Happy Thanksgiving!

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!

500th Post! Evolution of a Sandwich

To celebrate the 500th post on this blog (500!! Whoa.), I am going to lead you through my mind's convoluted process for weeknight meal development... in tonight's case, the end result was this turkey and bacon club sandwich with chipotle and green onion mayonnaise, heirloom tomatoes, and Bibb lettuce.

You'd think that for my 500th post perhaps I would iron the place mat for the photo shoot.
You would be wrong.

Step 1: I peruse my favorite food blogs, and hopefully am inspired by (or drooling over) a particular recipe.
In today's case it was this amazing looking avocado BLT with fried egg and chipotle mayo at Closet Cooking.

Step 2: I obsess over recipe discovered in Step 1 and wipe drool from my chin.

Step 3: I consider whether I can make said recipe exclusively using ingredients I already have at home; determine that I cannot.
I didn't have avocado... boo.

Step 5: I ponder whether it's worth following the recipe exactly, and thus whether I must brave a trip to the grocery store.
The lines at my local grocery store leave much to be desired...

Step 6: I decide that the grocery store is too daunting, re-evaluate whether I need to be a slave to the recipe, or if I can just riff off of it and make my own creation.
Yes, riffing is good.

Step 7: I utilize the Google machine to search similar recipes that might be more in line with
the ingredients I have in stock and develop a dinner plan based on this.
Today, using the search term, "chipotle mayo," I found this recipe and the sandwich took a turn into club sandwich land.

Step 8: I finish out my day at work in excruciating anticipation of the sandwich that evolved in steps 1-8.
Today was a long day...

Step 9: I implement the plan!
Rejoice over bacon, spicy mayo, and amazingly juicy tomato!

Shepherd's Pie with Thanksgiving Leftovers

Another easy-to-make dish composed of Thanksgiving leftovers is a modified Shepherd's pie. Pretty good!

Loosely based on this Rachel Ray recipe, I heated up leftover gravy, threw in shredded turkey, sauteed carrots and baby spinach in a little olive oil and garlic, and zapped the mashed potatoes in the microwave briefly with a splash of chicken stock to loosen it up. Then I layered it all (in that order) in individual casseroles. I sprinkled some grated Parmesan cheese on top of the potatoes and baked them at 375 degrees for about 15-20 minutes (until it was bubbly).

Turkey, Cranberry and Fontina Panini

I made this great turkey, fontina and cranberry sauce panini/grilled cheese using Thanksgiving leftovers, inspired by (but not exactly following) this recipe. I also saw some other turkey panini recipes on the internets that were really appealing!

In retrospect, I am thinking I would have liked to throw thinly sliced apple into the sandwich itself for some crunch, but it was pretty tasty nonetheless. Prior to composing the sandwich, I zapped the shredded turkey in the microwave with a splash of chicken stock to reconstitute it, as it got a little dry in the fridge overnight. Worked perfectly.

I would definitely recommend this sandwich for leftover turkey! Also, this avgolemono soup recipe that I made in the past works great with some shredded turkey thrown in at the end!

Turkey Tetrazzini

So this week must be retro casserole week... I feel like Betty Draper, mooning around the kitchen, cooking these old-school dishes like chicken pot pie and turkey tetrazzini. All I need is a martini and a cigarette... and maybe some big ole curlers.

Anywho: turkey tetrazzini... noodley, mushroomy, crispy-topped. Pretty good! I used ground turkey (sauteed with some shallot and garlic), Gruyere instead of Swiss, and threw some parsley into the mix before I baked it.

Eggs Benedict with Leftover Stuffing, Turkey and Brussel Sprouts

I saw this idea for reimagining Thanksgiving leftovers a couple years ago in a Daily Candy email:

• Form your leftover stuffing into little patties and fry them in a little olive oil until warmed through and a little crispy on the outside.


• Top with warmed shredded turkey (I splashed a little chicken broth on mine to keep it moist, then popped it in the microwave for a minute).


• Throw on some greens- sauteed spinach, or, in our case, leftover brussel sprouts


• Top with a poached egg and some hollandaise sauce (I used the Washington Post's blender hollandaise sauce).

An awesome way to transform the leftovers into something new and edible. Essential for me since, as you know, I hate leftovers (particularly mixed grill).

Thanksgiving Extravaganza: The Turkey

So, here is the first of several recipes served at our pot-luck Thanksgiving: the main course was, of course, the turkey.

