Can-Am Thanksgiving Part 3: Gravy

The gravy follows the general theme of the Turkey-Giblet pan gravy recipe in The New Best Recipe cookbook. It's really a multi-step timeline but I'll condense it all together.

1. (The day before) Take the neck and backbone from the turkey and put them in a heavy bottomed pot. Add about 1/2 an onion and cook, covered over medium heat for 20 min - until the juice starts coming out. Add 1 qt chicken broth and 2 cups water and simmer for 30 min. Strain out the turkey bits and put in a tupperwear overnight.

2. (while the turkey cooks) - skim the fat off the top of the container and put into a pot to heat to boiling. In a separate heavy bottomed pot melt 4 tbs butter. Add 1/4 cup flour and whisk constantly to make a roux. Keep wisking and cook over medium until it browns - about 10 min. Add 1 cup of the hot broth and mix like crazy until smooth. Add remaining broth and cook ~ 30 min until thickened. Set aside to wait for the turkey to come out.

3. (After turkey comes out): Strain all the juices from the bottom of the pan into the gravy. Squish the veggies in the colander to make sure you get all the goodness out. Bring gravy back to a boil and reduce for about 10 min while you get everything else ready

4. Ladle over mashed potatoes and realize life is good.

Can-Am Thanksgiving Part 2: Brining and butterflying the turkey

Turkey all brined and ready for the fridge. I used a hair elastic to tied the bag up - otherwise it was too big for the turkey and not everything would have been covered. Use a strong cookie sheet -it's heavy!

I had never brined a turkey before, but I keep hearing good things and it seemed worth it to me. Once again I stole the basic recipe from www.thepioneerwoman.com I decreased the salt slightly because I had one of those turkeys that said "injected with a 3% solution..." You really want to avoid this, but it seems to be pretty hard to do. Frozen turkeys especially have this added- go for a fresh turkey if possible.

Here's the directions for brining - note that while she tells you to cool it to room temperature she does not point out that that might take say, 2 hours. You'll want to do this the afternoon before.

1. Make the brine following the direction above. Key point- your largest pot might not hold 2 gallons + 3 cups of liquid - mine doesn't. I put in less water to cook it and then split it into 2 pots to cool adding the extra water to help it cool.

2. While your brine solution is cooling you'll want to prep the turkey. This is the intimidating butterfly step . Aside from being freeky it's not that hard.
a. First, rinse the turkey and take the neck and giblets out. I used the neck for stock but threw out the innards. I hear they improve the flavor of stock but I think they are gross.
b. Figure out which side of the turkey is up- that would be the breast. Got it? Ok, now flip the turkey over. Find the backbone (hint, it's the bump down the middle) Take those kitchen scissors that came with your knife set that are super sharp because you never use them and cut up either side of the bone. It does take some force, but it shouldn't be impossible. If it gets too hard try moving away from the backbone a tiny bit or going from the other end. Put the backbone in the pot with the neck to make stock.

If you don't like my directions you can get the real ones by signing up for a 14 day free trial at http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/login.asp?docid=26397 just remember to cancel within 14 days or they'll charge you. The account it tied to email addresses so you should be able to repeat the trick for as many email addresses as you can find - I'm running out. :(

3. You'll now have a floppy turkey ready for brining. Grab the brining bag you bought at the last second while the brine was cooling. (Yes, it's an overpriced ziplock, but it did allow the turkey to fit in my fridge and it didn't leak which is worth $4 to me)

4. Have your assistant help hold the bag open while you put the turkey in and then pour in the brine. Place the whole thing on a cookie sheet in your fridge. It is super important it is in the fridge so you don't get salmonella so make sure it fits before you get too far into this mess. :)

5. Pour your self some wine and relax while the turkey brines overnight

Can-Am Thanksgiving Part 1: Cranberry

I've decided to post Can-Am Thanksgiving recipes in the order in which I made them - This way if you want to repeat this feat (or parts of it) you get an idea of the timing.

First up: Cranberry Sauce. I debated between just buying a can of the stuff or making my mom's traditional but time consuming version but then I saw a post about Cranberry-Pomagrante sauce on thepioneerwoman.com and decided to do it. I actually followed the directions for once, possible because it's so simple and fast. You can do this a couple days ahead of time - I did it the day before

1 bag cranberries (12-16oz)
2 cups pomagrante juice
3/4 cup sugar

combine in a pot and cook over medium heat for 20 min stirring occasionally to smush the berries. Pour into your favorite serving dish and refrigerate until it's time to eat!

