I’ve confessed before that my favorite part of Thanksgiving is the leftover turkey sandwich. After burning through all that cooking energy, and surviving peril-fraught gavotte with relatives and siblings and in-laws, I like walking into the kitchen alone, and making a nice turkey sandwich. It is a total WASP sandwich – with none of the embellishments that my son, the Tall One, enjoys. Give me two slices of Pepperidge Farm white bread, a small swipe of mayonnaise, and a scattering of salt and pepper. A little handful of Ruffles potato chips and the last dregs of the Beaujolais. Yumsters. It is as enjoyable to assemble and devour as any comfort food that someone else could lovingly prepare. It never disappoints. It is bland and consistent.
The Tall One trowels anything that been on the dining room table onto his leftovers sandwich. He has even been known to smush a crescent roll between the slices of bread, where it pads out the turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, pickles, limp lettuce leaves, a couple of green beans and a generous schmear of mashed potato. I don’t think he has ever added after-dinner mints or pumpkin pie slivers, but he is young and hungry and has a passion for out-doing himself every year. Excelsior, Tall One!
We have always been a mashed potato family at Thanksgiving. We have looked askance at sweet potatoes, except as pie ingredients. But this year our former nuclear family is scattered. The Tall One is spending the holiday with his new in-laws, where he is sure to astound and amaze with his capacity to consume Pilgrim Sandwiches. We are traveling to visit the Pouting Princess, who will be cooking her first Thanksgiving dinner. She is a former vegetarian and pescatarian, and now consumes many seeds. It will be a memorable meal.
We all lovingly remember her first Thanksgiving coming home from college. She was newly vegetarian – not yet vegan, so we tried to be sensitive. We did not use chicken broth when we made the mashed potatoes. I can’t recall all the restrictions, but I am pretty sure we were allowed to use milk and butter in the mashing process. Imagine our surprise, then, when we sat down at the table, crammed with heirloom silver and wine bottles and candles and extra elbows, as we gazed with amazement as she poured a steaming lake of turkey gravy into her Richard Dreyfuss-inspired mountain of mashed potatoes. Yes, Thanksgiving stories like that are golden memories that we love to recall year after year.
Mashed potatoes are good hot the first time around, lukewarm on sandwiches, and reheated as potato pancakes on Saturday morning.These mashed potatoes from Bon Appétit can be prepared the night before Thanksgiving. It is always a good bet to have one steaming hot dish squared away before plunging into the kitchen battlefield. Another thing these potatoes have going for them is that you do NOT have to peel them. If you have a potato ricer. Quick – get on line with Amazon right now! Though adding garlic is something we won’t do – we are purists, but you might be more open-minded than we are. Go for it. We are the Blandings. https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/ultra-creamy-mashed-potatoes
Another recipe calling for a ricer – yet insisting that you peel first – is from our friends at Food52. To them, the mashed potatoes are a canvas on which you can paint dreams of lusciousness. Surely those pipe dreams are better spent on dessert? https://food52.com/blog/11703-how-to-make-mashed-potatoes-without-a-recipe It is a good recipe to re-read in case you are separated from your smartphone and need to improvise making the potatoes to prove to your Aunt Regina that you are indeed a grown up, and know how to do more than order take out. As I said, Thanksgiving can be fraught.
If you have your own vegan coming home from college this year, try this recipe: https://minimalistbaker.com/the-best-damn-vegan-mashed-potatoes/
A long time ago, when my brother was the family mashed potato person, he peeled the potatoes, quartered them, and cooked them in boiling water until tender. The he dropped the cooked potatoes into a big yellow ware bowl, added several tablespoons of butter, and mashed them with the electric hand mixer. Once the biggest lumps were smashed he would pour in a dribble of fresh whole milk, a little at a time, mixing at a low speed until all the lumps disappeared. He was the mashed potato whisperer. Milk, butter, salt and pepper and potatoes. Simple, bland, delicious. No garlic. No potato ricer. Classic stuff.
“What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”
― A.A. Milne
Other potato ideas from Bon Appétit: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/slideshow/thanksgiving-mashed-potatoes
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ3fjQa5Hls
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