A very Turducken Thanksgiving, or, how to make a butcher laugh at you

This year I turned 30 on Thanksgiving Thursday and felt that I needed to do something to mark the occasion, preferably with a degree of culinary bombast. I am quite partial to taking on challenges for which I am fairly unqualified - plucking, gutting and roasting a duck at age 14 for a 5 course French meal (it was homework), making a croquembouche in 35 degree heat for a flatmate's civil unionisationing shindig (sugar burns aren't fun), decorating a cake in the shape of a large vulva (chocolate hail pubes!), making 10 litres of alcholic eggnog in a bucket for a Midwinter Christmas (burp), and so on. In this case I felt that it was an apt time to make a turducken for 40 - 50 people, even though I have never roasted anything larger than a greedy chicken let along a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey. Bansai!

May I highly recommend the services of the good people at Cashmere Cuisine who supplied me with the meat, all of which was organic free range. They didn't even charge me to debone the birds, which I suspect reflected their bemusement.

"So you've done this before then?"
"Nup."
"Oh, you've seen it done then?" 
"Nup."
"... oh." 
"I know what I'm doing!"


... which was mostly accurate.


The night before the morning after

First thing was to sort out the bones - too good a resource to waste. They nearly didn't all fit in the stock pot and after a few hours simmering away we ended up with a thick gelatinous stock sludge that smelled amazing. Most of it is now in the freezer, labelled superstock. Some carrots and celery gave their lives in the name of flavoursomeness.

By this stage the cat had figured out that something exciting and meat related was happening, so she had to be booted out.

 She still had the eye of the tiger though, so credit where it's due.

I decided to make three types of stuffing, which required a lot of bread.

However, I cheated - I knew I was going to run out of time so I used some package stuff (Gregg's "Homestyle", whatever that means) and bulked it out with stock, extra bread and some other ingredients. Often stuff from packets is over-seasoned and super salty but ekeing it out this way seemed to be okay. I would do it properly next time, with better prep, because I am generally a packaged food bigot and I like to know what I'm eating. I'm looking at you, "flavour enhancer".

• Stuffing 1 was sauteed onion and celery with fresh sage, stock, and two types of bread crumbs.
• Stuffing 2 was similar, but with less onion and lots of diced dried apricot and sauteed mushroom.
• Stuffing 3 (not in the picture below, it was in the fridge) was onion sauteed with free range pork sausage (happy pigs make tasty pigs) with grated apple and lots of proper breadcrumbs and stock.

In the interim I had also made a giant carrot cake, just for shits and giggles (also, the batter tastes nice).

I have never brined anything before but I have it on good authority that this is the way to do things (thanks Cat) and I was worried about everything being a bit dry and manky. I got most of my helpful information from here and settled on a mixture of salt, brown sugar and mangled bits of orange. I was going to add more but Mr Longbean told me to stop fussing, probably for the best. There are ice cubes in the left hand one as the water was a bit warm from dissolving the salt and I didn't want to confuse the turkey.

It would have made terrible punch.

Being oblivious, I never really considered how much room this was going to take up as it was far too warm outside to just jam them in the laundry overnight and I didn't want to poison everyone (best birthday surprise ever!) so the Christmas cake got kicked out of its container, the punch bowl was requisitioned and most of the fridge was cleared out.

Gross. The naked bird spa party lasted maybe 12 or 14 hours. The chicken and the duck got to share.

By this stage I had been in the kitchen for nearly 6 hours and was getting tired and grumpy and wanted to sit on the couch and drink beer and watch local satirical comedy. Mr Longbean had bought me a sweet new apron for my birthday, so at least I was still looking good.


Birdageddon

After going to the swimming pool and going ffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuhhhhh what the hell am I thinking (about the bird, not the pool) I channelled my inner Dexter and prepared the plastic and the gloves.

I love latex gloves, for reals.

Next, the stuffings, warmed slightly after a night in the fridge. You're not really meant to prep the stuffing the day before but there was no way I was going to get up at 5am to start cooking so that's the way it goes. Some extra superstock and fresh-stale bread helped things loosen up a bit.

 Roger Sutton looks on in awe.

I rinsed the birds thoroughly as no one likes having a salt lick for dinner, and patted them dry. The turkey was too mighty for mere paper towels and needed a clean bath towel all of its very own.

I've never really eaten much in the way of turkey that wasn't housed inside a Subway sub, so it's easy to forget that they are humongous. Even with all its bones out this one weighed a good 5kg - I had to weigh it by standing on the bathroom scales, like a vet, only my bird was well past saving.

