Today we greet the last entry in the ‘Almonds’ section of the Edmonds Cookbook, Broccoli with Almonds. And can I say, what a delight. Lightly cooked broccoli covered with lemony butter and toasted sliced almonds. Oh yum.
You can tell the state of the economy by the price of a lime, or so the saying goes. What it’s meant to tell you, I’m not sure, but I can reliably inform you that limes in these here parts cost a small fortune at the …
Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it something else entirely ungodly?
We’ll go for the third option here.
It was Midwinter Christmas and, following a decision a few weeks earlier and most likely assisted by the fine beers available at Goldings Freedive, Turducken was the dish of the day.
I like to think of Turducken more as a Frankenducken. An unwitting turkey becomes host to both an entire chicken and, in our case, four duck breasts, evolving into a bulging meat sack that is neither bird nor beast, but is definitely dinner.
I have to say our Frankenducken may never have got off the ground (so to speak…sadly for all birds involved, their flying days were well and truly over) had it not been for the wisdom and generosity of YouTube, in particular this aptly named ‘How To Make A Turducken’ clip by Armand Ferrante, who happened to be crowned Wholefoods Best Butcher in the US in 2012.
And thus, all research was completed, the de-boned and de-frosted poultry was collected from the butcher, a poultry lacer was purchased, and the hour of truth had arrived. Our merry Mid Winter Christmas party gathered in the rented holiday home’s kitchen to look on in horrified fascination. A hush fell over the group.
Constructing a turducken is not pretty to watch, but it certainly is interesting. We were blessed with the culinary skills and can-do attitude of Chef and Chief Sommelier Jeremy, who began by splaying out the deboned turkey on the bench and generously slathering the upturned surface with stuffing.
Next, the chicken is laid out across the turkey, with more slathering of stuffing, and finally the four duck breasts (de-skinned) are laid out across the top.
Here’s the bit where you need the poultry lacer. No, I had never heard of such a thing either, but we concluded it sounded much more sophisticated than’meat needle,’ the name we had assigned to this tool in earlier planning sessions. The Frankenducken comes to be when the turkey is sewn back up together with the chicken, stuffing and duck inside. The poultry lacer works a little like a corset, with the metal spikes pinning each half of the unfortunate bird together and providing eyelets for the twine that sews it up. The chef will need some willing helpers at this point.
The appearance of the metal spikes and stitching does nothing to dispel any thoughts of Frankenstein’s monster. Here we have our final product, pre-cooking. There was much sniggering, the exact cause of which I will leave to your imagination as you gaze upon this sight.
There are a number of schools of thought on how one should cook one’s Frankenducken. My main concern was reliability. I did not want a raw bird on our hands, nor a house of Christmas revellers struck down with salmonella. And so, I found myself tiptoeing around the kitchen like a little Christmas elf early in the morning, putting our Frankenducken in the oven at roughly 110 degrees celsius.
This seemed terribly low to me, but it was most effective. Our turducken took about 4 and a half hours to reach the recommended internal temperature of 165 degrees farenheit and maintained its heat for several hours happily nestled in a layer of foil.
Now, for the most important question that is no doubt on everyone’s minds…how did it taste? Quite delicious! The low temperature cooking left all meat moist and tender, with bacon layers on the turkey breast crisping up pleasingly.
I’m wondering if we should try a goose next year.
Bacon, chicken, red wine…what’s not to love? Forgive my absence; I’ve been on a food writing course at the weekends over May and June, which has taken up all of the food writing time in my life. I’m back with a vengeance however, and with a few …
Herman came into my life my accident. My plans were to have morning tea with my sister and gorgeous little niece. This did happen. But what I didn’t expect was to leave my sister’s house with my very first sour dough starter for my own Herman the …
It was time to slay the mighty parsley-beasts. I felt a little regretful about this, as they had done me proud by growing all green and bountiful, despite my doing very little to help them. But, many leaves had been picked for many dishes, and now the beasts had gone to seed.
My parsley-beasts looked a little sad all uprooted and laid out on my deck:
My garden likes very much to grown parsley, which has left me with similar questions in the past about what one should do with the crop. This was an unprecedented situation because rather than just a mere glut, I had several large plants’ worth of the stuff. And when I think ‘something that uses an unholy amount of herbs,’ I think ‘pesto.’
As I’m sure you know, traditional pesto is made from basil, pine nuts, olive oil, parmesan and Fiore Sardo, a sheep’s milk cheese. Its name comes from the Genovese word ‘to pound,’ and some even say it lends itself to the English word ‘pestle’, as in ‘mortar and.’
Apparently the Ancient Romans themselves ate a paste called ‘moretum,’ consisting of herbs, cheese and oil. This was of particular interest to me, as my only memories of food and the Ancient Romans, scraped from the dim, dusty part of my brain labelled Third Form Latin Class, were that stuffed field mice were typically on the menu. How unfair of me. I shall be contacting the editors of Ecce Romani forthwith to suggest a showcasing of moretum and pesto.
It seems to me that these days, we are increasingly embracing any number of nut, cheese and herb combinations for our pesto. The parsley pesto I have made here, based on this parsley pesto recipe, contains walnuts, almonds, parmesan and olive oil. I made it like so..
My ingredients (note: I had a HEAP of parsley, so needed a heap of everything else and in turn made a heap of pesto – you could quite easily halve or quarter this and still have a respectable amount):
I toasted the almonds and walnuts of the stove-top in a non-stick frying pan until they were all golden and smelling tasty.
I ripped the parsley into smaller bits with my hands, and added it to the bowl of my food processor, along with the toasted nuts, parmesan, olive oil and plenty of ground black pepper. I processed it until it made a smooth paste, adding a little salt and squeezing in some lemon to taste along the way.
I wound up with 6 jars of roughly 250mls capacity, meaning that a few friends and family members had pesto thrust upon them. Our first meal with the bounty was a salad with roasted potato, shredded poached chicken and plenty of pesto. This pesto is rather tasty slathered on freshly toasted bread, and I am reliably informed it tops pasta quite nicely too.
Happy gardening and eating.
This idea came to me by accident, really. I’m always a fan of shortbread, so any excuse for that. But the orange part happened when a lonely orange, languishing in the fruit bowl, happened to cross my field of vision whilst I was enjoying a Sunday morning …
We have recently started smoking. No, not the nicotine kind (don’t worry Mum!), the charcoal kind. And my is it fun. Our little smoker cost us the princely sum of $50, half price on the GrabOne daily deals website. I think it looks a bit …
Lucky me, to receive this lovely baking book for my birthday from my similarly kitchen-obsessed little sister. Alice Arndell’s Alice in Bakingland is a treat for the eyes as much as anything, full of pictures of dainty plates, matching teacup-and-saucer sets, all showing off delightful mounds of delicious cakes and biscuits. Squeal!
It simply wouldn’t be a summer holiday without a little cold beer, would it? And luckily the remote, beautiful Coromandel Peninsula, the current holiday location, was happy to oblige us with the the Hot Water Brewery. You find this little delight on the Tairua-Whitianga Road, …