Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is easily one of my favorite holidays.  The food is hearty and everyone seems to be in a great mood… if not, all it takes is some dark beer, wine, and/or a baileys with coffee. Unfortunately for me, getting home for Thanksgiving is expensive and a hassle.  So what do you do when you miss your family and can’t get home for the holiday?  Bring the flavors of your home to you.

I am not going to go into much detail on Thanksgiving because, to be frank, I am more interested in sharing with you my leftover recipes.  Nonetheless, I will walk through my time leading up to Thanksgiving Thursday.

On Tuesday, I picked up the bird.  Lucky for me, I was able to order a pasture raised, antibiotic-free, organic never frozen turkey through Ripple… the bird’s name was probably Colin.  I decided this year I would try out a turkey-roulade recipe I saw on chefsteps.com (Click here for more).  So after my Tuesday shift at The Rip, I spent some time in the kitchen taking the legs off, de-boning them, and removing the tendons.  After I seasoned the turkey legs, or what was once the legs, throw a little fresh sage in there and roll it up in plastic wrap (see the link above for more visualization and explanation).

On Wednesday, I prepared my bring to allow enough time for it to return to room temperature.  In my brine I had some lemon, honey, peppercorn, sage, rosemary, thyme and a few bay leaves.  Once I set that aside to cool, I started preparing my stuffing and cranberry sauces.  For the stuffing, I sauteed in butter a lot of celery, mushrooms, and white onions with fresh herbs (sage, thyme, and rosemary that I put through a piston and mortar).  Separately I toast broken up pieces of english muffin, roast and shell chestnuts, and cook off sausage.  It is important you under cook everything because it will cook later on as you roast your turkey (if  you cook your stuffing too much beforehand, everything will be mushy).  It is also important you store the ingredients separately so nothing gets too soggy.  Once the stuffing preparation was complete, I made a port cranberry sauce and a cranberry chutney.  For the sauce, I took one bag of fresh cranberries and boiled it down with sugar, a little salt, port wine, and some fall spices (cinnamon and cloves).  For the chutney, I took one bag of fresh cranberries, the juice of an orange, the zest of half an orange, one pear with the skin off, and a little sugar, and pulsed it all in a food blender until I found the desired consistency.  On top for garnish I sprinkled candied ginger and candied orange rinds.

As for Thursday, things pretty much fell into place.  I woke up at around 8 A.M. to put the Turkey into the brine.  Then I made the sweet potato dish, where I baked sweet potatoes, removed the skins, and mixed with a little seasoning and maple syrup, and topped with toasted pecans.  Then I prepared the stuffing my combining all the ingredients, and stuffing the bird.  The remaining stuffing I put into tinfoil with turkey bones or the turkey neck, and roasted individually.  Once the bird was in the oven at 350 and the clock was ticking for 2.5-3 hours, I prepared the garlicky mashed potatoes with plenty of butter and a little cream.  I am lucky to have a heating drawer, so I put my mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes in here to avoid cramping up the oven.

As the time drew closer to take the turkey out of the oven, I put a bunch of Pillsbury biscuits on baking trays and prepared them for the oven.  I also prepared a nice fall salad with walnuts, pears, beets and blue cheese with a simple balsamic vinaigrette.

Once you remove the bird, insert biscuitss that need to heat for 15-2- minutes.  Once the biscuits were done, I put in the roulade at 475 until the skin on the outside was crunchy.  I let that sit for about 5 minutes, then I cut into everything and served.