Culinary post-mortem
Nov. 26th, 2021 07:15 amWe were invited to a friend's house for Thanksgiving dinner, but neither of us was particularly up for socializing this year so we declined, and planned a relatively-small, relatively-simple Thanksgiving dinner for two. We were both working Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so the only thing that got pre-cooked was the roasted green beans with red onions, garlic, and balsamic vinegar.
About ten years ago we got a heritage turkey from a farm at the Greenmarket, roasted it for Thanksgiving, and were astounded by the flavor. Ever since then we've been pre-ordering a turkey from a farm at the Greenmarket, and they've been good but not OMG-wonderful-didn't-know-it-could-be-like-this. And it turns out they haven't been heritage-breed: they're pretty much the same turkeys you would get at the grocery store, just slightly better fed and more-humanely raised. So this year we switched suppliers and made sure to get a heritage-breed turkey, which I drove into Brooklyn to pick up on Wednesday. The butcher offered spatchcocking for no extra charge, so we took that option. Dry-brined it Wednesday evening (all the recipes say "at least 24 hours", but I figured late was better than nothing). The bird weighed in at a little under 11 pounds, so I figured the cooking time would be less than recommended in our usual recipe for a 15-16-pound turkey, but I wasn't sure how much less. I turned on the oven about 10 AM, roasted some sliced onions in the pan (sliced thicker this year so they wouldn't scorch as easily) for an hour, applied butter and sage leaves under the skin of the bird, and added it to the roasting pan on top of the onions around 11:30 or noon.
And somewhere in there I browned some sausage, added onions and celery and peppers and seasoned croutons and broth, and put the stuffing in a casserole dish.
After the bird had half an hour at nominally 425°F (according to the oven thermostat; the two third-party oven thermometers usually agree with one another that it's about 50°F below what the thermostat says), we turned the oven down to a convection-aided roast at nominal 350°F, added a cup of broth, set the timer for two hours, and I walked to the grocery store for the traditional Thanksgiving-day One Missing Essential Ingredient And If You're Going To The Store Anyway You Might As Well Get All These Other Things Too. It was a gorgeous day for a walk, even with a bag of groceries.
Somewhere in here![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere mixed up ingredients for cranberry-jalapeño-apple salsa (a change from the usual mulled-wine-spiced cranberry sauce, because for Reasons we had about two dozen apples of various varieties in the fridge), and I washed some baby potatoes, poured them into a small baking pan, sprinkled them with ground salt and pepper, and dabbed them with duck fat.
The stuffing went into the oven on the rack above the turkey when there were about 20-30 minutes left on the timer, followed a few minutes later by the potatoes. The timer went off, I pulled the turkey out, stuck an instant-read thermometer into the thigh, and it already said 175°F. In another place, it said 185°F. And similarly in a couple of other places, so I announced the bird was done and dinner would be at least half an hour earlier than planned. I cleared and set the table whileshalmestere made gravy from the pan drippings and giblets and the bird rested at room temperature.
Verdict: the turkey was more flavorful than usual, but some of that was salt -- perhaps insufficiently-absorbed rub because it hadn't had long enough to dry-brine? It wasn't as moist as we would have liked, but OK, and we've certainly had drier turkey-breast many times in our lives. The salsa was a hit. The gravy was good, if a little on the salty side. The green beans were OK, although I think they should have had more time to come back to room temperature. The sausage stuffing was as good as it has been every year of our married life. We split a bottle of "Hotspur" cider (from Trader Joe's?) (shalmestere had used another bottle of the same in the gravy), and that was tasty.
After dinner we put away the leftovers, started the dishwasher, and took the hounds for a walk in the park. Dessert was raspberry-crumble bars (to which we had added a layer of chocolate because we could, and which had been in the fridge for weeks) with vanilla ice cream.
