To brine, or not to brine?

Incidentally, this is actually a chicken I recently brined before roasting. But you get the idea.

Turkey day grows closer by the second (hooray!) and if you're like me, you're busy dreaming about how delicious the day's feast will be.  Since heading home to the newly-minted Peachtree Corners (go, Mom!) for the day is a bit of a hike (Mr Turvy has to work on Friday- ugh!), we'll be sticking around Boston to celebrate Thanksgiving with my in-laws.  They're cooking for a crowd and I've volunteered to bring mashed potatoes (surprise, surprise) and my grandma's butterhorn rolls (recipes to follow). Has anyone had butterhorns before?  They're a bit of a hassle to make but are buttery and sweet and delicious and well worth the effort. 

Several years ago, I cottoned on to the idea of brining a turkey. If you've never had the pleasure of brining a turkey before- DO. IT. THIS. YEAR. (I'm giving you a few days head start to assemble everything you'll need). Seriously, you won't regret it.  When I first brined a turkey for my family's Thanksgiving a few years ago, it blew our minds. I'm not exaggerating, either.  For the first time in the history of Thanksgiving turkeys, this one was melt-in-your-mouth juicy and we couldn't get enough. That go-round, I used this recipe for Herb-Roasted Turkey from my favorite of favorite cooking websites, Epicurious. I used the herb butter and basted with chicken stock and pan juices instead of apple cider and didn't end up making the apple cider grazy.

A few tips for cooking your bird:
-The brining process can take up to 48 hours, so get started asap! You need at least 15-18 hours to brine the turkey and at least twelve hours afterwards for it to sit on a rack in your fridge, uncovered
-When you brine, it helps to put the brine mixture and the turkey in a small (like the ones for a bathroom sized garbage can) garbage bag tied at the top so no liquid can escape and do all of this inside a stockpot
-Remove the little white temperature thing that pops out (which I neglected to do on the above chicken). It isn't always so helpful at giving an accurate temperature reading.
-A word to the wise, cooking stuffing inside of a brined turkey can make things awfully salty, so make an extra batch of stuffing to cook independently of the bird (and mix the two together). And if you're cooking stuffing inside of the bird, inserting it en masse into a cheesecloth (tied at the top) will make it infinitely easier to scoop out of the cavity once the turkey is done.
-If the turkey breast/tips of wings and feet start looking too brown, pop on some aluminum foil to nip the browning in the bud.
-If your turkey doesn't come with one of those metal things to hold its feet together, find some string and tie them yourself. And if you're really feeling fabulous, give your turkey fancy booties that look like chef hats

Tres chic. Your fancy friends will be impressed.

Any questions?

Since I still have beaucoup de time on my hands, in addition to a crockpot curried chicken for dinner (recipe to be posted later- provided it turns out), I've gotten a jump on Thursday's mashed potatoes. It's hard to keep up the potato fluffiness by fixing them two days in advance, but you can roast the garlic ahead of time with no adverse effects. (A head of roasted garlic can be refrigerated for a week in an airtight container). Roasting garlic takes about 40 minutes in a 400 degree oven and is easy-peasy if you follow these steps.

Roasting garlic in 5 easy steps

1. Set your oven to 400 degrees

2. Peel some of the excess layers of skin off the head of garlic, so it looks like this

and lop off the tip of your head of garlic to make it easier to rescue the cloves once it's roasted, comme ca:

Look Ma, no tops!

3. Place the garlic in aluminum foil, drizzle with olive oil (about 1 T) and sprinkle with salt and pepper

4. Pinch the aluminum foil closed around the top of the head of garlic and pop in the oven for 45 minutes (I like to rest the garlic atop a square of aluminum foil just in case any oil leaks out)

                                                 

5. Remove from the oven and enjoy. If you're using it immediately, remove individual cloves from the head using a fork. If you're using it within the week, store, cut-cloves down in olive oil in an airtight container. 

Now that you've got the garlic roasting part down pat, here's the recipe for the potatoes I'll make on Thursday. These aren't exactly figure- friendly but will definitely impress your guests on special occasions.

Roasted garlic mashed potatoes with crème fraîche
Serves 8-10
4 pounds russet or yukon gold potatoes, peeled, rinsed and diced into 1/2" cubes
8 T butter, unsalted (I like to use unsalted butter to moderate the amount of salt when I'm cooking)
5 T crème fraîche
8 c water
1 head of garlic (or 12 cloves), roasted (see directions above)
1/2 c milk (use whichever milk you buy- you can use light or heavy cream if you have either handy)
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste

Boil 8 cups of water on high heat.  Add potatoes and cook until they hold their shape but are easy to smush (not in a Jersey Shore way) or bite (about 15 minutes). Drain the potatoes (don't rinse), add garlic and mash using a mixer, old-fashioned masher, ricer (whatever gives them the texture your pretty little heart desires). Add butter, crème fraîche, milk, and salt and pepper to taste and continue to mash/stir until everything is well-blended. If you're making these ahead of time, pouring 1/4 cup milk or cream on top of the potatoes before you cover them will keep them fluffy when you need to reheat before the big feast. Hope you love these potatoes as much as I do!!

A note on the creme fraiche- un produit de France, it's relatively similar in taste and consistency to American sour cream (not quite as delicious but will work as a substitute in a pinch) and can be found in the dairy or deli section of your local grocery. You may have trouble finding it at grocery stores like Ingles, Stop & Shop and Shaws but I've had luck finding it at specialty markets, gourmet grocers and Trader Joes. I've also only ever found one brand that sells it, Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery and it looks like this.

