Thanksgiving 2009 - A Little Progress

I am a genius! In a stroke of brilliance yesterday, I decided to take a nap at 4:30. I wasn't officially up until 12 hours later! So, I'm a wee bit behind on my schedule, but no worries. Let's recap the progress. My goal is to really blog about everything I make this year; even if I done an entry about it before. Here we go.




First was the cornbread for the dressing. If you're new to the blog, let me tell you now that I'm in love with Cook's Illustrated. Most of my recipes are theirs. They were no slouches with the All-Purpose Cornbread recipe either. This has the sweetness of Jiffy with a better texture and real corn flavor.



First, and this is where my heritage meets the recipe: heat a cast iron skillet so that it's screaming hot. Cornbread should be made in cast iron. There, I've said it. I put the skillet into the cold oven (on the baking stone) and heat it as the oven preheats.





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Next, process the wet ingredients: buttermilk, corn and brown sugar.





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Add the eggs.





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Perfect! Thick and creamy with bits of corn.





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Before I start with the dry stuff, I take the skillet out of the oven and add canola oil. Do not use butter or extra-virgin olive oil. They will burn. I put the skillet back in the oven while I finish the batter.





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Now, grab flour, cornmeal and and a scale. (Baking is a science; measuring is necessary.)





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Add the leavenings and salt. Table salt for baking, kosher for everything else.







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Whisk together and make a well for the wet stuff.







Grab a spatula and fold unitl moistened. I like to have a few dry bits left before I add the butter.





Bring on the butter!







Get the skillet and plop the batter in there. Hear that? See those bubbles? That's exactly what you want.







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Smooth out the top and bake!







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Golden brown and delicious! Just look at that crust! That piece is for the cook and the chili I pulled from the freezer:-)







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Once cool enough to handle, break it apart and leave it out to dry out overnight.







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Now for the trukey brine. This is recipe is from Emeril Lagassee.



Grab a stockpot. Orange juice, wine (dry please) start us off. I chose a pino grigio.





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It is a brine - salt and sugar are required.







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Add peppercorns, ginger, thyme and bay leaves. Take a moment to rough up the thyme a little to release the flavor. I got lazy and didn't chop the ginger. If I had been putting the turkey in immediately, I would've chopped it. I added the water last.





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I refrigerated the brine separately. My intent was to add the turkey a few hours later, after the flavors had melded. They certainly melded since I fell alseep and the turkey didn't make the introduction until this morning!







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Butterball added a gravy packet this year. That went straight to the trash along with the gizzard, heart and liver. I don't like gravy just enough to know it should be homemade. I have to be in the right frame of mind to eat organ meats, especially gizzards. It happens once every few years.







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Do save the neck and tail. (Butterball didn't think I needed my tail) Use those to make stock for the gravy. This is missing some herbs. I'll add those later. I still have to get some parsley.





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Tools of the trade:



I'll add these later.

Another One In the Arsenal?

While I was visiting my aunt in New Orleans, I spent my days watching cooking shows and leafing through her cookbooks and magazines. She has a nice selection of the Cook's Illustrated special publications. In one of these, I found a recipe for a Cold Oven Pound Cake. Me being the lazy person I am decided not to copy the recipe then. I have a CI online membership. Surely, I'd look it up when I got home. So, um yeah, it's not on the website. It's a Cook's Country recipe.

Wouldn't you know it? I had a copy of the recipe anyway. It's in my America's Best Lost Recipes. Silly me. This book takes a slight departure from the regular CI formula. As the recipes are submitted by readers, there isn't the usual lengthy preamble for each recipe. This is the first time I've used a recipe from this book. I'm writing as it bakes, so we'll see how well it does.

I'm slightly worried because I had to violate a specific note in the book. You're supposed to use skim or 1% milk for this. For once, I only had 2% and whole. Oh well.

Let's get started, shall we?

The batter has four parts: wet, dry, fats and leavening. The dry is flour and salt. Wet is milk vanilla and egg yolks. Fats are butter and shortening (these are creamed with sugar). The leavening is egg whites! In a pound cake??! You'll see.

