#361 Middling Turkey

I have occasion to eat at banquet style luncheons quite a lot. To use the word banquet bestows a greater expectation of flavor than I have yet to witness. These meals share many of the same dynamics as a buffet. They have a line leading up to the table, an inadequate-sized plate at the beginning, a salad offering and fruit platter, a vegetable, a starch, and the main dish—usually meat. But also usually, unless it’s a special special business luncheon, the meat in question is not prime rib or salmon filets. No, it’s turkey roll or chicken wings or a breaded cutlet of some sort that I’ve refer to as momo. M-O-M-O- Meat Of Mysterious Origin. Typically, the cutlet in question is boneless and always it’s breaded. So it’s difficult to tell if it’s chicken, pork, turkey, or possibly stray cat. Most of the banquets I go to are served at the local university, since they have the space and staff to whip up a meal for 50 to 100 people. Occasionally I’ve gone to two banquets in the same week at the same place. Sometimes the second meal is a variation on the first—chicken quarters the first day, chicken enchiladas the next. Lasagna and enchiladas are frequent luncheon entrees towards the end of the week. Lunches on Mondays tend to feature relatively whole animal parts. There are certain reliable components of the banquet table. The salad, these health conscious days, is mostly iceberg lettuce, but almost always includes relatively identifiable shreds of mixed greens—cabbage, spinach, romaine, and that frilly bitter one. Dressings never include bleu cheese anymore. But usually include an Italian, a raspberry vinaigrette-slash-French, a honey mustard wannabee, and of course, the ubiquitous ranch. Ranch has completely edged out Roquefort for the white dressing buffet niche. Then there’s the plate of cubed fruit with the ineveitable banquet melon trio: water, honeydew and the one that isn’t allowed to run off and get married. Also pineapple and a few grapes for garnish. I’ve never actually seen anyone take a grape. The vegetable dish similarly features the same repetitive medley approach, a concoction of green beans, broccoli, cauliflower and carrots, vitamins completely and conscientiously leached out of them before they left the kitchen. Yesterday I was grousing to myself about how long the line was taking, then I saw why. They were hand carving. Oh boy, I thought, real meat. Nope. They were, get this, hand-carving a turkey roll. What’s the point? Training a new hand-carver student? Cause this stuff could have been pre-sliced the previous week and it wouldn’t have made any difference in texture, presentation or flavor. And the slow line didn’t help the other dishes either. With banquet food, tepid is not an improvement. It was fun watching the student sweat from the pressure and the heat of the carving lamps. Come to think of it my turkey was pretty salty…
America, ya gotta love it.