Our turkey was a farmer's market find, a broad-breasted bronze from Groff's Content Farm. We had a little bit of a panic earlier this week, when, after picking up said 19 pounder, our fridge crapped out. Luckily, Chuck and Tim were home and were able to scramble to transfer the turkey and our other perishables to Barbara's fridge, and the responsive folks from Trust appliance repair came to our rescue ASAP and fixed it up.

I used this dry-brine recipe from the New York Times Dining & Wine section... it appealed to me because of its simplicity and its lack of messy, sloshy brining liquid. Several other reliable sources also advertised dry brine recipes this year, so I figured it was worth a try. In the end, I may have overcooked the turkey a bit, but nothing a little gravy couldn't fix.

Turkey Cupcakes

Vanilla Cupcakes...chocolate frosting...candy corn beaks and tail feathers...marshmallow eyes (with red gel) and chocolate sprinkles for flare!

Voila!

Turkey and Swiss Chard Roulade: FAIL

All atwitter (no, not that Twitter) with Tim's impending return from Armenia, I had big plans to greet him with a fancy meal of turkey roulade stuffed with swiss chard, pancetta, gruyere and arborio rice, using a recipe highlighted in the Thanksgiving issue of Food Network Magazine, complete with handy-dandy step-by-step photos. Despite the hand-holding and spoon-feeding provided by the magazine, in my incompetent hands, this recipe went very, very wrong.

I found boneless, skin-on turkey breasts at Whole Foods on the way home from the airport, but not one 3-4 lb breast like the recipe required. Instead I found two 1 3/4 lbs breasts, and figured I would make 2 roulades instead of one, no problem. However, when I got them out of their packages at home, they were strangely shaped, and one of them was actually in 2 pieces.

"Never fear!," I said to myself (actually, it was more like, "what the f%*$?!!!"), "we'll just make 3 mini roulades (roulettes?)" And I proceeded to begin flattening the turkey breasts so they could be wrapped around the tasty filling...

However, these proved to be unflattenable turkey breasts. After approximately 10 minutes of beating them silly, they were still 38-triple Ds, unwrappable, unrollable, un-rouladable.

So, after a few more choice 4-letter words about how much I hate turkey breasts, I made the executive decision (with Chuck's sage advice) to slap the roulette filling on top of the now misshapen turkey breasts, shove them in the oven and call it a day. This is how we ended up with open-faced turkey and swiss chard roulades.

FAIL blog, here I come. Pwnd.

It was supposed to look like this (Food Network's photo):

Ultimately mine looked like this:

Served with purple smashed potatoes and roasted broccoli.

Turkey day in Octember

Two year old UPS turkey. . . applejuice steam-roasted w/apple cinnamon pan sauce, "homemade" stuffing and buttered summer squash from the "gahdin". Turkey day in Octember. Have to say it tasted better than it looks.

Asian Lettuce Wraps and Coconut Lime Rice

Mmm... these were really good: pork lettuce wraps with grapefruit. I used a recipe that caught my eye in my Food Network Magazine, although I used ground turkey thighs rather than the ground pork because that was all I could find on the way home from work. The Bibb lettuce and the scallions are from the CSA. I would definitely make these again!

The coconut lime rice was somewhat of a disappointment... not as flavorful as I hoped, and the rice didn't get quite cooked all the way for some reason. Oh well. I'll try a different recipe next time, perhaps. And I'll try the coconut popsicles from the magazine, too!

Greek turkey burgers!

Mmm... this is the second time I've made these turkey burgers, very loosely based on Rachael Ray's Spanikopita burgers. Here's what I did (approximately, since I was throwing stuff in without measuring both times I made the burgers):

Makes 4 fat burgers

1 lb ground turkey
olive oil for sauteeing
some onion, chopped (about 1/2 C)
2 cloves of garlic
half a bag of baby spinach (you could use frozen spinach, too, if that's what you have- drain it)
1 egg
some dried oregano (1 tsp)
salt and pepper
handful of breadcrumbs (about 1/3 C)
1/2 C feta cheese, crumbled
1/3 cup kalamata olives, finely chopped

- sautee the onions in olive oil until soft, add garlic after a few minutes
- throw in spinach, sautee until wilted, turn off heat
- put turkey in a large bowl
- throw everything else in with the turkey, mix with your hands
- form into 4 large burgers
- sautee the burgers in a teeny bit of olive oil (Rachael said 5 minutes per side, but mine took a lot longer for some reason)

Serve on toasted buns with a greek yogurt sauce. For my yogurt sauce, I combined the yogurt with salt and pepper, some fresh lemon juice, and dill and mint from the Aerogarden. I made homemade buns/rolls with the dough I had sitting in the fridge.