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plonqEven though it was technically Thanksgiving today, we celebrated yesterday by inviting four friends over for dinner. We don't host this kind of thing very often (certainly not as often as we'd like), so we wanted to do something a little special.
The first thing we did was order a turkey back in May. We talked to the farmer and put down our names for a "medium" turkey. We were expecting something in the 12-15 pound range, not the 21 1/2 pound monster you see below (snow leopard included for scale):
No problem. Our roasting pan is rated to 22 pounds
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atara decided to go simple with this bird. She stuffed it with onions and fresh sage and oregano from the farmers' market, and some friends rosemary and parsley from our own garden. Once she had done that she flipped it breast-side down and tossed it in the oven. All the maths said it should be done around 16:00, so we'd asked people to come over any time after 14:00, and we'd eat around 16. Well, around 14:00 the bird announced that it was done (well, our turkey alarm did anyway) and we suddenly found ourselves with the main entrée ready to go and nobody around to eat it. I managed to get hold of all our guests and cajoled them into coming over earlier.
We are definitely going to roast them breast-down again in future. You don't quite get the crispy skin like you do breast-up, but I've never had such moist breast meat. We also had stuffing (made from all local ingredients), local potatoes (smashed), green bean casserole (all from scratch with beans from our garden), local butter horns, farm-fresh corn that we blanched and froze earlier in the summer, and honey-glazed carrots. Our one concession to the 100-mile limit was the cranberry sauce (which I whined about until she relented). I got to make that.
I brought a cup of water, and about 3/4 cup of honey to a boil, added a bag of fresh cranberries, brought it back to a boil until they all popped and then simmered it for about 10 minutes. At the end of that time I added a bit of all-spice and lemon zest to round it out. I am pleased with the results, and I didn't hear a lot of complaints, so I'd call it a success.
Today we are dealing with the leftovers. Once everyone had eaten their fill, I dessicated the turkey and managed to get over 8 pounds of meat off of it before tossing the bones into the freezer for future broth. That's a lot of meat. We sent a god tub full of it home withdronon but we've still got some serious turkey to deal with.
The first thing we did was order a turkey back in May. We talked to the farmer and put down our names for a "medium" turkey. We were expecting something in the 12-15 pound range, not the 21 1/2 pound monster you see below (snow leopard included for scale):
No problem. Our roasting pan is rated to 22 pounds
atara decided to go simple with this bird. She stuffed it with onions and fresh sage and oregano from the farmers' market, and some friends rosemary and parsley from our own garden. Once she had done that she flipped it breast-side down and tossed it in the oven. All the maths said it should be done around 16:00, so we'd asked people to come over any time after 14:00, and we'd eat around 16. Well, around 14:00 the bird announced that it was done (well, our turkey alarm did anyway) and we suddenly found ourselves with the main entrée ready to go and nobody around to eat it. I managed to get hold of all our guests and cajoled them into coming over earlier.We are definitely going to roast them breast-down again in future. You don't quite get the crispy skin like you do breast-up, but I've never had such moist breast meat. We also had stuffing (made from all local ingredients), local potatoes (smashed), green bean casserole (all from scratch with beans from our garden), local butter horns, farm-fresh corn that we blanched and froze earlier in the summer, and honey-glazed carrots. Our one concession to the 100-mile limit was the cranberry sauce (which I whined about until she relented). I got to make that.
I brought a cup of water, and about 3/4 cup of honey to a boil, added a bag of fresh cranberries, brought it back to a boil until they all popped and then simmered it for about 10 minutes. At the end of that time I added a bit of all-spice and lemon zest to round it out. I am pleased with the results, and I didn't hear a lot of complaints, so I'd call it a success.
Today we are dealing with the leftovers. Once everyone had eaten their fill, I dessicated the turkey and managed to get over 8 pounds of meat off of it before tossing the bones into the freezer for future broth. That's a lot of meat. We sent a god tub full of it home with
dronon but we've still got some serious turkey to deal with.
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Date: 2010-10-12 11:34 am (UTC)We bought a turkey as well, but even after thawing for 15 hours it still was solid in to the core. Our supper was postponed, though eating was still done by 6:30.
I'll have to suggest the breast-side-down motif next time we make one, though.
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Date: 2010-10-12 12:08 pm (UTC)