Haydenei

A quite easy way to prepare a turkey is in my opinion the maple and cider buttered turkey. To prepare it, you put the butter on and under the skin of the turkey. If you don’t dread this kind of task, you have hardly any work afterwards. Until it is done you just have to reduce the heat after 30 minutes, cover the bird with foil and you are rewarded with a real juicy turkey. In the meantime you can prepare the side dishes (but remember, your oven is occupied by the turkey), set the table or you can just kick back and relax before the big feast.

The recipe is for 12 servings:

Ingredients

For the butter

• 500ml cider
• 80 ml real maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh marjoram chopped
• 2 1/2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 180 g butter
• Salt and pepper for fine tuning

For the turkey:

• 1 turkey 6 - 6,5 kg
• 150g carrots chopped
• 150g celery chopped
• 350g onions chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh marjoram chopped
• 500ml chicken stock
• 25g all purpose flower
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1 bay leave
• 30ml calvados (optional)

The preparation

Step 1:

Mix the cider and maple syrup in a heavy saucepan and boil over medium-high heat until reduced to about 1/5. Remove from heat and mix in the lemon zest, thyme and marjoram. Add the butter, and stir until all the butter is melted. Add salt and ground pepper to taste. Cover it and let it cool for a thicker consistency (the butter can be made up to 2 days ahead).

Step 2:

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F). Wash and dry the turkey, and place it in a large roasting pan. Slide your hand carefully under the skin of the breast and loosen it. Rub half of the maple cider butter under the breast skin and thigh. If you want to stuff the turkey, now it’s the time. Rub ¼ of the maple cider butter over the skin of the turkey. Tie the legs of turkey loosely together with kitchen string.

Step 3:

Put the chopped celery, onions, and carrot in the roasting pan around the turkey. Sprinkle thyme and marjoram over the vegetables and pour the chicken stock into the pan.

Step 4:

Roast turkey for 30 minutes in the preheated oven. Reduce the temperature of the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F), and cover it loosely with foil. Continue to roast for another 3 to 4 hours if unstuffed or 4 to 5 hours if stuffed. The turkey is ready when the internal temperature of the thigh reaches 80 degrees C (180 degrees F) and stuffing reaches 75 degrees C (165 degrees F). Take the turkey out of the oven and cover it with foil for the moment. Reserve pan mixture for gravy.

Step 5:

For the gravy: Strain the pan juices into a saucepan. Spoon the fat from juices and bring it to a boil. In a small bowl, mix the remaining maple cider butter with flour to form a paste, and stir it into the broth. Add in thyme, bay leaf, and the optional calvados. Boil until it is reduced and slightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper.

A good addition - Cranberry-Sauce

In addition to the gravy, a self made cranberry sauce is a real treat. It is easy to prepare and real tasty.

Dissolve 200g of white sugar in 250ml of orange juice. Stir in 350g of fresh cranberries an boil until the cranberries pop. Remove from heat and let it cool, which also thickens it.

Thanksgiving is one of the mosta American celebrations which brings the family and friends together and marks the beginning of the holiday season. I already had the chance to experience an original big T-day myself and was thrilled. The memory of turkey, sweet potatoes, pekan pie and the sociel get together are still very present even though this was about 18 years ago. For this reason my wife and I decided to also celebrate this holiday? So this year we again invited friends fot the big feast. But since the Germans don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and therefore don’t have a holiday scheduled forthe fourth Thursday in November we just postponed our dinner until Saturday. This left us with enough time for the preparations.

Since there was so much to do, I started of Friday with bying a mountain full of food - allowing us to feed 16 people. On the menu for the dinner were:

• Maple Roast Turkey
• Cranberry sauce
• Creamed Corn like no other
• Yummy Yam Cassarole
• Grandma Green Bean Cassarole
• Day Before Mashed Potatoes
• Unbetable Pecan Pie
• Banana Sour Cream Bread
• Apple Pie by Grandma Ople

Some of these dishes were already approved by our guest last year, that’s why I want to share the good ones with you. But we also tried out some new ones which proofed to be a mistake in at least one case.

After I roamed a couple of stores for all the necessary ingredients (cranberries and pecans are not that common in Germany and you can’t get yams in every store neither) i started to unpack all the bags and it looked something like this.

Most of what we needed for the dinner

But there was not much time to be lazy and the oven would be occupied by the bird for a ling time the next day. So I already started with the first bread on driday evening.