Whisk your flour and salt.

Cream the butter, sugar and shortening.

Whisk the egg yolks, milk and vanilla.

Now, beat the egg whites until you get soft peaks. This is where having two mixing bowls for Old Faithful really pay off. Make sure your bowl and whisk attachment are impeccably clean. I wipe mine down with a little vinegar just to be sure.

Alternate adding the flour and liquid to the fat. Start and end with the flour. Mix each addition just until incorporated.

Here's the batter after the last addition. See the dry flour? Don't let the mixer run until it's fully incorporated. You run the danger of over mixing and creating a tough cake with tunnels in the crumb.

 Finish up by hand. Isn't that pretty?

Gently fold in your egg whites. The first batch I fold in are sacrificial; they get stirred into the batter. They are used to lighten the batter so that folding in the rest will be easier. The rest are folded. Here's the finished batter.

Move on to your prepared cake pan.

Move on to your cold oven.

Bake for 45 minutes at 300 degrees. Increase temp to 325 and bake 45 more minutes. Nothing left to do now but wait (and clean up the kitchen).

The cake is done. I am disappointed in the crust, but I take 100% of the blame. I didn't use the right type of milk and I lowered the oven temperature by 15 degrees because my Bundt pan tends to cook quicker than the average pan. I'll go strictly by the book next time and update the post.

Here's the cake - cut into and enjoyed by some What's Cookin' Chicago Meetup members. The flavor was excellent. Just gotta nail the crust.

Tools of the Trade

• Pyrex Measuring Cup
• Williams-Sonoma Gold Touch Bundt Pan
• KitchenAid Stand Mixer

Buy The Book #3: Baking Illustrated

So. You know of my lemon bar obsession. I almost threw a tantrum when I found out the McDonald's that sold me the best lemon bar I ever tasted no longer carries them. I was offended because there were Apple Dippers where the lemon bars should have been. When you want butter, flour and sugar, apple slices just won't do. This heightened the urgency for a good recipe. space You remember the previous lemon bar disaster. I now have an important announcement: People, I have found the lemon bar recipe of my dreams. Thank you Baking Illustrated. I wasn't ready to use Baking Illustrated in this series yet, but kick-butt lemon bars warrant you buying this book. The scone recipe is also wonderful, but let's focus on the lemon bars. I promise these will be some of the best you've ever had.

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Start by preparing your pan. Spray a little cooking spray into a square baking dish. Fold two sheets of parchment paper and place them perpendicular to each other. The papers makes a sling. It will be so easy to get the bars out of the pan.

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Let's move on to the crust. Take the dry ingredients for a spin.

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Press it evenly into the pan and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

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Put the crust into the oven and start working on the filling. The filling needs to go on a hot crust so mind your timing. You'll need lots of eggs, a total of nine. Yes, I too was thinking that for nine eggs, this better be the best damn lemon bars ever. They are.

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Lightly beat the eggs. Incorporate the sugar. Whisk in lemon zest and lemon juice. Add the butter and head for the stove top. Yes I said stove top. You are actually making a lemon curd.

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I managed to contain my mess; I'm so proud.

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Here is where the pics get sketchy because the curd required constant attention. Once the curd hits 170 degrees, strain it, add a little heavy cream and pour it over the hot crust. (Going after the pot with a spoon later was a special treat.)

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Note how I managed to splatter the lemon curd onto the parchment. I'm quite skilled like that.

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All done. The filling is opaque and the center is jiggly. Cool to room temperature. Remember the curd splatters? Now they're a problem because as I move the parchment, it flings the burnt curd onto my pretty square of sunshine.

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Grab a pizza cutter and slice your squares. Garnish with powdered sugar. I sprinkle sugar on the individual squares as I eat them.

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These were worth every cent, minute of cooking and the cleanup afterward. Please go buy this book for the lemon bar lover in you.

