My father once got a piglet for a Christmas dinner from a customer.
As it didn’t fit in the oven at home, my father took it to the bakery, which charged cheap to bake Christmas dishes.
At night, when he went to take the piglet, he ended up bringing a much larger one by mistake.
But the sight of a large animal, roasted whole, with an apple tucked in its mouth, lying on the table made all the children in the house start to cry and grumble.
We ended up eating only potato salad and panettone that year. Luckily we were nice and Santa brought bicycles for everyone. So the poor pig was forgotten, much to my father’s relief, who was laughing nervously.
Tha’s the one thing I can’t stand about a lot of “American” food is that usage of sugar syrups to marinade… a bit of sugar to caramelize, or make a nice crust…ok, sweetnesss throughout the entire dish, count me out please.
I’ve never used any king of sugar (except maybe a little brown sugar) in any of my pastes or marinades. Rendell and his buyers are South St. Louis African-Americans. Everyone likes different stuff. I will say that marinating a turkey for frying does not really leave a crust like you may be thinking of. I haven’t tried Rendell’s bird, but it might not be all that sweet.
I’ve done it a few times. Usually over the summer, or visiting my parents Camper on whatever the shit isolated beach it’s parked on. We did 1 turkey, 3 ducks, and a pile of cornish game hens for a large post Thanksgiving party one year. Only once for thanksgiving, we ended up with 2 turkeys a couple years because my sister was getting a free one from her crappy boss and did not want to keep it for later. It was typically too small to cover our large group.
So we had some “turkey off” situations where I could finally do some of the wackier preps. Like sous vide deep fried turchetta or frying.
I don’t like it. Prepping turkeys identically the fried turkey was notably drier, especially around the outer 1/4" of the breast. It was a lot moister than the archetypical over cooked bird I’m used to from childhood. It didn’t really pick up a lot of deep flavor, just sort of blah. Very good skin though. I think you get a better turkey just roasting at lower temp, and being careful to pull it at the right temp.
When we do them on the beach (and for that party) we do them buffalo style, or mess around with it a bit. We’ve done pekin duck marinade and battered and fried like fried chicken. That tends to make up for the shortcomings. And it’s a fun way to make any free or cheap turkeys you score more interesting.
It’s also made entirely from yolks rather than whole eggs, and uses cider vinegar rather than white distilled vinegar or citrus juice. American mayo tends not to contain MSG at all.
On shelf life you’re fooling yourself if you think American packaged mayo doesn’t have a near infinite shelf life. Both are pasteurized to create a shelf stable product, and both will stay good in the fridge for a very long time once opened.
Japanese mayo is pretty easy to make if anyone can’t find it.
It’s a lot better. I basically only make Japanese style or Japanese ish mayo when I make it these days. It’s a bit richer from the egg yolk, but also a bit looser. Or at least flows better. That’s how they accomplish all that squeezy bottle mayo decoration on Japanese foods.
They usually don’t sell it in a package that’s appropriate for smearing on a sandwich or making potato salad and stuff though. And I can’t get it here, so I make it.
Thanksgiving for 3 will be ready soon. Bacon wrapped turkey, stuffing (but not in the bird), mash & gravy, green bean casserole, rolls, and petit fours for dessert. It feels weird not to cook for a crowd.
I have pics of the Petit Four Project that I’ll post later.
Yum! And those stuffed ones look amazing.
We also roast kombucha in thin slices then serve over arugula drizzled with pumpkin seed oil and nice coarse salt. You can eat the peel and everything. Nice fancy seeming meal with so little effort.
Some were frosted with buttercream, but it got too hard to frost soaked sponges, so I only did half. I had royal icing in the fridge from a failed attempt to created rosebuds for the top (you’ll see that part of the disaster later), so I thinned it to make it pourable so I could skip the poured fondant part.
I still have half the squares in the freezer. I’m going to try the poured fondant some day soon.
(ETA: they are delicious, although “the cake could have been lighter”. I have my own Paul Hollywood critiquers here, and the decorations? “A shame”.)
Brown is my favorite AA owned winery in Napa. Y’all should check them out. The wine is PRIMO. With the latest fires, they and every other Napa/Sonoma/Calistoga winery need our support.
Roasted butternut, 3 eggs, a can sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ground ginger and a pinch of cayenne.
Poured into a blind-baked crust, it came out perfect. We ended up with extra filling so cooked in a Bain Marie in little mason jars. Really good and not too sweet.
The rest of our Thanksgiving lineup includes:
Roast duck w/cherry sauce (we wanted something special but smaller than a Turkey since we’re alone this year),
Sweet potatoes with bourbon brown sugar syrup
Classic stuffing (but not in a bird)
Mashed potatoes and gravy, and the obligatory frozen peas (though now that I write this, we maybe could skip those. This is a LOT of food!)
This morning on the Splendid Table Jacques Pepin gave an awesome rundown of why this is his favorite holiday (it’s mine too). He said, we aren’t celebrating some battle or some war where people died, there is no religious angle, there is no obligation to buy gifts. You just come together with friends and eat and drink and have a nice time.
I think Jacques Pepin is my spirit animal.
