Tuesday, November 20, 2012

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!