Thanksgiving Turkey For One

Christmas and Thanksgiving are hard on us single people, but since Costco opened a store just an hour away, I have been able to eat turkey more often because they sell those rolled up roasts made up of just one side of a turkey breast.

I used to make a similar roast myself by boning the turkey and joining the two breasts with string. But then I had all the rest of the turkey to eat, and it was hard (but not impossible) not to waste any.

What's nice about those roasts, too, is that you can have one or two in the freezer, ready for any turkey craving that may show up at other times of the year.

This is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and I wanted to try doing different things with my Costco turkey. As you can see from the picture, I was quite successful!

Eleven meals out of one turkey breast!

First, I removed the netting and scrutinized my roast. Indeed, it was made up of a whole half breast, and nothing else. The little filet had been partially detached, so I cut that off and set it aside.

I created the centre roast by cutting off the wide and narrow ends. I rolled up my little roast and tied it with string after seasoning the inside.

I discarded the skin and fatty bits from the leftover pieces and cut them (minus the filet) into chunks, which I ground with my meat grinder.

 

1. THE ROAST

I adapted a recipe for Glazed Turkey Roast with Apples and Balsamic Vinegar that I had seen on TV this week, on the Ricardo show on CBC.

The recipe calls for a whole 2.5-lb roast, so I adjusted the quantities.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C)
2. Salt the roast all over, then brown it on all sides in a bit of olive oil in a frying pan
3. Deglaze the pan with 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar*, add 1.5 tablespoons of honey and a chopped French shallot (or half a small onion)
4. Roll the roast around in the sauce to coat it all over
5. Add one cup of chicken stock to the pan and roast for approximately one hour and ten minutes, or until 180 F (82 C) internal temperature. Keep checking every 20 minutes, and add small quantities of stock as necessary
6. In a separate frying pan, brown a Cortland apple which has been peeled, cored and sliced, in a spoonful of butter
7. When the roast is done, remove it and cover it loosely with foil for about 15 minutes, while you finish the sauce
8. Reduce the sauce if necessary (or add a bit of water or stock if it's too thick but it should be more of a glaze than a sauce), roll the roast around to glaze it all over, add the apples and mix well. Season to taste.

Absolutely delicious!

 

2. THE MEAT BALLS

I ended up with exactly one pound (450 g) of ground turkey. Today I made them as follows, but of course you can use your own favourite recipe for turkey or chicken meat balls:

1. The ground turkey;
2. A panade of good white bread soaked in milk (two slices plus 2/3 cup milk) ;
3. 1 egg;
4. 1 small onion, grated;
5. 2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese;
6. Salt, pepper and poultry seasoning;
7. 1 teaspoon of powdered gelatin**

Mix thoroughly with the hands and form balls with wet hands. Deposit them on a sheet of parchment paper.

Drop the turkey balls into simmering chicken stock to cover, and simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes, until the centre is fully cooked.

I plan to use some of the balls in a tomato sauce for pasta that I will make later on in the week. I could also freeze all or some of them.

 

3. THE ESCALOPE

This is the little filet that I detached at the beginning, and flattened with the side of a cleaver. (I really must get one of those meat pounders!)

Since it has already been frozen, I will cook my escalope tomorrow, probably as veal piccata or maybe a saltimbocca since I have some prosciutto in the fridge and some fresh sage in the garden. The Epicurious recipe calls for the sage on the outside, but I always put it between the prosciutto and the meat, because that's the way they prepare it in my favourite restaurant in Rome. Oh, and by the way do not use dried sage for this!

Instead, you could cut the escalope into fingers, bread them and fry them, and serve them to the kids.

 

YIELD

• 1, 1.2-lb (500 g) roast (4 portions)
• 3 dozen ping-pong ball-sized meat balls (5 or 6 portions)
• 1, 4-oz ((113 g) escalope (1 portion or two portions of fingers)
• Bonus: 2 cups strong turkey stock which will make an excellent soup or sauce base

 

TIME

The nice thing is I was able to prepare all those things at the same time. I mixed the meat balls while the roast was cooking. It took about two hours altogether.

