Thoughts on Thanksgiving, part 2 - Pearl Onions

In my mind, Thanksgiving is defined by the family holiday dinners of my childhood. I grew up in suburban New Jersey about an hour away from New York City, where my parents grew up.  Both of my parents were second generation American Jews whose grandparents immigrated from eastern Europe in the late 1800's.  We celebrated Jewish holidays with local cousins and friends in New Jersey, but the biggest annual family gathering occurred at Thanksgiving. My mother would get up at the butt-crack of dawn to get the turkey in the oven. Grandma Bella, my maternal grandmother, would arrive at about 9:00 am with my great uncle Irvy in tow. Uncle Irvy would watch the entire Macy's Thanksgiving day parade while my mother and grandmother slaved away in the kitchen. At around midday, my paternal grandmother Grandma Dag would arrive with Aunt Barbara and Aunt Marion. Other friends and relatives would filter in during the afternoon. Sometimes my older siblings would bring their high school or college pals and sometimes we'd have a new wave of people just for dessert. It was a bit of a marathon.

The Thanksgiving dinner menu in my house always included certain dishes. Appetizers were always celery sticks smeared with cream cheese and green olives, sticky dates stuffed with half a walnut and rolled in sugar, a dish of canned jumbo black olives and a bowl of nuts in their shells. Of course, there was an enormous turkey and two kinds of cranberry sauce - whole berry and jelly straight out of the can sliced into perfect rounds. There was always bread stuffing made with lots of paprika and cooked inside the bird. There was always canned yams cooked in maple syrup and a few baked potatoes for the people who didn't like yams. We always had a pumpkin pie and an apple pie for dessert. 

The one dish that I associate most closely with Thanksgiving is pearl onions in cheese sauce. My mother would boil the tiny onions until they were soft, then bathe them in a white sauce flavored with Velveeta cheese. Yes.Velveeta. This was standard fare on the Goldstein family holiday table. It just wasn't Thanksgiving dinner without onions in cheese sauce. Funny thing about boiled onions, however, is the carnage they wreak as they pass through your GI track. If the weather was cooperative, it was not unusual to find people wandering out to the porch for a few minutes. I distinctly recall my mother letting a dainty, little utterance go while serving pie when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I was sitting next to her and with the animated conversation going on at the table, I was the only one who heard it. I gave her a big-eye look of amusement and she said "shhhhh" and winked at me. It was our little secret. 

When I got into high school and college, some of my friends became regulars at the Thanksgiving table. Onions in cheese sauce became my friend Jenny's favorite holiday side. During my college years I hosted a late night jazz show on the campus public radio station. My show started at 11 pm and I was scheduled to work on Thanksgiving day. Being the great friend that she is, Jenny agreed to accompany me to the radio station. We'd both eaten large helpings of onions in cheese sauce and on the way to the station we did our best to purge ourselves before spending two hours in a small windowless control room. But the onions are a worthy opponent. About half way through the show, I looked over at Jenny who was reading the newspaper. She was shaking with laughter and tears were rolling down her face. I was about 30 seconds away from doing a live break when she showed me the source of the hilarity - an ad for a home air filtration system that said "TOXIC ODOROUS AND OFFENSIVE GASSES?". As I opened the microphone, laughter poured out of me and I choked.

To make this dish, peel a couple bags of small pearl onions and boil them they are soft. In a small saucepan, melt two tablespoons of butter over medium heat and mix in two tablespoons of flour. Cook them together briefly, stirring constantly, until the flour begins to stick to the bottom of the pan. Add a cup and a half of whole milk and whisk them together until the mixture is smooth. As soon as the sauce comes to the boil, it will thicken. Don't boil it for too long, just a moment. Take the pot off the heat and add small cubes of Velveeta cheese until the sauce reaches your desired taste. It should take a little less than the smallest block of Velveeta you can buy. Of course, you can use another kind of melting cheese like Monterrey jack or mild cheddar, but the Velveeta is intertwined with my Thanksgiving memories. 

My brother long ago forbade the serving of onions in cheese sauce at his holiday table and I have to admit that I can no longer tolerate them either. I did serve roasted shallots this year, but its not the same. Maybe you can carry this tradition forward in our honor. Just make sure the back porch is ready for company. 

