Foodies say they hate thanksgiving. It is the one holiday where people focus on food. Yet, do the hoi polloi actually enjoy the food? Is this quintessential meal a celebration of flavors, an occasion of people finally pushing back that unhealthy monotony of fast food and frozen comestibles?
No! Thanksgiving is often a logistical nightmare for the food enthusiast. The turkey can't be dry. The sides must cook at the same time. Everything has to be hot. Aunt Cathy's son has spilled the mulled cider. Your mother in law is searching for the most infinitesimal lump in the gravy.
Ok, set down the paper bag. After all, if we take a philosophical step back, we'd realize that this turkey day meal reflects human nature: inevitably imperfect, mildly under-appreciated, and generally o k. With the full spectrum of catastrophic variety and consequent hilarity, of course.
Yet, I am still quite naive in my cooking; I still daydream of the day when I can host a tasteful thanksgiving meal, complete with adorable appetizers, elegant desserts, and an exquisite main course. Anyone who knows my utter lack of logistical management, however, could realistically anticipate a meal that is late, a bit quirky, but pretty darn good. A girl can still dream, however.
Dreams, delusions, they're all the same, aren't they? Such lovely musings caused me to volunteer making the turkey for a first-year grad student orphan thanksgiving. It would be a bonding potluck, a sort of 'best of' celebration. That is, unless I utterly destroyed the 25 lb bird.
That's right. 25 lbs. That is twice the size of a normal turkey, but we didn't have the room to roast two smaller birds simultaneously. In order to keep it's flavor while roasting the necessary 6 hours, my friend and I decided to try an intriguing technique: brining.
Step 1: call up my friend who's at Davis. She's a) a fantastic cook, and we cook well together, and b) she's the queen of the universe, and therefore great karmic protection against the Gods of Rubbery Poultry. We started our brining investigation.
Brining: a magical process that keeps lipid-lacking meat moist. I have not read any scientific literature on the matter, but my guess is that equilibrating the turkey cells in massive amounts of salt and sugar makes them hypertonic, which keeps them from releasing water early on in cooking. If the juices aren't in the pan, they must be in the bird. So, we shoved the thing into a cooler and soaked it in brine poured over ice (1 lb salt, 1 lb brown sugar dissolved in chicken stock, and some random seasonings).
Equipment: I do not own a baster. Ok, I had one in the times of yore, but I destroyed it in an entirely different story. Who wants to spend money on a cheap plastic tube with a cheap plastic ball? The scientist's solution: steal a 60mL syringe from lab. Done.
A backup plan: I was still worried that the sheer mass of the turkey would bump the cooking time up so high that the breast would dry out before the rest cooked. So, I hunted arond for a sterile needle that would fit my syringe, thinking I could inject meat with fat/flavor later if needed.
Unfortunately, the average structural biology lab does not have large needles. We have small needles... the equivalent of acupuncture needles as far as a turkey is concerned. I asked a fellow grad student and cooking aficionado his opinion on needle sizes. I got a witty yet condescending reply along the lines of, "Well, if you insist on poking holes in your food..." Well, balls to him. One of my roommates pokes rat brains with needles. He grabbed one that could work as an injection-backup apparatus.
Now, few things look as unappealing as whole, raw poultry. To me there is something almost perverse about naked, gutted birds. They might be the SVU of the culinary world. The whole thing looks so awkward and wrong, but you can't look away. Mainly because pulling a cold, slimy, heavy turkey out of a murky cooler takes focus. We rinsed it off, patted it dry, and artfully plopped it on our improvised roasting rack of carrots and celery. We further molested it by stuffing garlic, lemon, cinnamon, onions, and herbs up the head and ass. It was seasoned and brushed with oil before shoving it in the oven.
Commence the marathon! The miracle was that when it came time to baste it every 20 min or so, there were no pan juices! I had to add chicken stock to the bottom of the pan, and use that to baste. Which meant that I never needed to inject any part of the bird. My daydreams of eagerly injecting mLs of turkey heroin never materialized. Brining is the antidrug of brining.
Our ugly sex-crime victim blossomed into a supermodel fit for any table runway. It was so tender we didn't need knives to cut the meat, once carved. This was good--we didn't have any knives. Even better, my classmates arrived bearing the best dishes from their families. It was a best-of feast, and we all ate so much I'm surprised my body can still produce insulin.
Since thanksgiving, I've become enamored with roasting. It is cheap, tasty, and easy. Rather than post the turkey recipe (which no one would use for a year) Here is a super-simple chicken idea. The seasoning and stuffing is merely a suggestion: use whatever you want. No syringes or needles, necessary.
Roasted Clementine Red-Pepper Chicken
1 medium sized chicken (~7lbs)
1/2 head of garlic, sliced in half
3 cloves garlic, minced
3-4 clementines (or 1/2 orange), zested and sliced in half.
1/2 onion, roughly sliced
1 T red pepper flakes
whatever herbs you want, dry or fresh
salt/pepper
oil.
Oven --> 400 F
Mix salt, pepper, garlic, zest, and red pepper flakes in a small bowl. Take chicken, remove insides, rinse under cold water, and pat dry. Rub mixture over chicken. Put garlic, lemon, clementine halves and herbs inside bird. place in roasting dish, drizzle with oil.
Roast at 400 for 10-15 min, until skin crisps. Decrease heat to 375 and continue cooking until juices run clear when thigh is pierced, or until thermometer inserted between thigh and body reads 180 F.
Save the carcass to boil down for delicious soups and stews.
No comments:
Post a Comment