Thanksgiving 2011

Normally I head out to Seattle to spend Thanksgiving with my sister and brother-in-law, but there were timing issues this year, and I couldn’t make it. I’ve been crossing the country every November for so many years that I felt completely at loose ends, and contemplated a number of different scenarios:

1. I could accept one of the invitations that had so generously been sent my way;

2. I could drive to Biloxi and gamble;

3. I could drive to Cape San Blas and rent one of the Old Salt Works cabins, and contemplate my navel;

4. I could hang at home and do exactly what I wanted, eat exactly what I wanted (rarely does that include turkey!), when I wanted, and not even have to put shoes or a smile on. Plus, I’d bought an amazing sasquana camellia as consolation for missing Seattle, and I wanted to get it in the ground.

Option 4 won me over with its simplicity.

Several years ago I spent a lovely Christmas and New Year’s in a small town on the French Mediterranean, called Argelès-sur-Mer. I was the houseguest of the mother of a friend of mine from Paris, named Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie is a supremely social person, unlike yours truly, and she naturally invited me to the New Year’s Eve celebration that she, and the rest of her generation of this small town, would be attending. I’d met so many people by then (a huge extended family sat down for Christmas dinner together), that I begged off for a quiet dinner with her mother.

Before she left, she whipped up a quick Catalan dish called Escalivade, saying that across the Spanish border (just a few kilometers away), it was known as Escalivada. Typically, an Escalivade is cooked on a grill, but it was cold and dark out, and this method works just fine. I had my Thanksgiving Escalivade with some pan-seared lamb chops, marinated an hour or two in garlic and rosemary from the garden, plus a few wee fingerlings. Escalivade

1 medium-large eggplant

3 multi-colored bell peppers

6 large shallots

big handful dried apricots

good olive oil

salt

pepper

Cut all vegetables in large (1.5" to 2") chunks and put them, along with the dried apricots (you could also use dates or figs), on a cookie sheet (non-stick helps), then pour over an luxurious amount of olive oil. This is important, so don’t be miserly.  Sprinkle on salt and pepper and roast until edges are charred (also crucial) at 450 degrees, stirring from time to time so the veggies get as uniformly browned/blackened as possible. Don’t give up when the veggies seem nicely cooked; the goal is caramelization, and for that you’ll have to be patient. You will be rewarded.

Dessert was a couple of squares of Dark Chocolate, accompanied by an ounce of Cockburn’s 20 year-old Tawny Port. It was pure magic, and I felt very thankful indeed.