 

COST

$19.49 for the turkey (3 lbs/1.5 kilos). This breaks down to about $2 per meal. Right inside my budget!

---

*Instead of -- or in addition to -- the balsamic vinegar, I could have used some of the Pinot Griggio wine that I had with it for lunch, which turned out to be a very fine "marriage".

If you're in the habit of brining your turkey, by all means brine this roast. I didn't, and it was moist enough.

** I copied this trick from my restaurants, where we used to add a few spoonfuls of gelatin to the pâté recipe. The gelatin would turn the extra juice into a tasty jelly.

In this instance, the combination of milk/bread/gelatin plays the role of fat in a dish that is nearly 100% fat-free, so what you get is a juicy result where you might expect something rather dry.

What I Hate About TV Chefs

I would be a lot more relaxed watching cooking shows if only the chefs would smarten up and think of projecting a responsible image in addition to a competent one.

These are some of the things that I hate about TV chefs:

1. No Apron

Can you imagine Julia Child making boeuf bourguignon in her finest silk dress? How about Jacques Pépin making béarnaise sauce in his tuxedo?

Then why the h*** do all these new TV chefs cook in designer clothes?

Take a look at this picture: Rachael Ray is wearing a suit jacket! She often wears this type of jacket in the kitchen. What? Her guest is wearing an apron. Smart guy.

Come on, ladies, a cooking show is not the place to show off your wardrobe, or your waistline, or your bouncy boobs. It's a dirty workplace and your clothes deserve to be protected. Wear an apron!

The other thing that bothers me about this lack of respect for clothes is that so many of the viewers have to get theirs at the thrift shop in these difficult times.

2. No Scraper

I absolutely hate the way they don't scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula. They were taught to do it in cooking school, so when did they decide that wasting food was okay?

Well, it's not okay to waste food, and it's not okay to be so sloppy about cooking.

3. No Compost Bucket

Imagine this: Rachael Ray (or Nigella Lawson, or your favourite TV chef) is preparing a salad. On the counter, off to one side, there is a pretty pottery bucket. The bucket is labelled "Compost". 

At one point, Rachael squeezes a lemon over the salad, then drops the lemon into the bucket. Not in the garbage, in the compost bucket.

She doesn't have to say a word. Everyone knows what compost is. Now they know that Rachael makes compost. Cool!

TV chefs need to remember that they are role models for their audience, and that it's their duty to give the right kind of example.

**********

Photo copyright Rachael Ray Digital LLC

In Search of the Perfect Microwave Egg

An Experiment in Coddled Egg Microwave Cookery 

Egg Coddler

I stopped having coddled eggs for breakfast when the ring on my Royal Worcester porcelain egg coddler broke off.*

Then I moved and now I can't find it, but it looked exactly like this one.

(What is a coddled egg? Imagine if you could inject some butter and other seasonings inside the shell of your egg, then soft-boil it to your exact taste... well, the egg coddler is just a replacement shell, and so to coddle an egg, you place it and your chosen seasonings inside the porcelain coddler, close it tightly, then submerge it in simmering water until it's just the way you like it.  A little miracle! [The ring is so you can grab it.])

I've cooked hard-boiled eggs in the microwave, but, I thought, why not coddled eggs? This morning, I decided to try.

---

Day 1

Chinese tea bowls make perfect little individual egg coddlers. I added a ruler so you can see how tiny they are -- they hold 1/2 cup when full. (If I were making two eggs, I would use one of my small glass custard cups.)

Put a tiny dab of butter in the bottom of the cup;

Microwave for 10-15 seconds to melt the butter;

Rotate the cup to coat the bottom and sides of the cup with butter (this is important both for the flavour and to keep the egg from sticking to the bowl);

Add the egg and pierce the yolk with the tip of a knife or a fork;

NOTE: this is essential -- otherwise the yolk will explode!

Add seasonings -- any or all of the following:

• Salt and pepper;
• Chopped chives or green onion tops;
• Finely chopped cooked mushrooms, crumbled bacon or finely chopped ham;
• Anything you would normally add to your eggs.

