Thanksgiving Recipes

My favorite exercise in holiday cooking is to make brined turkey. Use any clean, water-proof storage container and a cold environment (such as a refrigerator or Boston) and soak the turkey in the brine for an hour per pound of bird. The recipe for the brine I use is roughly 1 gal cold water to 1 cup of the following: kosher salt; raw sugar (or 1/2 white sugar and 1/4 molasses); rough whiskey. I like to use Wild Turkey. It makes a man mean and meat delicious. (Hi Mom, meet Delicious. Mmm.) You can add any combination of aromatics or other flavors to the brine. After soaking: remove the bird; dry it; rub with spices and stuff if desired; roast according to size and stuffing.

Now, you can stuff a brined turkey with anything, or nothing at all - it comes out delicious either way. This year, we decided to experiment with some mild aromatics: we applied a salt-and pepper rub and stuffed the bird with a mix of Gala apples; red onion; garlic; rosemary; thyme and celery salt.



My method of roasting a turkey is to cover it with a clean dish towel and roast it at 325F for 3-3.5 hours. I soak the towel with low-salt chicken stock every half hour.



Once the time is up, I uncover the turkey, turn it around (breast to the front) and baste while roasting at 350 for another hour to crisp the skin. It usually comes out looking delicious.




For the side-dish, we cut up a single enormous butternut squash to roast with sweet potatoes, carrots, apples and Morrocan spices.

Delicious Spice Mix (we upgraded to tablespoons):
2 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. chile powder
1/2 tsp. sweet paprika
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
and a pinch ground cloves

To prep, just toss the chopped squash and sundry with a few tablespoons of olive oil and a few teaspoons of the spice mix (enough to provide reasonable coverage). Now the recipe I cribbed said to roast the squash uncovered at 450 for 45 minutes; but we were roasting the turkey simultaneously, so we roasted the squash covered at 325 for 1.5 hours. Good thing, too! It was delicious.

Delicious Pesto

There was a mad rush this week to get basil from the farm share before the frost hit and all the plants turned brown and unfortunate. I'm not entirely sure of the basil variety they plant, but the leaves are smaller than grocery-store basil, and it smells spicier. I will update this post with the varietal information at a later date. What's more important is that making pesto was a moral imperative, but whenever I use raw garlic (as most recipes call for) the pesto always turns out much too strong and sharp.

The solution: Roasted Garlic Pesto

Step 1. Roast a whole head of garlic ala Warren Ellis (He writes like my Papa, which is disturbing. Even more so, he seems to follow the same hard road in cooking -- so ignore him about scraping yourself bloody trying to peel sweet potatoes. One day, someone brave will tell him that the right way to make sweet-potato mash is to boil the potatoes first, quench them in ice water, and then rub the skins off). I used Otter Creek Copper Ale as my beer of choice. Nice and sweet. I wanted my garlic in between sweet and sharp, so I only roasted it for 30min on 400F.

Step 2. Clean and pack 2c fresh basil into a food processor.

Step 3. Add 1/2c of EVOO - use a tasty variety. I like to use Trader Joe's California Estates Extra-Virgin Olive Oil, in the black bottle. Ask for it by name.

Step 4. Add 1/2c+ of grated Parmesan.

Step 5. Add a double-handful (1/3c) of pine nuts.

Step 6. Add salt and pepper (a pinch of each), or forget to add the salt and pepper like I did, and add it as a garnish later on. If nothing else, it gives you an excuse to summon Heavy Metal Guy.

Step 7. Add the roasted garlic.

Step 8. Q: Will it blend? A: Yes it will.

Step 9. Sever over pasta with fresh tomatoes.

Deliciousness

There has been some recent deliciousness occurring in my kitchen. The cause: This summer, I am participating in a local farm share, a privileged activity of the socially-conscious green (and maybe, young and urban) professional, which was recently featured in the NYTimes. You pay in advance for produce. Every week, one person picks up that week's allocation of vegetables harvested from the farm. We then struggle to consume the fresh produce without having any of it rot. It is wonderful.

