Final Fun Playing With Our Monster Turkey

It is said that all good things must come to an end. And so, our 32 pound turkey has finally gone to its last reward in our tummies.

We enjoyed a final meal of turkey slices simmered in gravy several days ago.


The Last Slabs Wait For the Gravy to Get Warm Enough to Receive Them

All that remained after this meal was the carcass, bones, and some odd chunks of meat. Yes, a sad moment - but not when a great recipe for Thai-Style Turkey Soup is in the house!

We started by emptying out all of the bags of bones and such from the freezer. We found some beef and lamb bones, in addition to poultry. The turkey carcass, bones (and a couple of chicken feet) went into the stockpot. This mixture yielded exquisite stock.

Bob then, for the most part, followed the linked recipe. We also found that adding chopped scallions improved it - and some chopped peanuts would also have added value had we sprinkled them in. And since it was a main dish for us, we served it over softened rice stick noodles.

The results were delicious:







Also, we used Squid brand fish sauce for the first time and really liked it - it imparted authentic flavor without being overly fishy.

This dinner wraps up our fun playing with local fresh turkey for this season. We'll just have to wait 'til next year to play with turkey this exquisite!

More Fun Playing With Hanukkah Food

Yes, tis the season. The Jewish holiday managed to come "right on time" this year (the Borscht Belt Comics noted that Jewish Holidays, plotted on a different calendar, were inevitably early or late, but never "on time"). I'm a little late with this, due in part to a mild disagreement with my husband concerning the proper potato needed to make a good latke. We had some Yukon Golds in the house, but I practically wailed when I saw that Bob intended to use them to make our latkes. Even worse, he'd bought a bag of red potatoes to take over once the golds ran out. I put an immediate stop to that by insisting on russets.

So, it took an extra day to get latkes worthy of photographing. Even Bob had to admit that the Yukon Gold Latkes "lacked profundity."

Our tutorial on Latke making is here.

Here are this year's [good] results:





We paired our latkes with the second installment of the Breychak Turkey Beast, which has been in repose in the freezer since just before Thanksgiving. For some reason, the gravy Bob made just screamed "curry" to me, so we added some curry powder from Heather's Heat & Flavor. And a mashed melange of home-grown Acorn Squash and sweet potato. Yum.



Of course the latkes, served with a meat meal, are served with apple sauce.







After enjoying this amazing dinner, my appetite was whet to enjoy the leftover latkes for breakfast. Here they are, served with sliced apples from the local orchard Howard's Apples, sour cream, and a glass of lovely un-homogenized, organic-style milk from Snowville Creamery, a new face at Solon's Mustard Seed Market.



A happy December holiday to all who celebrate! And make sure that you play with some food!