Add another dab of butter on top -- please don't skip this! It's amazing what this minuscule amount of butter does to the flavour of the egg!

Wrap the bowl in a paper towel (NOT plastic wrap);

Microwave on High-- I tried 45 seconds today;

Eat out of the bowl with a coffee spoon;

OR

Flip over toast.











This is how I did it today, but as you may know, after you take something out of the microwave oven it continues to cook. That's why, in these last two photos, you can see that the yolk is beginning to solidify.

I like my yolks completely liquid, so tomorrow, I will try 40 seconds and a 10-second rest, and see what happens.

NOTE: if you decide to try this, you will have to experiment too, because as you know all microwaves are different, and of course you may like your eggs more or less cooked.

---

Conclusion

After several tries, I did settle on 40 seconds, and that time seems to work best in the smaller of the two cups, the one on the right. The walls are thicker, which may contribute to the whites setting better.

That's what works best for my taste and my equipment.

You're on your own: do your own tests; just remember that, oddly enough, if you get some water in the bottom of the cup, it's not from under-cooking, but from over-cooking. It's a chemical reaction, apparently.

---

 * Without some sort of "handle", it's impossible to get the coddler out quickly when the timer goes off (and believe me, I've tried).

Making Seedless Raspberry Jam In Winter

Photo Credit: See Footnote

Raspberry jam is my absolute favourite, but I don't like the way those little seeds get between the teeth, so I've been straining them out.

During the raspberry season, I use the wild raspberries that grow in my back yard, but in winter, I use frozen raspberries, and this is the recipe that I use.

This jam is as pure as it gets.* I never use pectin – it's expensive and superfluous and jams made with it do not have the same rich fruit taste and texture.

EQUIPMENT REQUIRED

• A stainless steel pot or saucepan
• A kitchen scale (This recipe shows the weights, both in ounces and in grams -- next time I make it I will measure the raspberries by volume and I will come back and fill in the square.)
• A candy thermometer (See other technique, below.)
• A potato or bean masher
• A fine strainer and a glass or stainless steel bowl over which it sits well (and safely, jam is hot!)
• A jam funnel (optional)
• A small jar

INGREDIENTS	Quantity Metric Weight	Quantity US Weight	Quantity Volume
Frozen raspberries	285 grams	10 ounces	?
White sugar	240 grams	8.5 ounces	1 cup (rounded)

PREPARATION

1. Mash the raspberries if they're thawed; if not, combine them directly with the sugar
2. Set aside, stirring from time to time, until all the sugar is dissolved
3. Transfer to stainless steel pot
4. Place over medium heat and continue to mash the raspberries until there are no whole ones left
5. Insert the candy thermometer
6. Boil, stirring from time to time at the beginning, then let the mixture simmer until the thermometer reaches 104 degrees C or 220 F (this is called the Jelly stage and if you don't have a thermometer [highly recommended if you're going to be making your own jams and jellies], follow my friend Goldie's technique: she would keep a small saucer in the freezer, take it out and pour a spoonful of jam on it, then run her finger through the jam. If it wrinkled, the jam was ready.)
7. Remove from heat, stir well and pour carefully into the strainer, using a silicone spatula to get every bit. This must be done while the jam is still hot, so do be careful.
8. Now comes the fun! Stir the jam around with a spoon; press on the seeds and keep scraping the bottom of the strainer until nothing will come through any more. (But don't throw those seeds away yet!**)
9. Transfer quickly to a jar, using a jam funnel if you have one
10. Cool, put the lid on and refrigerate

YIELD:  1 cup (250 ml)  -- just enough to fill one of those cute Mason-type jelly jars.

NOTE: I prefer to make a small quantity like this, rather than having to worry about sterilizing the jar etc. I buy the frozen raspberries in a big bag, and just take out what I need as I need it. But of course you can double the recipe.

