Thanksgiving away from home

Out of change, tradition is renewed

Above: We get ready to leave Courtomer on a blustery November afternoon before Thanksgiving.

Chère amie, cher ami

We left Courtomer for Thanksgiving, driving up the Cotentin peninsula to take the ferry to Dublin. For the first time, we were to have Thanksgiving in the home of one of our children. 

Monsieur did not approve. He likes to be at home, likes our familiar menu perfected over many years, likes to be out in the country where he can cut wood or work on a stone wall as the pale afternoon light dwindles, likes our children and their families to come to us.  He had, he said, prepared a curmudgeon’s blessing.

But in Dublin, little Owen, his littler sister Lottie, and their parents were waiting. One of our other sons was coming from Paris. There would be new elements of the traditional repast to try: instead of roast turkey with cranberry sauce, rouleau de dinde farcie and cranberry chutney, There would also be the ingredients for me to make a few of our old favorites. 

Or almost all of them.

“It’s impossible,” said our daughter-in-law, “to find pearl onions in Dublin.”

It is equally impossible not to serve creamed onions at Thanksgiving. Monsieur loves them. 

And “Je veux faire plaisir à ton Père,” as I tell my children. “I like to please your father.” I try to set a good example.

It’s also a tribute to my mother, a way to conjure her presence at the feast. My husband first tasted creamed onions in her house, at one of our first Thanksgivings together.

I use her recipe, annotated with her comments. She appears in my mind’s eye as I read it, brandishing a wooden spoon at the gas stove in our old kitchen, wearing a long black and red-striped Nepalese apron. She’d bought it in Kathmandu when we were little; our family had lived in the East and we’d spent part of one spring in Nepal.

I’m not sure where the recipe came from. My mother had been a student in Paris in 1948, the same year that Julia Child discovered French cookery there. In our kitchen bookshelf were the classics of that era — Julia Child’s opus, a copy of M.F.K. Fisher’s The Art of Provincial Cooking, James Beard. But my mother, like Julia Child herself, used cookbooks as suggestions, as a walker uses maps for the layout of the land rather than for precise directions. And she was profoundly influenced by the memory of meals she ate growing up.

“If it isn’t good, add more butter!” my grandmother would say. But everything was always good. 

Out of her kitchen came clam chowder, roasts, steamed lobster, potatoes, peas from the garden, carrots from the cellar, home-made Parker House rolls, cottage pudding with foamy sauce. She managed the kitchen with a cook, two index-card boxes filled with typed and hand-written recipes, and a well-used copy of “The Boston Cooking School Cook Book.” My sister and I, when we stayed with our grandparents, made butter curls with a pair of wooden paddles, cooked fudge sauce, and helped wash the dishes. We watched and learned.

Our grandfather penetrated into the kitchen only to bring produce from the garden. Occasionally, his skills were required. The entire family was summoned when he flipped corned beef hash.

Standing by the stove, he took the pan, shook it, and with a deft twist sent the round patty soaring toward the ceiling, where it turned upside down and flew back down to its iron mould. It was he who always lowered unsuspecting lobsters into their steamy tombs.

The onions might well have been inspired by New England meals. And on my mother’s kitchen bookshelf was her own well-worn “Boston Cooking School Cook Book.” But the manner of making them has much in common with French cooking. There is plenty of cream. The liquid used for cooking the onions is reused for the roux.  Flavour develops through various stages of cooking and resting. Once the onions are blanched, peeled, and cooked to the tender stage, the roux is added. Cream is poured over the hot mixture and sinks into the outer layers of the onions. And as my mother wrote, “They are more tasty if they are done the day before you eat them; it gives the onions and the cream sauce a chance to meld.” 

On Thanksgiving morning, I began to make the onions. Corn pudding and pumpkin pie were to follow. Little Lottie played with her toys in a bouncer beside me. I told Siri to play chansons enfantines. 

“Les Quatres Barbus,” I suggested. “Lucienne Vernay!”

“Jenny on the Block,” Siri responded. Lottie, seven months old, stared at me with round inquisitive eyes. We tried again. A rap song with very bad words. Her father’s stern accents, coming from his office upstairs, called Siri to order.

“Meunier, tu dors!” sang Les Quatres Barbus, the “four bearded ones,” with the sweet voice of Madame Vernay joining in. 

“Miller, you are sleeping!”

