Thanksgiving 2010: Le Menu

Michael and I are working out the final wording for our Thanksgiving menu. So, as a reader service today, IPoL will be presenting a brief workshop in how to make your menu sound more glamorous than it actually is. Of course, it helps if your menu is actually glamorous, as ours is. But even if it's not, here are a few simple tips for making your favorite snotty foodies feel right at home.

Adjectives
If I could pick only one tip for gussying up a menu, it would be to add more adjectives. Some people think they can get away with serving just "beets," but that simply won't cut the mustard these days, if you'll pardon the expression. You gotta get some descriptors in there. They're "baby beets" or "roasted baby beets" or even "roasted red baby beets." See? Doesn't that sound like something you'd pay $10 for as an appetizer? If you're lucky, you know where your food came from, and you can say something like "Keystone Farms organic roasted red baby beets." If you're not so lucky...well, I'd just stick with the basic descriptors and avoid saying "Acme Aisle 5 blue-light special roasted red baby beets." It just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Think you're getting the hang of it? Pop quiz: What do you serve your Keystone Farms organic roasted red baby beets with? Just "bread" and "sauce"? Oh no! It's "fresh, crisp-toasted slices of baguette" and "mushroom red-wine sauce" --- or perhaps "porcini mushroom and shiraz sauce." The more specific, the better.

The nice thing about the adjective trick is it doesn't much matter how banal your description is. Even if you're serving "butternut squash" or "red beets" instead of plain ol' "squash" or "beets," it makes a difference. Dickens was paid by the word; act like you are too. For instance, instead of "roasted beets" you could say "oven-roasted beets." See what I did there? There's pretty much no way to roast a beet other than in an oven, so the first part is totally irrelevant. Yet totally fancy.

French
Ooh la la, cherie! Nothing says fancy, expensive food like using lots of French terms. It used to be that you had to know French in order to know French, but now you don't, if you know what I mean. No? Two words: Google translate. Stick a few key phrases in there and stuff 'em onto your menu, and you're golden.

Allow me to illustrate. Instead of boring "onion soup," you now have "soupe à l'oignon." Much better --- and there's an accent in it too, so people will know it's all foreign and exotic and stuff. Tired of regular "green beans"? Nothing spices them up like calling them "haricots verts"! Well, some pepper might help, too. What kind of pepper? "Finely-ground Chinese white pepper," of course.

Quotation marks
When all else fails, bring out the big guns: quotation marks. These are best when you're serving something that didn't quite work out, but you want to make it look like that was all on purpose and you're being playful and witty. Thomas Keller is a master at this. He serves a dish called "peas and carrots," which contains (you guessed it) peas and carrots. But playfully. They're not your grandmother's peas and carrots! They're hip! They're modern! They're so totally over just being peas and carrots that they've transformed into being the blasé, too-cool-for-school "peas and carrots" that proudly slouch before you today. It's like having teenagers at the table --- only tastier.

And there we have it! Et voilà! Now you too can live the dream and please the food snobs in your life. And if you send me just $29.95, you'll get the full-length DVD, "Better Dining Through Sexing Up Your Menu Rather Than Improving Your Cooking." But that's not all! If you order within the next five minutes, I'll also send along a free bonus gift of gently off-white part-linen paper on which you can print out your very own culinary-language masterpiece! Amuse your friends! Amaze your guests! Confound your enemies! Call now!*

*No substitutions. Limit one per customer. Offer valid only where fine snark is not appreciated.