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A Thanksgiving Despite All Odds

November 28th, 2008

Thanksgiving Table

Bangkok, Thailand – As I was getting ready for a Thanksgiving dinner a few hours away, I received an e-mail from the hostess, an employee at an international organization, saying, “we have just received indication that there has been an advance of the military to the airport. this means that a coup is likely – not imminent… but something may occur tonight.” The day before thousands of protestors for the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) had shut down Bangkok’s major airport, Suvarnabhumi, and now talk of a coup and the government declaring a state of emergency were swirling around the city.

No matter though. I was still going to Thanksgiving and it wasn’t out of machismo or stupidity (maybe). Though the images of Bangkok’s protests projected around the world seem to large, the truth is that this year’s protests and violence have been localized in out-of-the-way areas with little effect on the daily lives of most outside the tourist industry. Plus I had already gone through the hoops of cooking western food in southeast asia and I wasn’t going to sit at home eating it myself.

The day before Thanksgiving still unsure of my dishes I decided to swing through Gourmet Market at upscale mall Siam Paragon to see what they had available. It proved to be an exasperating exercise. Bangkok’s fanciest western market had no kosher salt or plain sea salt (only iodized), no vegetable shortening, the cream was ultra-pasteurized, the flour questionable and the prices were astronomical. I went home to look at recipes and regroup.

Beyond hard-to-find ingredients, I was also without my normal set of kitchen, equipment or staples. The kitchen in the apartment I’m staying in consisted of a refrigerator and a sink, no heating implements to speak of, not even a hot plate. So, I asked to cook in another friend’s apartment, the Journalist, where there was actually an oven (a real rarity in Bangkok). I had to pick recipes that were very simple to prepare and had ingredients I could find in Thailand that meant no fresh cranberries, pecans, north American pumpkins, plus apples here are mealy. Still, I’ve been making pies for about the past 15 Thanksgivings and the fact that I didn’t have a food processor, pie plate or a rolling pin wasn’t going to stop me this year. At the very least, I could finagle a free-form pie, a galette, which would cut out the pie plate issue.

Last year, I made Dorie Greenspan’s Cranberry-Lime Galette so I started poking around on her site for another recipe. Instead I found a recipe for Sweet and Spicy Pecans. I haven’t seen pecans around, but cashews are grown in the region and delicious so I was pretty sure I could substitute one. Now I needed to figure out my assigned dish – an appetizer or snack – and settled on Dean Fearing’s Texas Smoked Salmon Tartare from Food & Wine. I was a little worried about finding anchovies and capers in the market, but figured I could deal with it later. Finally, I figured I would make a mango galette with butter-only crust since I couldn’t find shortening and mangoes, unlike apples and pears, are a local fruit. I couldn’t find trust-worthy recipe for a mango galette recipe anywhere and I hoped there wasn’t a reason for that (would the mangoes leach too much liquid and destroy the bottom crust during cooking?). I figured I would just use a standard galette dough recipe, add some sliced mangoes and hope for the best. David Lebovitz’s dough recipe in Fine Cooking seemed to fit the bill.

The next day at Gourmet Market I found most of my ingredients with the exception of cayenne, which I would have to omit from the sweet and spicy cashews. I also found vegetable shortening, which I no longer needed, and measuring cups, which I still needed. I gathered, paid the ungodly total at the register and cabbed it over to the Journalist’s oven-equipped apartment on Sarasin.

The cashews proved to be a snap, as expected, and delicious even though I cheated on the recipe a bit by spreading handfuls of the seasoned cashews onto the baking sheet, instead of placing the nuts one-by-one per Dorie’s instructions. The smoked salmon tartare was nearly as easy. Although I roasted the garlic, for the garlic paste, to a crisp on the first go around and had to check earlier on the remaining. Also, it turned out that I had picked up French green peppercorns in vinegar instead of capers, but they were briny and had a little pepper punch so I threw them in anyway, at first withholding the chopped green chile in case there was too much heat, then adding it in after tasting.

Now the big challenge: the mango galette. Without a food processor or pastry brush and bruising memories of attempting a pie dough once with two knives, I ended up making the dough with my fingers, like a biscuit dough. I chilled all the ingredients in the freezer and then sat on the floor rubbing the flour mixture and butter together in a baking dish, there was no bowl available, while the Journalist laughed at me from the couch. I let the dough chill well over the hour minimum and then with the Journalist’s ingenious idea to use a wine bottle as a rolling pin I rolled out the dough to about 1/8 inch between two pieces of wax paper so that it wouldn’t stick to the wine label. The dough was chilled again while I sliced up the mangoes and then brushed with some whipped egg white in the hopes of protecting the bottom from sogginess. I sprinkled on some brown sugar for kicks, layered on the mango slices, sprinkled sugar on the crust and slipped it in the oven at 175 C, which Google tells me is about 350 F, and pulled it out when the crust was golden brown. It wasn’t the prettiest pie I’d ever seen, possibly the ugliest I’ve ever made with a hastily shaped crust and slightly browned mango slices, but it was potentially tasty so I swallowed my pride and packed it up.

Arriving at Thanksgiving dinner, I found I wasn’t the only one who had to make adjustments. Without an oven, our hosts had cooked a turkey roulade on the stovetop, and finding that the sweet potatoes in Thailand were much too fibrous they had to ditch their sweet potato gnocchi in favor of plain potato gnocchi. Despite our hostess’s fair warning, everyone showed up with a few add-ons of stranded travelers whose flights had been cancelled, and with 2 Kiwis, 2 Scandinavians, 3 Italians, 1 Korean and 1 Brit in attendance, the 3 Americans were well-outnumbered on this holiday. So, how did the food turn out? Dorie’s spiced nuts were pronounced “addictive,” Dean Fearing’s tartare was a hit and David Lebovitz’s crust was flaky and tender. Above that, the company fabulous, the wine free flowing and we stayed well past midnight even though it wasn’t a holiday in Thailand.