Turkey Dinner Platter

Turkey Leftover - Day 1

Enough said!

Thanksgiving Roast Turkey Dinner with Potatoes and Green Beans

A week of Turkey Delights

What happens when you have an 8 lb. worth of Thanksgiving roast turkey and only 2 people to eat it? A Turkeyathon - a full week of turkey themed dishes!

The first time I ever roasted a turkey was about 6 years ago. There isn’t any kitchen nightmare story to tell though: the turkey didn’t get burnt or caused a fire in the kitchen or anything disastrous like that. The turkey got roasted all right, but not only did it look pathetic (it didn’t have that roasted brown look that I imagined it would look based on what I’d seen in TV commercials and restaurant’s chef prepared rotisserie chicken), it also tasted very bland and dry and at the time I thought that it really wasn’t worth all the mess left in the kitchen, not to mention the whole day wasted preparing it, and so I’ve sworn off roasting turkey ever since. As a result, I’ve skipped Thanksgiving dinners for the next 6 years after that (not that I have a family tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving in the first place), at least until last week. It was a last minute decision. We went grocery shopping and saw a mountain of frozen turkeys and thought maybe we’d give roast turkey a try. It was on the Sunday before Thanksgiving Monday holiday so we thought, “Heck, why not!” After all, what would a Thanksgiving holiday be without some self-inflicted kitchen disaster?

This time around I had a little bit more of confidence in my cooking ability and a little bit of motivation. I attended a Christmas soiree at my cousin’s house last year where she prepared a variety of sumptuous holiday dishes, including a delicious and juicy roast turkey. I admit that I was a little jealous of her delicious and juicy roast turkey so I picked up some tips from her on how to successfully prepare a roast turkey that won’t look or taste bad. As it turns out the secret really is in brining the turkey overnight and then brush some butter on the skin while roasting to make the skin brown and somewhat crispy (a few steps I missed some years ago when I unsuccessfully attempted to roast a turkey). I followed her advice this time and armed with some culinary courage of my own and a pack of poultry blend herbs, I attempted to roast a turkey once again, without expecting too much out of this experiment. To my delightful surprise, the roast turkey turned out nicely: browned and crispy on the outside, juicy and delicious on the inside. I especially loved the stuffing and the gravy that was made out of the turkey juice. Bland, it was not at all! As a result we were stuck with lots of delightful and delicious leftovers that we actually didn’t mind eating day after day for one whole week.


A Canadian Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner

Preparation:
1. Defrost frozen Turkey in salt water overnight (starting midnight) at room temperature up until around 11 AM the next day.
2. Prepare stuffing
3. Prepare herb (poultry herb) butter
4. Prepare vegetable stock

Vegetable stock:
1) ½ large white onion
2) 2 shallots
3) 3 carrots
4) ½ cup cilantro (replacing celery – there was no celery)
5) 2 cloves garlic
6) ¼ cup shiitake mushrooms
7) Salt, black and white pepper and Mrs. Dash

Direction for stock:
Put all ingredients in pot with water and boil. Once boiled, strain to get the liquid and discard ingredients. Set aside.

Stuffing:
1) 3/4 (large size) yam
2) 3 Carrots
3) ½ large white onion
4) 2 shallots
5) 1 clove garlic
6) ¾ cup shiitake mushrooms
7) 4 multigrain toasts
8) 1 tbsp. roasted sesame seeds
9) Salt, pepper, Mrs. Dash

Direction for stuffing:
1) Heat canola oil in a pan and cook yam slices, put a pinch of salt, pepper and Mrs. Dash, cook until slightly soft but not mushy. Add a couple of tablespoons of vegetable stock to prevent the yams from drying out and burning. Place the cooked yams in a mixing bowl and set aside.
2) Using the same pan, add more canola oil. Put the rest of the ingredients, except sesame seeds and toasts, and sautee until all the vegetable juices come out. Season with salt, white and black pepper and Mrs. Dash and a pinch of paprika. Add a little of the vegetable stock to the mixture to keep it moist. Once cook, add to the yams and mix. Shred the toasts into the mixture and add the sesame seeds. Stuff into the turkey’s cavity (after inserting some of the poultry herbs from the herb butter dressing into the cavity – see herb butter).

