am reading the directions from a master to an audience of — whom, exactly? What do they know and not know? And how does one write directions for an unknown audience?
You can’t, of course. And it shows, because, inevitably, the directions are clear only if you already understand what is going on. And, if you don’t, I don’t know if anyone can explain the whole thing and it keep it to one page. Or ten.
I read the directions. I had a good laugh with my spouse. Then I opened up the tin to look at the turkey, and then I understood immediately: Chef Fox had done exactly what I would have done, in that he provided us with a partially cooked bird. This is because a turkey that is partially cooked can still be cooked for the first time, whereas a fully cooked turkey, cooled and reheated, is something else entirely. And not a good kind of something else.
All the conceptualization of all these dishes, all the pulling together and prepping of the ingredients, all of the assembly and enough of the cooking to really help move things along — all had been done. It was just up to us to finish the last cooking step.
If you know how to cook, you are filled with gratitude. If you don’t already have a sense of where things are in the cooking process and how that all works, you might have gotten home, read the instructions, and cried. Or, maybe you carried on, learned as you went, and had a fabulous meal. All I can say is: We certainly did. The best, really. A feast that would’ve taken me many hours of work across several days, but came out better than I could have hoped — in less than an hour. And for that, this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for you, Chef Fox. So thankful. And so well fed!
The only thing that could be better, really, would be that gravy recipe.
Vignoble Abeille Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2006
Plum flowers and cherry juice on the nose, very full, full of promise. On the palate, cascades of stone fruit crossed with something you always hoped cranberries could be but never quite got there. Sure, smoke and oak, Parmesan rind, but these don’t get at it, and besides, there’s a more important note, beyond black licorice and better than black pepper and altogether something else. I’m listening to the instruments of the symphony orchestra and trying to pick them out, and then something comes from the flying saucer above and I realize that “contrabassoon” is too much and yet also entirely inadequate. And yet, it is all confidently balanced by a supple body of extraordinary magnitude and aplomb, that deepens and opens as the wine opens up, until what began as remarkable becomes much, much more. Ultimately it is its own, unlike any mere pointing stick flavor-wheel word I can use to indicate what it is like. It is entirely mature, but how can I say what I am tasting? What the Marine Corps is to the Boy Scouts, this wine is to red licorice. Tasting this wine, you can see why I would say red licorice as a starting indicator, but you will also hasten to agree that it is essential to note that it is this whole entire other thing so vastly beyond what “red licorice” can begin to say.
And then someone asks, because someone always asks, what sort of food it would be best paired with. And I understand that, because an Acura MDX is best paired not with the classical music radio station, but the sort of semi-smart, easy listening modern tunes that will appear in the malls in a few short years. But this wine is not an Acura MDX. It is a Ferrari 812. And as you first take the wheel of that glorious red destroyer of worlds, you think, as you do with that first sip of this gloriously red Châteauneuf-du-Pape, that this is something rather special. And then, as you experience the Ferrari opening up, like the wine, seemingly too hot at first, you hear something far more spectacular than Beethoven or Bruno Mars; compared to this V-12, they lack all dimension. And then, as your drink the Ferrari in more, you see how much more it has to offer, how fast it wants to go, and that it would much rather go faster, faster than you wonder if you can, too. And you drink it in. And that V-12 is singing a song of glory you’ve never heard before, you’ve never felt anything like this before, you are so exhilarated and you know you should be terrified but you just don’t care because you are too astonished at how much more the car wants to do and will do and is doing and it’s the best thing you’ve ever known, you can’t believe it — and then someone wants to know which radio station would go best with it.
Nothing would go best with it. It is its own experience, its own work of art. Tell me: Which vase looks best with the Mona Lisa?
This wine is the most satisfying thing. As children we are told endlessly that “this is for adults.” But then we grow up and we find out that the adults-only content is not for the mature, nor for benefit only of the worldly and the wise, but most often plainly vulgar — not something we wouldn’t understand but something tawdry, maybe even harmful, but in any event, when we finally see it for ourselves, mostly, it is merely disappointing. We hoped for more, for something special, for something that would take us somewhere we hadn’t been before.
This wine is everything we waited for when we waited for. It provides a richness, borne into our mouths as full of life and depth as any wine can give — beyond coffee, beyond chocolate, beyond complexity. It surpasses all, and for what it is, it cannot be any better than it already is. It has been made all the way through, the original meaning of perfection, and for that I can only give it 100 points.
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