Cooking... by the seat of my Pants! » Turkey

The Pilgrim Sandwich

Jerry — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:32:10 +0000

Let me start by saying that this is not so much a recipe as it is a Thanksgiving stat of mind. An embracing of all that was great about Thanksgiving dinner all in one bite. A final embrace of feasting and gluttony for the day after turkey day. This is the Pilgrim Sandwich, which could be considered the American version of the English “Bubble and Squeak.”

Whatever you call it, it’s a tradition in my house and I look forward to this the day after thanksgiving almost as much as I look forward to Thanksgiving dinner itself. How could you not love it? It’s the perfect brunch for the day after a feast and the perfect way to get through a bit of leftover… Well, a bit of leftover everything.

And did I mention that it’s fantastically good?

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Post tags: christmas, Holiday-Recipes, leftover recipes, Leftover Turkey Recipes, Thanksgiving, Turkey

Leftover Turkey Stew Recipe

Jerry — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:24:42 +0000

From the archives. One of our family’s all time favorite leftover turkey recipes. Stay tuned for more though!

I Promise that this will be the last of my leftover turkey recipes. By now we’re both most likely getting tired of turkey. Personally, I’ll be buying another while they’re still on sale, but it will be getting cut down into component parts and frozen for when the urge strikes later in the year.

This is a simple method for taking those last little bits of turkey and turning them into something hearty and filling at the same time. Total cook and prep time are less than 40 minutes, perfect for a quick meal after work,or a good hot lunch on the weekends. The addition of a ton of potatoes takes the focus off of the turkey and puts it on the vegetables which, in this case is exactly where it belongs.

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Post tags: christmas, comfort foods, Holiday-Recipes, leftover recipes, Leftovers, Soups and Stews, Thanksgiving, Turkey

Turkey Giblet Gravy Recipe

Jerry — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:54:50 +0000

From the archives. My go-to giblet gravy. sure to please a table of twenty or a table of two. don’t waste those giblets!

Giblet gravy is one of the staples on my holiday table, and has been since my grandmother introduced me to it as a child. At the time this brown gravy was something different, even a bit exotic for a child who was raised on southern gravy. For me this succulent new flavor sensation became one of the things I looked forward to most at the holidays, which was the only time I’d ever had it.

Over the years I tried many times to perfect my grandmother’s recipe for this gravy without success. I suppose I’ll never get hers right, but this version has become my favorite, and is adapted from a recipe I got from a Safeway Select Magazine.

I’ve never looked back. It’s just that good.

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Post tags: christmas, gravy, Holiday-Recipes, Thanksgiving, Turkey

The Ultimate Roast Turkey Recipe

Jerry — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:51:13 +0000

We’re pulling this dish out of the archives because it really is the ultimate roast turkey recipe and should not simply be linked to. It needed to come back into the limelight and take its rightful place at the center of our holiday menu once again. Enjoy!

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present to you the king of the American Holiday table, the centerpiece of nearly every family gathering in the United States for the months of November and December, the prince of poultry, the roast turkey. As promised, I’m kicking off the Holidays with a focus on the foods of the season, and there’s simply no better place to start than with with this, the noblest of all domestic foul.

The turkey is either the most awaited or most dreaded addition to a holiday meal. Most awaited if the bird is moist, succulent and juicy, and most maligned when dry, overcooked and in desperate need of a slathering of gravy just to make the remains of the once proud bird palatable. the latter almost never happens to me, and I’m going to give forth the secret of the perfect bird, which I assure you, this was.

There are literally thousands of roast turkey, Christmas turkey and Thanksgiving turkey recipes on the Internet, and the methods for achieving the “perfect” bird vary wildly from one recipe to another. Most call for basting the bird constantly throughout the cooking process. If it makes you happy, I suppose you can go ahead, but you’re not going to end up with the results you were looking for. To make the truly prefect turkey you must keep the mantra of poultry perfection on your lips at all times…

“I will not baste. I will not open the oven door. The turkey is fine.”

Sound silly? I know my mother and grandmother would have thought so. Both women basted their birds religiously, and both made some pretty fine turkeys. Over the years I’ve discovered that basting does not make for a better bird. Patience does.

