Lemon Rosemary Roasted Turkey with Gravy

I think I'm this close to perfecting the roast turkey for the holidays.

I've been a big fan of the lemon-rosemary flavor combo for a long, long time, but never used it with turkey until this past Thanskgiving. I was inspired by the Trib's Good Eats Thanksgiving story, where super thin slices of lemon and whole rosemary sprigs are tucked under the skin. I hadn't yet bundled up the rosemary and that was a great way to use a lot at once. This approach didn't work out so hot as written. The flavor was great, but the lemon slices heated differently than the rest of the bird, scorching the skin above, giving this gross polka-dot effect.

My brother, who was my partner on this dish, has some great rosemary bushes at his place, so I took that idea and improvised. We also added a brining step at his suggestion. I hadn't had great luck with that before, but we had time and I figured it certainly couldn't hurt. He picked out a 17 lb bird for our group of 10 adults and 3 young kids.

The night before, I took the basic brine recipe:
1 cup kosher salt
1 cup sugar
1 gallon water

Bring to a boil for five minutes and then completely cool.

And tweaked it for seasoning and volume to:

1.5 cup kosher salt
1.5 cup sugar
zest and juice of a three (3) lemons
small handful of fresh minced rosemary (a few tablespoons)
small handful of peppercorns
and
6 quarts of water.

We then brought this to a boil to supersaturate the solution and then let it cool completely outside (This is so you don't essentially poach the bird). We were able to fit the bird in a small (disinfected) Igloo cooler, cover it with the brine, set it out on the 35F porch (I would have added a bag of ice if it had been warmer outside) and covered the whole thing. Easy enough.

The next morning (Christmas Day), I softened two sticks of butter and mashed in another couple of tablespoons of minced rosemary and lemon zest and a few pinches of kosher salt. I rinsed off the bird, patted it dry, and rubbed the butter under and over the skin. I then cut a lemon and an onion in eights and crammed them into the cavity with a few more sprigs of rosemary. A quick truss and we were ready to cook

Due to oven space, we used the grill, by simply putting the roasting pan on the grate. My brother manned the grill while I worked on the sides in the kitchen. He did have a bit of a problem keeping the temperature steady. I found that the only way around that is to practice with your grill to find the right setting, unfortunately. The only problem is basting. Once you open the grill lid, you lose all of the heat and you have to start again. The oven has pretty much the same problem, but it's less extreme in the variances. I think it's Alton Brown who says that you shouldn't baste at all, in favor of the constant temperature. Not that I like him that much (okay, not at all), but it's a vote in my favor. We did run out of gas, so we finished it in the oven for the last 20 minutes.

The end result was really quite nice. The breast skin blackened a bit, which made me realize I'd forgotten to warn my brother to tent the the breast with foil for the first hour (which evens out the colorization). But it was still quite tasty.

The meat was moist enough that it really did not need gravy, but I decided to give it a quick shot, since the pressure was off. I've never been really comfortable with gravy, as it always seems to be a rush job, by definition, and risky. I deglazed the roasting pan with a bit of chicken stock, whisked in some flour, cooked that into a nice roux and then added stock and white wine to get to the right volume and viscousity.. The drippings from the brine and seasoned butter were just salty enough, but not too much.

So, in the end, there was no magic trick. Just carefully working through the basics and working with a consistant flavor mix paid off.

Christmas Dinner - 2008

We drove down to my brother's house in Texas again for Christmas - a trip that almost didn't happen due to my employment situation. I was laid off the Friday before Christmas, if you hadn't heard, and it kind of freaked us out for a minute. Especially when we found that the car needed a not-so-cheap repair that same day. Thanks to some help from the parents and falling gas prices, we went ahead. We were very happy we did. Being around family was just the thing we needed. And being able to contribute my skills in the kitchen was validating.

