Crunch Time

We forewent (is that a word?) Thanksgiving this year because none of our friends could make it. But we had bought a frozen Butterball turkey and had grand plans. Notwithstanding that I've never made a whole turkey in my life, it has been rescheduled for Saturday.

With my usual gusto, I did all the research I could on making whole turkeys, and, as usual, there are three million differing opinions on how it should be done. So I picked #s 1.65M, #2.98M and #.94M and mixed 'em up.

So, here's my thinking, and bear with me here: the damn thing is frozen, it's Thursday and I don't want it to be an iceball come Saturday. Defrosting in the refrigerator at this point is going to take a week. So I prepared a brining solution of one part sea salt (about one cup), one part sugar, one nugget palm sugar (exotic, don't you know), two batons of cinnamon, a couple of cloves and about eight crushed cloves of garlic, boiled it in about a gallon of water for twenty minutes, put it on the balcony (it snowed this afternoon) until cool, then discovered we didn't have a pan big enough to put it in.



No matter. We had a pail that had been used to store feta cheese and that I had cleaned and adapted for strawberry daiquiris for our wedding earlier this summer, so I decided to repurpose it. I lined it with a plastic bag, put the (now carefully washed) still-frozen turkey in, poured over the brining solution and topped it up with water, put the lid on and put it on the balcony.

I know it looks slightly unappetizing, but just you wait, my faithful!

I figure it will brine until tomorrow sometime, then I will pull it out, wash it and put it on a drying rack on the balcony for 24 hours. According to Cook's Illustrated (and I've done this before, but with chicken) the drying action will produce an incredibly crisp skin.
Then I'll put slits in the skin and insert slivers of garlic and rosemary, rub the whole thing with slightly melted duck fat, and PUT IT IN DA OVEN. Baste every half hour or so with pan juices, then towards the last half hour baste with honey/dijon (according to my friend Barry, if I lay on the honey early, it will burn) and then see how it goes.

I'm very excited. My first-ever whole turkey!

But I'm even more excited about what I made tonight: Potatoes Hassleback. I got the inspiration from the site in the link, and mine certainly didn't come out as beautiful as those, but take a look:


The above is the spoon that I used to cut the potatoes so the cuts didn't go all the way through. But it was a bitch cutting those thin slices. Must be a better way.

But they turned out pretty well -- I inserted slivers of garlic between the slices and topped the potatoes with garlic butter, parmesan and breadcrumbs. An hour of closely-watched ovenwork, and they were delectable.

Round one for the turkeymeister.