SFoodie's series asking some of our favorite San Francisco food people about the dish they just can't celebrate Thanksgiving without.
When you're gay, you take a seam ripper to the holidays, snipping the threads of family obligation one by one, till what you're left with feels authentic: the relative or two who gets you, the friends ― cut loose from their own family ties ― you end up drinking too much with. And the food? You're sort of free to make it up.
Over the years my partner Perry and I have claimed the Sunday before Thanksgiving as our holiday. We invite our friends, Perry's sister, my mom and aunt, our nieces. I make the Thanksgiving dish I think I always secretly wanted: turkey legs and thighs, braised for hours in a slow oven with Zinfandel and aromatics. Skimmed of fat, the sauce reduces to a beautifully lithe little slurry, blackish, spooned over polenta cooked so long it renders into a luxurious corn purée. We drink too much. The kids corral the cat under the bed till she hisses. The house is a shambles. It feels like family.
On Thanksgiving itself Perry and I are often on a plane ― two years ago en route to Sydney, where through the magic of the International Dateline we actually skipped the fourth Thursday of November entirely. Just wiped it off the calendar.
We were just fine with that.
Other Thanksgiving essentials in this series:
-Jonathan Kauffman's Brussels sprouts with prosciutto
-Jun Belen's stuffing balls
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