In putting together the menu, I swapped out a few standards again, for variety's sake. I also took another pass at a few recipes I'd tried recently, for practice. The menu was:

Lemon Rosemary Roasted Turkey with Gravy
Green Onion Buttermilk Biscuits (not served)
Cheddar Buttermilk Drop Biscuits
Lime Cilantro Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Poblano Gratin Potatoes
Classic Green Bean Casserole (The Cook's Illustrated Version)
Best Potluck Macaroni and Cheese
Cornbread Stuffing with Sausage and Fennel
Vegetable Casserole with Tofu Topping
Sour Cream Apple Pie
Cranberry Eggnog Tart
Gingerbread

I came down with a pretty bad headache on Christmas Eve, so I wasn't able to get all of my prep work done then, as I hoped. This was a big factor in dinner getting on the table about 2 hours late (7 instead of 5, as planned). I did, at least, get all of the desserts taken care of.

On the day of, my mom was a HUGE help in the kitchen. I was able to give direction on things to cut and prep and have complete confidence that she would know what I was talking about. My aunt asked my brother and me where we learned and we both answered that while we don't remember any specific "How To" sessions with her, she really taught us a great foundation. My brother also tended the turkey on the grill after I prepped it while I worked in the kitchen. There is no way I would have been able to run back and forth between the two.

There was one mishap, the Green Onion Buttermilk Biscuits, which I caught early and was redundant anyway. I didn't read carefully when mixing and used baking soda instead of salt. I tasted one and not only was the flavor off, but the soda aftertaste lingered for 30 minutes. Ugh. I threw them out. What I didn't realize until very late that day was my brother and sister-in-law had already snuck one and discovered how foul they were, but apparently weren't going to say anything out of niceness. What really sucks is that this was the first time ever that I've messed these up.

Entries for the individual dishes, including recipes and comments, will follow over the next few days. If a recipe has already been posted, I'll be updating the original post if there were any neew discoveries or findings.

Treebeards' Mushroom Soup

I've been literally been meaning to make this soup for years. I ordered it once at the restaurant when I was feeling a little coldish. Stuffed up, but not enough to stay home from work. I was not expecting the pepper kick and I'll be damned if it didn't completely clear me up. This wasn't a bland cream of mushroom soup, but a blast of flavor and spice with large, delicious chunks of mushrooms.

The only think that held me back was the use of whole milk (or half & half) in the recipe and Channing's hatred of whole mushrooms. Do you see a pattern in what I have to work with here? It's a texture thing, actually.

I knew I needed a soup course for Thanksgiving and I'd made the Eastside's Curried Corn Chowder too many times before (and he doesn't like that, either, because of the whole kernels of corn and the spice). So, I threw this on the menu.

There were enough dishes that anyone who wasn't interested in it wouldn't go hungry (only hurt my feelings), but wanted as many people to enjoy it as possible, of course. I realized that I now have an immersion blender, so I could make it a mix of regular and creamed soup. That way, I could serve the cream-only portion to Channing and still have the basic recipe for us.

Preparation was pretty fast and easy, the hardest part being cleaning 2.5 lbs of mushrooms. I'm pretty fast on these and it still takes about 15 minutes, just for that.

While the result wasn't quite what my 15+ year old memory led me to expect, it was quite good. There was definitely a pepper kick in there which, with the other spices, kept it from being anything like the canned Cream of Mushroom. Most of the heaviness of the liquid was a function of my having blended half of the recipe and using the the half & half itself. I think you could easily go with a lighter milk and it would be fine.

While eating dinner, I did find that there were a few lumps of flour in the mix. They didn't taste too different from the softened mushrooms, so not a big deal, but it was a little embarassing. I need to be more careful with the flour next time. I had made two batches - I'm pretty sure the first was fine, but I was rushing through the second one and I'm willing to bet that I just got careless.

Roasted Turkey & "Gravy"

I had grand plans to follow Alton Brown's guide for the perfect turkey this year. Printed in Gourmet a few years back, it's written exactly as he talks, like it's a transcript or something. The big problem is you realize just how little information there is and how difficult it is to tease out any of it when you need it. Oh, and I think he's really annoying on television, anyway, so reading this article excruciating for me*.

An example of the lack of information? There's absolutely no place where he gives an estimate of how long the cooking time would be. While I appreciate going by temperature only, not telling that info really makes planning meal time difficult.

