It seemed like a good idea at the time.
My motivation was that I wanted to make a raspberry pie
before the first frost. I love raspberry pie, and traditionally we have had the
first frost in mid- to late September. Pie is Share Food. You need to
distribute those calories widely. I asked Pat for some open dates, and she
picked September 24, the day she and Nancy were going to be in the neighborhood
anyway for the Farm Walk.
As long as people were coming over, I thought, why not get
one of the giant turkeys out of the freezer? We could have a nice turkey
dinner, not too much fuss, just dressing, mashed potatoes, and a veg, with
raspberry pie for dessert. Easy peasy.
What I didn’t know is that a persistent heat wave was going
to keep temperatures in the 90’s. Not what I had envisioned for a Sunday in
late September when I planned to leave the oven on nearly the whole day.
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| Outdoor temperature 92.5 degrees. At the end of September? |
No matter. I got out a 22-pound turkey to thaw a week in
advance. Also a week in advance, I made a loaf of sourdough bread. I cut it in
cubes and dried it out for the stuffing. I always question my sanity when I
make bread for the express purpose of letting it go stale, but the stuffing is
way better with homemade bread. Trust me.
Twenty-two pounds of turkey. Who else could I invite? Kate
came to mind. She loves both turkey and raspberries. As luck would have it, she
had no other plans. With 8 total diners, we would at least come out even with
the pie.
Faithful readers may recall the fiasco of cooking half of
the 32-pound tom turkey last Thanksgiving. I thought it would never get done.
Hilda, bless her heart, found a recipe from Cook’s
Country for cooking a large bird in 3 hours using a baking bag. I was game
to try anything to speed up the process. Jane, bless her heart, knew exactly
where to find baking bags at Meijer when we were shopping on Friday. Check.
Saturday I started prepping for the pie by mixing the crust
and crushing enough raspberries to make two cups of juice.
I was proud of myself when I found the recipe for brining in
the first place I looked. The options were for a 12- to 14-hour brine or a 4-
to 6-hour brine. I figured I needed to start roasting at 1:00 on Sunday. Not
wanting to get up at midnight to put the turkey in brine, I opted for the 4- to
6-hour version. I was up early Sunday mixing a total of 2.5 gallons of brine, 1
cup of table salt per gallon, and putting the turkey in it. Other little
victories included finding a stock pot large enough for brine and turkey, and
being able to get the whole thing in the spare refrigerator.
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| Brining the turkey |
Next, I blind baked the pie crust. While it was baking, I
mixed the raspberry juice with 3 tablespoons of corn starch and ¼ cup sugar. I
brought it to a boil and cooked it 5 minutes, stirring the whole time so it
wouldn’t stick to the bottom. While the raspberry goo cooled, I washed a quart
of raspberries and spread them on a towel to dry. Then the goo was cool enough
that it would not cook the raspberries and the crust was completely cooled, I
mixed the raspberries with the goo and poured it into the crust. I covered it
with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator to chill. I also put in a bowl
and the beaters for the mixer. Heavy cream whips better when everything is
cold.
In the middle of the night Saturday, it occurred to me that
I had forgotten about the cranberries. Terry would miss cranberries if I didn’t
make them. I had a bag in the freezer, which I put in a saucepan with a cup of
sugar and a bit of water. After the berries popped and the sauce thickened, I
put it in a bowl and got that in the refrigerator too.
The day was going by quickly. I kept thinking I would sit
down for a minute to rest once I got a particular task done, but by the time
one task was done, there would be something else to do. I did sit down to eat
lunch. Before I knew it, 1:00 was rushing up, and it was time to put the turkey
in the bag. “Remove the turkey from the brine, rinse it well, and dry it with
paper towels.” It sounds so simple. Wrangling 22 pounds of raw turkey is not
that easy. I could not get the wings folded behind the back. I finally got mad
enough to make it happen, but one side popped out again when I got the bird in
the bag. At that point, I thought, “Screw it.”
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| The turkey in the bag |
The turkey finally got in the
oven at 1:23. They had better not be kidding about that 3 hour thing. Dinner was
to be served at 5:30, and the turkey was supposed to rest for an hour before
carving.
On to the dressing. I put the bread cubes in a large bowl
and added chicken broth to soften them. I sautéed mushrooms, onions, and celery
in butter and added that to the bread along with fresh parsley, sage, rosemary,
and thyme (really!). After checking for seasoning, I added three eggs, mixed
well, and put it in a casserole.
Lord, it took me forever to prep the herbs. The turkey
recipe suggested making herb butter to put on top of the sliced turkey before
serving. It called for a tablespoon each of rosemary and thyme. The rosemary
was the work of minutes. And then there was picking off all those tiny thyme
leaves to make a tablespoon plus what I needed for the dressing. I put the
rosemary and thyme in a glass measuring cup along with a stick of butter and
set the whole thing by the stove so I would remember to put it in the microwave
for one minute before drizzling it over the carved turkey.
I delivered the dressing upstairs to bake in Hilda’s oven,
since there was no room in mine. Hilda had been working on scalloped corn and
mashed potatoes. She simmered home-grown frozen sweet corn in half and half for
20 minutes, put it in a casserole, covered it with bread crumbs, and baked it.
She put the mashed potatoes in a crock pot to keep warm.
Jane got to the house at 4:00 to help with the gravy. The turkey wasn’t done, so we watched the
Bears game for a while.
Kate arrived at 4:30 and hung out in the kitchen with Jane
and me. She took over as photographer when I took the turkey out of the oven
and cut the bag away.
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| Cutting the bag off the turkey |
As promised by Cook’s
Country, the turkey was browned, at least on the top. And it was done in
about three and a half hours.
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| The turkey out of the bag |
Because the turkey was in a bag, we couldn’t use the usual
method of flour in the pan drippings. Kate assumed the role of Recipe Reader as
Jane and I put together the gravy from the juices that had accumulated in the
bag. The gravy turned out quite well, although perhaps not quite as good as
pan-drippings gravy.
Pat and Nancy had a great time on the farm walk. They joined
us a bit after 5:00. We sat down to dinner close to 5:30 as planned. The mashed
potatoes had developed a lovely brown crust around the sides of the crock pot. The
scalloped corn was to die for.
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| Counterclockwise from bottom: turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, scalloped corn |
Sometime in the evening, it occurred to me that September 24
was after September 19, and I had completely forgotten Pat’s birthday. Hilda
found a candle for Pat’s piece of pie, and she was just as happy as if it had
been on her actual birthday.
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| Pat with her late birthday pie |
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| Kate enjoyed the pie, too |
When I got back to my kitchen at the end of the evening, there was the herb butter, uncooked by the stove. Damn. All that work picking the thyme leaves off the stems for naught. I'll have to find something else to use it on.
Even though it was too hot to be roasting a turkey, at the
end of the day, we had a fun meal with friends, I have a big space in my
freezer that wasn’t there before, and I haven’t had to cook all week. All good.
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