Talking Turkey

Talking Turkey

A caterer’s guide to keeping calm while cooking the bird.

Despite Thanksgiving’s current status as a non-denominational food orgy with football, it can still be quite stressful. Admittedly, there is the whole giving thanks part, but that’s not going to give you indigestion. Where are you going? Who’s invited? Who’s not? Is it okay to pass on your Aunt Ethel’s creamed Brussels sprouts this year? These and other legit concerns are enough to turn the entire day into one big Maalox moment. With the holiday just around the corner, I turned to a man who puts on parties for a living, Berkeley caterer Hugh Groman, for some sound advice on how to navigate the often-treacherous Thanksgiving waters. A regular on ABC-7’s “The View From the Bay,” Groman’s game plan for turkey day is to relax and keep entertaining plans simple. Oh, and try not to pass out at the dining room table in front of your Aunt Ethel.

Paul Kilduff: Thanksgiving is coming up. That is an angst-ridden occasion for many people—does it have to be that way?

Hugh Groman: Well sure, it’s angst-ridden, I think mostly because people have family issues. And then maybe they’re nervous about cooking the big meal as well.

PK: But they’re intertwined.

HG: Exactly.

PK: Do you have any suggestions for people that might want to do something a little bit different instead of having dry turkey? What do you do? Just a lot of butter?

HG: You know brine it, if it hasn’t already been brined, which means a salt-and-sugar combination with water. You soak it overnight. If you’re buying a commercial turkey, sometimes they’re pre-brined so you don’t want to do it twice because then you’re going to get a real soft bird. But if it’s an all-natural turkey that hasn’t been brined, you brine it and there are recipes all over the Internet for that. And then another trick for making sure it’s not dry is to take it out of the fridge a few hours before you’re going to put it in the oven. So you take it out of the brine, put it on the roasting pan, let it come to room temperature for a few hours, because [that] creates a more gentle cooking situation for the bird. If it’s going from super-cold to a super-hot oven, it’s going to take a long time for that internal temperature to come up to the right temperature and meanwhile the outside of the bird is drying out.

PK: What I have always heard is if you want to have the juiciest turkey in the world, deep-fat fry that sucker.

HG: Yeah, well you know, deep frying is delicious.

PK: Have you done this?

HG: I’ve never done it. No, I’d love to. That’s a lot of oil but I am not concerned about the oil in the turkey so much as just the amount of oil required in a pot to put a turkey into. But if you overcook the turkey—even deep-frying it—it’s still going to dry out. So that’s not a sure-fire way of cooking it and to make it juicy.

PK: And there’s always the we-could-burn-the-house thing too.

HG: Yes, burn down the house, kill somebody with that. That’s some very, very serious burns.

PK: Right. So you have to basically have to do it outside?

HG: I think that sounds like a good way to do it, yeah. If you don’t have a good commercial ventilation system …

PK: Are you planning on doing that this Thanksgiving, deep-fat frying the turkey?

HG: Oh, God, no. Hopefully we’ll host Thanksgiving this year and I’m all about, “Keep it simple.”

PK: Yeah, there’s too much work.

HG: Yeah, keep it simple. Minimize the dishes. You don’t have to have 10 things. Just have turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, a green vegetable. It’s just so much more pleasant for everyone involved and then you’re not eating yourself into total exhaustion. And delegate out a few things. Somebody else can make the cranberry sauce. Somebody else can make the sweet potatoes, whatever. It should be about having a good time. One of the things I’m lucky enough to do is that for my living, I get to be creative and entertain for a living. I get to sort of satisfy that urge, so when it comes time to do my own entertaining, I don’t have anything to prove anymore. I don’t have to give it my all because this is my one chance to show everyone what I can do.

PK: So fine, if we’re invited to your house for Thanksgiving, we’ll probably be bringing a dish, is that what you’re saying?

HG: You might be, you might be, but the food will be good and we’ll have a good time.

