Hope you have a good holiday!
Tim and I got a head start on the festivities by cooking a turkey and mini-Thanksgiving meal this past Sunday to ensure that we had leftovers. We've also got a pot-luck party coming up on Thanksgiving itself with a bunch of folks we met here in Jakarta.
Here's how we did our turkey... it was a bit of free wheelin', so bear with me:
- cleaned the bird up, salt and peppered the cavity
- stuffed it with half an onion (cubed), half a head of garlic (cut in half), half a lemon, a carrot (rough cut), a handful of fresh thyme, rosemary and sage
- rubbed it and stuffed the skin with a compound butter made with minced rosemary, sage and garlic, lemon zest, salt and pepper
- tied up the legs with a strip of foil, tucked the wings in
- put it in our pre-heated mini oven (adopted from Ben and Erin), which was at approximately 375 F, give or take
- let it brown a bit, then loosely covered it in foil
- let it cook for about 3 hours, taking off the foil again towards the end to brown it up again
- let it rest for 20 minutes while
It came out pretty tasty! Definitely not overcooked, definitely moist, definitely delicious.
We also had some great leftovers concoctions:
1. The most delicious leftovers sandwich ever: toasted bread spread with mayo on one side, cranberry sauce on the other, a thin layer of stuffing, mixed white and dark meat turkey, lots of lettuce and two pieces of bacon. Awesome. Like a Thanksgiving turkey club.
2. Turkey and white bean chili, made loosely based on this Martha Stewart recipe, with the addition of 2 chipotles in adobo, 2 cloves of garlic, and a handful of leftover stuffing to thicken it up. I also left out the water because it looked far too liquidy already. Pretty good, though!