Pardon us from another turkey dinner

24 November 2004

Thanksgiving: a perfectly decent holiday ruined by a mediocre meal.

It's not supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be a grand feast, the year's best meal. And front and center on the table is the turkey, plopped down to oohs and ahs, elaborately carved and served in piles. It may be our most widely followed tradition; the National Turkey Federation claims 97 percent of all Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

And the other 3 percent?

They're the smart ones.

Let me be blunt. We have been bamboozled. We may pretend otherwise but the truth is turkey is bland and flavorless. It's hard to imagine a more insipid centerpiece to a meal.

This week, home chefs are in a panic. Low heat or high? Humid oven or not? Get it wrong and the thing tastes like dry sawdust.

But cook it just right? It tastes like wet sawdust.

Think about it. The highest praise you'll hear offered around tomorrow's table will be, "It's so moist."

Great. So is water.

Proof of my argument is the simple fact that most of us feast on roast turkey but once a year. If it were so compellingly delicious, you'd see it on plates every week.

But no. Except around Thanksgiving, fresh turkey is almost impossible to find. No one wants it. Nor will you see it in restaurants. There are steak houses almost every block in Boston. Turkey houses? Not a one. Chefs have made their marks with most other foodstuffs: Gordon Hamersley and roast chicken; Chris Schlesinger and fish; Lydia Shire and, gulp, organ meats.

Turkey? When it comes to gourmet, the best you've got is guys with bad teeth hovering over their turkey fryers. Sure, consumption is up; it's doubled over the last 25 years. Turkey has become our latest ersatz meat, kind of like tofu with feathers, substituting for the real thing in such delectables as turkey burgers, turkey sausage and turkey pastrami. That's because it's healthy, the turkey lobbyists say. I suppose it must be; most things that are good for you aren't particularly good tasting.

Even worse, turkey seems to set the tone for the entire Thanksgiving meal. The spread consists of an array of foods few of us otherwise touch. Cranberry sauce. Stuffing (imagine: deliberately eating soggy bread). Pearl onions. Root vegetables.

How did we arrive at this sorry state of affairs?

You can't blame the Pilgrims. Sure, in 1621 there were wild turkeys - wily, slim and able to fly, unlike today's domesticated behemoths. But in all likelihood, the immigrants from Europe were eating other foods: duck, venison and lobster. In other words, good foods.

Almost four centuries later, we're stuck with turkey. Why? The British had a tradition of eating goose at celebrations; perhaps some dimwit mixed one bird up with the other. Or maybe it's because turkey is cheap, a way to feed a crowd without spending much. But I think the real reason is that we're just victims of a first-rate lobbying job. Since 1947, turkey producers have made a ceremonial presentation of a live bird to the president, who then "pardons" it so that it can live out its days on a farm. If we had been doing the same thing with snails, we might be eating escargot for the holiday.

Don't get me wrong. Thanksgiving is a wonderful day, filled with football, parades and the anticipation of a month-long shopping spree. It's a rare opportunity to gather together with family and friends. Most importantly, it's an occasion for gratitude, a chance to contemplate just how extraordinarily lucky each of us really is.

But couldn't we do all that over chateaubriand?