´óÏó´«Ã½

Happy Holiday to all my American readers and hope the rest of you have some reason to give thanks today.

Until I got to the States I hadn't realised just what a big deal this was: bigger than Christmas, without the presents, the carols, baubles, the tree and the nativity, the focus is unashamedly on food and family.

Not for nothing is it also called Turkey Day, a nod no doubt towards its real origin, , the traditional English festival giving thanks for the harvest (and giving a goose to your landlord, which seems sort of the wrong way round).

I've repeatedly seen Thanksgiving called the quintessentially American feast. It is, in more ways than one. The by-word of modern chefs all over the rest of the world is principle "fait simple": keep it simple, let the main ingredients' purity and flavour speak for themselves. In Escoffier's case, through the medium of lots of butter.

In America less is not more, but simply less. Why have one flavour when you can have 50? Every sandwich shop establishes the principle that there's nothing wrong with a chicken sandwich that blue cheese, bacon, mayonnaise, mustard, fried onions and a bit more cheese cannot put right.

Thanksgiving is the ultimate expression of this philosophy. Everywhere I am confronted by a recipes of the wildest, heaviest fantasy - curried creamed onions; glazed sweet potatoes with marshmallow; turkey with oyster gravy (with whole oysters); green beans in mushroom soup sauce; iced cranberry relish with raw onion. Never has a cooking column been so misnamed as the New York Times' "the minimalist" with its suggestion for sliced Brussels sprouts acting as the bread in a sandwich of ham, - each dish an overwhelming cacophony of flavours that crowd together on a single table of sensory overload.

It is perhaps a fitting paean to bounty, and an immigrant mixture of foods and culinary styles. I am not sure what it does to the digestive system.

What of course Thanksgiving has going for it, just like Christmas, is annual repetition from an early age. Americans feel very emotional about some of these melanges just because of what they evoke. I am sure that if, once a year, for the first 12 impressionable years of life, you get to cuddle up with the dog in front of an open fire, be spoilt by grandparents, watch lots of TV, go to bed late and happy, and all this is accompanied by jellied eels in cherry custard then this food too would serve as a to rock your heart.

But before you start throwing pumpkin pies, I am not really having a pop at my new home. I just am suspicious of doing it the way it has always been done. As much as the spicy smells of Christmas evoke a very happy childhood for me, I still got so fed up with cooking a traditional Christmas dinner that some years back I revolted. Given that Christmas was the one time that one was excepted to spend time cooking, it seemed (for someone who likes cooking) a bit of a wasted opportunity to spend ages over an essentially boring meal, that no-one else in the family was particularly enthusiastic about either.

So for a couple of years we had Chinese, Thai and Malaysian food and enjoyed it a lot more than turkey and Brussels sprouts.

But I must admit to being rather excited by Thanksgiving. So what to do about my fear of being overwhelmed by all those flavours? It'll be an evening meal as I have to be alert during the day in case pardoned by the president is revealed by Mr Obama's opponents to be an enemy of the state.

But then I will be offering a bit of not so much deconstruction as simple separation - the first course: curried squash and carrots in coconut pumpkin sauce (I must start experimenting as soon as I have filed this) with James Beard's followed by turkey stuffed a la Julia Child with , sweet corn and potatoes - roast or mash, I haven't decided yet - and a British touch to the mix: Yorkshire pudding. Followed by another great American tradition: the guests bring dessert. A very happy Thanksgiving to you all.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?