I seasoned it (and all the other birds) with sumac, because sumac is wonderful and enhances flavour without saltiness and tastes like the flavouring on barbecue flavoured Shapes crackers. Then, I layered stuffing over the top, and then another bird, and so on.

Here is where I made a total rookie error - I overstuffed the birds. Stuffing expands as things cook and it would come back to bite me in the ass later. Oops. At least the bird strata looked lovely.

In the end the chicken was slightly larger than the duck, so instead of a turducken we had a turchickuck, but it doesn't roll off the tongue quite so well and I don't like it when the name of my dinner sounds like someone retching. (See also borscht.)

Pulling the whole thing together took two sets of hands, large and small metal skewers, a needle and thread, brute force and lots of swearing. We pulled the duck together, then the chicken, and held everything mostly together as we went along.

... no comment.

Eventually the whole thing was tied together, although next time (there will be a next time?) I will get a needle with a bigger eye, or smaller string, or something generally less aggravating. We needed pliers to facilitate the sewing process and I nearly got a needle in the eye.

Neither Mr Longbean nor I will make very good field surgeons.

Once everything was sewn up, the skewers were removed and the Russian nesting bird was forced into an enamel roaster. It was rubbed down with olive oil and sumac - I had planned on glazing it with some nice mysterious apricot chutney stuff we got inside a gift basket but in the heat of the moment I forgot.

Hurrah, stick it in the oven at 160°C (fan forced), and all that. So far so good.

When I pulled it out of the oven after an hour I realised the error of my stuffing ways as it looked like a chestburster had been on the scene.

Oops. Covered it with foil, stuck it back in. After another couple of hours I realised that the oven was on the wrong setting and I had a significant panic - see that charring? Might it have been the grill? I dunno, I'm too mortified to say. Luckily the bird was so big that the heat wasn't circulating very evenly anyway so it all worked out well. A mistake not to be repeated.

Meanwhile, I iced the cake with cream cheese frosting and drank a bunch of beer and fizzy wine and generally stressed myself senseless sorting out the house.

After about 6 hours, maybe longer, the bird was done - thanks Mr Oven Thermometer, you were swell and utterly invaluable in making sure I didn't poison 50-odd of my nearest and dearest. My stepfather, who has meat-fu, was put in charge of the carving as it was going to be a bastard trying to get it out of the pan (I'd had a cunning plan for this but forgot to enact it when I first put the bird in to cook). I did not take a picture of the finished bird as it looked rough as guts, and it didn't slice nicely due to the fact that it looked like something had gnawed its way out of the middle. But the finished product was moist and mighty tasty, and it was a bit of a lucky dip as to which bits you got.

Epic pot luck ensued, much food was eaten by many people, the keg was drunk dry and only one glass got broken.

There weren't many leftovers.

It took a lot of time and money but I would definitely do this again. Notes for the future:

• don't overstuff
• remember to secure an exit strategy
• truss better and more aggressively
• glaze with something interesting
• make sure to get in line before most of the meat has gone

Thanks for a lovely birthday guys, perhaps next time I'll add a whole piglet or, at the very least, bacon strips.

Pinwheel scones, or, lining your stomach before a big day in the sun

My most memorable stein (sorry, tea party) breakfast was an epic fry up (including sweet things) on the bbq for 10 people, all washed down with a magnum of Moet that someone had won. Very classy! It still didn’t stop the usual dramas (passing out from too much sun, getting tearful and upset at trivialities, becoming best friends with someone covered in mud, lipstick lesbian show-kissing, kick to the head in the mosh pit, finding people shagging in the bushes), but it was a good effort nonetheless.

While the organisers these days offer a better rounded and more palatable food and beverage experience than the ill-begotten nacho beans and Export Gold of my undergraduate tea parties, it is still wise to line your stomach in the morning rather than waking up and reaching for the beer bong before you’ve got your costume gaffer taped on.

If you have it within you to be so organised as to cook them the night before, these pinwheel scones will serve beautifully in the morning with a side of beer or cheap fizzy when warmed up in the oven or microwave. They’ll also provide a welcome effort-free dinner once you’ve managed a blurry and nauseous trip back home on the Orbiter, preferably dressed like a buzzy bee, a Transformer made of cardboard boxes, or a slutty [insert noun here]. Don’t drink and fry, kids, or you won’t get your bond back.

Pinwheel scones – one for the baker bots

Scone base

4 1/2 cups white flour

3 tablespoons baking powder

A big pinch of salt

120g butter

Up to 2 cups of milk 

Pre-heat the oven to 210 degrees C. Combine the flour, salt and baking powder in a large bowl (I use a punch bowl) – you can sift them together or give it all a quick whisk to remove lumps.

