Christmas Dinner

Turkey. Turkey. Only turkey.

There was supposed to be a jelly roll. But this turkey took 6 hours from start to finish. That's a lot for Christmas Day. So the rolling of the jelly is for another time.

To ensure it's juiciness (or something) the turkey is brined in very salty vegetable broth. 1 3/4 cups of salt to be precise.

Unfortunately the turkey did not completely fit in the stockpot, so when we pulled him out the brine... Most of him was white but the parts thats stuck out were a scary looking reddish-tan. Ah well.

So we stuffed him with Chestnut Stuffing. Chestnuts. So tasty but completely ridiculous. You must score them, then boil them, peel them, chop them and then finally mix them with bread cubes, celery, onion, and three cups of chopped parsley.

Not even half of the stuffing fit in Mr. Turkey. And anyhow, I'm not to sure about this stuffing thing. Once it's cooked and you take it out of the bird it's a bit...soggy. I suppose some people prefer it that way-but I like the bread cubes to be slightly crispy.

The Gravy

Apparently, you should never see the law or sausages being made. To this list there is just one thing I want to add. Anything you eat that contains or is made with giblets.

First the stock. Yes, gravy stock. Made with giblets.

I almost thought I wasn't going to make it. Giblets are scary. Really. Scary. I was about to decide just to use the turkey neck, which yes, seems sort of odd, but I am familiar with turkey necks. I am not familiar with strange...purple things. (Which I later learned were the heart and the liver.)

Eventually I used only the neck and something pink and unidentifiable, and I am sure if I knew what it was, it would make me feel ill. But I don't and I didn't so I just tossed it in the saucepan along with aromatic vegetables and herbs and boiled it.

But then I had to take it out and chop it, which did make me feel ill. Because of the smell. It was a funny smell, like stew meat, but-different. Fairly disgusting.

Now I made roux. I cooked flour with an equal amount of the most intense smelling pan drippings ever. Really. It smelled of turkey, chestnuts, bread, onion, and even garlic, although there wasn't actually any garlic in it. It was slightly ridiculous.

And now we wisk in the giblet-stock, (which has had the giblets removed), the pan drippings and-the giblets. Again. I reduced it until it was slightly thicker than heavy cream and finally strained into a gravy boat.

Ta Da!

Finally it was all together and we ate it. I'm afraid I did not enjoy it as much as my family because I had, you know, seen it being made. It was amazing nontheless. There were so many flavors layered in it, it was overwhelming. A portion could keep you going for hours, but somehow my brothers managed to eat third helpings.

Confusion

Pan Seared Strip Steak with Mustard Cream Sauce is not very complicated. Except what is a strip steak?

Well it is also a Kansas City Strip, a shell steak, and a New York Strip. Once you figure this out, much is possible.

Once I figured that out, I could continue making my lunch.

Pan searing is fast. The butter hisses and the steak browns with alarming speed. I was attempting to cook it to medium rare-ish, but in my fear of undercooked meat it turned out more medium well done.

I do not like mustard. But for some reason it tastes ridiculously good in salad dressing and pan sauce.

While  the steak is resting, you add a bit of white wine to the juices and it spatters and bubbles for 20 second and then you end up with what looks like less pan juice than you had before.  But you end up with a reasonable amount once you add mustard and heavy cream.

I served this with Garlic and Rosemary Mashed Potatoes (do you know the difference between potato puree and mashed potatoes?) and (ahhh!) Creamed Spinach.

There is this skill that some people have where they can have everything cooked, hot, and ready at the same time. Unfortunately,  I do not.

In the end the steak was room temperature, slightly tough and absolutely delicious, the creamed spinach was piping hot and...not bad (I hate cooked spinach), and the mashed potatoes were hot and yummy.

A sort of success.

 

OK, So What ARE Bonito Flakes?

Wellllll...

Bonito flakes are made out of boiled, smoked, sun dried, fresh bonito, a type of small tuna. It is one of 3 ingredients in dashi, a type of soup stock used in Japanese miso soup. The only other things in dashi are kombu (kelp), and water.

After searching a Japanese food store from top to bottom twice, there were still no bonito flakes to be found. Instead we got some fish sauce and dried flounder and hoped it would work.

Once we took the ingredients home, however, I read the back of the bag of dried flounder, which said it needed to be kept frozen (sort of defeats the point of drying it), which it had not been at the store.