PK: How do you get that message across about delegating? If you think of my mom, bless her soul, she still does this to this day, every last thing and I mean, she’ll maybe have me carve some turkey or something or one of my brothers but it’s really difficult to get her to want to delegate anything. Any strategies there?

HG: Well, I was going to be a therapist before I became a cook but I decided not to do that. So that’s the thing. That’s therapy.

PK: You’re not qualified to answer that question.

HG: My answer is therapy.

PK: What about your mom? Did she do every last thing?

HG: No, my mom is a real giver and she makes huge efforts to entertain people and at the same time, she doesn’t want to kill herself. She’s always been great at taking care of herself while at the same time, being very giving so I think she’s a great role model in that regard.

PK: Because it can really be misery, these holiday occasions.

HG: I think you glossed over the biggest hard part, which is figuring out where you’re going and who you’re going to be with. That’s the part that’s the most stressful.

PK: Any tips there?

HG: Stay single? Just kidding, honey. But I think it’s hard. I think it’s kind of like getting married. It’s this moment in your life where you’re forced to ask yourself, “Who’s important to me?” And it is stressful. Who are we going to invite? Who are we not going to invite? How is everyone going to feel about it? Where are things going to go?

PK: Who feels left out or victimized? It’s supposed to be this joyous occasion but you start taking sides. It almost seems as though Thanksgiving is the designated day to really overeat and it’s perfectly fine. The gluttony factor is huge there. Sounds like an hors d’oeuvre for Thanksgiving would be Maalox.

HG: Have as much as you want. I’m not telling you what to do but if you have four different desserts and you have a little piece of everything, you’re just going to be so tired. And then you have to wash all the dishes.

PK: It sounds like you want people to be bounding out of the Thanksgiving dinner ready for yoga class?

HG: No, no. It’s not nice to be full. It’s nice to be pleasantly full; it’s nice to be sleepy but it just gets to be a little intense sometimes. We’re not foie gras. We’re not fattening ourselves up for the kill here.

PK: I don’t know. You might think differently going into my family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

HG: One of my favorite quotes is from Ellen DeGeneres and she is talking about all-you-can-eat buffets, she says, “We don’t need to be eating all we can eat. We’re not bears. We’re not going to be hibernating for the winter.” I just thought that was great.

PK: But it is true and I mean, it’s a tradition and you have to psych yourself up for a Thanksgiving meal. No lunch, limited breakfast.

HG: Right, right.

PK: And then, you get there and it’s just like, you’re ravenous, right?

HG: Well there are other strategies. You’re not supposed to starve yourself all day because then your stomach shrinks. You need to keep it elastic. With little breakfast, a little lunch you’ll be able to cram down as much as you can. Maximum input.

PK: Would that be a good thing—some sort of a Thanksgiving-eating, turkey-eating contest?

HG: At the end of parties when we’re catering and we have like 50 extra cupcakes and my joke is always, “Let’s have a cupcake-eating contest.” It’s not really a good idea but it seems fun at the time when you’re tired and you’ve got 50 delicious cupcakes sitting there in front of you.

PK: The best part of Thanksgiving is the turkey sandwich the next day. Would you be in favor of just serving those on Thanksgiving? Turkey sandwiches?

HG: I like that idea. It’s a nice alternative.

PK: Thinking of alternatives, another one made famous by John Madden . . .

HG: Oh, the turducken.

PK: Three words: Tur Duck En.

HG: Right.

PK: Have you ever had one?

HG: I’ve never had one. To me, that just seems like a whole lot of work. If I really wanted to have some turkey, duck, and chicken, I could just go to the Hometown Buffet. It seems like a project. I’m sure it would be fun but I see it as one of those things you do once and then you say, “Okay, we did that.”

PK: Maybe it is a tradition for John Madden.

HG: It also seems like a food poisoning disaster waiting to happen.

PK: Why is that?