Herb butter dressing:
1) Place a bunch of poultry herb in a pan (thyme, rosemary, sage and Italian parsley) on a medium heat.
2) Spoon approximately 3 tbsp. of butter into the herb mixture and heat till butter is melted. Set aside.
3) Take out a few of the herbs from the butter mixture and insert into turkey cavity before inserting the stuffing.

Roast Turkey:
1) After inserting herb and stuffing, place turkey in a roasting pan with carrots and yams and 2 - 3 cups of vegetable stock, a couple more sprigs of herbs from the herb butter dressing and cover and place in a preheated oven at 350 F.
2) Roast for about one hour.
3) Open the oven and baste the turkey with juices from inside the pan. Keep roasting and check turkey and keep basting with juices a couple more times every half hour for a few more hours or so until the turkey and stuffing inside it reach a temperature of around 150 F. Sprinkle the turkey skin with a pinch of paprika and pieces of thyme. Start brushing the skin evenly with herb butter dressing and keep roasting, uncovered this time until the turkey and the stuffing inside it reach a temperature of 175- 180 F and the skin turns brown. If the skin turns brown before reaching the desired temperature, cover with aluminum foil to prevent burning.

Turkey mushroom gravy:

Ingredients:
1) 2 cups of roast turkey juice.
2) 1 shallot.
3) ½ cup vegetable stock.
4) ½ cup dried or fresh black mushroom.
5) Salt, pepper, Mrs. Dash, paprika, saffron.
6) ¼ cup of red wine.
7) 2 tbsp. of cornstarch.

Direction:
1) Heat oil over medium heat and sautee slices of 1 shallot. Once fragrant, pour 2 – 3 cups of juices from the roasting pan (roast turkey juices) and heat until almost boiled. Prepare ½ cup of dried black mushrooms that has been rehydrated. Mix mushroom into the juice in the pan and keep boiling under medium heat. Add a couple of tablespoon of vegetable stock once it boils and keep boiling.
2) Season with salt and pepper and Mrs. Dash and a pinch of paprika. Add a couple strands of saffron (optional). Lower heat.
3) Pour ¼ cup of red wine and keep boiling under low heat.
4) Place 2 tbsp. of cornstarch in a small bowl and dissolve with cold vegetable stock/water. Pour the cornstarch mixture into the juice and keep boiling for a few more minutes under low heat.

Green beans:
1) 2 – 3 cups of green beans, washed and drained.
2) ½ tbsp. canola oil and ¼ tbsp. sesame oil
3) ¼ tbsp. roasted sesame seeds

Heat canola and sesame oil in a pan over medium heat. Add green beans and sautee until cooked. Add a couple of tablespoons of vegetable stocks now and then to keep the vegetables from drying out. Once cooked, sprinkle sesame seeds and turn off heat.

Flavorful Red Onions

The Perfect Complement to Red Onions
(at least the one that often comes out of my kitchen...yum!)

The red onion (or purple onion, as I prefer to call it sometimes, because of its lively purple color, which is also my favorite color, by the way) is my most favorite onion of all the varieties of onions available out there. Red onions can be eaten raw or cooked and either way they never disappoint. And unlike other onions, red onions are more palatable and even delicious when eaten raw. They are mildly sweet and aromatic (at least to me), and they make the perfect condiment to almost any dish, as long as you don't mind the onion breath that you'll be left with afterward. I enjoy adding thin slices of red onions to salads, burgers (of course!!), pizza (always!) and the occasional hot dogs or any other dish that I find too bland for my taste. When I want to cook something quickly and I have no other interesting vegetables to cook with, I always have my red onions available, ready to be sliced and diced and blended with any of my spontaneous and quirky dishes that I come up with when I am really starving and have little time to cook or prepare (or too lazy to). I always, always have red onions in my kitchen, in addition to garlic and shallots. But my favorite, definitely most favorite, way of pairing red onions is with smoked salmon/lox. That is not to say that I have supplies of smoked salmon/lox that are readily available in my kitchen all the time, I don't, because those packages of smoked salmon can be quite expensive. But during the rare occasions that we eat them, they always taste heavenly, only because I always prepare them with thin slices of raw red onions marinated with olive oil and fresh ground black peppers, capers, a sprinkle of fresh lemon juice and then serve on crackers or small pieces of toasts and garnish with dills.


I also use slices of red onions to garnish my cheese platter and cold dish platters when we have companies over for our little soirees that we occasionally have (always simple, nothing complicated).


