Things two people can make with a nine-point-four-pound turkey: a list.

1. Thanksgiving dinner.


2. Club sandwiches for two: bacon, turkey, cheese, lettuce. No tomato, unfortunately, as it is winter.


3. Leftover turkey on a plate for one, as the other is doing homework.


4. Leftover turkey on a plate for one, as the other is still doing homework.


5. Thanksgiving lunch for three, including Katie: potatoes, turkey, stuffing, &c.


6. White bean & kale soup for five bajillion:
   

   Non-quantitative white bean & kale soup
   Be sure to always have on hand: broth; good olive oil; spices (thyme, pepper, salt, bay leaves, etc.); garlic; shallots and/or onion.
   Subscribe to the vegetable box, which often includes kale in the winter.
   Purchase carrots and potatoes if you have recently depleted your standard stock of these as well. Buy approximately equal volumes of each. Tonight it was 4 carrots, as they are kind of skinny, and 3 medium-sized russet potatoes.
   Also purchase some white beans. I find that the small white beans are much tastier than the white kidney beans in this context. I do love kidney beans but this soup is not their place.
   Find the bag of leftover turkey somewhere in the back of your ridiculously small fridge.
   Pour yourself a glass of wine for drinking while you cook.
   
   Sauté onion and garlic in some olive oil until onion is tender.
   Throw in carrot, chopped small enough to cook in the amount of time you have, and sauté while you finish chopping potatoes after your cooking partner has cut his finger again.
   Throw in potatoes after carrots have sat for a bit, and add broth until all ingredients are covered. Then add some more. Add water if needed. Make sure there's enough liquid to cover the kale and beans that are not yet added.
   Boil potatoes for a while.
   Put in kale after some time. Maybe twenty minutes, or maybe thirty. Add finger-shredded turkey at this point as well. It's important to do it with your fingers because then you get to lick them. Add however much you have left, or less.
   Simmer/boil the whole deal for a bit, until the kale seems about 10 minutes from being done, and then thrown in the beans (rinsed, of course).
   Simmer until you're ready to eat.
   
   Salt & pepper to taste and be sure to dip good bread -- Grand Central is preferred.
   
   Serves five bajillion, depending on your measurements.

   
   


7. Stock made of carcass, neck, and wings (because I can't bear to gnaw on the bones), which will in itself be many meals! Stay tuned for the second part of the list ...

Battle Turkey!

(Only we're making more than one dish, unlike stupid Bobby Flay, who can't make anything other than the same dish over and over again. Stupid Bobby Flay.)

8:30 am: G. awoke and immediately set the turkey to brine.
8:45 am: I awoke; we drank coffee and orange juice and read the internets (*waves to MetaFilter*)
10:30 am: I prepared the living room for Oliver's imminent arrival -- yarn looks like tennis balls and therefore must be removed.
11:25 am: I set about making pie crust.

Mark Bittman's Flaky Pie Crust

Mark writes more than a little bit about how to integrate the fat and the flour, but since we don't actually have a food processor, I did it by hand in the manner he describes, cutting the cold butter into bits and rubbing it between my fingers. I think this would have been easier if I weren't making three batches and trying to make them all at once.

1 1/8 c flour, plus some for dusting working surface
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
8 tbsp (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
about 3 tbsp ice water, plus more if necessary.

Combine flour, salt, and sugar; pulse food processor or stir with a fork or spoon a few times.
Add butter and turn on machine or manually combine until it is about the texture of cornmeal.
Put it in a bowl and sprinkle 3 tablespoons of water over it. Stir with a wooden spoon or spatula until it forms a ball, adding water if the mixture seems dry. Form it into a ball with your hands, wrap it in plastic, flatten into a small disc, and freeze it for 10 minutes (or refrigerate for 30).
Roll the dough out to fit your pie pan, sprinkling both sides, as well as your work surface, with flour.
If it is sticky at the start, add flour liberally; if it becomes sticky after rolling for a few minutes, put it back in the fridge for 10 minutes.
Roll from the center out, turning and flipping the dough regularly.
Fold in half and then in quarters to transfer to the pie pan; press it firmly to the bottom, sides, and junction of bottom and sides of pan. Trim the excess to about 1/2 inch all around, then tuck it under itself. Prebake or bake as the pie recipe directs.

