Talking Turkey

by kessia{Sage}

Well this month, she was going to avoid it. She had this whole other column planned in the hopes that not writing about it might make it go away. No such luck. One look at the calendar and there it is: Thanksgiving. The cook till you drop, overdress to be around family, unbutton your top button feeding frenzy. She doesn’t know about everywhere else, but growing up in New England, Thanksgiving is second only to Fourth of July in terms of food. Skipping it is not optional, though in recent years she understands that some people do actually go out. These new-fangled notions will lead to the downfall of western civilization she is sure, so she hopes everyone is planning on eating their fair share of Bird and fixture dishes on the big day.

What’s a fixture dish? You know, those things you HAVE to have on certain occasions. It does vary from family to family, so kessia will share hers. Squash is a fixture dish. Nobody eats it, but you have to spend two hours peeling and paring, boiling and mashing so that it can sit on the table in its yellow mushy glory. Master, who does not eat squash, commented the one year that kess didn’t fix it that “something” was missing from the meal. Yes, Master, were you thinking of the pile of stuff you shove over to kessia, making horrified noises all the while? Yes, in fact, He was. She is happy to report that squash has not been omitted in over a decade now. Thankfully, the dog likes it.

Then there’s her mother’s favorite: “Moldy pudding”. It’s actually molded (as in made into a shape) jello with nuts, fruit and cool whip, but my mother has called it moldy pudding from time immemorial. Mother still can’t figure out why no one eats it either.

We have the squash, moldy pudding, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, beets, pickles, and it goes on and on..ending with The Bird. Forever shall it be juicy and capitalized when you speak it’s name, amen. If this is your first Bird, then congratulations, you are about to be inducted into hard core food prep. If this isn’t your first Bird, then you know about the ugly jobs she is going to describe and can skip this part or read along, cackling at the appropriate parts.

Before you can cook the Bird, you have to GET the Bird, which reminds her that she needs to talk about different Birds. There are about a bunch of different kinds, but here it is in a nutshell: Most of those “self basting” Birdies are injected with sodium and/or fats at some point around their departure from the land of the living. Tastes great, makes it hard to mess up and it can be a big problem if there is someone on a restricted sodium diet. Kosher Birds are generally additive free, so have a tendency to be leaner and have lower sodium. As she understands it, there are also gourmet “free-range” Birds that are as close to the farm as you can get. For the stout hearted, there are usually local farms that raise turkeys. She has cooked two fresh Birds so far, and while they are higher maintenance (no little pop up thing and you have to baste), they do have terrific flavor.

In all fairness, she does have to mention the last couple of ways to obtain a turkey. You can raise it yourself, or hunt one, and make your small contribution to the great circle of life and death in the wild. Of course, if you do that, then you will have to pluck and clean it, a rather messy procedure. So, with half of you laughing and the other half truly horrified, let’s please move on to the commencement of:

Cooking the Bird

Because most Birds come with cooking instructions, she’s not going to re-type them here. If you have already slit open the plastic and destroyed the roasting instructions, shame on you and go look in a cook book.

She is, however, going to take a moment to extol the virtues of the aluminum roasting pan. For a small cash outlay, there is NO nasty scrubbing, no icky congealed grease on The Day After. Now she feels like she should begin screaming like that freaky exercise guy, but she won’t. Instead, she’ll just urge you to beg, plead, whine and then beg some more for one of these handy disposable pans.

There’s the pan on the counter. If it isn’t one of the disposable kind, do yourself a favor and spray the bottom with some non-stick spray, or grease it lightly. It makes the drippings from the Bird peel up easier during clean up. Drag your trash can close to the sink and get a knife. Slit open the Bird wrapper, and be ready for all sorts of juice. Yes, well, you are right, it is cold and slimy and slightly nasty, but the best things in life often are. First thing, and yes she knows it’s gross. Empty the bird. This means you stick your hand in and fish around. (Sometimes, it is fun to call Master in and wave the Bird around a bit, using it as a pointer to ask for help reaching things on the top shelf. The look of horror and subsequent laughter generally keep kessia amused until well into the stuffing portion of Bird prep.) Make sure you get all of the giblets and neck out of the back and body cavity then rinse the Bird. Some people cook the giblets and neck to use them in stuffing etc. Kudos to them, because kessia just can’t do it. It’s all she can do to fish the stuff out and fling it in the compost bin. Yuk. Now walk the Bird over to the pan and drape him in there.

