How To Cook In A Traditional Philippine Pot Oven

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"To be thankful is fine . . . to demolish divine," I said. "But kindly inform yours truly, first, where a turkey can be obtained during this typhoon, and second, how the same can be cooked without electricity . . . without a gas oven, even."

"I shall supply the turkey," Vince told me. "You supply the cooking fuel."

"In this weather you'll get a turkey?" I jeered. "They're probably flying all over creation."

"He means a cold turkey, stupid," said my wife, Leonor. "Refrigerated. Frozen."

"Oh," I said. "I thought you were talking about a live one."

So Vince went out in the rain and the wind and, so help me, soon came back with a huge turkey. Not only that, he also brought some cranberry sauce . . . (which he said is what Americans generally like to eat with such fowl).

Very good. We dressed and prepared the bird far the oven (we stuffed it, American style, with bread, instead of the customary chorizo de Bilbao— Spanish sausage—and other normal ingredients) . . . and while we were doing so, I remarked cheerfully, "If this typhoon is anything like the one we had a 1970, we can expect the current back in three weeks. Would you like to toast the turkey over hot coals? In that case, we'll have to hold off awhile until the rain and the wind ease up somewhat."

"Maybe we'd better wait till next Thanksgiving, yes?" suggested Nene Cortez.

"No," s aid Vince. "Our visas expire next month. We'll have to do the turkey now."

It was then I remembered my palayok oven. I grabbed the prepared turkey and—by dint of pressure, prayer, and more pressure—somehow squeezed the whole fowl into the pot. We swabbed the bird with margarine, threw in a few handfuls of tamarind leaves from the wet backyard tree, and placed the pot over hot charcoal in the kitchen pasillo (passage).

Then we waited, while the wind howled, rattled saucepans, blew down the clothesline, tumbled two of my papaya trees, and sheared some sheet iron off our water tank. Within an hour, delicious odors been to rise from the pot. Another hour, and I peeped in to see the bird slowly turning a light golden brown. By six o'clock the turkey was quivering from pokes of Vincent's fork. The bird seemed almost ready for the dining table, except that-somehow-it still looked a trifle underdone. Somehow it didn't fit my concept of Colonial roast turkey . . . the ideal which so proudly we hail in the pages of Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Oui, and Playboy. It was tender enough, and flavorful enough . . . but brown it was not.

What to do? Should I toss the turkey back into the freezer and wait far a change of electrical weather? Should I try roasting it-despite its huge size-directly over the coals, and risk a burned spot here, a reddish-raw patch there?

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