Conventional wisdom would have it that you dice the butter, add it to the flour and then work it in with your fingertips, however I can’t abide the feeling of dough beneath my nails so I do one of two things. The first is to chill the butter and grate it in. The second, lazy version, which many will tell you is heresy (but we did it all the time at the cafe and everything was fine), is to melt the butter and just pour it right in. Either way, add the butter and combine everything well.

Make a well in the middle and pour in most of the milk. ‘Stir’ the dough quickly with a butter knife – things will be getting thick and doughy. Add more milk if it’s a bit dry, or more flour if it’s a bit sloppy. When it’s lovely and soft and not at all sticky, and is staying in one big ball, sprinkle the CLEAN CLEAN bench with flour, turn out the dough in the middle and give it a quick knead with your CLEAN CLEAN hands. Roll the dough out about 1.5cm thick into a big rectangle – the longer your dough is along the edge facing you, the more scones you’ll have. Add your fillings, leaving a strip about an inch wide clear along the edge furthest away from you so as to make sealing the scones easier.

Starting at the edge closest to you, very carefully roll the whole thing away from you into a long roll, then slice to make individual scones. Lightly dust a tray with flour and lay out the scones, leaving a good inch or so in between them. Check them after 10 minutes, and cook until finished – depending on the size of your scones this could take 20 – 25 minutes in all. If you’re unsure, give the dough a poke – if should be firm and spring back against your finger, and the scones should be a light golden brown on the bottom.

If you’re storing these, wait until they are cold before keeping in an airtight container and eat within a couple of days. Give them a quick microwave if they are more than a day old.

Sweet mix

Add 1T cinnamon and 2T sugar to the flour before adding the butter. Spread the rolled out dough with butter or softened cream cheese, then sprinkle liberally with brown sugar and cinnamon (or spices of your choosing). Add orange or lemon zest or small bits of dried fruit (apricots, sultanas) for extra points. One you have rolled and sliced the pinwheels, sprinkle a bit more cinnamon or raw sugar over the top before you stick them in the oven. These can be made to be quite dainty. Also, imagine how good nutella scones would be.

Savoury mix – aka the Bakehouse special

Add 1 ½ t dried green herbs or paprika and 1/4c cheese to the flour before adding the butter. Spread the rolled out dough with relish, tomato paste, or sweet chilli. Sprinkle it with cheese and add any of the following: chopped up bacon or ham, diced tomato (take out the seeds or it will get sloppy), diced mushrooms, grated courgette, finely shredded spinach, diced onion, fresh green herbs, drained kernel corn. For bonus points, spread the side that is going to be the centre of the pinwheel with a thick glob of cream cheese. Pat the filling down gently with your hands before rolling carefully and slicing. It might get messy, and if things aren’t really sitting still you can hold them together with a skewer while cooking. Sprinkle with cheese and seeds before cooking. These may end up the size of your head.

Everything pie, or, a quiche by any other name would drive off the punters

I’m not sure what people’s antipathy towards quiche is. Maybe it has vague connotations of wankery and the perilous classism of mid 90s cafe culture, maybe it has too many consonants and is pronounced in a way which makes our brutish antipodean ears baulk, maybe it is French. Either way, quiche is pretty much the same thing as bacon and egg pie, but with cream, and is a perfectly acceptable reheated breakfast foodstuff or camping companion. These are eggy pies for people who don’t have the patience to make their own pastry or base, thank heaven and all things good and buttery for our good friends at Ernest Adams.

I don’t see the point in giving exact quantities as pie dishes tend to vary in size from petite and dainty to monstrous tubs and guesstimation is half the fun. Also, as this column continues, I like that things have become increasingly vague as I get tired of measuring things out, and I hope to see this continue.

Piggy pie

• A pie dish
• 400g flaky pastry at room temperature (or a couple of pre rolled pastry sheets, joined lovingly together in bakerly union)
• An onion
• 8 – 10 eggs
• 250 – 300g bacon, rind removed
• A couple of handfuls of grated cheese
• A tomato, sliced thinly and prettily
• NO PEAS – they have no place in this pie

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Sprinkle the pie plate with some flour. Roll out the pastry on a lovely clean surface (you can get awesome silicon sheets for this, baking geeks) to 3 – 5mm – you want it to be large enough that you can drape it across the pie plate and still have extra bits hanging down the sides. Do that too.

Slice your onion and bacon into thin strips and sprinkle or layer or thrown them into the pastry lined dish with a handful of cheese, making sure everything is spread out nicely. Trim the excess pastry with a sharp knife, trying to get as nice a cut edge as possible for maximum puffiness. Don’t throw out the scraps!