* I found the following ingredients listed on a jar of premium "Pure Seedless Raspberry Jam" at the supermarket:

• Raspberries
• Sugar
• Glucose
• Pectin
• Citric Acid

** There's still a lot of raspberry pulp (and sugar) attached to the seeds, and it makes great tea, either by itself or with some tea leaves. If you have a teapot that comes with a strainer basket, that's best; otherwise, use a tea strainer over your cup.  Try it!

---

 Image: zole4 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Back to Butter

Photo: New England Cheesemaking Supply Company

I never "left" it, so I didn't have to go back to butter, but I know a lot of people do when they start caring about what they put into their bodies, and once they find out what the new medical studies show about the relationship between what they eat and the cholesterol in their arteries -- or rather, the lack of such a relationship.

If you're a healthy person and you like butter, then eat butter, not butter-flavoured margarine, for heaven's sake! (I once read an interview with Dr. Andrew Weil, where he talked about eating everything [I remember something about pizza for breakfast]. The interviewer asked him if there was anything at all he would never eat, and the answer was "margarine". It had to do with the way they process and refine the oils that are used to make margarine.)

Now somebody's making margarine with virgin olive oil -- a whole 12% of the product is olive oil -- guess what the other 88% is?

I wrote about making homemade butter a while back, and included my own recipe for plain butter and for cultured butter.

However, I don't make my own butter any more because Lactantia brand unsalted cultured butter, made in Quebec, is now available locally, and in addition to being cheaper than homemade butter, there's the nostalgia factor. Quebec is my home, and Lactantia butter is the brand I was raised on.

My own recipe included some yogurt culture, but this morning I got the monthly newsletter from New England Cheesemaking Company, where I get my yogurt culture and other cheesemaking ingredients, and it had a recipe for cultured butter made with buttermilk culture. 


Here is the link to the New England Cheesemaking Company recipe for cultured butter.

What's nice about that recipe is that it is fully illustrated, and the method is exactly the one I used, so whether you use their recipe or mine, you now have a great set of instructions, and you just can't go wrong.

Happy buttermaking!

---

Shaggy Mane Mushroom Recipe

Shaggy Mane Mushrooms at Different Stages, in the Early Morning Light

I attended a mushroom hunt a few weeks ago, and I came away without mushrooms, but with a shaggy mane mushroom recipe.

The hunt took place in the woods, and the shaggy mane (coprinus comatus) grows in open fields, so it was not included in that day's activities, but I asked the mycologist to tell me how to deal with the abundance of shaggy manes that pop up in my village every October. I had tried cooking them, but I didn't like the way they came out, all black and yucky. (It won't surprise you to hear that they're often referred to as "inky caps".)

The secret?

1. Pick them as young as possible -- before they start turning black;
2. Cut them in two lengthwise;
3. Freeze them on a cookie sheet;
4. Bag them and store them in the freezer;
5. Take out as many as you need and sauté them.

OR

• Cut them in two and sauté them fresh.

WARNING: shaggy manes and alcohol are a toxic combination.

Beware of Recipes You Find on the Web

Like everyone else, I sometimes look for recipes on the Web. The other day I was looking for something to make with the buttermilk I had leftover from making cultured butter.

I found oodles of recipes; eventually, I settled for "Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Strawberry Coulis". It was from what I thought was a trusted source, The Canadian Living Test Kitchen. I live in Canada, and I know Canadian Living magazine from seeing it in doctors' offices. They even have a TV show on the CBC, no less.

It's important to trust the source because most of the recipes out there have never been tested! You'd think a test kitchen would be there to test recipes -- but apparently not.

Here's the recipe; let's see if you can detect the errors:

This recipe makes 6 servings.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp (15 mL) unflavoured gelatin
1 cup (250 mL) whipping cream
1/3 cup (75 mL) sugar
2 tsp (10 mL) vanilla
1 cup (250 mL) buttermilk

Strawberry Coulis: 1 pkg frozen strawberries in syrup, thawed

Preparation:
In small saucepan, sprinkle gelatin over 2 tablespoons (25 mL) of the cream; let stand for 5 minutes. Heat over medium-low heat, stirring often, until dissolved.

