From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
Giving Multi-Culti Thanks
In this nation of immigrants, there are many flavors to Thanksgiving.
New York--Deciding what to be thankful for this time of year isn't as easy as it sounds. Such is the view of a Bangladeshi cab driver, who introduced himself as Mr. Sarkar, a man second to none in his devotion to Thanksgiving. "Bangladeshis are the best cooks in the world, 95% of people would agree," he insists, and he wouldn't entrust his late-November rite to a Frenchman or a Brazilian. Mr. Sarkar is nonetheless having trouble deciding which is better, the blessings of his life in Queens or his sister's cooking, which comes trailing clouds of glory from life back home in Dhaka.
She'll be making the family's turkey dinner at her home in Brooklyn on Thursday--using mustard oil and chilies to enliven the bland bird--and Mr. Sarkar can hardly wait. He sees himself and his fellow immigrants as modern-day pilgrims (a word of many syllables, as he pronounces it, with a certain musical flourish)--pilgrims in a new land trading culinary insights with the natives.
"The Indians gave corn to you, now you give turkey to us. We love this holiday."
Like Independence Day, Thanksgiving has always had the aura of an inclusive holiday, open to Americans of all religions. Anyone wanting testimony to that fact has only to look at the Key Food supermarket in Jackson Heights, Queens, a neighborhood shared by South Asians, Koreans, Ecuadorians and dozens of other immigrant groups, and a store amply stocked, this week, with pumpkin pies, frozen Butterballs and ads for specials on cranberry sauce. Under the elevated train line along Roosevelt Avenue, cardboard turkeys and dried corncobs decorate storefront windows.
Even so, many relatively new Americans hold fast to their own cooking methods and seasonings, which means that in New York, and particularly in the boroughs apart from Manhattan, the traditional turkey will become a tabula rasa for an infinite variety of cultural and herbal influences.
Regular customers of Brawta, a Jamaican restaurant in Brooklyn, will have to cook their own dinners at home (the place will be closed), but jerk turkey will be an alternative to anemic Anglo-Saxon flavors in many Caribbean kitchens. In New Jersey, a Peruvian grandmother of my acquaintance will use salt, garlic, cumin, rosemary and white wine to enhance a turkey stuffed with rice, walnuts, parsley and chopped gizzards, while Koreans in Queens might serve a biting kimchi, a highly spiced cabbage dish, with the bird.
At the Jackson Diner, a popular Indian restaurant in Jackson Heights, turkeys, steeped for days in curry spices, will be served tandoori-style to customers--many non-Indian--whose idea of a holiday is not having to cook. And in Chinatown, in patriotic observance, some restaurants will substitute traditional game birds for chicken, so that Chinese-Americans might gather with extended family to pass moo-shoo turkey from chopsticks to lips.
If a plump bird soaking overnight in mayonnaise inspires gratitude in you for God's bounty, you may be like Margarita, a beauty-salon manager who grew up in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. "We rub the mayonnaise inside and out and let it sit for a long time," she says of one Russian method of preparing a bird. "Then we roast it and serve it with a salad of cold herring, potato, beets, boiled egg and onion."
One of her colleagues notes that Russians "celebrate everything in America" because holidays back home were often covert affairs, where the Christmas tree, for instance, had to be absorbed into the state-sanctioned New Year's holiday. "When we first came to America, people invited us to Thanksgiving," she says. "Now we do it ourselves."
But Maria, another beautician, suggests that Sicilians make the Russians look like amateurs when it comes to ritual chow-downs. "We have a seven-course meal, starting with antipasti." Turkey stuffed with rice and bacon falls in the middle of an exhaustive procession of dishes that includes batter-fried vegetables and stuffed artichokes and finishes with pastries, fruit and nuts.
For Ken Zanta, the Yemeni proprietor of the Caravan restaurant in Brooklyn, the fruit and nuts belong inside the turkey. This Thursday, his Moroccan wife, Khadiga (who is the establishment's chef), will be preparing the cafe's Thanksgiving special, roast turkey seasoned with cumin, saffron and coriander, served over a stuffing of ground walnuts and almonds, onions, raisins and honey.
Because Thanksgiving coincides with Ramadan this year, some Muslims in the neighborhood will fast all day and gorge at sunset. Others may be recent arrivals, not yet familiar with Thanksgiving, explains Mr. Zanta, who was dressed last Saturday afternoon in a Ralph Lauren-type American-flag sweater. "But in my family, we're very open about American customs. My daughter took apple cider to her school's Thanksgiving party. We even buy our children Christmas gifts."
Mohamed Salman, owner of the Halal Meat Market on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, says that this week he'll get a few orders for turkeys properly slaughtered (in accordance with religious requirements), but that many of his customers will probably feast instead on tagines, lamb stews thick with olives and lemons, and other Middle Eastern standards.
But Mr. Salman will be eating turkey at home, and he agreed to share his own family's recipe, a preparation typical of his native Sudan. "You chop onions, tomato, cumin, black pepper, fresh garlic and olive oil and rub it into the meat. Then, if you want to, you can stuff the turkey with ground lamb."
The main course is best accompanied by baba ghanoush tahini and an onion-and-tomato salad dressed with peanut butter and olive oil.
"You roast the turkey at 350 degrees," Mr. Salman advised, with mouth-watering attention to detail. "Then, you eat it after fasting."
What Mr. Sarkar might make of all these non-Bangladeshi ways of preparing turkey we can only guess. Still, given their variety, he's clearly not the only one with too many blessings to choose from.
Ms. Finnerty last wrote on the Target ship for the Journal.
