Chicken and vegetable pakoras, chickpea fritters with delicate spices. Aloo samosas filled with spicy potatoes, peas, and cilantro, with a fiery green sauce. Goat curry. Tandoori chicken. Mutton biryani. White lentil dal with onions and spices, potatoes and eggplant fried with onions and tomatoes, and four kinds of bread, naan, tandoor roti, chapati, and paratha.

I look over the recipe again. It sounds very simple. You boil some rice in water like pasta, I can do that. You cook some onion in butter, stir in the rice, pop it in the oven. Add some cream and grated cheese and mix it up. And voila! A real dinner.
I pull out a couple of the pots Caroline gave me, and began to get everything laid out. Grant always yammered on about mise en place, that habit of getting all your stuff together before you start cooking so you can be organized. It seems to make sense, and appeals to the part of me that likes to make lists and check things off of them.
I manage to chop a pile of onions without cutting myself, but with a lot of tears. At one point I walk over to the huge freezer and stick my head in it for some relief, while Schatzi looks at me like I'm an idiot. Which isn't unusual. Or even come to think of it, wrong. But I get them sliced and chopped, albeit unevenly, and put them in the large pot with some butter. I get some water boiling in the other pot and put in some rice. I cook it for a few minutes, drain it, and add it to the onions, stirring them all together. Then I put the lid on the pot and put it in the oven, and set my phone with an alarm for thirty-five minutes. The kitchen smells amazing. Nothing quite like onions cooked in butter to make the heart happy. While it cooks, I grab a beer, and grate some Swiss cheese into a pile. When my phone buzzes, I pull the pot out of the oven and put it back on the stovetop, stirring in the cream and cheese, and sprinkling in some salt and pepper.
I grab a bowl and fill it with the richly scented mixture. I stand right there at the counter, and gingerly take a spoonful. It's amazing. Rich and creamy and oniony. The rice is nicely cooked, not mushy. And even though some of my badly cut onions make for some awkward eating moments, as the strings slide out of the spoon and attach themselves to my chin, the flavor is spectacular. Simple and comforting, and utterly delicious.

Caroline has laid out a beautiful spread, which is a combination of some of my favorite things that she has cooked, and traditional Sikh wedding dishes provided by Jag's friends. There is a whole roasted beef tenderloin, sliced up with beautiful brioche rolls for those who want to make sandwiches, crispy brussels sprouts, potato gratin, and tomato pudding from Gemma's journal. The savory pudding was one of the dishes from Martha's wedding, which gave me the idea for this insanity to begin with, so it seemed appropriate. I actually think Gemma would strongly approve of this whole thing. And she certainly would have appreciated the exoticism of the wonderful Indian vegetarian dishes, lentils, fried pakoras, and a spicy chickpea stew.
From what I can tell, Gemma was thrilled anytime she could get introduced in a completely new cuisine, whether it was the Polish stonemason introducing her to pierogi and borsht, or the Chinese laundress bringing her tender dumplings, or the German butcher sharing his recipe for sauerbraten. She loved to experiment in the kitchen, and the Rabins encouraged her, gifting her cookbooks and letting her surprise them with new delicacies. Her favorite was 'With a Saucepan Over the Sea: Quaint and Delicious Recipes from the Kitchens of Foreign Countries,' a book of recipes from around the world that Gemma seemed to refer to frequently, enjoying most when she could alter one of the recipes to better fit the palate of the Rabins. Mrs. Rabin taught her all of the traditional Jewish dishes they needed for holiday celebrations, and was, by Gemma's account, a superlative cook in her own right.
Off to the side of the buffet is a lovely dessert table, swagged with white linen and topped with a small wedding cake, surrounded by dishes of fried dough balls soaked in rosewater syrup and decorated with pistachios and rose petals, and other Indian sweets.

I cooked with so many of the greats: Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, Grant Achatz. Rick Bayless taught me not one but two amazing mole sauces, the whole time bemoaning that he never seemed to know what to cook for his teenage daughter. Jose Andres made me a classic Spanish tortilla, shocking me with the sheer volume of viridian olive oil he put into that simple dish of potatoes, onions, and eggs. Graham Elliot Bowles and I made gourmet Jell-O shots together, and ate leftover cheddar risotto with Cheez-Its crumbled on top right out of the pan.
Lucky for me, Maria still includes me in special evenings like this, usually giving me the option of joining the guests at table, or helping in the kitchen. I always choose the kitchen, because passing up the opportunity to see these chefs in action is something only an idiot would do. Susan Spicer flew up from New Orleans shortly after the BP oil spill to do an extraordinary menu of all Gulf seafood for a ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner Maria hosted to help the families of Gulf fishermen. Local geniuses Gil Langlois and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard joined forces with Gale Gand for a seven-course dinner none of us will ever forget, due in no small part to Gil's hoisin oxtail with smoked Gouda mac 'n' cheese, Stephanie's roasted cauliflower with pine nuts and light-as-air chickpea fritters, and Gale's honey panna cotta with rhubarb compote and insane little chocolate cookies. Stephanie and I bonded over hair products, since we have the same thick brown curls with a tendency to frizz, and the general dumbness of boys, and ended up giggling over glasses of bourbon till nearly two in the morning. She is even more awesome, funny, sweet, and genuine in person than she was on her rock-star winning season on Bravo. Plus, her food is spectacular all day. I sort of wish she would go into food television and steal me from Patrick. Allen Sternweiler did a game menu with all local proteins he had hunted himself, including a pheasant breast over caramelized brussels sprouts and mushrooms that melted in your mouth (despite the occasional bit of buckshot). Michelle Bernstein came up from Miami and taught me her white gazpacho, which I have since made a gajillion times, as it is probably one of the world's perfect foods.

The nice thing about this menu is that it will keep fine for tomorrow. I decide to finish the potatoes, cutting the top off and scooping out the fluffy interiors, leaving a quarter-inch-thick shell. I mix the scoopings with butter, sour cream, cheddar cheese and chives, add a splash of milk to keep smooth, and restuff the potato shells, sprinkling a mixture of shredded cheddar and fried shallots on top, and pop them in the fridge. All I will have to do tomorrow is cook the beef, reheat the spinach, and bake the potatoes.

I hacked an old Crock-Pot and turned it into a sous vide machine, and did a turkey breast, and then seared the skin on the stovetop, so it is totally crispy, but the meat is BEYOND juicy. And the stuffing is a combination of homemade corn bread, homemade buttermilk biscuits, and brioche, with sage and thyme and celery and onion and shallot. And I tried the Robuchon Pommes Puree, and thought that there was no way to put THAT much butter into that much potato, but holy moley is it amazeballs! And I did a butternut squash soup with fried ginger and almond cake with apple compote." All the bustle has roused Volnay, who wanders over to greet Benji, and receives a dog biscuit for her trouble from Eloise.
"Honey, breathe a little," I say, laughing.
"It's just... I... I mean... THANKSGIVING!" he says, which cracks us all up.