carve
There are a number of basic guy skills – driving stick, holding liquor, hailing cabs, etc. – that any competent male need develop at some point in his life. Granted, some of those skills tend to atrophy a bit over years of disuse (as the clutch of my brother’s car attests after each of my visits). But, like electro-shock therapy, all fall more or less into the ‘get it once, get it for life’ category.
Each, I would contend, is crucial. Which is why, at Thanksgivings past, I’ve always been painfully aware of one such talent I never had the chance to develop: carving a turkey.
In large part, the lack is due to celebrating Thanksgiving, year in and year out, at my parents home in California. There, my father, turkey-carver extraordinare, takes great joy holding the bird-slicing helm. And, to be fair, it’s a well deserved post, a place where years of practice come together with his surgical profession and an outsized collection of carving accouterment: from carving knives and forks of all makes and sizes, to a professional chef’s jacket donned solely for the occasion. Certainly, watching him work has given me a vague sense of the movements required to beautifully de-bone, but, as in so much of life, I’d long suspected that watching and doing were worlds apart.
Over the years, as the number of turkey-day attendees grew steadily, my parents would cook up successively larger and larger birds. This year, however, the combination of an all-time eater high, and the Jewish cultural ‘let’s cook at least three or four times as much as we could possibly eat’ tradition, forced them to divide and conquer. This year, we roasted twin turkeys.
My father, recognizing the double-birding as a chance to pass along Newman carving finesse as the start of a grand culinary tradition, had me carve the second. In a play-by-play master class, he stood across the kitchen counter, directing me from drumstick de-jointing and dark meat chunking through breast slicing and wishbone removal. And, while I wouldn’t claim to be ready for cooking channel prime time, years of observing and his live instruction allowed me to make fairly fine work of our de-feathered friend.
Now, placed bird-side, Wusthof in hand, I’m sure I could carve a turkey – at least as well as I could change a car tire or avoid asking for directions when lost on a long road trip. Another guy competency conquered with sense of manhood unscathed. Someone get me a beer.