In a separate saucepan, heat together remaining cream, sugar and vanilla over medium heat until steaming; remove from heat. Stir in gelatin mixture and buttermilk. Pour into six 5-ounce (175 mL) ramekins. Cover and refrigerate until set, about 4 hours.

Strawberry Coulis:
In food processor, crush strawberries until smooth; press through fine strainer into bowl. Run knife around edge of each ramekin; turn out onto dessert plate. Drizzle coulis attractively onto plate.

HOW MANY ERRORS DID YOU FIND?

1. The first thing that bothered me was "1 pkg frozen strawberries in syrup". What size package? What if I have fresh strawberries? Frozen strawberries without syrup?

The worst thing is that they had a recipe for strawberry coulis from scratch elsewhere on their own site; the least they could have done was to link to that recipe.

2. "Sprinkle gelatin over 2 tablespoons of the cream." I was skeptical, but I don't have that much experience with dissolving gelatin in anything but a clear liquid like water, so I followed the instructions.

It did NOT work and I could tell right away. The gelatin could not possibly dissolve in such a small amount of a thick liquid. Eventually, I added all the buttermilk and the gelatin dissolved beautifully. (Had they read the instructions on the package of gelatin, they would have seen that you're supposed to dissolve that amount of gelatin in at least 1/4 cup of water.)

A novice cook might not know better and would have ended up with a lumpy mess.

3. "Pour into six 5-oz ramekins." Something wrong with the math here: six x 5 = 30 ounces, right? But the recipes contains only two cups of ingredients, and last time I looked, 1 cup = 8 ounces, so 2 cups = 16 ounces. Where did the extra 14 ounces come from? Nowhere.

Therefore, the yield of this recipe is either two 8-oz portions, or three 5.3-oz portions, or four 4-oz  portions but definitely NOT six 5-ounce portions! (I settled for the four 4-oz portions.)

4. The serving directions are buried inside the strawberry coulis recipe. They should have a paragraph of their own.

THE FINAL VERDICT

Hey, this is a pretty good recipe, and I would do it again. But I'm a professional cook and I know how to correct recipes.

In fact, it makes a decent fake Crème Brûlée and next time I would make a plain sugar caramel, pour it on a buttered cookie sheet, let it cool, then break it into slabs which I would serve inserted into the cream.

CONCLUSION

Like I said, beware of recipes you find on the web.

How To Avoid Slimy Yogurt

If you google "slimy yogurt" or "why is my yogurt slimy", you will find plenty of people complaining about this, yet I've been making yogurt on and off for more years than I care to remember and never had that problem until I moved to New Brunswick. Must be the way they process the milk here, or the way they feed the cows, or something.

I don't eat a lot of yogurt these days, but I have to make it regularly because I need it to culture the cream that I use to make my own butter, and around here you can't buy plain yogurt.

Then I get to eat the leftover yogurt. My favourite way is with a bit of maple syrup or honey, for dessert. Sometimes I drain it and make yogurt cheese, which I like every bit as much as cream cheese.

So I googled "why is my yogurt slimy", and eventually found the solution: you bring the milk temperature to 185 degrees (Fahrenheit) and hold it there for a while (some say 20 minutes, some say 30 minutes), which does something to the protein structure of the milk. The result is thick, creamy, non-slimy yogurt even if you use just regular milk (3.5% butterfat) and no extra skim milk powder (to give it body).

I tested every electrical appliance I had: the small coffee heater that I use to incubate the yogurt at 110 degrees, (didn't rise above 150 degrees) my crock pot, (reached 185 degrees on "high" but I had to keep playing with the lid to keep the temperature constant) and one of the burners of my stove. Eventually, it was the latter that gave consistent results with no temperature variation at all.

As you can see in the picture, I used a remote thermometer for all my tests. I ran all the tests over several hours, checking every half hour or so to ensure there were no wild variations. I did all the tests with a lid on because it's more hygienic.

So, if you have a problem with slimy yogurt, try heating it to 185 degrees and holding it at that temperature for half an hour or so. After that, you cool it to 110 degrees, add the culture and proceed with your usual method.

French Onion Soup Weather

January is French onion soup weather.