Fine. I had the intent to brine it until I realized how much of the solution I'd have to make to put the bird in the cooler (many gallons). Screw it. It didn't seem to help last time anyway. Oh, and he doesn't actually have a recipe for the brine. You have to pick it out of the verbiage and it's still missing the point that you have to boil and cool the solution before you soak the bird.

So, I basically used the Roasted Chicken method on this larger bird. I grabbed a fresh 20 pounder at Jewel, so I didn't have to worry about thawing. I would have preferred a more natural bird from Whole Foods. But I happened to spot the chosen victim while on a regular shopping trip and saw that I could save myself an easily 3 hour ordeal.

They were out of sage at Jewel, so I mixed a holiday rub I picked up at Whole Foods into 1.5 sticks of butter. This was rubbed over and under the skin. I also threw a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme, 2 small quartered onions a several smashed cloves of garlic into the cavity and then trussed it up (with twine - the legs were too big for the skin trick).

The only time crunch I faced was getting things out of the oven in time to put in the turkey. Then I remembered my trick from a few years ago - the grill. For the second time, stress just melted away.

The hardest part was regulating the temperature with the grill flame. I did use the Brown trick for browning the turkey:

• Start the turkey @ 500F and roast for 30 minutes.
• At that point, cover the breast with a foil shield and reduce the temp to 350F until done.
  

Easy enough. I found that High on my grill stays at an even 500F and you have to drop all the way down to Low to maintain 350F. This is, of course, dependent on the outside temp, which was about 35F that day. I didn't baste as I didn't want to lose heat.

I was surprised at how fast this cooked. We hit 165F within about 2.5 hours, when I expected about 4. It came out just right, though, so I think I finally got the thermometer right (granted, the thigh on the turkey is a much bigger target). Though it was ready a good few hours before dinner, it held a lot of its heat. I carved in the kitchen and added a touch of heat from the microwave before serving.

There was a downside to the amount of butter, though. I had nothing, I mean nothing, to make gravy with. Just a ton of cooked butter. Yuck. So, at the last minute, I whipped together a wicked veloute sauce. You have no idea how cool it is to be able to say that. It was flawless on the first try.

* Strangely, though, I really like his cookbooks. They have a lot of the science of cooking explained well. But on TV, I find him, well, patronizing, I guess.

Cornbread Stuffing with Fennel & Sausage

Once I found this recipe for dressing, I've never made any other one. It completely nails the sweet, savory and texture nodes. I use sweet cornbread when I make it, usually from the Jiffy Corn Muffin mix.

The downside is that it's not very flexible for modifications. I discovered this first at my brother's house. We swapped out the pork-based Italian sausage with a chicken sausage because some relative (my sister-in-law, maybe? It's been a while) couldn't eat pork.

The result tasted fine, but was way, way too dry. I think this happened twice, as I had forgotten between the two attempts. So this year, our friends Ebru and Fuzail joined us for the feast. Being Muslim, they couldn't eat the pork either, so I went a different route. I split the recipe into two and put sausage in one and left the other vegetarian. Finally remembering the moistness issue from nixxing the pork sausage before, I upped the chicken stock on the pork-free version.

Unfortunately, there may be a density factor at play here in the baking, also. I split the two versions into covered baking dishes, but they were only about half as deep as usual. Again, a bit dry. So, my lesson from this experience is to just do exactly what the nice people at Bon Appetit tell me. At least in this case.

UPDATE: I made this again at Christmas in Ft. Worth a few weeks later. I found that if you make it in one dish and you up the stock added by a cup or so, it turns out absolutely perfect. Yay!

Green Onion Buttermilk Biscuits

I don't really know what to say about these other than they're incredibly good and I've never screwed them up. They're the only home made biscuits I've ever made and have been consistently successful for 6 years. So, I'd say it's a fool proof recipe. For some reason, it's not on-line, so this is a scan of a xerox from the magazine. I'll clean that up with either a scan of the original, if I find it, or I'll type it. But in the meantime...

