The Slice is Right Novice cook learns Thanksgiving carving secrets from an experienced chef

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Who are those people?”

Noted social critic (and lethal marksman) Al Ockenfels of Rockland always asks that question every time he sees that Norman Rockwell painting of the traditional, three-generation family gathered around the Thanksgiving table, with grandma serving the stuffed turkey on a platter, so grandpa can carve it up for his beloved children and grandchildren.

With so many divorced and otherwise dysfunctional families today, some of us are lucky to get anyone around our holiday table, let alone three generations of loved ones. “Are those people from Mars?” asks Ockenfels, virtually every Thanksgiving.

Cheryl Wixson, Bangor chef and co-host of Maine Public Television’s new program “What’s for Suppah?”, also has some problems with the famous painting, which created the “ideal” holiday meal. Wixson knows turkeys. Her family operated a turkey farm, which sold hot turkey sandwiches, turkey pot pies and, of course, birds on the wing.

Wixson was the first woman to earn a degree in agricultural engineering at the University of Maine. Her varied background includes cooking at a private social club and running a gourmet food store. She now is working on a doctoral degree in food science and human nutrition. She features Maine ingredients on her cooking show co-hosted with comic Tim Sample.

First of all, Wixson notes, if you bring the uncut turkey to the table while all the other “fixings” are already waiting, then everything, including the vital gravy, is going to be cold by the time the ritual carving is completed. She says a more efficient, if less aesthetic, presentation would be to carve the turkey in the kitchen and serve it sliced and ready to eat at an appropriate temperature.

In an effort to improve my own holiday presentations, I begged a carving lesson with a freshly cooked bird from Wixson in her expansive West Broadway kitchen.

No one could carve (or make gravy) more poorly than I do.

My approach is to slice a piece or two off the breast, then rip the bird apart by hand and slice up the pieces. Gravy is simply purchased at the grocery store.

“Not a bad idea on the carving, actually,” Wixson said, diplomatically withholding comment on the gravy problem.

Wixson rejects electric knives as simply inappropriate. She took the perfectly cooked turkey from the oven and prepared for carving. She chose a sharp boning knife from one of 30 displayed in the kitchen. Sharpening is crucial.

“I have never been cut with a sharp knife, only a dull one,” she said. She pulled the legs slowly and steadily from the body of the bird, working the point of the knife to find the “knuckle” of each leg and cut the legs free. Then she felt for the backbone, inserted the point of the knife and slowly, gradually forced the entire breast from the bone. She made me do the other side. I rushed the job and left too much meat on the bone. Her side was perfect, naturally. When the breast was free, it was placed on the platter for slicing. The secret to slicing, she explained patiently, is always cutting across the grain. This method, she said, is much more efficient than the traditional carving the meat on the bone.

Wixson says the most common problem in cooking a turkey is over-reliance on the “popup” device on many supermarket birds. This gadget allegedly informs the cook when the meat is done. Wixson just throws these away, using the more dependable meat thermometer, inserted into the bird.

Another potential problem, Wixson adds, is the tradition of cooking the bird filled with stuffing. While traditionalists insist the stuffing doesn’t taste “right” unless it is cooked inside the bird, she says stuffing can be cooked successfully as a side dish, with the use of turkey stock for moisture. In her view, a stuffed turkey complicates the correct time and temperature for the meat. If you cook a bird long enough to cook the stuffing correctly, she says, the meat is often overcooked. Plus a stuffed turkey raises a higher possibility of food poisoning and salmonella.

Wixson cooked this particular bird stuffed with onions and oranges, all eventual ingredients for the gravy.

Of all the glaring failures in my life – personal, professional, financial, athletic – few can compare with my losing battles with gravy.

Perhaps a dozen times I have taken my sacred “Joy of Cooking” (the only cookbook I ever owned) out of the dusty kitchen drawer for my attempt at a gravylike substance. The problem was that the “Joy” recipe started with a complicated “roux,” which never seemed to work out. The mixture always looked more like wallpaper paste than gravy, and tasted about as good. They were all bitter failures, often accompanied by jeers and catcalls from holiday diners, including my own children. They took great delight (still do) in my eventual reliance on a gravy recipe from a paper towel roll.

In my household, one freshly divorced resident claimed to know how to make gravy and was quickly awarded the holiday chore. He simply took the drippings from the bottom of the turkey pan and served them, untouched, in a bowl. Another (not too freshly divorced) resident at the table said, “I know gravy. I have had gravy. That is not gravy.”

Eventually, I solved the problem with store-bought gravy, doctored up with a few cognac-sauteed onions and mushrooms.

“Gravy couldn’t be simpler,” Wixson insisted.

She simply poured all the pan drainings into a gravy separator to eliminate the fat, then poured the mixture into a pan and brought it to a boil. She added a drop or two of bouillon for flavor, then mixed “about” a quarter-cup of flour with cold water. She hardly ever measured. “About twice as much water as flour,” she explained. She strained the flour-water mixture as she poured it into the boiling drippings and cooked it for four to five minutes.

That’s it. That’s gravy.

My gravy method always left the turkey carcass (late at night so the neighbors couldn’t see) in the back field for the crows.

This confession drained the blood from the cook’s face. “I hate to throw anything away. People in Maine do not waste things,” she admonished. Wixson placed the carcass in the pot with boiling water, onions, bay leaves, carrots and peppercorns to make something called “turkey stock.” There is no need to pick the carcass clean, she said, if it is to be used for stock.

I have heard of turkey stock like I have heard of cold-water fusion, but it has always been beyond me. Real cooks, Wixson explained, use the stock for soups, stews, turkey pot pies, or for adding fat to other meals (and stuffing).

Sounds like voodoo to me.

There is nothing wrong with fat, says Wixson, a sworn enemy of the “fat police” and the attempt to drive every vestige of fat from our daily diets.

“Fat is not the culprit. Carbohydrates are,” she declared. “The problem with our diets is not the quality of the food but the quantity. We don’t have to eat 24 hours a day. I have seen offices where people eat eight hours a day. It’s like having an IV for food all day. It won’t hurt any of us to miss a meal once in a while or to eat an apple.”

I don’t know why she was looking at my constantly expanding waist when she said that.

The best part of the interview was her “to go” package,” which included meat and gravy. Both were devoured within 24 hours. The gravy, with just a hint of orange, was superb.

With all this newly acquired knowledge, I can’t wait for my next turkey (and gravy) experience. But just in case, I will keep some store-bought gravy on the shelf.

Emmet Meara’s weekly column appears Saturdays in the Style section. He can be reached at emmetmeara@msn.com.