It’s All In The Knife

Our new contributor for Thanksgiving, my sis Nancy!

My brother in law Bob likes to take a perfectly good piece of meat and transform it into something other than what it was meant to be. He hacks it into unappetizing “cave man-esque” slabs. Bob averages about four servings per thirteen pound roast. I watched him deface my main course in this way. It was a weekend fall family dinner and I had driven twenty miles to pick it up.

Forlorn faces fell as the first few members of the buffet line made short work of the platter. They left very little beef behind. The remaining  guests went hungry or turned toward the salad and rolls with a mutinous eye.

The next night, my brother in law Mark, was assigned the carving of the twenty five pound turkey. We needed to feed a substantial number of houseguests, and the pressure was on after the hunger pangs of the evening before. Mark was given strict instructions to “slice thinly” and “make sure of enough turkey to stretch among the assembled family.”

The carving audience had grown larger after the indignity of the roast experience. Unwilling to miss out on another night without protein, they pushed into a tight mob. The body language left no room for error.

It wasn’t long before the pressure of the assignment began to unhinge Mark. His end result was more of a dissection than a culinary presentation. Rather than take responsibility for the unhappy state of the turkey, he began blaming others.

He groused about how he didn’t have a sharp enough knife and how the turkey wasn’t cooked correctly. Despite Marks protestations, there was an improvement in the number of folks that unwillingly went without a main course. It was down to three.

My husband took his turn to carve a honey baked ham on the third night. Many of the guests were driving back to their homes after dinner. It was imperative that no one fainted at the wheel from hunger. Correct ham carving would dictate the success of the final meal.

 A burley homicide cops son, my husband had been raised with a deep reverence for both religion and food. There were consequences for missing either one. The family would go to Catholic mass weekly and all attend the family meal that followed. Growing up in his big Irish family, it was considered a special occasion to be eating anything that wasn’t a casserole.

The men of his clan were judged by their ability to make the meat stretch to all the hungry mouths that were waiting. There was very little in the family that went to waste, like hand me down clothes, cars and toys. Carving was serious business and reputations were gained and lost on it.

Our holiday ham came out of the oven perfectly shaped like a football. It was glazed and smoked in Cajun spices. The elegant wrapper gave specifics about how to slice it. “Someone in your office sent this to us,” I told him as he was rooting around for the super duper electric carving knife he had bought a year ago on e-bay.

“It is all in the knife,” my husband announced to the two other brother in laws, who were perched on stools nearby, ready to leap in and heckle him at the slightest sign of incorrect form. He took an open legged stance much like a golfer getting ready to address the ball.

The nine year old twin nieces were silent with rapt attention. “ Its a pre-cut spiral ham,” said Bob, “this isn’t really a fair comparison to a roast.” Mark chimed in “How was anyone supposed to know you had that hedge trimmer knife?” He added, “No one offered it to us and I don’t really call that carving. It probably takes something out of the flavor and dries it out to have all that rapid back and forth motion.”

My husband mumbled something about “nonsense” and “tools of the trade” and then gave a fond family reference to an Indiana Jones movie about “bringing a gun to a knife fight.” He was an expert at making the slices look mouthwatering and pristine. I’d been treated to a few family meals at his house. I knew he could use the traditional carving utensils with ease as well as the Indiana Jones version.

Often during my husband’s childhood, and especially during holidays (statistics show a spike in crime during holidays), the phone would ring just as the family was sitting down for a meal. Criminals didn’t take time off for Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter, or apparently for dinner either.

“Sarge” would listen carefully to the details of each phone interruption, kiss the top of his wife’s head, and head out into the night, his lips clamped around a cigar. His six children knew he would be eating cold leftovers when he returned hours later. Sometimes their mother would let them stay up to see the late news and catch a glimpse of their dad if it was a high profile or gruesome case.

On nights when he was called out, the job of carving the meat would  fall to one of the boys, or to my mother in law, who became something of an expert in the void.

A particularly sharp butcher knife was her favorite utensil for the task at hand. Family lore (which has never been confirmed) has it that the knife actually had a tag swinging back and forth from its handle and was once used in a crime. It had come from the attic, where it had been “housed” and forgotten. The kids were sure it was evidence from an old murder trial of Sarges. Margie liked to “borrow” it for particularly tough carving jobs, sending one of the kids up to retrieve it. The knife was likely washed and dried, maybe taking a turn in the family dish drain before it was returned back to the attic. The kids invented scenarios over the years about what criminal history the cutlery had been a part of. It is likely that my father in law placed it in the attic as a prop, to spin a story that would humble the six rambunctious children and help them mind their table manners when he was out.

The true success of a roast, turkey or ham is a combination of cooking skill, artful slicing and the ultimate placement on a welcoming table filled with family, friends and lots of wine.

Cookbooks emphasize the importance of letting the meat “stand” after it is removed from the oven. The timeframe recommended seems to vary from ten to twenty minutes before carving. Slicing is made easier when the turkey or roast is cooked at medium temp. Meat should be carved across the grain for increased tenderness and sliced thinly at a forty five degree angle.