There are a lot of Orthodox Jews in our neighborhood. I don't know how many of them celebrate Thanksgiving, but it occurred to me that Thanksgiving is basically the same as most Jewish holidays: "They tried to kill us; we survived; let's eat!". Although the "they" for early-17c European settlers in North America was not a malevolent enemy but a morally-neutral combination of starvation, disease, and weather.
About ten years ago we got a heritage turkey from a farm at the Greenmarket, roasted it for Thanksgiving, and were astounded by the flavor. Ever since then we've been pre-ordering a turkey from a farm at the Greenmarket, and they've been good but not OMG-wonderful-didn't-know-it-could-be-like-this. And it turns out they haven't been heritage-breed: they're pretty much the same turkeys you would get at the grocery store, just slightly better fed and more-humanely raised. So this year we switched suppliers and made sure to get a heritage-breed turkey, which I drove into Brooklyn to pick up on Wednesday. The butcher offered spatchcocking for no extra charge, so we took that option. Dry-brined it Wednesday evening (all the recipes say "at least 24 hours", but I figured late was better than nothing). The bird weighed in at a little under 11 pounds, so I figured the cooking time would be less than recommended in our usual recipe for a 15-16-pound turkey, but I wasn't sure how much less. I turned on the oven about 10 AM, roasted some sliced onions in the pan (sliced thicker this year so they wouldn't scorch as easily) for an hour, applied butter and sage leaves under the skin of the bird, and added it to the roasting pan on top of the onions around 11:30 or noon.
And somewhere in there I browned some sausage, added onions and celery and peppers and seasoned croutons and broth, and put the stuffing in a casserole dish.
After the bird had half an hour at nominally 425°F (according to the oven thermostat; the two third-party oven thermometers usually agree with one another that it's about 50°F below what the thermostat says), we turned the oven down to a convection-aided roast at nominal 350°F, added a cup of broth, set the timer for two hours, and I walked to the grocery store for the traditional Thanksgiving-day One Missing Essential Ingredient And If You're Going To The Store Anyway You Might As Well Get All These Other Things Too. It was a gorgeous day for a walk, even with a bag of groceries.
Somewhere in here
shalmestere mixed up ingredients for cranberry-jalapeño-apple salsa (a change from the usual mulled-wine-spiced cranberry sauce, because for Reasons we had about two dozen apples of various varieties in the fridge), and I washed some baby potatoes, poured them into a small baking pan, sprinkled them with ground salt and pepper, and dabbed them with duck fat.The stuffing went into the oven on the rack above the turkey when there were about 20-30 minutes left on the timer, followed a few minutes later by the potatoes. The timer went off, I pulled the turkey out, stuck an instant-read thermometer into the thigh, and it already said 175°F. In another place, it said 185°F. And similarly in a couple of other places, so I announced the bird was done and dinner would be at least half an hour earlier than planned. I cleared and set the table while
shalmestere made gravy from the pan drippings and giblets and the bird rested at room temperature.Verdict: the turkey was more flavorful than usual, but some of that was salt -- perhaps insufficiently-absorbed rub because it hadn't had long enough to dry-brine? It wasn't as moist as we would have liked, but OK, and we've certainly had drier turkey-breast many times in our lives. The salsa was a hit. The gravy was good, if a little on the salty side. The green beans were OK, although I think they should have had more time to come back to room temperature. The sausage stuffing was as good as it has been every year of our married life. We split a bottle of "Hotspur" cider (from Trader Joe's?) (
shalmestere had used another bottle of the same in the gravy), and that was tasty.After dinner we put away the leftovers, started the dishwasher, and took the hounds for a walk in the park. Dessert was raspberry-crumble bars (to which we had added a layer of chocolate because we could, and which had been in the fridge for weeks) with vanilla ice cream.
There are a lot of Orthodox Jews in our neighborhood. I don't know how many of them celebrate Thanksgiving, but it occurred to me that Thanksgiving is basically the same as most Jewish holidays: "They tried to kill us; we survived; let's eat!". Although the "they" for early-17c European settlers in North America was not a malevolent enemy but a morally-neutral combination of starvation, disease, and weather.