One caveat. If you’ve bought yourself a butterball turkey, this method will not work for you. The skin of a butterball turkey has been pierced, and therefore basting is necessary. For any other poultry in the world, it is NOT, and should not be done. The second part of the mantra is this…

“I will not stuff the turkey…”

Stuffing the bird increases cooking times drastically while robbing you of the perfect opportunity to add flavor to the bird. I adore turkey flavored dressing but if you’ve got a good bird you should have more than enough turkey drippings to make not only a wonderful dressing, but a good amount of gravy as well. (But I digress, those are different entries.)

This method is simplicity in itself, a rub, a trip into the oven and one action that you need to take in the middle, a little patience at the end and viola! You’ll thank me for this, I promise.

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Post tags: christmas, Holiday-Recipes, Thanksgiving, Turkey

The Making Of: Turkish Borek

Jerry — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:29:15 +0000

In case you didn’t know, my wife is currently stationed in Turkey. While I miss her terribly, I’m thrilled that she not only has the chance to sample some wonderful new foods, but also that she’s willing to share them with us.

The following video was taken at a local restaurant in Adana Turkey. The gentlemen behind the counter is making Filo dough by hand!

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Post tags: Adana, Borek, Turkey, Turkish Cuisine, video

Recipe for Turkey Cutlets with Orzo-Spinach Salad and Butter-Braised Squash

Jerry — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:30:12 +0000

Every now and then I crave something that I’ve eaten a long time ago, but haven’t seen or heard of in a while. It doesn’t matter what it happens to be. It can be something my mother used to make, my father’s chili, a food that reminds me of somewhere I’ve visited or just something attached to a memory of some time in my life. Whatever it is that causes me to want that particular dish, once the idea is planted, it stay with me until I give in. If ignored long enough it overwhenles me completely. This dish began with an inspiration like that.

My first real cooking job was as a line-cook (Or chef de partie) at a chain restaurant called Lyon’s, a California chain sort of like an up-scale Denny’s. It was the very early 90’s. pasta was served with a blob of somewhat-Italian sauce on top, salad’s were huge and healthy meant you added chicken (cooked with butter.) In the winter, the side vegetables were always broccoli and caulflower. In the summer we cooked zucchini and Yellow squash. There were no other vegetable options.

While a side of squash might sound very healthy, the cooking method we used back then gave a lot of flavor, but definitely didn’t do anything to improve the health of our diners. Several handfuls of squash were tossed into a saute pan with a serving ladle full of butter and tossed until soft, seasoned with salt and pepper, then served hot. Not what we’d call healthy in today’s world.

Unfortunately, it was this dish that taught me to love squash. It was cooked on my station. I made a ton of this stuff every day, but I hadn’t thought of it in years. Then the other night I was talking with my wife about old jobs we’d had and the memory of simple squash simmering in butter hit me like a brick. I could smell it, I could taste it. I had to have it, and nothing was going to get it out of my head until I made it.

Even though the memory of the original has a special place in my heart, I just can’t bring myself to use an entire stick of butter to cook two squash. I know better. My cholesterol levels know better. My family means more to me than that. So I had to find a way to get the same flavor without all the fat. I also had to keep it simple, because this side was never meant to be complex.

In the process, I needed a full meal to go with it, lest I sit and simply eat the entire pan of butter soaked veggies on my own, then be relegated to a diet of water and broccoli for the next month so that I can get my checkup without having the good doctor go insane.

In the end I decided on a combination of butter and olive oil and a bit of fresh red bell pepper to up the flavor that would be pulled out by the lack of fat. The combination is wonderful and I highly recommend it the next time you’re looking for a simple side dish for a meal.

For the rest of the meal I added simply cooked turkey cutlets and an orzo and spinach salad that were both simply divine, if not paired perfectly. (serve the orzo on the side or in it’s own dish and you’ll be happier. The squash and the Turkey are perfect together.)

Now that this trip down memory lane has reached an end, I feel invigorated and renewed. Many of the things that I used to cook there are fresh in my memory and ready to be modernized, which is just the kick in the rear that my inner-chef has been lacking over the past few weeks.