Treebeards' Garlic Cheese Grits

I always have to explain grits, as most everyone I know here has never had them. They're like polenta. In fact, this recipe is a lot more so than the ones I fell in love with that my mom used to make. The egg in the recipe firms it up a lot more like the Italian version and the cayenne gives it a great kick. This is one of the recipes that is included in the Treebeards' cookbook that isn't actually on the menu, but in keeping with the palate and feel of the restaurant. That's a shame, because I would have ordered them all the time.

Something about that grits = polenta thing: A woman in my office, Teresa, is Chicago born and bred, though it seems she got a solid upbringing with Southern food here. She went down to Mississippi with a friend whose father (or some male relative) who is a fantastic cook, based on what Teresa was describing. He served soft polenta with an Italian meal he put together and Teresa had no idea what it was. His response? "They're like grits." So the analogy works both ways.

Roasted Garlic & Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes

This "recipe," like my guacamole, is basically made to taste. I've had this as part of every single holiday meal I've served for at least ten years now, so it's not like there's much "learning" for me here. They are tasty, but I think it's time to move them out of the line up.

Ingredients:
5 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes
1 pint sour cream
1 bulb garlic
olive oil
salt & fresh ground black pepper

I roast the garlic in the toaster oven, as a) it seems wasteful to use the entire oven for such a small item and b) I'm usually baking something else there at the time anyway, since it is the holidays, after all. I slice the top off, to expose a bit of most, if not all, of the cloves and drizzle olive oil over all of it. Then I roast the buld, lightly covered with a sheet of aluminum foil at 400F for about 20-30 minutes. Thinking about it, I'm not sure I've ever timed this.

Wash the potatoes and chop into ~1.5 inch chunks. Cover with cold water in a pot and boil until fork-tender. Note that I do not peel them.

Once the potatoes are done, drain them, put them back into the pot and mash until creamy. Add sour cream, garlic, salt and pepper while mashing, to taste.

5 lbs is an awful lot, I know. I just got in the habit because I like the leftovers and if I don't do the whole bag at once, the remaining spuds usually go bad.

Lime Cilantro Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Holy Mother of God, this recipe is good. As I mentioned in the menu overview, I usually just skip these as I have too much starch action going on in the meal. But the promise of the sharpness of fresh lime juice was just too good to pass up and would make it a nice pop of flavor.

There's not much to say other than it was easy and straight forward. The sweet potatoes were a hair underdone, so I need to watch that next time.

UPDATE: One thing I have found is that it is really important that you spread the pieces out in a single layer in the oven, with space between each piece, like it says in the recipe. If they're packed too tight or on top of one another, they get mushy. Still taste great, though.

Spinach Cheddar Bake

Bon Appetit describes this recipe as a "creamed spinach," but it's really more like a casserole. A very managemable and delicious way to include greens in the holiday meal - it always gets rave reviews. I've made this several times before, but I did learn two new things time:

1. You can cut this in half. In fact, you should. As written (for 18!), this is an insanely generous amount. As much as I like leftovers of this stuff, really. This is the first time I've tried cutting it down and it worked.
2. When reheating something with a crispy crust, do not leave the foil on the entire time. Okay, everyone, "Well, duh." Fine. I waited a bit too long and it was kinda moist. Don't think anyone knew the difference or cared.

Oh, and that first review with the bit about "adding pimentoes for color?" Crazy talk. Just saying.

Ginger Lemon Cheesecake

These are two of my favorite flavors and so there's been a fondness in my heart for this dish since I had it as a desert at FlatTop here in Chicago (a Mongolian barbecue). Theirs was pretty good, notable for the crust made of gingersnaps, so recreating it was a good target for learning cheesecake.

I'd tried it a few years ago by improvising on a lemon cheesecake recipe, substituing the gingersnaps for graham crackers in the crust and adding Indian ginger paste into the recipe. The result tasted fantastic, though there was a HUGE split in the top and the crust got really soggy.

Then I found this recipe in one of my magazines.

Overall, this turned out well. The texture was just right, there was no breakage, and ti tasted good. So, a good showing. On the down side, the flavor wasn't as intense as late time. I definitely need to make this to taste next time and add a LOT more fresh ginger.

