Posted by Ed Levine, November 14, 2006 at 6:45 AM
WHERE ARE YOU GETTING YOUR THANKSGIVING PIES THIS YEAR?
I once wrote a piece for the New York Observer advocating the nation skip the turkey, stuffing, and sweet potatoes, and opt for an all pie Thanksgiving meal. A meal consisting of, say, half a dozen pies would indeed be one that serious eaters would be thankful for.
To encourage serious eaters everywhere to take up my all pie Thanksgiving cause I am going to try to guide readers and users to the best pies available, both in New York, via mail order, and elsewhere (later this week)...
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Posted by Ed Levine, January 3, 2006 at 1:25 PM
I managed to get through the holidays without gaining any weight. In fact, I lost a pound between Christmas and New Year's Eve. I am particularly proud of this given the amount of food that not so mysteriously makes it way to our house during the holiday season. You see, for a food writer, every day is Xmas in terms of the flow of food presents. While the rest of the world only has to resist temptation from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day every year, food writers are constantly tempted by people who send us food to sample 24-7 the entire year.
This year we received the following at our house between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day:
- Buttered pecans and candied pecans from North Carolina.
- Peanuts from Virginia
- Six pints of Graeter's Ice Cream in Cincinatti
- Six pints of Capogiro Gelato from Philadelphia.
- A huge gift basket of food sent by a writer client of my literary agent wife
- Samples of what turned out to be an awful low-cal ice cream.
- Two kinds of pound cake.
- A pound of delicious Smoked Salmon.
- Three different kinds of designer chocolate
- An eight pound smoked brisket from Texas.
Most of these were holiday presents from friends and colleagues. I know it sounds churlish to complain about this flow of free grub, but if you're someone who adores food who happens to be on a diet, it does make it difficult.
I am accepting all gifts of kelp and miso this post-holiday season.
Posted by Ed Levine, November 25, 2005 at 1:39 PM
Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, along with the usual assortment of mini-triumphs and mini-disasters that always seem to accompany this most food-centric of holidays. I have been brining my turkey the last few years, which in and of itself causes many problems in a NYC apartment. We have a small fridge, so finding a cool place to brine the turkey in overnight is always an issue. This year I decided to brine it on a friend's penthouse terrace in our building.
I placed the turkey along with ten gallons of water and two cups of salt in a plastic storage bin I bought at my local hardware store, and deposited it on the aforementioned terrace at 6 p.m. the night before Thanksgiving. At midnight I logged on to get my email and also checked on the weather. Winds of more than 20 mph were forecast for NYC and vicinity that night, and those winds began to prey upon my usual pre-Thanksgiving anxiety. We went to bed around 12:15, and I found myself thinking about the turkey flying off the roof and killing or maiming some innocent bystander in for the Thanksgiving Day parade (our apartment is just a few blocks from where the parade begins). So after tossing and turning and considering this possibility for about an hour I decided to take the turkey in for the night. I took the elevator up to the penthouse and brought the turkey in from the cold and wind. I was relieved not to find anyone sleeping in the apartment (my friends were in Rome, and I hadn't told them I was going to brine my turkey at their place, so I was more than a little concerned that I was going to walk in to find friends of theirs staying there). I had already rehearsed what I was going to say: "Don't be scared. I'm just a friend and neighbor taking my turkey in from the cold."
I brought the turkey in and put it and some of the brining liquid in a big pasta pot in my friend's fridge. I took the plastic container with the rest of the now-bloody brining liquid back down to our house, and put it in our bathtub. Armed with the knowledge that my turkey was not going to wreak havoc in anyone else's life that night, I slept like a baby.
Oh, yeah, the brined turkey was magnificent. Even the white meat was tender and moist.
And even though there was an incident at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade which slightly injured two people, I knew that my turkey wasn't responsible.
Posted by Ed Levine, November 17, 2005 at 1:40 PM
Given that I read on-line every major newspaper's Thanksgiving-obsessed food section this past Wednesday on SauteWednesday, I feel compelled to share with all of you my Thanksgiving menu.
I buy an Eberly Farms Organic Turkey and brine it overnight. This year I hope to avoid last year's catastrophe, which resulted from buying a cheap styrofoam cooler to brine the bird in. The cooler broke and there was a flood of salty brine water all over our kitchen.
Other years I've bought Kosher turkeys and Murray's free-roaming turkeys, and had good luck with both of those as well. Just try to avoid buying a Butterball. They have a strange unnatural taste, probably from the crap that is injected into them. The most fashionable turkey to buy this year is a heritage bird. They're much more expensive than even my organic bird, but they do have a more intense and distinct flavor. If you like dark meat, this is the bird for you. If you haven't ordered one by now, you're probably out of luck. Every website that is selling them appears to be sold out.
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