Archive for November, 2011

Leftovers, Anyone?

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

One of the best things about Thanksgiving is the leftovers, which, at my house, we tend to enjoy in phases.   First comes the sandwich phase, tender slices of turkey with mayo and cranberry sauce stuffed in a split dinner roll (or 3).  Then, after the guilt for how much we ate on Thanksgiving day passes, we start to have a hankering for just one more plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, and maybe some of that great stuffing, with a little nice warm gravy drizzled over the top.

The final and most interesting phase is the creative phase, where the leftover turkey is STILL in the frig, and something MUST be done with it.  This is the phase we’re in now.  In case you also may have a little—or a lot, if you were a little too ambitious this year like I was—of the turkey on hand, here are a few ideas:

Chili: Nothing counteracts that overstuffed Thanksgiving sweetness (I’ve neglected to mention that leftover pie figures prominently in the first two leftover phases and is usually gone by the final phase) like bringing in some onions, and chilies, and salsa.  This year I made a batch of wonderful turkey chili by substituting turkey and turkey stock for the chicken and chicken stock in our Chicken and White Bean Chile with Green Chilies recipe.  (Use 2¼ ounces of our Roasted Turkey Stock dissolved in 6 cups hot water.)

Risotto:  Try tossing some leftover roast turkey into your favorite risotto, or make our Luxurious Turkey-Mushroom Risotto with sautéed mushrooms, white wine, and Parmesan—this risotto alone is worth roasting a turkey for.

Pot Pie:  Who doesn’t love this quintessential comfort food?  You can make a delicious pot pie with leftover turkey and turkey stock—just top it with a simple pastry crust (or a store-bought one if you’re not a pastry chef) and bake it for a one-dish meal.

Soup: Roast turkey is the perfect thing to build a soup around.  One of our favorites is Turkey and Wild Rice Soup, a rich, creamy concoction spiked with sherry and bacon.  Add a green salad, a thick slice of good bread, and you have dinner.

By the way, chilis and soups usually freeze well.   You can always use turkey in a couple of large batches of chili and/or soup and freeze them.  This way, you can have the satisfaction of using up ALL the leftover turkey and treat  yourself to a freezer full of thaw-heat-and-eat meals that will bring back that Thanksgiving gratefulness in January or February.

 

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, The Holiday Kitchen

It’s All Gravy!

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

Gravy doesn’t get much press in all the Thanksgiving cooking hoo-rah.  Magazine covers and web sites usually feature a beautiful burnished turkey, garnished with artfully arranged herbs, veggies, or fruit.   Sometimes there are gorgeous-looking sides in lovely dishes, but the gravy rarely gets center stage.  It’s probably not gorgeous enough for that.  But can you imagine a Thanksgiving meal without gravy?  I can’t.

For me gravy is the thing that ties it all together, spreading that savory turkey flavor all over the plate.  I love the aroma of a good gravy, too, and its silky, rich texture.  It’s the quintessential homemade sauce, humble in its origins, made without any fancy ingredients, yet incredibly tasty.

My favorite gravy for Thanksgiving turkey is a straightforward pan gravy.  After moving the beautiful burnished bird to a carving board and covering its glory with tin foil while it rests, I pour off any liquid in the roasting pan into a gravy separator or measuring cup and move the pan to the stove.  Sometimes there’s not much liquid there, but what there is has plenty of flavor.  When the fat comes to the top after the juices sit for a few minutes, I spoon a couple of tablespoons of the fat back into the roasting pan, and make a roux by stirring in some flour over medium-low heat.

After cooking the roux for a few minutes to get rid of the floury flavor, I whisk in the rest of the pan juices (with the remaining fat spooned off and discarded) and turkey stock, and use a wooden spoon to scrape up all the tasty browned bits from the pan and incorporate them into the gravy.  I simmer the gravy for about 10 minutes, season it to taste with salt and pepper, and voilá: perfect, silky gravy all ready to grace our plates heaped high with turkey and trimmings.

The nice thing about gravy is that it’s flexible enough to withstand some tinkering by a creative cook. A favorite variation on basic pan gravy is one with apple cider, sage, and a splash of apple brandy.  Some years I have smoked or grilled the turkey for a change of pace, but we still had to have gravy, even though we had no pan juices standing by in a roasting pan.  For those occasions I made turkey gravy in a skillet with aromatic veggies cooked in duck fat (love it!) and turkey stock, or I made mushroom gravy with mushroom stock and white wine and plenty of sautéed mushrooms and shallots.

Those with special diet needs and preferences can also have their gravy. Pan gravy can be made for a roasted vegetables with olive oil and veggie stock for vegetarians, and the mushroom gravy is vegetarian, as well.  Another favorite gravy of mine is a vegetarian version made with roasted garlic.  Those who follow a gluten-free diet can use sweet rice flour as a thickener to make delicious gluten-free gravy.