This is a dangerous mistake. In the days of wind-driven mills, there was always a risk that sparks from the grindstones would ignite airborne particles of flour and burn down the mill. The windmill had to be kept at a measured pace.

Lottie bounced along to the jolly rhythm. But the wheels of the mill began to spin ever faster, and the quartet sang out in alarm.

“Ton moulin, ton moulin va trop vite, 
Ton moulin, ton moulin va trop fort.”

Your mill, your mill goes too fast,
Your mill, your mill is out of control!”

They sang faster and faster, imitating the whizzing sails of the mill.

Lottie leapt up and down with growing excitement. Her eyes glittered. Surrounded by piles of wet, blanched onions, I wondered if I’d better unplug Siri before the baby shot out of her seat. 

“Meunier, ton travail est perdu!”

”Miller, your work is for nought!” warned the singers.

Abruptly, the song ended.

“Promenons-nous dans les bois,” began the Quatre Barbus. “Let us walk in the woods, whilst the wolf is away.” 

Of course, the wolf is most certainly in the woods, not away. But Lottie, blissful in the innocence of babyhood, bounced contentedly to the comptine, like generations of French children before her.

Watercolor sketch for a mural in a nursery school on the theme of "Chansons infantines," 1933, by the artist Jules Zingg. Collections Musées de Paris 

I hadn’t had time to look for grelots, France’s equivalent for pearl onions, before leaving Normandy. Unlike the common domesticated onion, Allium cepa, pearl onions are small, round, white and a member of the leek family, Allium ampeloprasum. 

Luckily, our part-time kitchen gardener, Monsieur Damien, had harvested the onion crop before the bulbs had completely matured. Or perhaps he had planted seeds instead of bulbs. The onions were perfectly formed, just very small.

“C’est Damien,” regretted our neighbor, who takes a warm interest in the potager and its surpluses. “Toujours fini avant même de commencer.” 

That indeed is Damien, always finished before he begins, as the expression has it. In his habitual rush, he had planted and harvested hundreds of onions.

None were grelots, though. We left Normandy with a basket of our miniature Allium cepaharvest, both the yellow and red varieties, and eggs from the poulailler.

A basket of onions from the potager accompanied us to Ireland.

Lottie had been carried away to have a nap by the time the painstaking work of scalding the tiny onions to loosen their skins, cooling them, peeling them, and carefully cooking them to the tender but not mushy stage was finished. The roux was made; cream glistened on the translucent bulbs.

I had a few moments to mix up the pie crust. Then, little Owen, age two and a half, arrived from an activity called “Zenden,” wearing his craft project on his head. It was, appropriately, a crown. For as I write, today (Sunday) is the feast of Christ the King

Intensely interested in the tools and techniques being deployed on edible objects, Owen climbed up on a stool next to me to help. In the excitement, his little hands trembled like hummingbird wings. He wanted to stir. I held onto the bowl, while he wielded a wooden spoon in each hand. Amazed, he watched me crack the eggs one by one. Then it was time to sprinkle in the spices. Owen seized the cinnamon and applied it with gusto. Rolling out the pastry was even more satisfying. He rushed to the playroom and reappeared with his own tiny rolling pin. With intent concentration, he worked away on a miniature ball of dough.

The children were fast asleep by the time we sat down to Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps windmills and wolves, rolling pins and spice danced in their dreams.

It was a memorable feast for us as well, our Irish Thanksgiving.

In end, Monsieur desisted from his threatened blessing. Owen and Lottie’s father gave thanks instead.

The rouleau de dinde was very good. The corn pudding, with its Irish corn, was crunchier than what we were used to, but we all agreed it was just fine. The creamed onions, despite not being direct relatives of the leek, were as tasty as ever. And the chutney was delicious. 

“It’s from Julia Child,” my daughter-in-law told me. A new classic for our own table next year, I told Monsieur. He agreed. Perhaps my mother’s spirit nodded approvingly, too.

We ended our meal with pumpkin pie. It’s a good recipe from the updated “Boston Cooking School.” Perhaps thanks to Owen’s stirring, rolling and dose of cinnamon, it tasted even better than usual.

Silently, we each gave our blessing for this day and this time together. And to a new tradition, not entirely our own, but with something of us and of generations before to give to Owen and Lottie and their family. And for something new — that chutney! — to add to our own table next year.
 

          A bientôt, au château,
 

Elisabeth                 

Below: A new discovery for Thanksgiving, from an old, familiar cook who loved the flavors of France.