Thanksgiving - Butterflied High-Roast Turkey

I am not a fan of Thanksgiving. I think turkey is a boring, second-rate protein that requires all kinds of ludicrous tricks in order not to taste terrible.

That said, we cooked a pretty nice Thanksgiving meal. Pics and commentary below for your amusement.

This is a dough hook that is hooked on to dough to be made into homemade cheese-filled crackers as per the Alinea cookbook. Carol at Alinea at Home made these and she said they were good. She is right about most things but not this one. I thought they were a pain. We also deep-fried some potato skins and those were tasty.

Giving your guests something to nosh on is pretty important.



We butterflied and high-roasted the bird as per a recipe in Cook's Illustrated from a couple of years ago. This is what it looked like before:













And this is what is looked like afterwards.





Attractive, yes, but it still tasted like turkey (ie not like very much at all).

Dressing for turkey was not tasty. It was a Cook's Illustrated recipe for sausage and cornbread stuffing. Maybe this would be good if it had been more savory. I probably screwed up the cornbread. Baking is for wimps anyway.


Also the gravy was not brilliant. Somehow I managed to turn the onions into little flecks of charcoal. Something clearly went awry as the final product was half a quart, not a quart as predicted. Here's a pic of the original roasting pan with tasty bits in it, plus a pic of the wet stage. I didn't take a pic of the final product because it is just brown sauce and who cares about that?
























But we had plenty of other stuff that was great. The cranberry-pear-ginger sauce was outstanding. It looked pretty nice when finished.

We also replicated the Pommes Anna from last week. Great call.



The plated main looked attractive:


Desserts were fantastic thanks to the efforts of my fiancee. First dessert course was a Whiskey Apple Crumble Pie.

That is her hand covering up a piece of crust that fell off.


Very very nice.

And finally we made "coffee and doughnuts" from The French Laundry Cookbook. This was fantastic and we will make it again.



Still not a fan of Thanksgiving but an okay meal nonetheless.

Large Hunks of Meat are Delicious

Last night I made the single best dish I have ever cooked. "Yabba Dabba Do" out of the French Laundry Cookbook. It's deceptively simple - a large hunk of meat (double cut rib roast) with a bunch of potatoes (pommes Anna using clarified butter and stock-simmered prunes) and some wet stuff (sauce Bordelaise made with homemade veal stock). Okay, maybe not that simple - but not frankly difficult like so many other of these French Laundry recipes.

On Carol Blymire's blog (here) she writes about cooking this dish and falling into deep wet love with the Bordelaise Sauce. She talks about running off to Vegas with it. After making it I think I'm going to try and steal this sauce out from under her. I might have to sweep it off for a quickie before she finds out. Yes that makes me the other man. Or the other person. Or something like that.

The whole dish was fantastic. All the parts worked together. I had to take large bites in order to get a little taste of everything at the same time. Yes, not much to look at (thanks to my thoroughly inadequate phood photography skills) but I guarantee it was wonderful.

What would I recommend to the enthusiastic amateur who wishes to try this?
1) Be careful not to overcook the meat - mine was a little past medium-rare and it only cooked for 15 minutes (vs the anticipated 20-25 minutes).

2) Cut those potato slices very thin - I think I left my mandoline on "Naomi Campbell" whereas I needed to have it set to "Kate Moss." This resulted in me having to cook it for much longer than the prescribed amount. Also a lot of fluid left the slices, which probably wasn't supposed to happen. Still tasty.










3) Use the right wine in the Sauce Bordelaise. I used a Sangiovese and it had a little too much, er, character for the sauce. Use a cheap Chilean cabernet or something a little less ballsy.

I would recommend this dish as a must-make for all fumbling chefs. What, you don't have the French Laundry Cookbook? What's wrong with you? Buy it here. Right now!

Honestly, the thing that had stopped me from doing this previously had been a conspicuous lack of veal stock at home. That was remedied last weekend after a few hours with some veal bones and a big pot. If you ask nicely I can write about that too.

Duck Confit with Scrambled Eggs

Ducks float, quack, and taste pretty good. Duck leg confit cooked sous vide, with scrambled eggs aux fines herbes on the side. Note the chive tip. Yes, I am losing it.