When I don't feel like cooking anything (since I am not a great cook to begin with), and we want something easy and quick and fun, we just put together all the ingredients I mentioned above and enjoy....! It's more like jigsaw puzzle than culinary, really, but the results are always yummy, thanks to the great red onions, the tastiest onion of all onions!!
I had smoked salmon with red onions marinated in olive oil and pepper and dill and capers for dinner today because I just did not feel like cooking. Plus, it's healthy (I think)!

Red Onions rock in my kitchen!

A Southeast Asian Dish - Grilled Fish, Curry Rice and Green Beans

Banana Leaf Wrapped Broiled Lemongrass Fish or Chicken

ya..ya.. I know, it's a mouthful (pun intended), but here it is: my latest spontaneous creation in the kitchen from a few months ago and I happened to have the picture on file. This recipe is adapted from the April 22, 2001 edition of the Globe and Mail Canada which was originally intended for chicken - Myanmar style and there was no banana leaf involved. So I did a few tweaking of my own by switching the chicken to cod; adding a few more ingredients that suited my taste bud and finally wrapping the fish with banana leaf to broil....ha...and the result was not bad at all! The dish was served together with Curried Coconut Jasmine Rice and Curried Green Beans in order to create the full Myanmar cuisine experience.

Ingredients:

• 4 pieces of cod fillet (or skinless chicken breasts)
• 3 stalks lemongrass - discard all but the bottom 3 inches
• 2 tsp fine chopped garlic
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
  
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
• lime juice and peel
  
• banana leaf

Direction:

• Smash the tender white part of the lemongrass (after removing the tough outer leaves at the base) and then finely chopped.
  
• Make a paste out of garlic, ginger and lemongrass using either mortar and pestle, rolling pin or food processor.
  
• Add chopped green onions, including the green tops, to the paste.
• You can also add a little lime juice and lime peel for added flavor if you wish.
  
• Add the fish sauce, sugar, and salt & pepper.
• Marinade the fish or chicken with all of the above processed ingredients and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 450F.
• Rinse and air dry 4 banana leaves and set aside.
  
• After 30 minutes, take the marinated fish out of the refrigerator and then wrap each piece with banana leaf. Place each piece in the oven and let broil for 15 - 20 minutes. The banana leaf will add some nice fragrance to the fish while keeping it moist.
• With Chicken - Heat a skillet on high and add oil. Add jalapeno pepper once the oil becomes hot and stir for 1-2 minutes. Add the chicken and cook for 3-5 min on each side or until each side turns golden brown.
  
• Place the chicken in oven-proof baking dish and roast/broil for 10-15 minutes or until cooked and crisp.
  

p.s.: I've also tried the chicken version and it was just as good if not crispier.


Curried Green Beans

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp curry paste
• 1 tbsp chopped ginger
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 12 ounces of green beans
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (about 1/2 a lemon)
• 2 tbsp chopped coriander or basil
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• 1/2 dozen prawns (optional but recommended)

Direction:

• Heat some vegetable oil in a skillet on medium heat.
• Optional: Stir fry prawns until cooked and set aside.
  
• Add more oil to the same skillet without rinsing it and reheat on medium heat.
  
• Add curry paste and ginger and stir-fry for 2 minutes.
• Pour in coconut milk and fish sauce and a few tablespoons of chicken stock.
• Bring to a boil and reduce heat and simmer for 2 minutes.
• Add green beans and simmer together for 10 minutes or until green beans are cooked but crunchy.
• Add the necessary amount of chicken stock to keep the sauce liquid.
  
• Stir in lemon juice.
  
• Add the cooked prawns and stir for another minute.
• Garnish with coriander or a lime wedge.

Curried Coconut Jasmine Rice

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of jasmine rice
• 2 cups of chicken stock
• 1 tbsp curry madras or garam masala
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1 tsp of chopped garlic
  
• salt, freshly ground black and a dash of white pepper
  

Direction:

• Combine rice, water/chicken stock and curry madras in a pot.
  
• Bring to a boil and stir in coconut milk and cover.
• Reduce heat to low and steam for 15 to 20 minutes or until rice is cooked.

As a start, saute some chopped garlic until fragrant and then add rice, garam masala, salt and white pepper and stir for a few seconds before adding the chicken stock. Bring to a boil. Add coconut juice, cover pot, and then reduce heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes, adding more stock if need be. Once rice is cooked, squeeze some lemon juice. It was a hit!