You can go two ways here. The good way for people like me who hate the texture of egg yolk is to whisk the eggs gently in a bowl, then tip them over the bacon and onion. The evil way is to crack the eggs directly into the pie, in such a way that they are evenly distributed, and either leave them as is or prick the yolks gently for runny bits. Arrange the tomato on top in a pleasing fashion, sprinkle over some cheese and lots of cracked pepper. Bake at 220 degrees for 15 minutes then turn the temperature down to 180 and cook for another 25 - 30 minutes, or until done – the pastry should puff up nicely and the egg in the middle should be puffy but firm if you give it a little prod. If it wiggles suspiciously when you give it a nudge it’s not done, egg’s gotta be set or it looks like ectoplasm.

Everything pie aka eggy pie

As above! But:

This time, instead of the bacon, take everything you think belongs in a pie, chop it up and before lining the tin with pastry, fill it up to make sure you have a good amount of stuff– courgette, broccoli, leeks, onions, tomatoes, one million mushrooms, spring onions, ripped up roast chicken, leftover roast veggies, leftover whatever else, ham, chunks of soft cheese, and so on. Throw all the bits into a big bowl and wipe the pie plate clean before lining it with pastry.

Whisk together 8 or 9 eggs, a couple of big splashes of milk or cream, some pepper and a handful of fresh green herbs and add it to the bowl of everything. Toss it together to make sure everything is coated. It will look like snot salad, no joke. Pour it into the pie dish, sprinkle on some cheese and add a small drizzle of a chutney of your choice or sweet chilli sauce, and cook as above. Dinner and tomorrow’s lunch, sorted.

A word about thriftiness: You have options with your pastry scraps. You can amalgamate them, roll them out and cut long strips out of them to create a pretty lattice pattern on top of the pie before putting it in the oven, like out of a nice picture book about animals who bake. Or, you can roll them out, sprinkle on grated cheese, fold it, roll it out again, and repeat the whole process, then cut them into strips, prick them with a fork and bake them in the oven on a tray = cheesy straws! Or you can make little jam tarts, being aware that hot jam is hot and hot jam can burn. Aren’t you clever.

Lunchbox trifle, or, back of the fridge special: dessert edition

The back of the fridge special is the cornerstone of student cooking, a bit like Ready Steady Cook but with a greater capacity for things to go sideways and a higher proportion of mince, apples, stale bread and survival kit offcasts. While next week we will deal with that most holy of culinary grails, Everything Pie, this week is all about the sweet stuff, and by sweet stuff, I mean neglected muffins, instant custard and canned fruit.

We never had trifle when I was growing up as my grandmother, who was a terrible, godawful cook, used to make an horrific version for family gatherings and as a result my mother couldn’t stand the sight of it. On the other hand, being of the British Isles, Mr Longbean has fond memories of trifle with the Sunday dinner, which I hear is more civilised than beans on toast in front of whatever movie’s on Four. Luckily the world has moved on from my grandmother’s lime jelly flavoured monstrosity and now houses such marvellous creations and mocha-berry, passionfruit and Cointreau, and black forest trifles.

Trifle consists of a mix and match of various layers in a deep, straight sided bowl or container:

Something cakey – store-bought sponge, leftover cake or muffins

... soaked in something alcoholic – liqueur, sherry, Baileys, or juice if you simply have to go teetotal

... then covered with a layer of something squishy and fruity – canned or fresh fruit, fresh or frozen berries

... then (perhaps) something gelatinous – optional, but mix up some jelly and pour it over when it’s semi-set

...then covered with in something gloopy – whipped cream, pastry cream, sweetened marscapone, custard, instant pudding, yoghurt

... and repeat (or not) at will

... finally topped with something extra – chocolate chips, broken up chocolate bars, hokey pokey bits, chopped nuts, cherries, more whipped cream, type 2 diabetes

Do it in a sundae or other tall glass, eat with that long-handled spoon you pinched from a cafe (presuming you didn’t beat it out to make a spotting implement), and feel special about things in general.

September’s banana, plum and chocolate lunchbox special

The following recipe is as it is purely because that was what was in the cupboard and fridge, as embarrassed as I am to say that chocolate and Bailey’s hadn’t been polished off after the last big aftershock.

• 8 stale chocolate muffins, forgotten and neglected
• 2 – 3 sad bananas
• 1 810g can of plums in syrup, drained
• Instant custard powder + whatever else you need with that (milk, sugar)
• Chocolate chips (white and dark)
• Baileys
• A 2 litre straight-sided plastic container with a lid, like one of those klip-lock ones

Make up the instant custard to approximately 2 ½ cups (625ml). Slice the muffins into rounds, slice the bananas thinly, and drain the plums. Preparation! 