Gravy may never make the cover of a cooking magazine, but it will always be on our Thanksgiving table.  Best wishes from MTG to you and your family for a festive, fun, and delicious holiday, and all the gravy you want.

 

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, The Holiday Kitchen, Tips and Techniques

On the Side

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

For many, the Thanksgiving feast revolves around the turkey, but at our house the side dishes get almost the same amount of attention. The stuffing, the potatoes, the veggies, and the appetizers often all have their fans, some of them pretty vocal and opinionated. The sides also offer the Thanksgiving chef a chance to flex her or his creative muscles a bit to cook up a delicious variation on a favorite tradition.

Sometimes I try something new and it becomes a beloved favorite, and a must for Thanksgiving in years to come, and sometimes we decide that once is enough (a stuffing recipe that involved orange liqueur and dried apricots comes to mind here; turned out to sound better than it actually was). At MTG we’re always on the look out for tasty new ideas for Thanksgiving sides, and it’s a pleasure to share some of our favorites with you.

Whether you call it stuffing or dressing, bake it inside the bird or out, stuffing is probably the perennial favorite side dish. We love the blend of savory and sweet in Cornbread Apple Stuffing and our Autumn Fruit and Pecan Stuffing, but we’re also partial to stuffing more on the savory end of the spectrum, like Herbed Stuffing with Mushrooms or with Sausage, or Sourdough Stuffing with Sage and Bacon. A classic Southern-style Oyster Dressing makes an elegant addition to the meal. And some years we ditch the stuffing and make simple and delicious Cranberry-Pecan Couscous instead. The only problem is choosing which one to serve.

Potatoes? Got to have ‘em. The year-after-year staple of our Thanksgiving table is the Yukon Gold Garlic Smashed Potatoes. However, we do have some great potato dishes standing in line for its place: Rosemary Roasted Potatoes, Horseradish Smashed Potatoes, and Potato Parsnip Gratin.

Vegetable dishes are a must, too, preferably more than one. Thanksgiving is a great time to celebrate the bounty of autumn veggies like butternut squash, cabbage, root vegetables, and hearty greens. Some of our favorites are: Braised Red Cabbage with Apples, Julia’s Carrots, Slow-Cooked Collard Greens, Braised Butternut Squash and Potatoes, Kale with Caramelized Shallots, Root Vegetable Sauté, Braised Kale and Turnips, and Butternut Squash Gratin.

What to start with? Consider serving soup. It’s not too filling and can often be made ahead and frozen, only requiring thawing and reheating to serve, which is nice when you have the whole feast underway in the kitchen. Some years I’ve served a relatively light soup like Velvet Carrot and Ginger Soup or Apple-Butternut Squash Soup. Other years I’ve served a richer soup in small demitasse cups; Roasted Cauliflower and Gorgonzola Bisque was a hit, as was Wild Mushroom Bisque.

Whatever sides you choose this year, we hope you get to try a new one or two and enjoy those perennial favorites, as well. They might be so good they upstage the turkey!

 

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, The Holiday Kitchen

Brining the Bird

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

I have to confess that at first I was skeptical about brining our Thanksgiving turkey.  Soaking a large specimen of poultry overnight in a salt and sugar solution seemed like a nuisance, another set of steps to follow for an already too complicated meal.  Something else to keep track of—who needs that?  But then I had my first brined turkey: it was not the bird I was used to.  Instead of dry, chewy breast meat that needed a quart or two of gravy to make it swallow-able, we had juicy, tender turkey subtly infused with the herb and citrus flavors from the brine.  It was a revelation.  I figured out how to brine a turkey and have been doing it ever since.

It’s not actually very complicated or time consuming at all.  Brining makes meat and poultry juicier, more tender, and more flavorful.  The salt in the brine denatures protein molecules, causing them to unwind and form a matrix that traps the water and whatever flavorings you’ve added to the brine.  Instead of seasoning just the surface of your turkey, brining allows you to season throughout the meat.

I make up a brine solution (which usually involves boiling to dissolve the salt and sugar in the brine and release the flavors of other ingredients) sometime on Tuesday, chill it overnight, immerse the turkey in the brine Wednesday morning, and stow it in the refrigerator.  When turkey day arrives on Thursday, the bird just needs to be patted dry and roasted in the usual way.