Also, the crust was soggy again. Since I'd made a crumb crust well recently with the key lime pie, so I knew I could pull that off. And since I had blind baked this, my previous theory that the custard had soaked through seemed unlikely. I decided to test my springform pan for water-tightness and, sure enough, it leaked immediately. It looks like some water from the bath leaked into the pan, despite the aluminum foil lining the outside. Mystery solved. I need to look up if there's a way to seal it better (like greasing the groove the bottom seam) or if I just need to buy a new one.

Chocolate/White Chocolate Mousse Raspberry Tart

Oh, Lord. This is a long one.

I first made this tart on a dare. When I started cooking, I was on a project for BSG in St. Louis. One of my friends and co-workers there, Scott, would "dare" me that I couldn't make "X." That is, whatever it is he was craving at that time. Sometimes, I bit. Because whatever “X” was, it usually sounded like a good idea.

Once, when I was putting together a meal for the occasion of his wife, Namita's, visit to our project city, he dared me that I couldn't make a chocolate/white chocolate/raspberry desert of some type. So, I hunted down this recipe in my mom's collection of cookbooks as mine was pretty sad at the time and the internet was just a-birthing.

Yes, I'm old. Shut up.

It comes from a little collection called Beat This!, by Ann Hodgman. Quite appropriate for a challenge, I'd say. The book is a diverse gathering; the only thing tying the recipes together being the author's certainty that they are all simply the best ever. I bought my own copy, finally, but I can't say I've made anything else from it yet. That needs to change. It's just that the collection is such a random assortment, I never think to reach for it when I have something specific in mind. It is a very entertaining read and is definitely recommended.

To make this, I had to buy a tart pan. As I walked out of the store, I looked down at my bag and said to myself (and I'm totally not kidding here), "Well, Hal, today you are no longer a man."

I got over that. But that moment of emasculation is why I insist on calling this a tart instead of a "pie," as Hodgman calls it. If I had to have that moment to get the right pan, then it's a tart, damn it.

As I was going at it that afternoon, I could not make the crust to save my life. Three times I went at it, until I finally broke down and went to the store for that Pillsbury pre-made AND pre-rolled crust.

The rest went well and it was a big, impressive hit. It stayed in the repertoire, but it always bugged me that I was "cheating" because a) I'm terminally guilt-ridden and b) it was supposed to be a "french sugar cookie crust" which I really, really wanted to try. Really more of "b," to be honest, but never underestimate a Catholic upbringing, even second-hand as mine was. I even once tried rolling out the Pillsbury Sugar Cookie dough as a crust. Yes, disaster.

Whew, home stretch here, I promise.

So, now that I'm challenging myself, have learned a regular crust and was having a big-ass dinner, it was time to try again. Since I had the cheesecake, I took comfort in knowing I could abort at any time, if need be.

First thing Thursday morning, I tackled the crust. The first try, I did it as instructed in the food processor and got a big gloppy mess. Right away, I decided, "Screw it," and pulled out the pastry cutter. Sure enough, perfect. I forgot to set the timer and almost forgot it while it was blind baking, but thank God I remembered at the last minute and pulled it out at exactly the right time. There were going to be no threesies that day.

With that done, I pulled out all of the ingredients, lined them up and left them while I started work on all the rest of the dishes. If I got through with everything else, I'd tackle it. If not, it was a long weekend. I'd do it later.

Chris and BJ were the first to arrive at around 4:30 or so. I was rounding things up, sans tart, when they asked if there was anything they could do. Chris is a master of deserts and I realized, “Aha, here we go!” So I threw the book his way and asked him to start prepping. I knew he could handle it. Dinner was going to be a little late, but, by God, we’d have the tart. By the time, I could jump in, Chris was working the raspberries. We double teamed the rest and nailed it. I’m digging this collaborative cooking thing.

By the way, I think the flicking fingerfuls of white chocolate on the finished product sounds messy and like a waste of good white chocolate. I just melted a couple of ounces, spooned it into a sandwich bag, gathered it all in one corner, nipped off the tip and had myself a quick and easy little pastry bag. And the result? An already awesome desert made much, much better with the proper crust.