Wednesday we had the day off thanks to a holiday to thank our military veterans… It’s a good reason to celebrate…
It also gives me a day to cook… a lot…
Thursday began the last week of regular tours at Patterson House, my home away from home… Monday starts Christmas… at least decorating, we don’t start tours until December 4th…
To mark the occasion we have a pot luck “Thanksgiving dinner”… I cook a turkey, stuffing and gravy… the docents bring the rest of the fixings… I finish the turkey in the wood burning stove at the house… but a 22lb turkey takes 5 hours, maybe 6, so I start it at home, then about 7:00 or so take it to work…
So I have been chopping onions, celery, and carrots, while the turkey took a bath to promote thawing… (I have been thawing him for 3 days in the fridge…) I am assembling ingredients for two stuffings (regular and oyster) gathering supplies and tools to take to work… flour and broth for the gravy, carving knives, a turkey baster…
I am also gathering various leftover vegetable bits, celery tops, carrot tops, onion skins for a soup stock… to be made from the turkey carcass, for a pot of vegetable soup to be served Monday to the decorators… In 5 short days we should be able to completely consume the poor bird with little going to waste…
There are many schools of thought on how to cook a turkey… most of us only do it once a year… so most of us find it necessary to relearn or reinvent the process annually… I keep notes, so its more of a review than a relearning… My method; thaw the bird, salt and pepper bird inside and out. I like to separate the skin from the meat, they place butter and herbs between. Stuff loosely with roughly chopped carrots, celery, onions and maybe herbs… (thyme and sage)… tie the legs, wrap the wings in foil… place breast up on a rack in a roasting pan. Dump any extra vegetables in the pan, add several cups of water…
I cook the bird at 325 or so, if in doubt on the low side… Sometimes I start the bird at 450 then turn the oven down after I put it in… Several cook books swear by this… so sometimes I do it…
I then cook the bird for 20 minutes a lb… this years big boy should take between 6 and 7 hours… I target 10:00 as a finish time so it can set, I can carve, and make gravy in time for a 11:00 meal… So it needs to go in about 2:00 am… Cooking a turkey takes planning and a commitment.
Of course there is also a lot of paranoia about food safety… warnings about how to thaw, about how to protect the bird from bacteria, and how to handle leftovers… This is all made more difficult because most of us don’t handle a hunk of meat this big… and don’t have refrigerator space and such… I try to keep it all clean and cold, and so far haven’t killed anyone… I will continue to try…
The real secrete to how to cook a turkey is how to consume it… not the at the big dinner, or plate of leftovers heated in the microwave the next day, or the turkey sandwiches the following day, but the rest of it… I have docents to consume the turkey meet, but the carcass is what is really special… I break it up, stuffed it in a huge stock pot, added all the veggies I roasted inside, and the trimmings saved from the celery and onions used in the stuffing and a bunch of old parsley, then cooked it all night… I pulled out the carcass, then reduced the stock for another 12 hours… then strained it though paper towels (they catch everything, including much of the fat)… To the stock I will add carrots, chopped onion, celery, zucchini, and Italian sausage, all browned in olive oil… plus a can of kidney beans, and a can of crushed tomatoes… It will be a soup for the first day of Christmas decorating…
On other stuff… we are honoring veterans this November (there is a holiday dedicated to Veterans, I think I mentioned it before…) At Patterson House it means we change the scatter… the stuff on the desks, beds and such… The Patterson House had an involvement in World War I… the two boys, Henry and William were both too old for service, but they both served on the board that organized and promoted War bond sales. Part of that included helping to organize a War Bond train… A Victory train. The boys were given souvenirs… Henry was given a Pickelhaube… a German spiked helmet. His brother got a couple of Pickelhaubes, along with a trench shotgun (with bayonet) and the magneto from a German plane, complete with a bullet hole from the bullet that shot it down…. The plane is now in the Smithsonian… the Grandson returned the magneto a few years ago… the hole in the side of the plane matched the hole in the magneto…
Back to Patterson House… we have stuff about… we have a display about making socks for solders… we have photos of the Victory train… Upstairs we have Marjorie’s Marine Corp jacket and letters from home… Our guests seem to appreciate the effort…
Bye for now… Randy
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