According to the powers that be, it is unhealthy to cook the stuffing in the bird so kessia does not recommend you do that. Still, she cooks the Thanksgiving bird stuffed and it has not killed anyone yet, but then she also lives on the edge by thawing the bird in the sink. Theoretically, the bird should be thawed in cool water or the fridge. So, shove the milk out of the way, move all the junk off the top shelf and park the bird there for about a week and a half (no joke). Anyway, cook the stuffing in a dish or in the Bird, whichever you feel most comfortable doing.

If you decide not to cook the bird stuffed, then it is a good idea to add some seasoning to it. A little bit of Bell’s poultry seasoning (which is basically premixed thyme, rosemary and sage), or maybe some butter and fresh rosemary are nice. So is sage, dried rosemary and/or a bit of thyme. Try not to go insane with the spices, more is not better but a ½ to whole teaspoon of each is nice. If fat is not an issue for you, then cut some small slits in the skin of the Bird and stick some small cubes of butter in the slits. It does this buttery, spiffy basting thing that is really quite lovely, especially when you are cooking a fresh-type Bird.

Now it’s time to make it pretty, just like the Butterball ads. To get it that golden color, brown the Bird by searing it in a 400 degree oven for about ten or fifteen minutes, then turn the heat down to the recommended temperature. This serves to seal in the juices and gives it that golden color. If you or the people for whom you are cooking don’t care for golden brown then cover it with aluminum foil before putting it in.

With the Bird in the oven, it is time to either wash dishes or cook some more. Better still, why not cook some more and build up a nice pile of dishes as entertainment for during the football game. If you are cooking an 18 lb bird, then it is going to take about four hours. If you are one of those live on the edge types and cook it stuffed, then it’ll take a bit more time. Either way, now is the time to peel the veggies, make salads, put together appetizers and maybe even get a dessert or two ready to go in the oven. Take a minute and figure out what else needs to be prepped or cooked so you can figure out when to start the other dishes. That way, everything comes out at close to the same time so it’s all reasonably hot. The cooking frenzy around here is such that kess has found it much easier to just make a list of what needs doing and when things need to be put in water. Listing things seems to keep her from barking orders like Julia Child on crack, which keeps her out of trouble with Master.

If it happens that you are lucky enough to be a guest for thanksgiving, then you will probably want to bring something. Some people inflict one of their family’s fixture dishes on their host, others buy something, and still others make some incredible culinary masterpiece. Before you go crazy making some fifty layered cake, or worse, moldy pudding, consider a couple of things: How are you getting there? How long will it take? Can the dish be packed securely?

If you are driving three and a half hours with two kids, a dog and a carsick cat, then you’ll need to make something that will not spoil. If that three and a half hour drive is over winding Vermont roads, then you’ll really want to be sure that dish is packaged for travel. No, this is not the voice of personal experience talking. For the record, it was one carsick kid, two dogs in a tiny Toyota and she ended up dumping an entire dish of poorly packaged squash all over the southern part of Vermont.

Even though the urge for many new cooks is to do the culinary masterpiece, kessia does not recommend that. Learning to cook new dishes is best done before or after, not during some major food event. However, sometimes despite our best efforts, we end up making some new dish and if that is the case then plan on making a couple of ‘practice’ rounds. That way, you can tweak the recipe, figure out how to make it better, and make sure it tastes good. You don’t want to be the bearer of biscuits that are so bad that hunting hounds won’t even touch them do you?

Some easy ideas for “bringable” stuff:

Mini-quiches: The tiny pie shells are in most freezer sections. Easy to make, easy to carry.

Quick breads: Unlike yeast breads, which can be tricky and take hours to make, quick breads are very forgiving. There’s a basic quick bread recipe at the end of this article.