The main challenge for most people who want to brine their turkey is what to put it in.  I use a food-safe 5-gallon bucket with a lid.  A non-food-safe bucket works, too, if you line it with a plastic turkey bag.  You could also use a large stockpot, or just place the turkey in a double layer of turkey bags in your roasting pan, pour the brine over the turkey in the bags, and seal them up.  Just keep in mind that the turkey needs to be completely submerged in the brine (or surrounded by it in the case of the turkey-bag-in-the-roasting-pan arrangement), so if you have a container that’s much larger than the turkey, make extra brine.  And yes, the turkey must be refrigerated while it’s brining. This sometimes requires a little rearranging of the frig, but it’s worth it.

Now that I’ve done a few Thanksgivings’ worth of brining, I’ve started experimenting with different ingredients in my brine solution.  There are a number of great flavorings to try adding to brine: brown sugar, honey, molasses, maple syrup, fruit juices, beer, liquor, bay leaves, pickling spices, cloves, garlic, onion, leeks, celery, carrots, chilies, citrus fruits or rinds, apples, pears, peppercorns, and other dried or fresh herbs and spices.  The only thing that shouldn’t be changed is the type of salt and the proportion of salt to liquid; stick to the recipe on those points.

If you haven’t tried brining a turkey before, give it whirl.  Our recipe for Brad’s Citrus and Herb Brined Turkey is a great place to start.  If you’re an experienced briner and would like to try some new ideas, check out our Maple and Apple Cider Brine or our Savory Honey Herb Brine.  Let us know how you like the results!

 

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, The Holiday Kitchen, Tips and Techniques

Cooking with Wine

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

At More Than Gourmet we love to cook with wine—sometimes we put it in the food, too!  A splash of wine is a key ingredient in many of our favorite dishes, and we wouldn’t be without it in our kitchen.  Here are a few tips for using wine in your cooking:

Why cook with wine?

Wine can boost flavor in a dish in two ways.  First, wine adds its own complex and delicious flavors to food when used as an ingredient.  Second, the alcohol in the wine is a great flavor enhancer, even better than fat.  Just a small amount of fat can dissolve and carry flavor compounds in food, making a dish much more flavorful than if it were fat free.  Alcohol dissolves and carries not only the flavors that fat and water do, but also flavor components that fat and water won’t dissolve.

For instance, you might start a pan sauce by adding a little wine to the pan after you’ve sautéed a pork chop and scraping up the browned bits in the pan so they dissolve in the wine.  You’re getting the flavors of the browned bits and the flavor of the wine, but you’re also getting extra flavors that only the alcohol can release and carry into your sauce.

What’s the best wine to cook with?

The rule of thumb is to cook only with wine that you would drink—you want a wine with good flavors since you’ll be adding them to your dish.  A quality $10 bottle of everyday wine is the ideal wine to cook with.  Save your best wines just for drinking, since the subtle nuances in fine wines are lost when they’re heated.

Select a wine that complements your dish.  It you’re making something that is hearty, choose a more intense, hearty wine; for light and delicate dishes, choose a wine that is also light and delicate.  Think about what wine you’d like to drink with the dish, and let that guide you in choosing the wine to use as an ingredient.

If a recipe calls for “dry white wine,” your best bet is a American Sauvignon Blanc, which offers fresh, light, herbal flavors that will enhance almost any dish.  If you’re making a dish with bold, spicy flavors, a Riesling, Viognier, or Gewurtztraminier would be a good choice since their more intense, fruity flavors and floral aromas will complement the spicy flavors and not get lost in the mix.

If a recipe calls for “dry red wine,” your best bet for lighter dishes would be a wine made with Pinot Noir or Sangiovese grapes.  If the dish is on the heartier side, a Merlot or a Zinfandel would be a good choice.  In general it’s best to cook with red wines that don’t contain too many tannins, a bitter, astringent compounds found in the most intense, flavorful red wines.  Tannins tend to concentrate with cooking and can impart their bitter, astringent qualities to your dish, especially if it’s a sauce.  Look for wines that are described as having “soft tannins.”

How can I use wine in cooking?

Wine works well in marinades, risottos, sauces, soups and stews, as an addition to braising liquid, or for steaming shellfish or poaching fish.  You can add a splash of wine to salad dressing or substitute it for vinegar in a vinaigrette for a less acidic result.  We know one cook who adds her leftover wine to water for cooking pasta.

For some ideas for cooking with wine, take a look at these MTG recipes:  Roast Pork Loin with Fennel and White Wine Pan Sauce, Sauce Robert,  Spinach Risotto with Chicken and Goat Cheese, Classic Bordelaise Sauce, or Beef Bourgignon.  We have more than 60 recipes that use wine as an ingredient: just use our search box and enter  ”dry white wine” or “dry red wine” to find them. We hope you enjoy cooking with wine as much as we do–bon appétit!

 

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Market to Table, Tips and Techniques