Cover and Bake by the editors of Cooks Illustrated

The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect: When something looks great, but turns out to be very disappointing.

As far as dorm food goes, our fare at Adams House was pretty good. It helps that I eat and enjoy pretty much everything, and that there were always several entrée choices a the buffet stand. Of course, if you were really averse the options on a particular day, you could ask the cooks to fry you up a burger, and there was always cereal.

Periodically, our dining hall would offer a special meal that was out of this world. One of the best I can recall was the lobster-boil night, where each resident received a ticket to exchange for an entire lobster, straight from the big vat they set up in our courtyard. I ate three lobsters that night because I was lucky enough two know two picky eaters. Then there was the night a guest chef came to cook a full Thai meal, complete with tablecloths and dinner candles. We had regular specialties too: Sunday brunch was a meal we looked forward to all week (Belgian waffles, omelets to order, egg sandwiches, French toast… mmm).

Even with these specialties and our old favorites, there were only so many dishes that made it into rotation. By the end of the semester, most of us were eating at Tommy’s Pizza across the street several times a week.

One dish that appeared in the kitchen infrequently (but significantly) was turkey tetrazzini. In the buffet tray, it looked delicious: spaghetti in a cream sauce with large strips of turkey meat and assorted vegetables. I’m a pasta fiend, and who can resist a good cream sauce? The first time I saw it as a sophomore, I loaded my plate. And regretted every bite.

The noodles were cooked to a mush and almost beyond recognition as pasta, and the cream sauce was paradoxically bland and too salty at the same time. The turkey meat, which had looked so succulent, was the consistency of cork.

This should have been the end of it. A normal person would have said, “I don’t like turkey tetrazzini,” and never chosen it again. But I had a problem that became known among my friends as The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect. I think the dish hypnotized me into forgetting how terrible it was the last time I ate it. And whenever it appeared, maybe once a month, I would not be able to resist its temptation and would end up kicking myself again for my weakness.

After three years, the term stuck and The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect was used for anything that looked or sounded great initially, but was disappointing in the end (anything on NBC on Thursdays at 9:30pm, any movie by Quentin Tarantino after Pulp Fiction, Friendster).

Which brings me to a cookbook I received as a review copy from America’s Test Kitchen (during the good days), Cover and Bake. The entire cookbook is devoted to anything you can make in casserole dish, stick in the oven, and forget about. I was overjoyed when I was that turkey tetrazzini was one of the included recipes. Finally, I thought. A chance to prove the Turkey Tetrazzini Effect wrong once and for all. With Cooks Illustrated behind the recipe, it will be delicious and the TTE will go down in flames.

An afternoon of cooking ensued: pasta—al dente, fresh cream, turkey thigh meat, fresh vegetables. When I pulled the bubbly casserole with a crispy bread crumb topping out of the oven, it looked great smelled even better. E and I sat down to dinner and dug in.

Well, folks, it ain’t called The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect for nothing. Ten years after my first encounter with it, it still has not failed yet. The dish was fine. The flavor was OK. The noodles were a little mushy. Overall, it was a disappointment. Even E ate his dinner was unusual disinterest. It had not occurred to me that The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect could have reached as far as the editors of Cooks Illustrated, but I see now what I am up against.

I give up. I do not have the strength to fight it any longer. I will just eat turkey tetrazzini for the rest of my life and live with the disappointment.

Cover and Bake by the editors of Cooks Illustrated

tags: cookbooks book reviews Cook's Illustrated Adams House turkey tetrazzini