Every Thanksgiving, I'd walk in through Warren's garage door and get hammered by the smell of roast turkey, chicken cacciatore, biscuits, boudin balls, and of course Mrs. Neilson's green bean casserole with fried onions on top. That was her dish. I remember seeing it come out of the oven with golden fried bits of onions on top, covering a stack of fresh green beans mixed in with cream of mushroom. It was a simple dish. Mrs. Neilson even used canned cream of mushroom, but I'd never had green bean casserole so it was a revelation. I took a plate home to my mom that had a little sample of everything on it.
"Mom, look, it's Thanksgiving!"
"Oh, I don't want American food."
"Try it! It's really good! I promise."
"No, no, no, American food makes me feel funny. Too much salt and cream."
"Mom, come on, you are missing out! I ate it and it's awesome."
Whenever I brought home American artifacts to share with my mom, she'd shut me down. My parents were not the type to humor their kids; they always kept it too real. It literally took three Thanksgivings as Warren's neighbor for my mom to finally try the green bean casserole I brought home every year.
She was sitting at the kitchen table just drinking tea so I put the plate down and she picked around the green beans with her chopsticks. With a few swift moves, she transferred the green beans to her bowl and lifted them to her mouth, then stopped. She turned them around in her chopsticks, took a whiff, glanced one more time as if to find flaws, and then bit carefully. I saw her eyes widen like Scratchy getting shocked by Itchy. It was a cartoon within a cartoon, Thanksgiving within Thanksgiving moment as my mom experienced New Orleans in a ceramic bowl with edges adorned by Chinese key.
"Oh! Oh! Oh my God! What is this?"
"I told you! Green bean casserole."
"Casser- who?"
"Casserole, Mom. Like when Cantonese people put stuff in clay pots. That's a casserole."
"What's it mean, though?"
"I dunno, it's just casserole."
"We need more! How do we make this casserole?"
"I don't know, I'll call Warren."
Later that day, Warren came over with a huge dish of green bean casserole for my mom. He was so happy she liked it since she was so picky most of the time. For the first time, my mom was eating food from a non-Chinese home and she loved it. Who would have known it would be Mrs. Neilson's green bean casserole?
From that first Thanksgiving in 1998, I started cooking at our house every Christmas and Thanksgiving. I read cookbooks, talked to Warren's mom, and watched a lot of Food Network. It's embarrassing, but I would watch every single Food Network show leading up to Thanksgiving. Most of the year, I never watched the station, but I was determined to put together an all-American Thanksgiving.
I watched Emeril one year make an infused butter, let it cool, then he'd get under the turkey skin and spread the butter between the meat and skin. With a little seasoning salt on top, he'd wrap it in foil and send it to the oven. The turkey was flavorful, the skin was insane, but the white meat was still a bit dry. Plus, the flavor wasn't in the meat. It was on top of it. I liked how braised meat took on the flavors throughout every piece inside out. Somehow, some way, I needed to get up in the guts.
I started thinking. What about that Haitian thing where they boiled the turkey in infused water? No, it wouldn't penetrate something as big and dense as a fifteen- pound turkey. But I thought about marinating it so I went online and searched for "marinating" and "turkey." What came up was this thing called "brining." I had never heard about it before. We'd marinate proteins by letting them sit in spices, soy, rice wine, aromatics, and so on, but not usually overnight or beyond three to five hours. Brining is different because of the time spent and the higher levels of salt. The goal isn't just to get the flavors into the meat, but also to add enough salt, retain water, and in turn keep the protein moist. I tried it.
