First, Bathe Your Bird

The befuddled look on the face of my son, barely 10 months old, captured the essence of our first--and most extraordinary--Thanksgiving in Poland.

There on the kitchen counter, amid the coffee pot, toaster and familiar clutter of baby bottles, sat his cherished kiddie bathtub. The oversized plastic basin, his favorite escape before bedtime, was brimming with water. That much he could easily discern.

But everything else was wrong. The tub had not only migrated downstairs but had also been possessed by something slimy and headless. And everyone in the house was hovering around it like a team of surgeons--poking, jabbing, massaging.

For eight long hours his bathtub was out of commission that cold November day in 1994. Inside, a 14-pound turkey was undergoing the crucial first step in preparation for Thanksgiving, Polish-style: getting soaked to the bone.

My son was not alone in wondering how this possibly could be. But as my wife, Dawn, explained when I raised an incredulous brow: “The only turkey I could find in all of Warsaw was buried under a flock of frozen geese. . . . And it wasn’t a self-basting Butterball. This is how they do it here.”

Enough said. After barely four months in Poland, Dawn had become a master of making do in the kitchen. Communism was long gone, but gastronomy was still stuck between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution; for a family of culinary “light-weights” from California, survival was a daily foraging for miracles.

Our dinner conversations went something like those of early nomadic tribes. I marveled at the collection of edibles on the table as Dawn recounted her wanderings of the day. She once came home with 25 pounds of frozen spinach because she was so thrilled to find a freezer case full of it. She became a devoted fan of the Polish Folk Art Museum because its gift shop was the only place that sold tofu (amid wood carvings and embroidered table linens).

A typical shopping day involved at least four stops in far-flung corners of the city--one for bread, one for vegetables, one for meat and one for packaged foodstuffs.

So when Dawn found a turkey--of any sort--it was cause for celebration. And this one even fit in our pint-sized oven. We had already decided to create a tradition in Poland of sharing Thanksgiving with the families of the L.A. Times staff in Warsaw, office assistants Marek Zielinski and Ela Kasprzycka. We had eight dinner guests expecting a traditional American meal, so turkey was a nonnegotiable item. Had it not been for the gobbler hidden beneath the geese at a new Austrian-owned supermarket, we would have had to venture into the countryside to buy direct.

Dawn likes to compare her preparations for this Thanksgiving to those of the early American settlers. It’s a nice thought, especially when you’re 6,000 miles from home, but it was also an essential means of coping with the endless frustration of pulling off such an event. She spent days tracking down the simplest ingredients, from walnuts for a Waldorf salad (which our Polish guests had never heard of) to sweet potatoes, which were available only at a Communist-era hard currency market for $7 per pound and turned out to be woody (we bought several pounds nonetheless).

Before long, we resorted to cheating. Stove Top stuffing, Durkee dried onions, Libby’s canned pumpkin, Jell-O and canned cranberry relish all arrived via air mail from my mother-in-law in Wisconsin (the price of that injection of Americana, I might note, made those sweet potatoes seem like a steal). Brown sugar, Crisco and more canned pumpkin were smuggled from the commissary at the U.S. embassy; diplomats even get Butterball turkeys flown direct from the United States, but none of those came our way.

In the end, there was no getting around our turkey dilemma. It had to be bought and cooked in Poland. Dawn turned for advice to Henryka Kowalska, our baby-sitter and adopted grandma. Baba, as our boys affectionately know her, immediately commandeered the kiddie tub and rolled up her sleeves.

According to her generations-old family recipe, it is best to cook a turkey by steaming it at a very high temperature. It has something to do with locking in the protein, she told us, but the explanation seemed less important than the need for respecting tradition.

The long soaking ensures that the meat has plenty of juices, she said, and an extensive massaging with salt, olive oil, paprika and pepper locks in the taste and moisture. The Kowalska family recipe also comes with a stuffing that reminded us of liver pa^te (the livers also get a soaking in water, but for only 15 minutes).

The cooking schedule was determined by logistics. Our oven is about the size of a regular television set. We brought a microwave with us from Los Angeles, but it couldn’t even keep the correct time. Dawn, once a professional events planner, set up an oven timeline broken into 15-minute intervals. She assigned each dish a cooking and reheating time. The process extended over two days, right up to an hour after our guests arrived.

That first hour was supposed to be spent in the living room. We had chips and dip on the coffee table and everyone was offered a drink. It was a longstanding Murphy tradition to spend that time catching up on family gossip, while also catching the football action on television.