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Tools of the trade:

• Square Pyrex Baking Dish
• KitchenAid Food Processor
• Microplane Multi Citrus Tool
• 2-in-1 Citrus Juicer
• Glass Mixing Bowls
• Pyrex Measuring Cup
• All-Clad 2-Qt Saute Pan
• Taylor Thermometer
• All-Clad Strainer
• All-Clad Pizza Cutter

Thanksgiving #11: The Greatest Cake In The World

I know I'm very late with this post, but I'm backdating it to go with the Thanksgiving series. I just couldn't manage cooking and real-time blogging. Maybe for Christmas.

Now, what's Thanksgiving without dessert? Okay, I had two desserts, but who's counting? (You have to have at least one pie and one cake.) This year's cake was a coconut cake. Done right and it is one of my favorites. How do you do it right? Get rid of that 7-minute frosting.

I spend more than $5 a slice for coconut cake from Bloomingdale's. I was determined to recreate it myself and do it better than they did. Tall order. I couldn't find one recipe that did exactly what I wanted, but I could steal bits and pieces from other recipes. The cake and pastry cream come from Cook's Illustrated. The simple syrup is from Bobby Flay and the frosting is from Rosy Levy Beranbaum. It was time consuming, expensive and worth all of it. What really worked out is that the frosting was all yolks and the cake was mostly whites, so there was no waste with the eggs.

I tackled the pastry cream the night before so that it would be fully chilled and the flavors would meld. Boy was it good. So good that I almost came up short because I kept thieving random spoonfuls until I made the cake.

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Here are the humble beginnings of pastry cream:

Cook on the stove.

Refrigerate. It's not hard at all.

Let's move to the cake. I don't have any "making of" pics. I was itching to use my new Williams-Sonoma cake pans. These babies did not disappoint!

I don't have any pics of it, but I also made a coconut simple syrup. Let's assemble. We know I suck at torting cakes. I actually got it right this time!

After brushing on the simple syrup, reach for the pastry cream.

Cover this with another layer and repeat the process. Your top layer should be a bottom.

Let's get to the icing. I made a half batch of icing, which was almost enough to cover the whole cake. Because I used pastry cream between the layers, I just couldn't see wasting all that butter and eggs for a full batch of icing.

Believe it or not, this was the start of the icing.

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Now the application wasn't pretty, so there aren't any photos of that. Hey, I was covering it with toasted coconut anyway.

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This cake was the cause of the five pounds I picked up over Thanksgiving. (Okay, well the dressing, rolls and sweet potato pie helped too.) A bite is heavenly. It was moist and full of coconut flavor. I loved how the different textures worked together. If you don't think you can deal with the temptation, it freezes beautifully.

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Thanksgiving #10: After The Fact

I know I'm very late with this post, but I'm backdating it to go with the Thanksgiving series. I just couldn't manage cooking and real-time blogging. Maybe for Christmas.

Anyhoo. Let's finish up the greens. In the last post, we'd gotten up to the boiling. After a 40 minute simmer, drain the greens and try to get as much water out of them as possible. Give 'em a good chop.

Make your cream mixture. This was a recipe departure. I added minced garlic, nutmeg and crushed red pepper flakes in addition to the required salt and pepper. Whoever heard of creamed anything without nutmeg?

I then poured this over the greens. Two things bothered me:

A) Was I messing up some good damn greens? As I poured the cream over the greens, I kept thinking, "This is so wrong."

B) I can't really explain it, but something about the pattern created by the greens in the cream (like the upper right of the pic below) freaks me out. I also don't like the site of dry, cracked earth. I'm sure that I'll one day pay somebody a lot of money to figure that out.

It's important to note that there isn't really a lot of cream in this dish.

I chose to use individual ramekins for this dish. It makes the leftovers so much easier. And yes, I skipped the breadcrumbs the recipe called for.

I baked them at 350 degrees. I'll share the finished pic later.

What else can I show you? The Pioneer Woman's squash. Isn't it pretty? The next time I make this, I won't go for the syrup. The brown sugar adds enough sweetness.