HG: Well, it’s just this dense, big, huge ball of meat. You got to cook that thing all the way through if you don’t want to have some problems.

PK: You’re not going to make your own turducken? You’re not going to buy a duck, a turkey, a hen?

HG: Oh, no, you got to make your own turducken. I mean that’s the whole point.

PK: You do it yourself?

HG: You’re not going to find anyone who’s going to make you one.

PK: You can’t go to Safeway to get the turducken?

HG: There’s no one stupid enough to sell turduckens. But you know what’ll be good? Deep-fried turducken.

PK: That sounds good. How about for a vegetarian? It would almost seem that Thanksgiving is probably one of the least vegetarian-friendly holidays in the year. How about a turkey made out of tofu?

HG: A tofurkey.

PK: Does that exist?

HG: Yeah, I had one of those once. My sister-in-law is vegetarian and we had a tofurkey but it was kind of a disaster. It didn’t really taste very good. It was gross. I’m not against tofu. I like tofu but if you don’t eat meat then you don’t eat meat.

PK: So here’s the question. Should vegetarians be sent to some island for Thanksgiving?

HG: No, no. I’m not against vegetarians at all but I think if you’re vegetarian, you’re going to have to have some delicious vegetarian meal with lots of yummy vegetables and don’t try to make it turkey because it’s not. If you don’t want to eat turkey, I support that fully. I’m totally sympathetic but there’s lots of delicious food. There’s some amazing vegetarian cookbooks. So I say, go for it.

PK: Did you tell your sister that it was not that great?

HG: No, she knew. Everyone knew. It was a disaster.

PK: Everybody knew. Well, how did she feel? Was she just devastated afterwards?

HG: No, she’s not usually all that hungry anyway.

PK: Thanksgiving is actually one of the worst days for people gumming up their garbage disposals with God knows what and not separating out—just throwing everything in the garbage. I’ve been to some green-building conferences where they actually have stationed at the garbage receptacles little garbage Nazis …

HG: They’re not Nazis. They have to be there. Honestly, that’s what I tell people they have to do. If you want the waste system to happen successfully where everything goes where it’s supposed to, it has to be personed by somebody…

PK: You need a monitor.

HG: Yeah, you have to have a monitor because otherwise, you’ll fail. Once you have a few of the wrong things in the wrong bin, inevitably, that stuff is all going to go into the landfill.

PK: And then that’s going to create highly poisonous methane gas and…

HG: Yeah, whatever. I mean, I don’t want to think about it too much because it’s depressing but yes, you have to have someone keeping an eye on it.

PK: How do you approach somebody, pre-Thanksgiving, “Jim, how’s it going? Hey look, this Thanksgiving, I’d like you to monitor the garbage. That’s how much I think of you.”

HG: One of the things I enjoy is through my business, it’s really actually an opportunity to help raise consciousness. We say, okay, let’s plan the system for how we’re going to deal with the garbage, assuming it’s like one of those really big events where there’s hundreds of people and there’s lots of disposable, biodegradable plates and cups. All of the people at the event are saying, “Oh look, they have this whole set-up.” It’s a little opportunity to just give people a small kick in the pants.

PK: This may be a little extreme but what about having some kind of a Thanksgiving feast where you had cornstarch utensils, you had cardboard, recycled paper plates? [What if] there were no glasses and you basically just took everything in some recyclable tablecloth and folded that up and put that like Santa Claus over your shoulder and just threw that in the green bin?

HG: You could do that with a biodegradable paper tablecloth . . .

PK: Would you advocate that? Would that be like the ultimate Thanksgiving feast?

HG: I don’t think that’s the ultimate. I think maybe using plates and glasses is actually better although who knows? A tiny impact of the water used to wash the plates; it’s honestly hard to say. Honestly, the most environmental thing you can do is just put yourself in the compost bin.

PK: How about just eating with your hands?

HG: I think eating with your hands is actually a great idea.

