Sunday, November 30, 2008

Rambling thoughts on Turkey.

When I was younger, I was never a big fan of Thanksgiving, thats mainly because I don't really like turkey. I always preferred the taste of chicken, it was so chickeny. I found the flavor of turkey to be, well, foreboding. As if all the best animals are extinct, and now we have to eat turkey and then soon after we'll have no food at all so you better enjoy this, buster

Now that I have cooked duck, goose, quail, and game hens, I still list turkey as my least favorite bird. I was determined, however, to make a turkey for Thanksgiving that even I would enjoy. I recently acquired a VHS copy of Jacques Pepin and Julia Child cooking together in front of a studio audience; its called Cooking in Concert. There weren't all that many foodies around in those days and so the studio audience is largely comprised of women in their 40s, who were probably the only people who ever cooked way way back then. It was shot in 1992, I believe, so everyone is wearing an enormous sweater. I have not been able to find my doppleganger in the audience. I always look for my doppelganger when I see an audience. I have never seen one. Closest one was on Maury Povich a while back. The guy was making out with Connie Chung in the back row.

Professional chefs generally disrespect the turkey when they talk about it. Kind of like how singers disrespect the Star Spangled Banner as being a bad song with a formidable history that we are stuck with so just enjoy what you can about it. Singers always say that. One problem with a turkey is that it is often so big that in order to completely cook it through, one often ends up overcooking the breast. In 2002 I read an article in the Times, Parlez-Vous Turkey? where some fancy-pants chef proposed to remove the legs before roasting, bone them out, and cook the legs and breast-still-attached to the carcass separately. When I showed the article to my roommates, though, they were horrified. They declared that any changes to the T-Day regime was positively un-American. It probably didn't help that the title of the article was in French.

Well, I had all but forgotten that article when I started watching Cooking in Concert, so I was pretty thrilled to see Jacques bone out a turkey, and stuff it with forcemeat. The only thing that made me nervous was that he roasted it for "about an hour and three quarters at 425 degrees," and if it browns too fast, loosely tent some tin foil over the top. 425?! Only two hours?! Well, I did a lot of web searching and found that most recipes recommends 30 minutes at ~425 and then like 3 hours at ~350. Jacques has never failed me, but, most of America is convinced that you have to lower the temperature after 30 minutes. Who was right? Well, some really extensive googling turned up an article about the recent history of turkey cooking techniques. I wish I had bookmarked it. Anyway, this article claimed that pre-WWII recipes generally roasted at a high temperature, and that post-WWII it started to be in vogue to roast at a lower temp. Both schools of thought claim that their method results in the juiciest turkey. The high-temperature group claims that minimizing time in the oven is the key to preserving moisture, and the low temperature group claims that the key is keeping a low temp so less water evaporates. The author of the article had cooked turkeys using both methods, and claimed that high temp was the way to go. Well, I wasn't looking for the results of an experiment, I just wanted to find one other person who had made the high-temperature method work.

We did not take pictures, but I am recording my recipe here. It is loosely based on the one I saw on the video. I certainly liked the results. I think that the pistachios are key, and its always nice to have some organ meat in a stuffing.

  1. Make at least 2 C bread crumbs and shuck 3/4 C pistachios.

  2. Bone out a 12-lb turkey.

  3. chop an onion, a leek, a lamb kidney, and about 1 C parsley.

  4. Sauté the onion until translucent in 3T fat, add the kidney and brown, add 1/4 C tequila and flambé. Place the kidney and about 1/2 of the onions into a food processor and chop finely.

  5. sauté the leek until translucent, about 3 minutes.

  6. mix together pistachios, 3/4 lb sausage meat and 3/4 lb ground pork. Add 2 Tb tequila, the parsley and vegetables and kidney and mix well. Add 1 tsp salt, and some pepper and some ground allspice.

  7. Immediately before stuffing add 2 eggs and enough bread crumbs to make a paste.

  8. Season the inside of the turkey lightly with salt and pepper, stuff the turkey. tie with string.

  9. Rub the turkey skin with tequila.

  10. Bake, breast side up at 425F for about 2 hours, until the turkey meat and the internal temp is at least 165F. Let rest for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

Monday, November 24, 2008

The small kitchen

There is a recent New York Times blog about Bittman, the Times' food writer, and his small kitchen. I agree with everything that he says; food prepared in a small kitchen will taste just fine, but the hassle-factor is quite high.