Happy Turkey Day, y'all!

Welcome to fall, now let's start making (potato leek) soup

I could without a doubt live off of potatoes and nothing else. Mr Turvy shares my love for all things spud, as I discovered when he recently showed me his 6th grade yearbook.  He went to a small school and each class had their own page dedicated to the students in it.  His class's page began with the headline "Can you imagine...?" and was followed by lots of funny middle school class inside jokes- things like, "...Catherine M. wearing clothes that clashed", "...Danny P. being on time" "Megan R. not gossiping" annnnnnd drumroll please- "Mr Turvy not liking potatoes".  Apparently he liked them so much that his whole class knew about it. So maybe it was fate? Perhaps.

In any event, I can- and will, keep the potato recipes coming. Let's say that you didn't have any russet potatoes on hand to make pommes frites last week but you do have yukon golds (or even those basic, all purpose potatoes).  A great way to use some up is in a potato-leek soup- one of the most delicious, belly warming meals around. There are a number of ways to make this soup using a variety of different ingredients (so feel free to poke around online for modifications).  To make my potato-leek soup, I adapted this pretty basic recipe from Epicurious, my go-to recipe/meal idea website since college. The leftovers will grow more flavorful overnight but this will make you an absolutely ENORMOUS batch of soup. However, if you aren't cooking for a tiny army (or even a grown-up sized one), you might want to halve the recipe.

Potato Leek Soup
Serves 12

2 leeks, washed and sliced
3 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 c. light cream
2 sprigs thyme
2 slices of bacon (save the bacon after you fry it because you'll use it for garnish)
6 c. chicken broth
3 c. water
1 T salt (more to taste)
2 t pepper (I use white pepper in white dishes)
4 scallions, diced (optional, for garnish)
sour cream (light, regular, fat-free- whichever you prefer) or creme fraiche (optional, for garnish)

Step one, cut a hole in the box...  Oops, sorry. Just kidding. Actual step one, peel and chop the garlic and potatoes. Then wash and chop the leeks.  Leeks can Over the years, I've learned to get all ingredients ready to go before you start cooking.  This way, you won't be panicking as things are burning on the stove and you're still trying to get everything chopped and in the pan. Not that this has EVER happened to me of course.

 Look at what a good little worker bee I am.  A word about the leeks: most of the time, they collect unseen dirt in the outer layers.  More than once have made the mistake of trying to slice them whole.  Total fail.  Turns out that it's nearly impossible to get the dirt out from tiny little rings of leek. (You won't use the top, dark green part of the leek, but the dirt usually manages to find its way further down the stalk). To combat that, after washing the leeks, I slice them in half and then peel back the outer layers just a hair and wash them again:    

Ick

This should solve the problem

Now that everything's chopped, fry the bacon in the same pot you'll be using for the soup.  The pots at our house range in size from small-ish to lobster pot and I figured everything wouldn't fit in the little guys, hence:

Certainly not winning any prizes for bacon photography

Once the bacon is browned to your desired level of crispness, (I like mine almost burnt but not quite), remove the bacon but leave the grease in the pot.  Add the sliced leeks and garlic and cook on medium/med-low for about 7 minutes (until leeks are floppy).  Then add the chopped potatoes, thyme, chicken broth, water, thyme, and cream. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat to medium low and cook for about an hour (until the potatoes are tender- think mushy potato salad-consistency). If you find the soup getting too thick, add water or chicken broth in half cup increments to thin it out a bit. 

Total dream

Here's the soup cooking (at left). In real life, it wasn't nearly this yellow.  Poor kitchen lighting and an iPhone camera flash contributed to this exotic color.  Once the potatoes are tender, remove the sprigs of thyme (no worries if a few stray leaves have detached themselves). You now have two options.  If you have an immersion blender (one of my favorite shower gifts from my pal LuckyClairo- and her darling mother Christmas Cele), now's your time to shine.  I had been pining away for one of these for years and it has already revolutionized my soup making. Basically, it's a hand-held blender. And it will change your life. It's too bad I didn't capture a pic of myself smiling up a storm while using it.  Ah well.  Your second option is to use a regular blender.  But fait attention, it's easy to get carried away and try to cram too much hot stuff into a blender at once. The steam rises up and the hot liquid will escape through the top if you aren't careful.  To avoid this fate, only put 2-3 cups of liquid in the blender at a time (you'll blend several cups at a time and then return them to the pot, and blend another few cups and so on until everything is blended to your liking- some like it chunky, some like it smooth).  Also, while blending, always put pressure on the lid with a dish towel (just to make sure the lid doesn't leak or pop off and you aren't caught off guard trying to put it back on with your bare hands).  Add salt and pepper (add more to taste. I used low sodium chicken broth and added a lot of salt back in to give the soup more flavor).  Incidentally, did you know that peppercorns grow on trees and  look like this in nature?   Saw that on Alton Brown recently and it was totally news to me. At my parents' house, we always used Tony Chachere's creole seasoning in our potato soup and it was delicious- so if you have that handy, give it a go. (Also, we pronounced it "Chaach-erees", which I'm pretty sure is incorrect).

Serve with whichever toppings you prefer.  I used chopped scallions, chopped bacon (remember that from the beginning), a dollop of sour cream (gives it a great tanginess), and a little hot sauce. Grated cheddar is also fantastic on top. As are chives. Basically anything you'd want on a baked potato. Enjoy :)