PK: This comes up every Thanksgiving. People say, “Well, you can go to Whole Foods and they’ll do the whole thing for a hundred bucks!” And then everybody pauses and they go, “Oh, but that’s cheating. You’re getting off scot-free there.” How do you feel about that?

HG: A lot of people go to Whole Foods and honestly, whatever works to get you through the day. If you don’t want to cook, go to Whole Foods. I mean, come on. Why should we have to suffer all the time? It gets back to the whole concept of “should.”

PK: What is Hugh Groman going to be bringing to Thanksgiving? Have you thought about it?

HG: Oh, whatever my husband makes because he actually is a really great cook.

PK: He’s a better cook than you are.

HG: Well, like I say, he’s a better cook than me but he’s certainly more prolific. He cooks at home and I’m just working constantly so I don’t have a chance. But I do contribute to Thanksgiving and I like to do my stuffing with cornbread and chicken sausage and apples and carrots and onions and lots of half-and-half and eggs and it’s really good. Oh, and yeah, the chicken sausage I mentioned and rosemary and thyme. That’s good. And I love cranberry-apple sauce and sweet-potato puree with brown sugar and heavy cream and butter and salt and pepper, that’s good.

PK: That sounds good.

HG: And I make this gravy with lots of white wine and herbs and chicken broth, I’m a pretty good cook.

PK: I don’t know if this is making a comeback —the marshmallow sauce on the . . .

HG: Oh, oh trauma. To me, that’s just gross. I have a little bit of a thing with orange vegetables. I love them, I love sweet potatoes, I love carrots but there’s something about that beta-carotene flavor that kind of is a little borderline. You eat too much of that, it makes you a little queasy. Then they’re really sweet and then to add the sweet marshmallows which are just too sweet already, that dish always freaked me out growing up. My grandfather [and grandmother], I remember it was my step-grandfather, rest in peace, they forced me to have that sweet potato. I was visiting them in Florida and I remember it was this whole big drama where kids were like, “No, I don’t want to eat it!” And the grandparents make you eat it then I went and sulked in my bedroom.

PK: You were forced to eat…

HG: I was forced to eat sweet potatoes and marshmallows. I just think it’s gross but that’s just my opinion. A lot of people like it. If you like it, go for it. God bless.

PK: It’s a once-a-year thing.

HG: Sweet potatoes are already sweet. You’re not setting off the sweetness of the sweet potatoes by using marshmallows. You’re just overdoing it.

PK: What’s the other classic? The fried onion that’s on top of the . . .

HG: Oh, yeah, green beans and almonds.

PK: Are you a fan of that one?

HG: It’s a nice theory but those canned green beans are just way too water-logged and soggy. I can’t do that.

PK: Well what if you use fresh greens?

HG: Oh, you can do that. Yeah, Cook’s Illustrated has great cookbooks that are compilations of their recipes and they’ve done extensive testing to take a dish and say, “What would be the ideal version of this dish using a more contemporary aesthetic, freshness, and quality?” I think they have a recipe for that and it’s probably pretty good, I would imagine. I mean, why not?

PK: Speaking of stuff that comes out of a can, I have no problem with the cranberry sauce straight out of a can.

HG: In the shape of a can?

PK: In the shape of the can. It still looks like the can. I kind of actually prefer that. Is there something wrong with me?

HG: There probably is something wrong with you because there’s something wrong with everybody.

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Suggestions? Please email Kilduff at thekildufffile@themonthly.com.
See more of what he is up to at http://thekilduff-file.blogspot.com.


Hugh Groman Vital Stats

Age: 38

Birthplace: Oakland, CA

Astrological sign: Pisces

Planet you’d emigrate to: It hasn’t been discovered yet. Something with an atmosphere and water ideally.

Extinct animal I’d like to be reincarnated as: None. I wouldn’t have anyone to socialize with.

Website: www.hughgromancatering.com

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