Connections: Talking Turkey
I remember the first Thanksgiving in Amagansett, long ago, after I was married but before our children were born, primarily because it was my first experience cooking a goose; I’ve still got a small scar on my right thumb testifying to inexperience where goose fat was concerned.
For a number of years, when the children were small, we “gathered together” at Jimmy and Dallas Ernst’s art-filled East Hampton house on Lee Avenue, where friends were numerous and even a huge dining room table could barely hold all the dishes carried in. One particular memory of those years involves a splinter in the bare foot of my daughter, which was extracted by the great artist himself, Jimmy, with the toe delicately sanitized for the operation with gin.
As the children got older, we began to make a huge Thanksgiving party our own Rattray family ritual, with stalwart friends and guests over the years swelling the ranks so that only half of us could fit at one of two long tables while others balanced plates on their laps in the living room. At its peak, we had three or even four dozen revelers, and often the evening would end with everyone singing old standards while beating rhythm on pots and pans. I remember the year Tom Paxton sang to the children, and sometimes we played word games after dinner. What never changed was the menu — and who would do what.
We started with oysters Rattray. The boys opened oysters and Imade a green sauce using a traditional Rockefeller recipe but substituting sorrel for spinach. The turkey was always fresh, not frozen, and we usually had a sausage stuffing, getting the sausage from Villa Italian Specialties. It was always good but never 100 percent perfect. (Maybe there is no such thing.) As the group became bigger, we added ham, which had to be a Hatfield from Pennsylvania; no Smithfield for us! My daughter would insist on a goopy, molasses glaze, adding (to the pretend horror of some, but to the delight of the palate) Coca-Cola to the mix. The butcher at the old Bridgehampton market where Citarella is today would special-order the Hatfield ham for me, and he continued to do so after that I.G.A. closed and he moved to the East Hampton I.G.A.
Joanne Rabinowitz wouldn’t let anyone else mash the potatoes. She also made the lightest pumpkin mouse for dessert, year after year. Others brought Brussels sprouts or creamed onions or squash baked with honey. Bess became an expert at her great-grandmother’s chocolate sundae pie. (It isn’t really chocolate, but, in fact, a mousse of vanilla custard topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. The recipe can be found in one of the ancient Ladies Village Improvement Society cookbooks, but, like many olden-days recipes, it is extremely vague.) As the years went by, my husband, Chris, added steamed persimmon pudding. Marilyn Appel ordered the wine.
Times change. As I anticipate Thanksgiving this year, images of the tens of thousands of migrants who are fleeing poverty and war in another part of the world make it very clear how much those of us here, in the safety of East Hampton, have to be thankful for.
This will be the second year in a row that we have not been home for Thanksgiving. Sharing the day with my oldest friend and her relatives last year, in Connecticut, was a sweet holiday, and we are headed there again this month. But I can’t help missing the boisterous hubbub that Thanksgiving at our house became over the years — and the oysters, and the chocolate sundae pie, and the ham.