Please give this dish a try and let all of us know what you think. It’s dear to me in a strange way and I’d love to hearyour thoughts.

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Post tags: Pasta, Peppers, Recipes, Tomatoes, Turkey, yellow squash, Zucchini

Turkey Sausage Sliders with Tomato Basil Relish Recipe

Jerry — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:06:18 +0000

Let’s face it, sliders are fun. you get all the flavor of a full-sized burger in an easily had held and extremely portable package that’s perfect for tailgating, game day parties or any other circumstance where you need to have a lot of food handy without the requirements of plates and flatware. They’re also perfect for kids parties, since sometimes a full burger is too much for a little mouth to handle. With sliders they can just go back for more if they’re still hungry.

This particular dish is a riff on two recipes. The first was this recipe for Italian Turkey Sliders, written by the lovely and always charming Anne from short Order Mom. The recipe made me want to jump in and make sliders and I’ve been trying to get around to it since I first saw her recipe. The idea for the relish is my personal spin on a burger topping I saw Gordon Ramsay create on his BBC show Kitchen Nightmares. His was for a beef burger, but I thought that the concept would make the perfect condiment for the turkey and I was not disappointed in the slightest.

Of course, fresh basil is out of season at the moment, but I’ve got a bunch of it in the freezer, thanks to this method from Kalyn’s Kitchen. Now I always have at least a semi-fresh supply of basil at my disposal, rather than having to run to the market and pay inflated prices for a few wilted leaves in a plastic package. In this case, the garlic was by far the more inferior of the ingredients, but still totally serviceable noetheless. And if you’re not in posession of fresh or frozen basil, feel free to use dried basil, but only use half as much. it will still be wonderful.

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Post tags: Burgers, game food, Game Food super bowl food, Italian Inspired, Sliders, tailgating, Turkey

Admitting defeat…

Jerry — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:53:42 +0000

As far as the 12 days of cookies goes, I have to admit my utter failure. I have been defeated. Not by the cookies, but by circumstances. There’s just too much going on right now for me to be able to focus on baking, and almost too much going on for me to focus on cooking.

First, both my wife and son have been fighting with a nasty cold for over a week each. This thing likes to move from the nose to the chest and hang around. The little guy is hanging in there, but it’s obvious that … [visit site to read more]

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Post tags: Incerlik, moving, seperation, Turkey

Leftover Turkey and Dressing Casserole Recipe a.k.a. Dressing, Redressed

Jerry — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:30:36 +0000

“What am I going to make with all these leftovers?“

It’s a pretty common phrase used during the holidays, especially after Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. The refrigerator is overflowing with half-full serving dishes or packed storage containers of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and half-a-dozen desserts still grace trays on the counter tops.

Rather than going for the “same-old-same-old” reheated plates and turkey sandwiches, I prefer to use the leftovers as creatively as possibly. This dish has been one of my favorites over the years and I still go back to it on a regular basis.

The concept is simple. Take all the flavors that were at the table for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, mix them all together and add a little of this or that to freshen them up a bit. It’s a truly comforting meal that you wouldn’t peg for a leftover dish if you didn’t know that it was.

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© Jerry D. Russell and Cooking... by the seat of my Pants!.com, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: christmas, holidays, leftover, recipe, Thanksgiving, Turkey

Turkey Stock Recipe

Jerry — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:56:12 +0000

If you haven’t broken down your turkey just yet then there’s something I need to tell you.

“Don’t throw out the carcass!“

That’s right, don’t throw it out. Use it to make enough turkey stock to get you through the rest of the holidays. No matter whether you can get turkey stock in your local market or not, I guarantee that you’ll never get the kind of flavor out of it that you will out of home made.

The best part is that making stock is a simple process. with just a little bit of effort and about two hours of unattended simmering, you’ll end up with the most mouthwatering addition to the rest of the meals of the season. It’s especially grand if you plan to serve turkey for Christmas as well. If not, just think how simple making gravy or some very succulent mashed potatoes will be.

So before you go to make all those leftover meals, let’s make a little stock to kick them up with, shall we?

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© Jerry D. Russell and Cooking... by the seat of my Pants!.com, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: basics, christmas, Holiday-Recipes, Thanksgiving, Turkey