Let's knock out the rolls. I just didn't have the heart or time for my usual yeast rolls. I decided to go with Williams-Sonoma's Sally Lunn Herbed Rolls. No kneading? I'm all for it. The dough was very sticky. It was also more like a batter.

Check out all the herbs that went into these. What else can you expect from an herbed roll recipe?

Here's the dough after the first rise and a push down with a wooden spoon:

Now you have to get all of this goodness into a muffin tin. I used a large scoop to portion. Cover with plastic wrap and let them rise. The tops aren't perfectly smooth because I didn't do the greatest job of greasing the plastic wrap before I covered the rolls.

Brush the top with an egg wash and bake. You're supposed to put a whole herb leaf on the top of every roll. Maybe next time.

The winners this year were really the creamed collard greens, cranberry sauce and coconut cake. The disappointment was the turkey, but I'm blaming that on truffle butter that wasn't what it was supposed to be. I'll do separate posts for finishing the turkey and the coconut cake.

Thanksgiving #5: What Had Happened Was

Whenever you hear, "What had happened was ..." please know you are in for some foolishness. Not one to disappoint, let me tell you about my first day of cooking.

You know I have everything mapped out. Today was an easy day. I got sidetracked and it ended up taking me a lot longer than it should have. Phone calls, a glass of wine ... where does the time go? By far, the biggest loss of time was when I decided to fix my automatic soap dispenser. I refilled it yesterday and today it stopped working. I don't know how long I fooled around with that thing -- I'm all on the Web trying to find the manufacturer's site. I eventually found the answer right there on the instructions I'd already read three times. I think the problem was I tried to fix it after the glass of wine.

Let's get to today's to do list. I started with the brine. I made some adjustments to the recipe.

Here's Mr. Turkey taking a quick shower before he gets his aromatherapy soak. Remember how you always had to stand under that cold sprinkler before you could get into the pool? Or did we only do that in Little Rock? Why do you have to get wet before you get into water? I'ma Google that.

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I digress. It's not that I mind rinsing the turkey or making the brine. It the clean-up afterward. I'm sure people use less caution trying to disarm a missile. Here's a trick I learned from Aunt Carolyn: if garbage day is too far away, put all of the meat wrappers and whatnot into a plastic bag and freeze it until garbage day. It keeps your trash can and kitchen from smelling like spoiled meat. She uses a grocery bag. I'm using a Ziploc, so I put mine into the trash can.

Anyhoo. I was smart enough to clear space in the refrigerator this year for the brining pot before I made the brine. Now of course when the pot was full, there was no way I could get it on the top shelf without sloshing turkey juice around. I took out the bottom shelf and two of the shelves on the door. (My refrigerator door only opens 90 degrees because it's flush with a wall.)

On to pie crust. I needed to get this right the first time, so I went with the foolproof recipe.

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Start here.

Ta -da! The shot of my perfectly rolled dough will be more impressive.

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Next on the list was the stock for the gravy. People, I have a confession to make. I make stock in my Crock-Pot. This is my second time doing it. I dump the stuff in there and when I wake up at some point during the night, I have stock. My Crock-Pot overheats anyway (the food actually boils.) If I crack the lid once the boiling starts, I get the evaporation you'd get from the pot on the stove. I strain it and put in the refrigerator. Once it's cold, I pick the fat off the top.

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Here are the vegetables going for a swim.

The recipe called for browning the turkey parts beforehand to add additional flavor. You do that that all the time for braising; I don't know why I never thought of it for stock. There was nothing I could do to make this a beauty shot.

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After everything has browned, deglaze the pan and add that to the stock.

My last task for the day was cubing the bread for the dressing.

See ya tomorrow!

Tools of the trade:

• All-Clad Multi Cooker
• KitchenAid Food Processor
• Crock-Pot (please don't buy this model; your food will boil)
• All-Clad Strainer
• All-Clad 10" Skillet
• Shun Offset Bread Knife
• Totally Bamboo Butcher Block
• Williams-Sonoma Sheet Pan