Pie Talk #33: Thanksgiving Stuffing

Good morning! There are five days to Thanksgiving and a lot of us are already making shopping lists, if as yet for me only in my head. I love grocery shopping, a love I passed down to my daughter, and somewhere on the interwebs is a short video of her surfing her shopping cart through Fred Meyer market in Portland saying, “Wheeeee!” I love New York City, but the grocery shopping experience after nearly 30 years of well-lit, wide-aisled west coast supermarkets? Abysmal.

As I mention in the audio, my plans this year got a little kiboshed. But! From adversity, opportunity, and I’ll now go to two Thanksgivings, one day-of event with a lot of people I don’t know and to whom I will get to feed pie, and a smaller one with family, for which I am not going go the whole 9 yards, there will be only 5 or 7 of us, a number likely to swell. We will not have turkey at this one but a roast goose, because one of the guests ate it once 30 years in Prague and remembers it fondly. I have never roasted a good but did watch some YouTubes and scanned for recipes and feel pretty confident, though will be very happy for your tips, and especially for a not-too-sweet glaze with which to baste the bird. I like sweet-and-meat but others do not so, hit me up.

I am also going to be making a change to a standard recipe, if not a change this horrific. As I mentioned yesterday on the Twitter* machine, the correct number of eggs in mac-and-cheese is zero.

What a I changing? The stuffing. Let me be clear: THIS WOULD NEVER BE THE CASE WERE I MAKING THE TURKEY. Stuffing, the kind I learned from my mom, is my favorite food, and while this means I should make it more than once a year, maybe just to stick in a chicken, I do not. A lack of at-hand giblets (which I knew meant the whole mess of innards you find in the bird; in the audio I meant gizzards, which I think is probably a fake word but anyway) might contribute, but mainly it’s because to my mind you need to make vat of stuffing because it’s so delicious and you want to feed it to many people and, if you are me, you need eat a great deal of it for yourself, before it goes into the turkey, and while you’re stuffing the turkey, and at the dinner (three helpings), and cold from the fridge. I already look forward to 2024’s repast.

This year, along with the goose - and the potatoes that will be roasted in the goose fat - I will try a new stuffing recipe, one from my girl Alison Roman. As mentioned in the audio, I am already making changes to the recipe in my head. Here she is making it.

Food is love (say it with me), and we’ve had a lot of both in this apartment these past few weeks, dinner parties and late-night hangs, including a few nights ago with a lot of the Reason mag peeps as well as the Fifth guys and their most recent guest, the awesome, funny, super-cute, whip-smart Mary Katherine Ham.

Then two two nights ago - I am typing this at 8:39am on Sunday, hoping to get this up in time! - we welcomed our beloved Yael Bar Tur back from Israel. She was on the pod last month and in our hearts always.

We ate all the food and drank all the wine and sang some songs and gave each other shirts we picked up in war zones. These friends, this life, I love it so much.

A few links mentioned in the audio:

“Sam Harris: The Bright Line Between Good and Evil,” Honestly podcast

And the recipe! This, too, I love to much, and am sending all buttery love to you and yours xx

Thanksgiving Stuffing

* 3 loaves white bread, supermarket variety, not too dense. I am liking potato bread these days.

* 2 good-sized yellow onions, small dice

* 6-8 stalks celery, small dice

* 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter

* salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, thyme if you have it

* 6 - 8 cups turkey stock, plus the giblets you’ve simmered in the stock, chopped

A day or two before you plan to make the stuffing, let bread slices dry out a bit. Turn then a few times so somewhat evenly dried but don’t stress. Once semi-dry, cut bread into cubes.

In a large heavy-bottomed pot, melt the butter. Add onions and celery and cook, stirring frequently, until translucent and onions are starting to brown just a bit. Add your chopped giblets.

(You are of course welcome to add the meat you chop off the turkey neck. I eat the neck, sending all squeamish people running from the room.)

Unless your pot is massive, remove half of the onion mix; you’ll be making the stuffing in two batches.

Add half your cubed bread to onion-mix, stir to start coating the bread, sprinkling with salt, pepper, poultry seasoning and some thyme. Stir stir. Now start adding your stock, a cup at a time, until stuffing is moist but not wet.

Stuff your turkey - or not! Any that does not fit in the bird, and there will be plenty, you can put in a buttered dish, maybe drizzle a little melted butter, and bake at a 350F oven until crisp on top.

*And some outro love from the original X (man). Would that I could, I would feed him a wheelbarrow of stuffing and it would not give him half the joy he’s given me. Happy Thanksgiving John Doe!

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