Thoughts on Thanksgiving, part 1

It is the day after Thanksgiving, I write a food blog and I haven't posted anything about my dinner. Doesn't that seem odd to you? Given that Thanksgiving is kind of the holy grail of foodie holidays, it certainly seems like a bad strategy not to share any recipes, photos or other inspiration for curious home cooks looking for ideas. I did, in fact, host Thanksgiving at my house with my family this year. It's the first time I've hosted Thanksgiving with my family since 1998. I did a ton of cooking over the past week, but captured very few photos and didn't take a single page of notes for this blog. I'll explain that in a moment,

Thanksgiving has always played a big role in my family life. When I was a kid, my mother hosted Thanksgiving and we usually had anywhere from 8 to 14 people at the table. My mother's menu included dishes that she only cooked for Thanksgiving. She had serving dishes that only came out for Thanksgiving. We used the good china and silver and crystal. It took us a week of cleaning and polishing and prepping to get ready for Thanksgiving. It was big hairy deal. In my teen years, we moved from New Jersey to Texas and being the outgoing and fearless person my mother was, she and my father made new friends. Our Thanksgiving dinners in Texas were somewhat interesting and eclectic with new people at the table every year. When two Russian families moved into town and joined the synagogue, they celebrated their first Thanksgiving dinner at my parents dining room table.  

I eventually moved to Dallas, about 5 hours by car from my folks house. My friend Paul was also living in Dallas and our families had known each other for many years. My parents would drive up to Dallas and we'd go to Paul's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Those are some of my favorite holiday memories, those huge, elaborate dinners. Paul's family is Sicilian and the meal included no less than five courses. We'd start with cocktails and appetizers - fresh boiled shrimp and all kinds of pickles, salads and dips. The actual dinner started with an antipasta of the best quality Italian sliced meats and cheeses, followed by a fresh, handmade pasta course, then turkey and all the sides. At this point many of us would be too full to sit upright and we'd take a break. There would be short naps in front of the football game and much rolling around on the floor rubbing our bellies. During this respite, there would be a big bowl of nuts, a platter of fruit and a bowl of sliced fennel on the table. People would stop by the table and nibble on roasted chestnuts or ice cold fennel, which helps settle the stomach. Finally, everyone would gather back at the table for dessert, coffee and cordials. It was during dessert one year that my father made what has become known as "the fart toast". In short, he emitted a well timed blast of flatus during the end of the meal toast and the story has become notorious in my family. 

Eventually, Paul's folks stopped traveling for the holidays. In 1998, I convinced my parents, sister and brother to come to my house for Thanksgiving. It was a small gathering, but I was so excited and honored to cook Thanksgiving dinner for my family. In the following years, all our lives changed dramatically. My mother passed, my brother Alan fell in love and moved to New Jersey, I met my future husband. My father remarried for a very brief period, I moved to New Hampshire and our family kind of splintered. My brothers and I started a new Thanksgiving tradition when we all lived relatively close to each other.  My brother Art lived in upstate New York and he hosted once; Alan hosted a couple of times while he lived in New Jersey. But when he and his wife moved back to Texas, we resumed Thanksgiving at his house with my dad and sister. 

For me, traveling for Thanksgiving had become the new normal. We were either at my brother's house in Austin, my in-laws house in Dallas/Ft. Worth or with my husband's extended family in New Jersey. Year after year, I'd sit in some airport and yearn to plan my own menu, to dazzle my family with superior kitchen skills and to make memories we would cherish for a lifetime. Year after year, I'd come home after Thanksgiving and cook a small turkey, just to have some leftovers in the fridge. With each passing year, the dream seemed to get farther out of reach, but when we moved to Pittsburgh a few years ago and bought a perfect house for entertaining, I started to think that maybe, one day, I'd actually be able to talk my brothers into coming to my house for Thanksgiving.  Art and I now live just a few hours apart and it didn't take much convincing to get Alan on board. Finally, it was my time.  

I cooked a great dinner. I brined and roasted a fresh 17 pound turkey, I made stuffing and roasted veggies and mashed potatoes. I baked a pumpkin cheesecake and sugar-free apple crumble for dessert. I used my grandmother's silverware and my mother-in-law's crystal. I had both my brothers and their wives here for three days and a good time was had by all, which brings me back to the beginning of this post. It struck me after everyone had left and I was making my day-after-Thanksgiving leftover turkey sandwich. There are only a couple of photos and no notes about my menu because I was busy living in the moment. I was busy making those memories that I will cherish forever. I unplugged. Food and cooking is a very primal way to show someone that you want to nourish them and feed their soul as well as their body. Food is a magic time machine that transports you back in time with pinpoint accuracy to relive emotional memories you associate with food. Food brings people together. This Thanksgiving, I was busy giving thanks for the relationships I have built, looking upon the smiling faces of my family gathered around the holiday table and celebrating with a giant, swinging bowl of mashed potatoes. 

And really, isn't that what its all about?