There are a multitude of electric carving knife options on the internet ranging in price from $8.00 to $88.00. The sure way to a “successful carve” is to have the proper tools are at hand for any culinary challenge, and that also means a long pronged fork to help get a good grip on what can be a slippery job. There are so many places to track down a great knife, but if the knife hasn’t been sharpened (Charles Department Store in Katonah does my knives each fall), there is no guarantee of the outcome. Never underestimate the importance of having a good knife lying around, or even in the attic.

by Nancy McLoughlin

 

Thanksgiving Gratitude

Thanksgiving always seems to sneak up on us, sandwiched in between Halloween and Christmas it sometimes gets short shrift.  But there was a time, when I was a kid, that holiday songs weren’t background music for trick or treating.  Thanksgiving was a stand-alone holiday, a truly secular day to reflect on our country’s origins and the peaceful joining of two disparate tribes.  It was also an occasion for the senses.

There were the smells of wonderfully rich things cooking; the pervasive scent of the sizzling turkey, and then the touch of the linen napkins at the table, the cool smoothness of the “twice a year China” and heavy silver settings.  Sounds were of disparate family coming together, laughter spiking in the kitchen, grandparents fussing, cousins roughhousing and aunts catching up and gossiping.  Those sounds would later be dominated by groans of overstretched stomachs and the agony of defeat noises men make around a TV football game.

 

I loved the sight of the Thanksgiving table as we children pushed in the swinging doors to the dining room.  Only a few times each year, every leaf was in place, the white tablecloth demurely covering its curved legs.  Long tapered candles flickered in candlesticks.  The anticipation of the meal was everything.  Thanksgiving was all about patience and the build up.  Until I hosted my own first Thanksgiving dinner as a young wife, I wouldn’t understand the hours of shopping, labor and preparation that were consumed in roughly 40 minutes.

But the food.  Oh the food.   Thanksgiving was the one holiday all year that was about taste.   Gravy and rolls, carrots and brussel sprouts with garlic, mashed potatoes dotted with butter, the dark meat of the turkey and the dribbled pie filling squeezing through the lattice crust. 

And there was always a moment, just before we ate, where we all held hands around the table for prayer. There were always the reluctant “touchers,” the self- conscious boys and Uncles who finally relaxed into the act, stilled by the feeling of family communing in one unbroken circle.  “Bless this food to our use and us to they service,” an economy of words from my grandfather.  My Dad would sometimes add an extra thought, some words and a moment of silence to take stock of our own blessings, the tender mercies in our short lives, and I’d bow my head, squinting my eyes in concentration.  I’d conjure up images of family, pilgrims and Indians, about living in a land where I experienced only plenty of love and food and goodness.  And then my sister would pinch my thigh to break the spell and we’d dig in.  

Back then, as child in the 60s and 70s, the world was much more black and white.  In the Thanksgiving of my youth, the bad guys lived behind walls, the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall, and there were cold wars.   Americans had defined enemies and larger than life heroes.   But none of them were in uniform. Boys in my neighborhood were slinking back from Vietnam sick in heart and spirit.  And some didn’t come home at all.  There were no parades in my town, no flags in front yards in that time.  We were ambivalent, opinionated and judgmental; we had watched some of the horrors on TV and in Life magazine.  

 

I didn’t think at all about the homecomings of those boys, about what kind of Thanksgiving they were experiencing, transported out of the jungle and jolted back to the low resolution of the suburbs.   My prayers at night included thanks to God that I was not a boy, so that I wouldn’t have to be drafted.  I remember that clear as a bell.

Fast forward to this Thanksgiving, to these wars.   Years and experience lend a fuller perspective.  As someone who has survived some of the dings and dents that life can throw—gratitude and service have a whole different meaning around my table now.  This holiday I think about the families of our injured service members gathered in their homes for the holiday meal.  Without a draft , they have self-selected to sign up.  They have raised their hands to go when their country asked.  Having met so many of these families over the years, I can say they are a self-effacing group, humble and inspiring.  They were “just doing their jobs,” they’ll tell you. 

But while we celebrate the holiday that symbolizes that first harvest season of bounty and gratitude for life in a free land, these families have loved ones halfway around the world who have stood up to protect those freedoms.  And you have to respect that, no matter what your politics or individual views. Someone you’ve never met is crouched in a tank overseas, or on foot patrol, or skyping home to their wife and baby.  And for that we need to be grateful. 

 

So this Thanksgiving, lets ask ourselves as we gather - Have we reached out in our communities and towns to help the service members and their families reintegrate and recover?  Have we gone beyond merely waving flags at airports and including them in our prayers to really helping and assisting in meaningful ways?  Have we put our thanks-giving into action as a country and as individuals? 

Before we lift our forks this Thursday, we’ll all grasp hands and say a prayer around my table.  And we’ll remind our children that despite the uncertainty of the world, the wars, the economy, the job market, there is a cornucopia of things to be thankful for.  We are lucky, lucky people.  We are blessed.  And in the moment that our heads collectively lower, my eyes will flick around the table.  I’ll experience that silent recognition, no matter how tenuous and short-lived it may be, that the most important things in the world to me are gathered in one place, connected in an unbroken circle.