If you are lacking the time (or more importantly, RoHS-compliant soil) to grow your own food, a farm share is the next best thing. You pay (in my case $150) in advance for what turns out to be about 4 months worth of vegetables. That's $10/week for enough vegetables to stuff yourself silly on. Onions. Beets. Turnips. Carrots. Chinese cabbage. Lettuce. Spinach. Tomatoes. Kale. Garlic (and skates). Squash. Zucchini. Cucumbers. You get all of the joys of the earth without any of the labor, birds, cutworms, deer, mites, droughts, storms, winds or thieving neighbors. It's then an exercise (in my case, a serious learning exercise) to learn how to cook what you have, make it tasty, and most importantly, just eat or preserve all of it. We've had good luck with all our recipes this week... so far.

Saag/Korma Hybrid (a.k.a. I disavow any knowledge of regional Indian cuisine):

1. Saute finely chopped onions with pressed garlic in a fair amount of rapeseed/canola oil and butter (as a substitution for clarified butter or ghee).
   
2. Once the onions are translucent, fold in about a pound of washed, finely chopped spinach.
3. Add delicious spices, such as coriander, ginger, cumin, fennel, cinnamon and chili powder. Saute. Do not steam.
   
4. Separately, wash and dice up summer squash (we had a variety that half-hybridized with zucchini and was quite sweet).
   
5. Fry the summer squash in hot canola oil, and as they start to cook spice them with mace, paprika, salt and cinnamon.
   
6. Add yogurt to the spinach-onion-spice mix. Reduce.
7. Fold in the spiced fried squash. Reduce until creamy.
8. Serve over rice.
   

Beet and Cucumber Soup (a.k.a. I love cold cucumber bisque):

1. Start out peeling the beets (save the greens). Dice a cup's worth of them and cook in boiling water.
   
2. Juice half a lemon into a blender. Add some salt, some pepper and a handful of chopped onion.
   
3. Peel a large cucumber, and cut into medium-sized pieces. Add this to the blender.
   
4. Add the cooked beets (drain the water).
   
5. Blend!
6. Add a cup of sour cream to the mixture. Blend!
   
7. Add milk and blend until the texture is appropriate.
8. Serve chilled with sour cream.
   

Vegetable Ragout (a.k.a. One eats what there is to eat.):

1. Saute chopped onions with pressed garlic in a fair amount of olive oil.
   
2. As the onions are partially cooked, add vegetables in the order of most flavorful/slowest-to-cook (mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, celery, peas, corn, peppers, whatever you have on hand). We added broccoli, beet greens and lemon juice. Saute.
3. Add tomato sauce and spices (thyme, rosemary, oregano, salt, pepper) (and optional things like tomatoes and meat). Stir, then cover and let steam. If you need more liquid, add vegetable stock or bullion and water.
   
4. Fold in chopped cabbage and cover.
   
5. Serve as is, with rice, or over pasta.
   

To make some excellent Eastern European peasant food, start with the ragout, skip steps 2 and 3, go straight to 4 (folding cabbage into sauteed onions and steaming) and then add a pile of cooked lentils. It doesn't look like much, but it is very simple, tasty and filling.

Korean Stir-Fry

My friend's mother is always sending her very good Korean food - all prepared and ready to defrost and eat. Unfortunately, we depleted her supplies rather quickly, so adventures in cooking were required:

Korean Beef/Thai Stir-fry

1. Take thinly-sliced sirloin and make a spicy Korean beef marinade: sesame oil, soy sauce, chili peppers (jalapeno or habanero + some seeds), sugar

2. Lightly fry generous amounts of minced garlic and ginger in sesame oil: add beef.

3. While the meat is browning, make up your sauce: sesame oil, peanut butter, tamarind paste, soy sauce, lime juice, siracha or red pepper to taste

4. Add chopped onions to the browned meat; saute; add your sauce.

5. Add green onions or sundry other vegetables.

6. Serve over a bed of rice noodles or vermicelli with spinach, cilantro, mint, sriracha sauce (rooster sauce), lime and peanuts (or any combination thereof; including other raw vegetables). Goes well with beer.