After the initial wave of panic passes, I think it’s time to
throw a party. If you think that can’t happen, it happened to my family this
past Thanksgiving. I had already spent
about two months planning a special 50th Birthday event for my twin
brother and me for the Saturday after Thanksgiving so I hadn’t planned on
Thanksgiving, too.
Since my cousin and I were “in charge” of managing
Thanksgiving for family coming in from out of town, the first thing I did when
I heard the news was to say “No problem, we’ll have it at my place.” Now before
you think I live in this palatial estate, I live in a little two bedroom condo.
But what I’ve learned over the years is that people aren’t coming for the
space, they’re coming for the food and the company.
My experiences hosting several of my Monday’s @ Mark’s
events where upwards of 30 people came showed me that you don’t need a big
space to entertain.
The good news is that the house was clean in anticipation of
my parents staying with me and hosting the party on Saturday. But even if it wasn’t a little straightening
here and there and “it’s all good!” Step
two was to check the wine cabinet. Now
I’ve been accused of being a wine snob but it’s not really true. I just know
what I like and have some really fantastic wines.
For Thanksgiving, I decided that, for the red wine drinkers,
I would be serving Carignane and Grenache.
Over the last several years, I’ve been expanding my wine palate. I started out pretty much a Cabernet or
Merlot drinker but found myself drifting – with the help of my friends at
Seghesio Family Vineyards – migrating to Zinfandels. Seghesio has a lot of really great Zins. And they’re really versatile.
This past year they came out with their own Carignane for
the first time in many years. They’ve
been using it in their blending but not as a stand-alone. I was blown away. Then I picked up some Carigane from the Frick
winery. I also had a couple of bottles
of Seghesio’s Grenache as well as a Grenache from their sister winery, Chamisal
Vineyards.
With the wine selected, step two was to work out the
menu. Between everyone, it was decided I
would handle the turkey, we’d buy the pumpkin pie from Sam’s, my cousin would
handle the side dishes and my sister-in-law would handle the cranberry salad.
The last thing I ever want is to run out of food and, unfortunately, I could
only find a smallish turkey.
Solved the problem by getting two 10 pound turkeys. Not only would they cook faster than a bigger
bird, I would do one in the oven and one in the smoker. I love smoked foods. To pump up the difficulty factor I decided to
do some oysters on the grill. With the
proliferation of cooking sites on the internet finding recipes wasn’t a
problem.
Nor was finding the time as luckily I had planned to take
vacation the whole week. As it turns out
I needed every single minute. As an
aside, when you’re smoking a turkey in Chicago in November, you have to count
on a few more hours than you would, say in July. But here’s the good news . . .
with enough good wine people don’t really care that much about the timing of
the food.
Perhaps the most challenging part of the whole cooking
experience was opening the oysters. I
had never done that before and it took me a few oysters (and a little blood)
before I realized that the way you open the oyster is through the hinge. Everything went much easier after that.
Everyone had a great time.
I don’t think anyone felt cheated by not having the original
Thanksgiving dinner. And reflecting over a glass (or two) of Seghesio’s
Dionigia Port, I realized that it isn’t about the food. Everything turned out fantastic. Or even the
wine. Which, by the way, if you haven’t
ventured beyond the old standby’s, I’d recommend you give both a Grenache and
Carignane a try. They’re well worth the travel beyond the ordinary.
At the end of the day, it’s about the company. It’s about a house filled with laughter and
joy even amidst the detours of life. That’s what Monday’s @ Mark’s is all
about.
No comments:
Post a Comment