Turducken: the results

Well, I did it and it turned out great. It wasn't easy and there was a minor disaster, but the end results were better than I could have expected. The results were a moist and tasty meat that has great flavor.

The hardest part I thought was going to be putting it together, but that was pretty easy. I deboned the duck and chicken myself without an issue. I had picked up the deboned turkey from Paulina Meat Market on Wednesday. The butcher gave me the bones, and I made a stock which turned out great for the gravy.

The turkey was a little more than 25 pounds before being deboned. After assembling the beast with some stuffing the result was a huge. I used more of a traditional stuffing, some celery, onion, sage, salt and pepper. I have a pretty big roasting pan, but there was no way this was going to fit in there. Luckily I had a disposable pan from something or other and it barely fit in there. In order to way the frankenbird I had to pull Rory's scale out of the bathroom, it weighed in at 24.8 pounds.
I placed some bacon on top of it and covered it with foil and put it in around 1 pm pn Friday, hoping it would be done by 7 pm. The one issue I know would pop up. There wasn't a whole lot of space in the pan and I knew we would get quite a bit of liquid so I would have to keep an eye on that. And this is where there was a minor disaster.

A little after 7 pm I was checking the temp of the bird and getting some liquid out when some spilled on the bottom of the stove. This caused smoke, a lot of smoke, more smoke than I have ever seen outside a fire. It may have been fine if some of the guests hadn't already arrived, but we made it though with only two calls from the landlord asking if I was burning down the building. Not to be too overdramatic, but this was just about the biggest kitchen disaster I have ever had and I was freaking out and smelling smoke the rest of the night even though the guests saiid it wasn't that bad.

But the smoke passed and the birds finished cooking. All told it took more than eight hours to cook to an internal temp of 170 degrees. I let it rest for about 25 minutes before carving. The way I carved it I got the coolest picture. You can clearly see al three layers of meat in the picture below and I think it's cool as hell.If I do this again there are a few things I would do differently, more importantly I would get a smaller turkey, 20 pounds max. I would also put a little more stuffing in the bird. I would put it in about an hour earlier and make sure I had a big enough roasting pan no matter what.

Short ribs redux

Rory and I decided to have some people over for dinner on Friday. Thad, Erika, Loraine and Alex were two couples we were long overdue in having over, especially since Erika is a frequent reader of the blog. I pretty much stuck to thing I knew here, other than with dessert.

I actually made the very first recipe I ever posted here. And while it was good the first time around, this time it was much, much better. Three major difference: better browning, dried mushrooms, more reduction.

I wasn't able to buy the flanken style short ribs that I like, so I had to go with something smaller, but I really got a good sear on them. The last few months have really taught me the importance of getting a good crust on the meat.

The first time around I didn't think the dried mushrooms were that important, I was wrong. They added an earthiness that really gave the flavor some extra depth. I won't skip this again.

Reduction: I didn't do this right last time. Basically a half hour before we sat down I took the meat out of the pot and cranked up the heat and let it cook down for a little more than a half hour. The results was this thick, rich sauce that was awesome.

I roasted the asparagus and made the usual mashed potatoes. The only thing I may do differently is not cook it for as long as I did in the future. The meat cooked for about six and a half hours and was pretty much falling apart. I could probably get just as goof flavor with the meat holding together if I cooked it for three hours.

But overall, the entree was great, the dessert, well, it tasted good.

I attempted to make my first ever souffle, a dark chocolate and lime souffle in individual ramekins. The recipe isn't very complex, but I wanted to do as much as possible beforehand so I wasn't in the kitchen after dinner. I decided to make the chocolate portion of the dessert before any one arrived and then after dinner whip the egg whites and finish the job.

It didn't work. By the time I got to the chocolate mixture it was all crumbly. I tried adding some of the whipped egg whites but it wasn't taking. I added a little water mixed it and then added the egg whites and it still seemed too heavy. I put the batter in the ramekins and baked for about 15 minutes. The result: individual brownies. They were good, but they weren't souffle. At least I know what I did wrong.

Zack recommends: Saveur

For my birthday this year my parents got me a subscription to Saveur. My buddy Jay recommended it and said it was better than most of the other ones out there and more up my alley.

And he was right, it's blowing me away. The theme of the first issue I received was butter. The Second issue was pasta, more specifically Bolognese, a sauce I love to cook. Some of the recipes are very complex, other are simple, but it's the writing that blows me away.

The feature on the City of Ragu and Bologna was some of the best food writing I've seen. Sadly, it's not online, but I felt as if I could almost smell the city and the foods. At some point I will make all the Bolognese recipes feature in the issue, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

The one recipe I did make is this pound cake recipe, which was a bit of an adventure. It just looked too good to pass up. Now I don't own a tube pan and when I went to buy one all they had were silicon bundt pans. I know silicon is supposed to be great to bake with, but I wasn't feeling good about it.

The assembling of ingredients went fine. I places the bundt pan on a cookie sheet I let it cook for an hour and it wasn't done. Ten minutes late I checked it again and the toothpick came out clean. I let it rest for 15 or 20 minutes and removed it without an issue.

The pound cake was going to be the case for strawberry shortcake, which I soaked in a little balsamic. Time was growing short and we needed to be out the door in a bit so I was trying to figure out how to transport it when I noticed the center was all gooey. The middle hadn't cooked all the way. I blamed placing it on the cookie sheet because the heat didn't have a chance to cook through the center of the pan.

So what did I do? I cut it out. I took a knife and cut out the portion that was gooey and sliced up the rest of the cake. It worked and what we had was quite excellent. Though I didn't tell my friends what happened. I told them I had trouble getting it out of the pan.