Line the bottom of the container with half of the muffin bits and drizzle over the Bailey’s – not too much, though, or it will go gross and soggy. Make a layer of banana and then plums, breaking up the fruit and removing the seeds as you go. Use your hands, it’s more fun that way. Pour warm custard over to cover, then sprinkle with chocolate chips – with any luck they’ll melt a bit. Repeat the process and you should have just about filled the container. Pop the lid on and let sit for a few hours or overnight for all the ingredients to make friends. Serve with something other than beer – how very civilised!

A word about layering: you can make just about any dessert related bits look fancy pants by organising them into layers or whipping them up a bit then putting them in a cocktail glass. Fold mashed or pureed fruit through whipped cream to make a fool; layer fruit, berries, thick whipped cream or yoghurt, crushed biscuits or toasted muesli, and ice cream sauces to make a parfait; or go old school for an ice cream sandwich. For extra cool points, use a nutella glass.

Chocolate fudge and rice bubble treats, or, sweets for people who don’t want second degree burns

Last year I gave up on buying people Christmas presents and decided to stuff them full of sugar instead. This was a genius idea. I got to spend the day in the kitchen eating cast offs, they got little ‘bespoke’ packets of things that, in turn, made them look good when placed out on platters for guests, and no money whatsoever was spent on vouchers for stupid chain stores.

Both of these recipes are designed so that little kids can make things without having to boil sugar, keep a sharp eye on things or maim themselves for life as hot sugar burns like napalm. It also means you don’t need a lovely candy thermometer, although they are also fun, if for no other reason that they have ‘soft ball’ written on them. Make a bunch, store it somewhere secret, and impress your friend(s) with a liberal dose of ‘here’s one I prepared earlier’.

Chocolate ‘fudge’

I have seen about eight versions of this recipe, all claiming it as their secret family recipe, which generally means that one of them’s lying or all their parents got it off of the back of the same chocolate packet. This is not mine. I stole it. I just don’t remember where from.

The stuff:

• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 3 cups finely chopped chocolate (dark or milk) or chocolate chips – Whittaker’s is better than Cadbury, and fancy pants stuff from gourmet shops is best of all.
• A big pinch of salt

The optional bits:

• 1 cup of chopped soft nuts – eg walnuts, macadamias (hard nuts won’t slice well, who thought I’d ever get to write that sentence)
• OR 1 cup of chopped dried fruit (eg cranberries)
• OR 1 cup of something peculiar like pic n mix or mini marshmallows
• OR a big pinch of chilli
• AND a splash of vanilla or other essence

Line a dish (eg an 8x8” pan) with baking paper. Very gently, on a low heat, melt together the sweetened condensed milk, chocolate and salt in a saucepan. You could rig up a double boiler for this, or use the microwave, or you could just watch it very closely else it will BURN and you will go to the special part of hell reserved for those who ruin chocolate (see: those people who make ‘chocolate’ coins). Remove it from the heat and add your bits, stirring well. 

Pour the whole lot into the pan and let cool – not in the fridge, somewhere else cool and dry. When you come to slice it, if you haven’t already pillaged most of it, run a large knife under the hot tap to warm it up, wipe the blad dry, then slice. This warm knife trick is also good with slices and cakes, my gift to you. Store in an airtight container, somewhere cool and dark, away from nibblers.

Rice bubble marshmallow slice

I quite like when this recipe goes wrong and you are left with pink molten goop.

• 8 cups rice bubbles
• 2 bags of marshmallows
• 110g butter
• Anything else you would like to add – chopped dried apricots, M&Ms, chocolate drops

Line a baking dish, natch. In a large glass bowl in the microwave, or on the stove in a medium sized saucepan, gently heat the marshmallows and the butter while stirring until they have melted and everything is looking creamy and delicious. Remove it from the heat (or the microwave) and add the rice bubbles and bits, a cup at a time, stirring to combine (or all at once, I've heard it both ways). Struggle to extract it from the saucepan and press down into the lined baking dish – you may want to use gloves or a big sheet of baking paper to put some pressure down on it. If you’re fancy, you can drizzle a bit of melted chocolate over the top. Cool, slice, eat – and soak the saucepan well before even thinking about cleaning it or making someone else clean it.

A word about cold things: the fridge is not a dry place, and things like these sweet bits, and also lots of other confectionary, should be stored somewhere else or in an impeccably airtight container. Little beads of fridge sweat on chocolate fudge give me the abject willies.