Not too early for holiday meal plans

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

You know the holidays are coming when mountains of pumpkins appear

at local supermarkets.

It’s not too early to finalize the guest list for your

Thanksgiving feast and start thinking about what you’ll serve.

Some people will bring one dish to a communal gathering, and lots

of cooks will take charge of preparing the entire meal. Either way,

everything should taste wonderful and you shouldn’t end up too

exhausted to enjoy it.

Through lots of trial and a fair amount of error, I’ve discovered

a thing or two that will make Turkey Day (and every day) a little

easier and result in broad smiles all around the table.

Every good meal begins with fresh produce, and using the best

quality guarantees success. Familiarize yourself with the Farmer’s

Market on Saturday mornings, where everything is strictly seasonal

and hasn’t been subjected to long voyages on refrigerated trucks. You

can sample apples for your pie, find persimmons at the perfect state

of ripeness, gorgeous organic greens for the salad and just about

everything but the turkey.

Recipes for the perfect Big Bird are all over the place. I’ve had

excellent results with both frozen and free-range fresh turkeys,

roasted in more methods than I can remember. I’ve also had some

disasters. Following package directions for defrosting, using a meat

thermometer (in the leg or thigh) to test for doneness are critical.

If you’re a first-timer, or not sure about a recipe, call on someone

with more experience. Everyone will remember a dry turkey.

Want to impress the crowd with your carving skills? Use a sharp

knife. The best quality knives are made of high carbon, stainless

steel. They’re expensive but worth every penny. My 8-inch chef’s

knife has been in almost daily use for about 15 years. When knives

get dull, use a disc sharpener to create a razor edge and finish with

a few swipes over a sharpening steel.

Try using coarse (kosher) salt in the kitchen and save the other

stuff for the table. Coarse salt is less potent than regular salt and

dissolves more quickly. Start by using the amount called for in a

recipe and add according to taste. If you’ve ever tried to correct

something that was over-salted, you’ll know why it’s time to switch.

You can’t make a decent pumpkin pie without nutmeg. For the same

price as a jar of the ground stuff (which has a very short shelf life

before tasting like sawdust), try whole nutmeg seeds. Scrape them

with the finest holes on the side of a box grater.(It works just as

well as a special nutmeg grater.) Experiment using this sweet nutty

spice in cream sauces, soups and vegetables especially carrots,

spinach and cauliflower.

Even weekend cooks start baking for the holidays. Ever looked at

the ingredients on a bottle of imitation vanilla extract? Do you

really want to use propyleneclycol, caramel color and ethyl vanillin

in that gorgeous dessert? Pure vanilla extract is made from vanilla

bean extractives in water, alcohol and corn syrup. Spend a little

more and you can get Bourbon vanilla bean extractives in water and

alcohol without the corn syrup. Everyone will taste the difference.

Proper tools make everything easier, especially during this

season, when time is limited and good results are most important. A

wonderful new set of tools to grate and shred just about anything are

the graters from Microplane. Modeled after a carpenter’s rasp, the

three different sizes available do a fantastic job of creating grated

citrus rind, hard cheese, chocolate, garlic, ginger root, onions and

anything else you can think of. Best of all, everything ends up where

you can use it, not stuck on the surface of the grater.

Practice makes perfect, and even experienced cooks will try out a

new recipe for stuffing, apple pie or other Thanksgiving dish before

the big day. It could just be a matter of adjusting the seasoning or

cooking time. Some recipes do contain errors, and many cooks,

especially beginners, misinterpret directions. You don’t have to

reproduce the entire feast weeks in advance, but try that stuffing

recipe when you’re making some kind of chicken, or even pork chops. I

recently roasted a small turkey breast to test a new recipe for

gravy.

Too many capable cooks enter the panic zone as holiday time gets

closer. It isn’t even fair to expect perfection with dishes you

haven’t tackled since last Thanksgiving. One solution is to keep

notes of every wonderful, easy-to-make-ahead appetizer, vegetable and

dessert you’ve made throughout the year. If it works with the rest of

the menu, present it at your holiday table. You’ll have one less dish

to stress about and a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

* LILLIAN REITER is a Laguna Beach resident. A self-described

“shameless foodie,” she is currently co-authoring a cookbook. She can

be reached at reitersinc@net-star.net or P.O. Box 248, Laguna Beach,

CA 92652, or via fax at 494-8979.