Vegetable or pickle trays are pretty easy too and if you put them together yourself (instead of buying them), they really aren’t expensive.

Cranberry sauce She doesn’t know why, but everyone oohs and ahhs over homemade cranberry sauce. She supposes that “homemade cranberry sauce” has this Martha Stewart mystique to it because few people make it. She started making it by accident, really. No, she didn’t trip into a vat of cranberries and have to cook her way out, she put off the shopping until all of the canned stuff was gone. Given that cranberry sauce is one of those fixture dishes, she was compelled to try to make the stuff from scratch.

Dubiously, she read the cranberry package, thinking that she would need gelatin or some weird combination of sugar and karo in order to get that pretty red jelly. She read the list of ingredients and was even more suspicious. Surely the cranberry people were wrong; it couldn’t be THAT easy. Yes, it is just that ridiculously easy. If you can boil water, then you can make this. Yes, actually make it. Put in a nice glass dish (if you don’t have one, you can get one for a couple of dollars at a discount store) and, my heavens, isn’t that just lovely?

Ok, thus endeth the humour and so begineth the recipes:

Cranberry Sauce

Here is what you need: A measuring cup, a pot, a mixing bowl, a strainer, a spoon, a nice dish for the finished sauce, water, sugar and cranberries.

Boil 1 cup of water with 1 cup of sugar, then add a 12 ounce package of cranberries. Return to a boil. Boil gently for about ten minutes, stirring every now and then. Put a strainer over the top of a mixing bowl, then slowly pour the contents of the pot through the strainer. Mush the cranberries through the strainer until no pulp is left. Stir, pour into serving bowl and cool to room temperature. Refrigerate until serving.

For whole berry sauce, simply dump everything into the serving bowl, skipping the straining part. Stir it, cool it and eat it. Told you…….ridiculously easy. If you want to get snazzy about it, you can grate some orange rind on top as a garnish.

Quickbreads:

The trick with quick breads is a light hand. Toss the dry ingredients together, then gently GENTLY stir in the wet stuff. Be careful to only stir until the batter is mixed then bake immediately. Also, quick breads tend to ripen in flavor, so for the best results, bake them a day or so ahead of time or make a mess of them all at once and freeze them. Below is a good basic recipie. Play with the spices, substitute apple for the cranberry, this makes an excellent sweet bread, and it travels way better than squash.

Cran-banana bread

• 1½ cups flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ¼ c melted butter or margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 or 3 mashed bananas
• 1 cup chopped cranberries

Combine butter, sugar and one egg. Beat until smooth. Beat in the other egg, then stir in the cranberries and banana.

In another bowl, mix first five ingredients together. Stir well. Add all at once to the banana mixture and stir just long enough to moisten. Scrape into greased 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for one hour until it tests done (stick a toothpick in the center, if it comes out clean it’s done. If it’s covered in gooey batter stuff, put the loaf back in the oven). Let stand 10 minutes then remove from pan to a rack to cool. Once cool, wrap it (or eat it or freeze it).

Spiffy Little Quiches

• 1 package mini muffin shells (the little tinfoil ones)
• 1 package of mini frozen pie shells
• 6 oz cheese (She uses swiss or cheddar)
• 2 tbsp sliced green onion
• 1 tbsp chopped pimentos (She uses bacon instead)
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup milk
• ¼ tsp salt
• dash nutmeg (if you like nutmeg)

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Put mini pie shells into foil liners, and put about a tablespoon of cheese into each one. Sprinkle in some onion and pimento.

In a 2 cup measuring cup (it makes pouring easier) mix eggs, milk, salt and nutmeg. Beat well with a fork, then pour mixture into crusts filling them to about a ¼ inch away from the top. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm. Really, the veggies and cheese are just a guidline. Use what the people you are feeding like or what you think will combine well. This is especially nifty because it is small, so you don’t need a whole oven to do it. A girl makes hers in the toaster oven.

She hopes she has added some wit, fun and a couple of tips to your Turkey Day and looks forward to writing next month. Please have a safe and lovely November.

kessia{Sage}

her mailbox is always open, so please email her with suggestions, questions or comments at kessia_s@yahoo.com