The next day was the actual day of a great battle in the kitchen to do get everything done. Line and I decided to devide the work - she was doing the the dishes and the decorating which left me with the cooking (but that was, what I wanted). Due to all the work, there was only little time for breakfast and we got working right thereafter. The dough were prepared and chilld, the pe shells were made and the contents for the fillings mixed and poured. For the pecan pie we tried a new recipe, because last years Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie was just too sweet and rich as a dessert. But as mentioned above, the new recipe proofed to be a mistake. When we started to slice the cake, the mixture of butter and maple syrup started to run away, it just had not set. I don’t know whether I did do something wrong (which is the most probable explanation) or the recipe just doesn’t work. For next year we will stick to the maple syrup and chocolate version and if there are left overs, they make a sweet and tasty beakfast for the next day. And that’s not so bad either - if you think about it.

According to the deal it was my part to cook instead of decorate, which left me with the task to peel the 6 pounds of potatoes and 8 pounds of yams. But what task more varied could you hope for? I then mashed the potatoes, stired in the cream cheese and sour cream, boiled the yams in the microwave (that worked surprisingly good), also mashed them and added pecans and brown sugar. Because there are raw eggs in the cassarole, you have to put it in the oven, which was in our case occupied by the turkey. This left me with only one solution - just before the guests arrived, I stood in front of our neighbours with a smile on the face and two cassarole dishes in hand. At first sh thought I wanted to purprise her with a dinner, but when I asked her to borrow her oven for half an hour she laughed heartily. And of course she was generous enough to let me use her oven.

To prepare the turkey I mixed maple sirup and cider and reduced it. I then added butter, lemon zest, thyme and marjoram which cooled to a real tasty butter which is massaged on and under the skin of the turkey. This is a little bit stange at first, but you are definitly rewarded with a great taste. To get the butter under the skin you carefully put your hand under the skin and separate the skin from the meat. Thereafter, you can get to the actual task. When I got under it’s skin an had my hand in there, it somewhat reminded me of scene from the movie aliens - but hey, I’m only doing it for the taste. And due to the maple cider butter you get a real tender and jucy meat and great, tasty skin. An absolute dream. You put it in the oven for 30 minutes and then simply cover it with foil and wait for approx. another 3 hours until the temperature in the thigh is 80° C. You can hardly make any mistakes here.

Shortly after the guest arrived I got the turkey and the side dishes ready. But since I got myself in the pit with a pack of hungry wolfes who were already seated at the table I didn’t risk to stall them just to take some pictures. And who would be interested in a turkey skeleton and empty bowls? So unfortunatly no pics of the finished dishes.

To sum up the evening I can only say it was a wonderful opportunity to add some pounds with friends. Even though we don’t usually celebrate thanksgiving in Germany, it’s worth it. The sociability in such a group is definitly woth the sweat and you are rewarded with the common feeling of replettion and happiness. For me the decision stand, I will spend an entire day in the kitchen again in about a year. If you have the opportunity for such a sociable get-together with food, I can only recommend to take that chance. It’s worth it.

Once again it was time. I had invited a couple of friends for dinner - or let’s better say – for a feasting. In the past, we already did something like that regularly, but at that time, we had a good Chinese restaurant with a yummy all you can eat buffet in walking distance. But as I moved to the new apartment in a new city, we couldn’t find a decent Chinese close by, but had a lot of space in the new apartment. So we decided in the future we would cook ourselves. (Did I put that right, and in case so, doesn’t it sound a bit like cannibalism?) But anyway.

Usually thinking about putting together a new menu already begins right after the last feasting, because, that’s when the ideas are starting. When I was leafing through Teubners Cookbook (a very good introductory book) I stopped at looking at tomato jelly and had to try it out right on the spot. The result was very tasteful in my wife’s opinion and in mine. So this dish made it as a course “Caprese in a different way” on the menu.

Motivated by this result, a thought crossed my mind. Why not try a orange jelly with a kick. So I squished oranges, added brown sugar, gelatine and a little bit of minced green pepper and blended it thoroughly. When I tried it, it was definitely promising – strong orange taste with a nice sweetness and a little tickle from the green pepper. But when it cooled down an the jelly gelatinize, you could really taste the green pepper. The first spoon was ok, but every spoon thereafter was just too much. What did I learn from that? You can’t trust the taste when it’s warm and liquid it, because later it changes. But with this insight, the orange jelly did make it on the menu.

A little further reading got me the other two courses which comprise the menu. It reads as follows:

Caprese a different way – tomato jelly with mozzarella flakes and basil froth

Pumpkin chestnut crème soup

Chicken drumsticks in red wine and balsamic vinegar

Orange jelly and green pepper and Limoncello crème

Not all recipes did make it on the list of things I’ll try again, but the orange jelly and the soup are definitely on it. With the tomato jelly I’ll have to find another solution how I can fit the mozzarella and the basil. The chicken was ok for a normal dinner, but I wouldn’t give it the status “it is suitable for an event like that”.

Now I’ll start all over again to put down ideas for the next feasting. But before that, there will be thanksgiving.