Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Spice up your Thanksgiving
We set out to brighten the rich, bland flavors
You probably think your Thanksgiving meal has everything it needs. Don’t you feel sometimes as though the table would buckle if you added even a single additional plate? But take a look closely at all the dishes, and odds are high you won’t find much spice or acid. Instead, it’s a feast bathed in butter and slicked with gravy. The most assertive ingredient is black pepper. Which is a bit odd for me personally, considering how spice and acid find their way into most of my meals on the other 364 days of the year.
I’m not the only one. In a recent episode of “Salt Fat Acid Heat” on Netflix, chef and author Samin Nosrat explains how confused she was at her first Thanksgiving meal. Her parents were from Iran, where acid plays a crucial role. Yet at the Thanksgiving table of a college friend, it didn’t seem that important. “There was hardly anything acidic to cut through the richness of all the food,” Nosrat says.
I began to wonder, “Could I brighten up Thanksgiving?”
Sure, you could make a case for the tartness in cranberry sauce, but often it’s so sweet, it might as well be a dessert. And that’s if it’s not neglected altogether.
I roasted a turkey breast and started sampling sauces. Things started off well. Because turkey meat is so mild, you can douse it with just about any spicy or acidic sauce and good things happen. A simple lemon vinaigrette adds a sunny brightness. Chimichurri adds an herbladen freshness. Sure, a hot sauce like Sriracha overpowers the delicate meat, but Frank’s and Tabasco enliven each bite without obliterating the bird’s natural flavor.
With these early successes, I dove off the deep end and tried some sauces that would truly make the grandma in that Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting (“Freedom from Want”) blush.
Ever tried nuoc cham on turkey? The common Vietnamese sauce, made with lime, sugar, chiles and a healthy splash of funky fish sauce, adds tongue-tingling fireworks to the meat. The same can be said for chermoula, a North African condiment that gets its green hue from finely chopped parsley and cilantro, along with a punch of complexity from cumin and Aleppo chiles. A Turkish yogurt and pomegranate seed sauce added a pleasing tang and pop of acidity.
Had I just hacked Thanksgiving? To check, I whipped up a practice version of the whole meal, complete with mashed potatoes and stuffing. And that’s precisely when my plan went off the rails. Turns out, spicy and acidic sauces don’t play well with traditional Thanksgiving sides. That lemon vinaigrette gets lost in the mashed potatoes, and the nuoc cham clashes with the stuffing.
In all, I tried a dozen different sauces, and none
of them worked with the whole meal.
Flush with failure, I flung open the fridge to see if there was any spicy or acidic thing I’d forgotten.
Turns out, there was one: giardiniera. For some inexplicable reason, the Italian mix of pickled vegetables and chiles loves Thanksgiving. It adds a friendly slap of spice and a thrilling shock of acid without stepping on the toes of the traditional Thanksgiving crew. Who knew?
It was news to Jim Graziano, whose family has run J.P. Graziano Grocery, an Italian importer and beloved deli in Chicago, since 1937. “To be dead honest, for Thanksgiving, we play it by the book,” Graziano says. He adds that his family often adds a pasta course before the traditional menu, but he had never thought about using some of his family’s excellent giardiniera for the meal.
Just a heads-up. I’m referring to the kind of giardiniera that is olive oilbased, not vinegar-based, and has a lot of chiles in the mix.
You probably already have a great Thanksgiving turkey recipe. But if you’re in need, here’s just about the most basic one imaginable. (Personally, I think drybrining is tops, but that requires time.) Just remember to bust out the jar of giardiniera when the turkey hits the table.