I had some homemade beef stock on hand and lots of onions, and it was winter... all perfect conditions for concocting a batch of my famous onion soup. (I don't wish to brag but in my restaurants, we served what everybody called the best onion soup in the world.)

Onion soup is the easiest dish in the world, but unless you start with first-class ingredients, you may as well buy it in a can.

In fact, quality ingredients are so important that since there is no decent French bread available in my village, I had to start by making a batch of baguette -- no kidding.

Here's the recipe:

• Lots of cooking onions - 1 large onion per portion
• Olive oil and/or butter
• Home-made brown beef stock (recipe here)
• Home-made chicken stock, degreased
• Brandy
• Bay leaves
• Salt and pepper
• French baguette bread (recipe here)
• Clarified butter (recipe here)
• Swiss-type cheese like Emmenthaler or Jarlsberg
• Real Parmesan cheese

Slice the baguette into 3/4-inch (2 cm) slices and dry them thoroughly in a 200-degree (100 C) oven. (You don't want to toast it, just dry it.)

Mix the beef and chicken stocks in a separate saucepan and heat them up; keep warm.

Peel onions, slice them in two lengthwise (from root to tip, to get two identical halves), and slice each half thinly along the length.

Heat some butter or a mixture of butter and oil in a large frying pan, add onions and stir and stir until they start to turn golden brown; then add a teaspoonful of sugar and continue frying and stirring until the onions are a deep golden brown. They must not burn. If you're making a lot of soup, do this in batches and transfer each batch to a bowl while you fry the next batch.

Combine all the onions back into the frying pan, sprinkle with a bit of flour and stir around until the flour has browned. Do this on medium heat so the flour doesn't burn. You just need a little bit of flour, just a tablespoon or two.

Pour a splash of brandy and a couple of ladles of stock over the onions, and stir to dissolve the flour and all the brown residue at the bottom of the pan.  Scrape this off well with a wooden spoon, then transfer the whole thing to your soup pot.

Add more beef and chicken stock -- there must be more liquid than onions, about 1/3 more.

Add a bit of salt and pepper, a few bay leaves, and simmer the soup on low heat for half an hour, just to meld the flavours, really, because the onions are already cooked.

The oven should be preheated to 450 F  (225 C) and the rack should be in the centre position.

Heat some clarified butter in a small pan and fry the bread slices on both sides until they are just a nice golden colour.

Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Ladle the soup into individual ovenproof tureens (or one large one, as in the photo), cover the surface with slices of fried bread, sprinkle grated Swiss-type cheese (not too much, please! This isn't pizza.), and sprinkle a spoonful of real Parmesan if you have any.

Place the whole thing on a cookie sheet or pizza pan or whatever (to catch spills and make it safer to handle when it's ready).

Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the top is like the photo -- brown and bubbly and smelling like nothing else on earth.

Bon appétit!

TIPS & TRICKS

•  VARIATION: This onion soup is very good all by itself, or with a light sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

• The reason I recommend slicing the onions as described above is that this way you get onion pieces in the soup. If you slice them across instead, the onions tend to dissolve and disappear.

• The size of the pan, the amount of heat, the amount of fat and the amount of onions in each batch must be such that the onions start frying right away, without rendering their water.

• There's no point in using a crock pot for this; the cooking time is too short.

• Only white French-style bread has the right body and flavour for this soup. This is NOT the place for your healthy multigrain sourdough bread -- I know, because I've tried it.

I made the bread too!

Should You Cook Ratatouille in the Slow Cooker?

Visitors to my main ratatouille posting often land there because they're looking for a recipe for cooking ratatouille in the slow cooker.

To quote myself:

I've seen instructions for cooking ratatouille in a crockpot, but what's the point? By the time you've finished sautéeing all the separate ingredients, your ratatouille is about 15 minutes short of being ready to eat!

Reserve your slow cooker for dishes that benefit from a long, slow sojourn at a low heat.

Believe me, mushy ratatouille is not a nice thing, and that's what you'd get if you cooked it in your slow cooker. To retain the freshness of the ingredients, stick to a miminum of cooking.