The problem was twofold: No football and no family gossip. In a matter of minutes, our guests had settled into the dining room, awaiting the meal. It seems in Poland that socializing comes after you eat, not before. But the turkey was still cooking.

We hurriedly served the Waldorf salad to kill time. It was, to put it delicately, not well received. Poland was awash in celery root, a popular base for soup, but celery stalks were nowhere to be found. Having been made with celery root, the Waldorf suffered, and so did our guests.

The turkey and liver dressing, albeit tardy, saved the day. Both were out of this world. We couldn’t remember eating a better-tasting turkey; it was moist and tender even though it had been necessary to cook it a day ahead of time and reheat it in gravy because of the oven schedule.

“Serve meal immediately upon guest arrival!” Dawn would later write in her hostess book, where she keeps reminders of our home entertaining successes and failures.

That in mind, we rushed out the dessert and coffee after clearing the dinner dishes, only to find that our friends had retired to the living room. “For Poles, there is a significant break between dinner and dessert,” Dawn penned in the hostess book.

Later in the evening, we returned to the dining room for pie. For mood lighting, I turned on the dimmer switch in our china cabinet, which was plugged into a converter because Poland operates on 220 volts. It was the first time we had used the soft lighting since moving to Poland.

I knew Dawn hadn’t burned the pumpkin and apple pies, yet the room was quickly filling with smoke. The converter was the wrong size for the china cabinet and had become engulfed in flames. Except for some quick action by Ela’s husband, Pawel, it would have set the draperies ablaze.

That would have been no problem. We had the kiddie tub on hand.

HENRYKA KOWALSKA’S FAMILY RECIPE FOR STEAMED TURKEY

TURKEY

1 (11-pound) turkey

1/2 gallon cold water

3 heaping teaspoons salt

Olive oil

1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 teaspoon white pepper

STUFFING NO. 1

1 loaf French bread

Butter

1 bunch parsley

1/2 cup raisins

STUFFING NO. 2

1/2 pound turkey or chicken livers

3-inch slice French bread

1/4 cup water

Generous 1/4 cup softened butter

2 lightly beaten eggs

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

1 tablespoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon sweet paprika

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons bread crumbs

2 tablespoons slivered almonds

2 tablespoons raisins

2 tablespoons parsley

ASSEMBLY

Olive oil

TURKEY

Defrost turkey in refrigerator.

Combine water and salt in large pot. Immerse turkey in water and refrigerate until skin is soft when pinched, 8 hours. If full immersion is not possible, turkey can be half covered with water and soaked 4 hours, then rolled over to other side and soaked additional 4 hours. Larger turkeys may be soaked up to 10 hours.

Rinse turkey and towel dry. Massage entire turkey, both inside and outside, with mixture of remaining 1 teaspoon salt, paprika and pepper. Return turkey to refrigerator, tightly wrapped, for 2 hours.

STUFFING NO. 1

Slice bread 1 1/4-inch thick and spread generously with butter. In large mixing bowl, combine with parsley and raisins.

STUFFING NO. 2

Soak livers in cold water 15 minutes. Remove outer skin. Scrape livers with knife to soften.

Place French bread in 1/4 cup of water to soften. Squeeze bread to remove all excess water.

In large bowl, mix livers, soaked bread, butter, eggs, pepper, sugar, paprika, salt and bread crumbs together. Fold in almonds, raisins and parsley.

ASSEMBLY

Just before baking, thoroughly massage entire turkey inside and out, especially breast, with generous coat of olive oil.

Stuff large cavity with Stuffing No. 1. Stuff throat cavity with Stuffing No. 2 and tuck in skin. Cavity must be closed to steam stuffing, sewn with thread if necessary.

Fill baking pan with 1/2 inch water, place turkey on rack in pan and bake at 400 degrees. Keep enough water in baking pan to ensure that turkey is steaming. It must hiss while cooking.

After 1 hour, baste turkey with water and juices in pan and then reduce heat to 225 degrees.

Continue cooking at 225 degrees, basting every 30 minutes, until meat thermometer reads 170 to 175 degrees when inserted in thigh, not touching bone, about XX more hours.

Makes 8 to 10 servings.

Each serving contains about:

759 calories; 1,270 mg sodium; 230 mg cholesterol; 44 grams fat; 32 grams carbohydrates; 67 grams protein; 0.29 gram fiber.