He talks a lot about prebaking the crust, but the mincemeat pie has a lattice top and the pumpkin pie didn't get made this evening, so neither was prebaked.

12:00 pm: As the pie crusts rested in the freezer, I made Mom's easy standard cranberry relish.

Mom's cranberry relish
Get a mess of cranberries. Pick out the bad ones.
Get an orange. Wash it, remove the stem and the sticker, and cut it up.
Put the whole lot in the food processor and grind it up. (In our case, this was in batches, as our food processor is actually an attachment on our immersion blender, and the bowl is very small.)
Sugar to taste.

12:30 pm: I dumped the mincemeat filling from last night into the pie crust, cut strips for the lattice, and wove them. That was fun. Brushed the top with egg and sprinkled sugar, per the Epicurious recipe. I put the pie in the oven. G. talked to his mom.

12:30 pm - 1:15 pm: G. prepared various goodies to go inside the turkey and under the turkey.

Inside a turkey
A bunch of garlics, whole, unpeeled, but crushed
An apple, cut into chunks
A lemon, cut into chunks
A few ribs of celery, chopped in big bits
Several sprigs of rosemary from the bush in the backyard
An onion, chopped up.

Inside a turkey's skin
Grind up fresh rosemary, fresh minced garlic, salt, pepper, and some olive oil.
Cut little holes in the skin of the breast, kind of above where the drumstick joins the body. Stick a finger in and wiggle it around to separate the skin from the muscle. Stick some of the rosemary-garlic paste in the hole and smear it around.

Underneath a turkey
Chop up several yellow and/or red potatoes, as well as several carrots. Add salt and pepper.

1:15 pm: We checked on the pie and it was all juicy and browned. Took it out.
1:30 pm: After final turkey preparations, it went in, stuffed but without the potatoes and carrots underneath, at 500 degrees for 30 minutes. Don't forget to put some broth or water in the roasting pan, and keep checking on it to make sure it doesn't all evaporate.
2:00 pm: Potatoes and carrots were added to the roasting pan under the turkey, and the temperature was turned down to 350. Thereafter, we checked it every 45 minutes or so.
2:30 pm: STUFFING!!

Stuffing with things Lauren likes in it.
Several mushrooms, sliced somewhat thickly
Several ribs of celery, sliced somewhat thinly
2 large-ish shallots
Many cloves of garlic -- like 5 maybe?
However many pine nuts we had in the cupboard
A bunch of parsley, chopped
Some butter
1 bag of Grand Central Bakery stuffing
Some thyme
Broth

Toast pine nuts in a dry pan over low-medium heat until browned.
Sauté shallots and celery in some butter until soft.
Add mushrooms, herbs and pine nuts and cook until mushrooms look done-ish, stirring
Remove from heat
Add stuffing and 2 c broth, and stir well to get all bread crumbs
Dot with butter (I put skinny pats all over) and set aside to wait for the oven to be free. It will bake for 30 minutes at 350.

4:00 pm: The turkey came out of the oven; the stuffing went in. The turkey waited. The potatoes and carrots came out from the roasting pan so they didn't absorb the lovely juice as the turkey dripped.
4:15 pm: The turkey had finished sitting, so it went to another plate. The drippings were transferred to a pan to become gravy. Green beans went on to sauté with a bit of garlic and lemon juice and white wine. G. opened the can of store-bought delicious cranberry sauce, and I remembered the Mom's relish in the fridge.
4:30 pm: I took out the stuffing and promptly burned four fingers on my right hand trying to transfer it to a serving bowl. But I remembered to turn off the oven!
4:35 pm: We sat down to eat. Yum yum!
5:15 pm: It was all over, seconds and all. We set about cleaning up, which was remarkably easy.
5:40 pm: While breaking down the turkey for storage, we discovered the giblets were actually in the turkey, though we'd checked and checked.
6:00 pm: After surprisingly minimal fridge rearranging, the whole deal was put away
and we sat down to mincemeat pie with just-whipped whipped cream and a glass of wine.