So.

There was no actually fish in the dashi, just some fish sauce.

But I had what I hoped would be a good enough substitute for the making of miso soup.

Miso soup is so good. Its basically nothing but water and soy beans prepared in various enigmatic ways and perhaps some seaweed.

But a long story short, the miso soup was good, and according to my mother, the extra step of making dashi added something, something I am not sure I could taste. Ah well.

Lamb and Pie: Is there anything better?

I think not.

Actually yes: Lamb with biscuits and pan sauce and then pie with  fresh whipped cream.

I must be the luckiest human on the planet.

A leg of lamb is rather strange looking. All raw meat is rather strange looking, but this is the largest piece of meat I have ever prepared. Although, granted, the 2nd largest thing was only a medium sized chicken.

It's even stranger when you saw the lamb two days after it was born and held it and petted it! The lamb, as a matter of fact, was raised by our neighbors down the hill and we watched the sheep and lambs from our kitchen window all summer! Local food, everyone. Down with Walmart. Get your food from where you live, not from China. Unless, obviously, you live in China.

Anyhow, the lamb had all these little white bits and things that I attempted to trim off. I'm not too sure how well I succeeded. Then came the fun part. I picked 25 individual leaves off a stalk of rosemary (greatest herb ever), chopped 25 other tiny sprigs off a bunch of thyme, and chopped a few cloves of garlic into miniscule slivers.

I then took a little steel paring knife and made 50 or so cuts all over the lamb and stuck a piece of thyme or a garlic sliver and a rosemary leaf in each one. I stuck it in a roasting pan and surrounded it in celery, carrots, onions, and red potatoes. Then I cooked it.

The leg of lamb was served with another amazing pan sauce made out of it's own drippings and some ridiculously good little biscuits. (The secret? More butter.)

PIE.

Here's another local food story.

Just 10 seconds away from where the lambs live, there is an orchard. We went there a few days after I made the lamb and loaded up on 2 gallons of cider, an enormous bag of Rhode Island Greening apples and 5 Delicatta squashes. The squash became dinner and the apples became PIE.

I truly believe that apple pie is the perfect food. Is there really anything better than a wedge of pie, hot from the oven, dolloped with whipped cream? (If this made you drool go immediately and make yourself a pie.)

Anyhow, I made pie. Again. And I probably will make it again and again until the world ends.

Fritatta!

A frittatta is something like a big omelet or a crustless quiche. You can put just about any cooked vegetable in it but this one had yellow squash and goat cheese. Technically it was supposed to have zucchini in it too but...

I realized once again that I had to go collect herbs in the dark. Unfortunately it had frosted and the basil was brown and very dead looking. There were, however, chives, and we have multiple bags of basil in the freezer.

Another random substitution: we didn't have butter. So I used clarified butter left over from the Omelet la Flop. It seemed to work okay.

I cooked the frittata and it was a little bit scrambled-ish but once I sprinkled Parmesan and "Raw Milk Cheddar Goat Cheese" (There are kinds of goat cheese?)on top and broiled it, it looked fine.

Bottom line: lots of substitutions but it tasted really good and it didn't get cold in 45 seconds like omelets do. Yay!

Halloween

It's the time of year when children (and teenagers who like candy bars, such as myself) put on strange costumes and knock on people's doors, demanding candy. Charming. But anyways, it was Halloween and I honored it by making spiderwebs out of chocolate and putting them on cupcakes.

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes with Swiss Meringue Buttercream to be precise. The cupcakes were beautiful, almost black with massive quantities of Dutch process cocoa powder and super chocolately. And maybe best of all, they only needed one bowl.

The buttercream was the issue. It took a very long time for the egg whites to whip up to white, very gluey substance. And when the butter got mixed in it took on a curdled texture which did not go away with beating. It did not taste very nice either, although my mother and friend liked it.

The spiderwebs are not one of the recipes in the book, but they are made out of chocolate piped onto a template and break very easily. They looked quite nice.

How Does This Salad Dressing Taste So Good?

Yes, you can take a wrinkled piece of ginger, cut off the bad bits,grate it, mix it with soy sauce, olive oil, and this strange substance we call vinegar (how do you make vinegar anyways?) and it will taste amazing.

Ginger-Soy Vinaigrette, people. It's what's for salad dressing.

Yum.