TURKEY ALTERNATIVES:
A Few Ways to Break with Tradition on Thanksgiving

You love the cranberry sauce and the candied yams, and you really love that stuffing, but there’s something about the Thanksgiving turkey that just turns you off. Maybe it’s that most turkeys are as bland as baby food. Or perhaps mom cooks the bird so badly that you wind up using gravy as a beverage. Regardless of the reason, you want a turkey-less Thanksgiving this year. So what can you make for the centerpiece of your Thanksgiving table instead? Plenty.
 
At the Lark Creek Inn in Larkspur, Calif., chef Jason Miller has done slow-roasted Sonoma duck, which he serves with foie gras, bread pudding and cider-glazed pippin apples with toasted hazelnuts. He’s also made roasted king salmon with citrus brown butter, hand-harvested wild rice with cranberries, and wilted escarole. David Lentz, chef at Opaline in Los Angeles, suggests a slow-roasted duck breast, stuffed with walnuts and fennel and served with black kale ravioli and butternut squash puree. Or perhaps molasses-marinated grilled pork tenderloin with braised pork belly and celeriac gratin.
 
If you are yearning to give the bird the boot but think it’s, well, unpatriotic, rest easy. Most food historians acknowledge that the first Thanksgiving probably didn’t have turkey either. “There were wild turkeys around, but they were hard to find, let alone shoot,” Anthony Gauquier, a former guide at Plymouth Rock and author of Pilgrim Recipes told me some years back. While Indians did bring venison, much of what was on the original Thanksgiving table was seafood in the form of clams, crabs, oysters, even eels. In fact, in his book Fading Feast, author Raymond Sokolov writes, “The New England clambake has as much claim to the title of our national feast as Thanksgiving.”
 
You can do seafood without searching hither and yon for seaweed and a blue speckled pot, however. What I have in mind is a whole fish such as grouper or tilefish, but especially salmon. Whole, roasted salmon makes a stunning presentation, and it takes a lot less time to cook than turkey.
 
Have the fishmonger clean and gut the salmon and remove the backbone and pin bones. This makes it much easier to cut portions and to eat. I also cut off the head and tail in order to fit the fish into my roasting pan (and because my wife can’t bear looking at fish eyes when she’s eating.) The final weight will be around six pounds, enough to feed up to 12 people.
 
My cooking method uses a recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything as a rough guide. Season the inside with lemon slices, garlic, celery leaves, kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Tie the fish with butcher string, then cut 6 slits about an inch long and a half-inch deep on one side. Stick garlic slivers inside each gash and refrigerate for two hours.
 
When you’re ready to cook, surround the fish (slit side up) with chunks of fennel, mushrooms, and whole, peeled shallots. Drizzle with olive oil and pour some light red wine over. Then cover with foil and roast in a 450° F oven for 20 minutes. Baste the fish with the pan juices then cook, uncovered, for another 20 to 25 minutes or until the thickest part of the flesh is 135° F. Remove the salmon and vegetables to a serving platter and make a sauce with the degreased pan juices, thickened with arrowroot.
 
I only drink American wines at Thanksgiving because it is the quintessential American holiday. With salmon, Pinot Noir is the default for many people, and the Russian River Pinot I tried was just fine. But I preferred a Pinot Gris from Sonoma. I also found a Napa white Meritage appealing.
 
If fish is too unThanksgiving for you, roasts of meat such as a standing rib roast of beef or leg of lamb are fine alternatives to turkey. A crown roast of lamb is positively elegant. It also portions out neatly and has a place for stuffing. Ditto for a crown roast of pork. My choice, however, would be a fresh ham, the hind leg of the pig, which is more familiar in its cured form. “No pork roast beats the leg for flavor, texture, and just plain goodness,” write Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly in The Complete Meat Cookbook, whose recipe I adapted for my roast. In addition to having better taste and texture, a fresh ham is cheaper than the more common loin roast and is less likely to dry out.
 
A whole leg weighs 15 to 20 pounds, including bones, and serves up to 15 people. Have the butcher cut a smaller ham if you’re serving fewer people. Keep the skin on if you want cracklings. The butcher should also bone the roast, which makes cooking faster. (Removing the bone lessens the flavor and moisture somewhat, but that’s more than made up for by the ease of carving a boneless roast.) As with the salmon, make slits in the roast for seasoning, though do so all around the roast and make the slits not quite as wide. Fresh sage and thyme are particularly good seasonings, perhaps with some chopped garlic as well.
 
After searing the meat in a 450° F oven for about 20 minutes, cook it the rest of the way at 325° F until the ham reaches an internal temperature of 145° F--about two and a half hours for an 8-pound boned half leg. Let the roast rest 30 minutes while you make a pan sauce with wine (red, white or Port), jellied cranberry sauce and the defatted pan juices.
 
Because it straddles the line between light and dark meat, pork lends itself to a variety of wine pairings. I like German Rieslings with pork, but American versions of Riesling don’t have the same intensity. In a recent tasting, an Oregon Pinot Noir showed the best, followed by a California Tempranillo. A Dry Creek Syrah overpowered the ham.
 
Many people aren’t fowl-phobic but eschew turkey on Thanksgiving simply because it’s too much food. Smaller birds are the answer for these folks. The fowl can be as small as quail, which require two per serving, or individually sized game birds such as squab, grouse or partridge. Pheasant and guinea hen can usually feed 2 to 3 people per bird.
 
My choice, though, would be a duck, which could also serve 2 to 3 people. Pekin is the easiest type to find. It has a mild flavor, but this can be cranked up by letting the duck sit in the refrigerator, unwrapped, for up to four days. Not only does this produce a gamier flavor but the evaporated moisture allows the skin to become crisper.
 
At Jason Miller’s suggestion, I thoroughly seasoned the bird (“Most people under-season their food,” he says) and stuffed it with a chopped apple and onion, celery, bay leaves and a cinnamon stick. Then I put the duck on a bed of chopped onion, celery and apple in a roasting pan.
 
Figure 28 to 30 minutes per pound (at 350° F), or until the temperature in the thigh reaches 180° F. Knock off 20 minutes from the cooking time if you let the duck dry out in the refrigerator. Or you could try a Muscovy duck, which is plenty gamy on its own. But if you do, make sure you remove the breast while still medium to medium-rare (after about an hour), and cook the rest of the duck for another hour or so.
 
The sauce is a simple reduction of two cups reduced duck stock (made from the wing tips, neck, and giblets, except the liver) and two cups dry red wine, reduced to one cup total. Finish the sauce with a tablespoon of sherry vinegar and a knob of butter.
 
California Pinot Noir and Zinfandel worked equally well with the duck, but I would give a slight edge to a California-Rhône blend that mimicked a Côtes du Rhône (Grenache being the primary grape).
 
Replacing the turkey on Thanksgiving with salmon, fresh ham or duck not only gives you something different to talk about at the dinner table (instead of lying to mom about how good her turkey was), it provides you with a bonus afterward: a week without turkey leftovers.

This article first appeared in the November 30, 2003 issue of Wine Spectator.