So, we're a bunch of American students in Budapest. What do you do? Well, you make Thanksgiving.
We'd been planning this for awhile. My apartment was hosting, although my roommates were out of town in Amsterdam and Paris, so it was me, three friends from my program, and a friend from the math program. It was basically a potluck: I did turkey and those accessories: stuffing and gravy, and my personal Thanksgiving favorite,
cranberry sauce. Paulina and Chelle made the pies, Danielle made vegetables, and Dan did the mashed potatoes. It looked pretty much ready to go.
Except: Thanksgiving requires certain foods. The main one of these is a whole, roasted turkey. In the States, its hard to find one of these except right around late November. In Hungary, they don't care about late November. I did know, however, that many other ex-pats had managed to have Thanksgiving before. I'd heard plenty of rumors about acquiring a turkey. I knew it was possible. Stacey, Lisa and I headed to the Great Market on Monday afternoon. After a bit of wandering and some paprika purchasing, we started to look for turkey. We find turkey. It's chopped up. We find a full animal. It's chicken. Another full animal. It's goose. Eventually, things start shutting, and we decide that they will return the following day while I am in school and just get some breast and legs. I'll simply roast that. Not quite a full turkey, but hey, it'll taste the same.
Tuesday after school I come home and cross the street to their hotel. As I'm walking in the door, I hear, "Liza!". I turn around and see Stacey and Lisa coming down the street. "We need to get up to your apartment, now." "Why, mom?" "We've got a turkey in my bag. It weighs 7 kilograms."
6.9 (more accurately) kilograms is exactly 15.212 pounds. There are 5 of us coming to Thanksgiving.
That is about three times the amount of turkey that I was looking for. However, as it turns out, this was, at the point that they went, the only whole turkey in the entire Great Market. I'm ecstatic. We've got a turkey. It may weigh a ton and still have its neck attached (luckily, there was no head or even guts), but it's a turkey.
The second adventure consisted of Wednesday afternoon shopping. I'd made a pretty organized list of all the things that I need. However, I don't actually know the translation of "cinnamon" or "poultry seasoning" or "basil" or "celery". We ended up with cinnamon-flavored punch instead of cinnamon, some onion/chive-like thing instead of celery, and our best guess on everything else. Luckily bread looks like bread and I've needed to buy salt before, so I didn't end up with sugar.
My personal favorite part about Thanksgiving in Budapest: apparently, Hungarians do not believe in meat thermometers. Now, I was not expecting one of those fancy things that pops out of the turkey. That was never even remotely in my mind. I was, however, expecting to be able to find a (celsius, but functional) meat thermometer. No. I could find room thermometers. I could find wine thermometers. But all of my (hungarian) "thermometer? chicken? meat?" questions came up with a resounding "nem".
So, I was scared. No meat thermometer. But hey, I could just follow the Joy of Cooking's instructions, right? Set my oven to the right temperature, do it for the right time, and hope it works? Oh, right. My oven is straight out of some Communist factory.
It is gas. That's fine. However, most gas ovens have little markings that estimate temperatures. These markings might be in C, or they might even just be random numbers (how are you supposed to know that 3 is actually 450?). Mine doesn't have that. Mine has nothing.
Okay, well maybe you can still kind of guess. No. Mine is actually just on/off. You can change the amount of gas going in and out slightly, but it will not control itself. We have, thanks to Stacey, a (Fahrenheit!) thermometer inside the oven. So, I had to check the oven every 15 or 20 minutes, and turn it off or on (using a match, we don't have a spark button or anything) according to the temperature. That was the plan.
So, Wednesday night. Paulina and Chelle have been over prepping the pies, and I've got some delicious cranberry sauce made. (Thanks again to Stacey for bringing over the cranberries!) I've heard that brining the turkey makes it fool-proof, so this is my plan. I'm not quite willing to ruin the only turkey in Budapest. Foolproof sounds great. We don't, however, have anything great to brine our huge turkey in. I think it'll probably work if we put the turkey and the salt water in two or three garbage bags, and just leave it outside in a box.
We do this. Chelle and Paulina leave. About 5 minutes, I hear a knock on the door. It's Chelle and Paulina, and they are pointing to my balcony, from which you can hear a constant drip,drip,drip onto my neighbor's stoop. Oops.
Okay, so I'll just put the turkey in a few more garbage bags and put it in the garbage can. Garbage cans don't drip. 5 minutes later, I check outside again. Drip, drip, drip.
Okay, I'll bring the garbage can inside so I'm not quite as obnoxious and so that my downstairs neighbor doesn't have salt water all over their stoop. I put it in the tub. It then becomes clear that my garbage can is not dripping. It is GUSHING.
Alright, it is now about 1:30AM. My turkey is losing water. I obviously can't leave it outside because we have no appropriate container. Finally, I just shove the turkey in the sink, fill it up with water, and leave it to brine for the night. Chilledness will have to wait.
Actually, at this point, the adventure became much more normal. Thursday, as it turned out, was pretty easy. I woke up, (skipped school - they tried to make a bunch of American students go to school on Thanksgiving!), received an absolutely life-saving email from Marianne, who instructed me on just about every aspect of turkey, stuffing and gravy, and proceeded to relatively smoothly get everything out. My friends showed up early in the afternoon, made their food, and around 5PM we sat down for an absolutely delicious and delightful dinner.
my pride and joy
cranberry sauce, my favorite part of Thanksgiving
our beautiful table
So, for my family, I missed you all on Thanksgiving. It's definitely a day for family. However, I have great friends here. In many ways, they are family. I'd say that I couldn't have done better. Although next time I make a turkey, I'd like the oven to be controllable.
No comments:
Post a Comment