Some people on this list cook; others pride themselves on their
sardines and vegan pizzas. None need be excluded from the debate
that follows. Here is the issue. Those of us who eat meat on
Thanksgiving will put a turkey in the oven and, one way or another--
here factionism enters in--cook it. I am not concerned here with
whether you cover the thing with aluminum foil, start with breasts
down, stick the corpse on a beer can, douse the beast in brine.
These are the schisms of kitchen belief.
What bothers me is an American appetite for cold food. I have come
to live with the potluck supper, an euphemism for "let's eat
everything cold." And I know that Thanksgiving is supposed to be a
Puritan festival--and how better to feel Puritan than by eating food
that ought to be hot, cold?--but I have reached my limit of patience
with daft advice in the newspaper. Today's Oregonian has a
Thanksgiving Turkey expert explaining, "You don't take [the turkey
from the oven] to the table. You *hide* it. I hide it in the
garage. Now you put the side dishes in the oven. Then I call
everyone to the table for the first course. All you're doing is
buying time while the turkey rests--half an hour or 45 minutes, if
you play it right."
Our garage temperature is currently about thirty two degrees (normal
scale, not foreign). Forty five minutes in this temperature would
give you what? Near-frozen turkey.
Americans will tell you that a roast beast continues to cook after
you take it out of the oven and thus, like a clockwork toy that needs
time to unwind, you must let it "rest." So much of a shibboleth has
this become that I am beset on all sides when I try to ask for a
piece that is fresh from the oven and hot.
My questions to you are: where did this notion of a well-rested dead
beast come from? What does it mean concerning the American Way of
Death? Why don't some like it hot?
David Ritchie Portland, Oregon
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