It was a good day. I want to cook all day more often.

Ah, Thanksgiving ...

... a holiday whose point I actually like: food.

Even though it's likely to be just us all weekend, with one other (host brother Simon) at most, we're (possibly unsurprisingly) going all out on the cooking. In fact, I already baked a very easy cranberry cake, and prepared the insides of a mincemeat pie.

Cranberry Cake
I don't remember where I got this recipe; I wanted to make it last Thanksgiving but Mom wouldn't let us cook at all. So I made it today.

2 tbsp butter
1 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 c flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 c milk
2 c fresh cranberries

Cream together butter and sugar in a large bowl. (I just used a fork; didn't feel like getting out the mixer.)
Sift flour and with baking powder and salt into another bowl. (My mother always treated sifting as irrelevant and unnecessary, and I think she's right, but I have a sifter so I used it.)
Add vanilla to butter and sugar mixture.
Add flour mixture to butter and sugar mixture, alternating with milk.
Fold in cranberries.
Pour into greased loaf pan.

Bake at 400 degrees for 40-45 minutes, until a knife in the middle comes out clean, as usual.

---

Notes:
I feel like cranberries must be lonely without oranges in some form or another, so I wanted to give them a friend; there was an orange laying around so I chopped up some peel and threw it in, and also added some small bits of orange segment. They lend a really nice flavor to the batter, and when you get orange and cranberry in the same bite, it's wonderful.
It seems to be a theme in my life that I never grease pans enough. I cut around the edges of the cake and then tried to invert it onto the rack to cool, and it turned itself inside out. I think I didn't grease the bottom enough. I had to stuff it all back inside and then mangle the first few pieces to get it out. Let this be a lesson to you: grease your pans properly.

It smelled wonderful, and tasted, as advertised, sweet, but not too sweet. Also, yummy.

Mincemeat pie, part 1

One of my new work pals just found out that her partner of ten years loves mincemeat. Subsequently, we had an extensive conversation about mincemeat, whether we like it or not, and particularly whether it should contain actual meat and/or suet. I personally had it when I was a kid and really liked it, but had no idea that it had ever actually contained meat or suet. I decided I would make a mincemeat pie with no meat, and set about finding a recipe. This one came from Epicurious and was recommended by New Work Pal Kim.

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled and finely diced (Give this job to your boyfriend who loves to chop things, and who likes to call himself "The Human Mandoline.")
2/3 cup golden raisins
2/3 cup dark raisins
2/3 cup dried currants
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 oz shredded beef suet, or substitute 4 tbsp melted butter (this is what I did)
1/4 cup brandy
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon zest
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh orange zest
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Stir together all mincemeat ingredients. Chill in an airtight container at least 3 days.

---

Notes:

Couldn't find currants. Used 1 c each of both kinds of raisins, instead.
And HELL NO suet. 4 tbsp of butter for us. "Suet is for the birds!" he says.
Our sugar was not dark brown.
Our lemon & orange were zested until it looked about like 2 tsp, and then chopped finely.
I only had 1/8 c of brandy -- turned out I drank the rest a while ago -- so I included 1/8 c Maker's Mark as well.
Nutmeg and allspice were not measured, just ground fresh (I heart Microplanes) directly into the mixture.
And who prepares enough in advance to let it sit for 3 days? Pffft. It will sit overnight and for most of the day, and will be baked in the early evening, I expect. Possibly after dinner.

I will have to wait until tomorrow to learn how the mincemeat tastes; expect further posts. It sure smells good and is full of delicious ingredients, though, so I have high hopes.

Also on our menu: garlic mashed potatoes; stuffing with mushrooms, pine nuts, and shallots; cranberry sauce; turkey with rosemary and garlic; green beans, probably also with garlic; pumpkin pie; dulce de leche ice cream (not homemade, unlike the rest of the list).