Fall Squash

It's squash time! grab an acorn-ish squash and eat this for dinner:


1 acorn squash (I used some carnival type from the coop)
1 cup cranberries
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbs butter

1. cut squash in half and scoop out seeds.
2. chop the cranberries into bits and put half the berries in each squash half. Top each squash half with 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1/2 Tbs butter
3. Bake on a cookie sheet at 350 until squash is soft - about 45min

Enjoy!

Double Chocolate cookies

I needed some chocolate, wanted cookies and had a lot of unsweetened chocolate. Here's the result

1 1/2 sticks butter (3/4 cup)
3 oz unsweetened chocolate
3 eggs
1 cup white sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp instant coffee powder
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

1. Combine the unsweetened chocolate with 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter in a microwaveable bowl and microwave, stirring periodically until melted.

2. In the mixer bowl cream the remaining 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter. Add 3 eggs and beat on high for 2 min. Scrape the sides and then add the sugar in a steady stream while beating slowly. Increase the mixer speed to med-high and beat until eggs and very fluffy.


3. Combine the vanilla with the coffee powder in a tiny bowl and add to the egg mixture. (if you need to, add a tiny bit of water to ensure the coffee powder is dissolved)


4. Add the brown sugar to the unsweetened chocolate mixture and mix well and allow to cool to room temperature.

5. When the chocolate-brown sugar mixture has cooled, add it in a steady stream to the egg mixture and beat slowly until just combined.

6. mix the baking soda and salt into 1 cup of flour and add it to the dough, add the remaining 2 cups of flour, mixing until well combined after each addition.

Almond Poppy Amish Friendship Bread

If you haven't received a mushy white ziplock filled with Amish friendship bread recently then this recipe won't really work. You can create your own starter (google it) or just swing by my house for some. I had been avoiding this as it uses pudding mix which has never seemed very amish, but I've finally accepted it for what it is - an almost cake sweet bread. I can't leave well enough alone though, I've modified it to fit my poppy seed fetish.


Almond Poppy Amish Friendship Bread
Wet:
1 cup Amish starter
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup milk
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp almond extract
3 Tbs poppyseeds
1 large box instant vanilla pudding

Dry:
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

1 cup sliced almonds

1. preheat the oven to 350
2. Mix together the wet ingredients in a large glass bowl (the recipe claims you shouldn't use metal, but I think that's a bit bogus)- beat well
3. mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, use a fork to avoid lumps
4. Combine the dry with the wet and mix well. Crumble 1/2 the almonds and add them to the batter
5. pour into 2 greased and floured 9x5 loaf pans and sprinkle the remaining almonds on top.
Bake at 350 until done - about an hour

Note on pans - the original recipe says 2 loaf pans. I think my loaf pans are a bit bigger than normal so it was too flat in 2 pans. you can also use muffin tins, mini loaf pans, etc. Just adjust the bake time accordingly.

Indian feast

two curries and Naan bread, delicious. Adapted from lots of sources, with measurements estimated.


Red Lentil Curry (hot)
1 diced onion
2 Tbs oil
1 cup lentils
2 cups water
1 15oz can chickpeas
3 Tbs tomato paste
1 tsp red curry powder
1 tsp curry powder
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp habanero pepper powder
1 clove minced garlic
1 tsp sugar

1. In a frying pan (or the pot you're going to use for the other curry below) saute the onion in the oil until soft

2. put lentils and water in a pot and boil about 8 min while onions brown.

3. Add remaining ingredients and cook until lentils are soft and water is gone

VEGETABLE CURRY (mild)
1 diced onion
3 tbs oil
3 carrots diced
1/2 a head of cauliflower
2 tsp garham marsala powder
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp tumeric
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water

1. In a heavy bottom pot, saute onions in oil over medium heat for 8 min (take out half of 'em for other curry above), then add carrots and cover for 5 min

2. mix all the spices together, and add it to the pot with the carrots and onions. Mix well to combine.

3. Add cauliflower, mix well to coat spices and then add 1/2 cup water and put the lid on.

4. Allow to cook covered over medium heat until veggies are soft.

NAAN BREAD
1. preheat a pizza stone and the oven to 450F

2. take an egg-sized piece of the bread-in-5-min-a-day dough you have in your fridge. You have some, right? Otherwise go back to THIS POST (do not pass go, do not collect $200).

3.Roll the dough out into a very thin round using a rolling pin - about 1/4 inch thick.

4. put the dough flat on the pizza stone and bake 5 min. Flip and cook another 5 min until there are brown spots just starting to show. It will puff up like pocket bread. This is ok. It will stop when you take it out of the oven. You should use oven mitts to flip it because it's very very hot.

Enjoy!