Smoked Turkey Breasts, Roasted Turnips with Shallots and Oven Fries

Once again from Cook's Illustrated - they just seem to have the root vegetable recipes. OK, so the Smoked Turkey Breast recipe calls for smoking one turkey breast on the grill. No grill here and I have four individual turkey breasts versus one large one. Basically, I just used the rub from the recipe (cumin, corriander, cardemom, ginger, pepper, cayenne pepper)- without the allspice or fenugreek - and cooked the breasts in the oven. Because they were weren't roasted on the grill, the rub ended up staying on like a breading. Cooked the turkey last night, and will reheat tonight to eat with...

Roasted turnips, parsnips, small potatoes and shallots. Simply toss these in a baking pan with some rosemary (or thyme) and cook. After about 30 minutes, you add a head of garlic. What I really liked was there tip for quickly peeling a head of garlic while softening it up a bit. Simply throw it in a pan with enough water to cover and, once the water is brought to a boil, you simmer it for 10 minutes. After rinsing the garlic off with cold water, the skin of both the head and cloves comes off very easily. So after adding the garlic and giving all the veggies a toss, you cook for about 20 minutes at increased heat.

Since I had potatoes left over from last weeks organic vegetable delivery, I'm attempting the famous Oven Fries recipe from CI. My sister made these, and she swears that they are just as good as if you'd deep fried them. You are suppose to use russet potatoes, but I'm just using the ones that we have (not sure what type they are). Also, they are much smaller than what is suggested (8 ounces per). Everything else is the same. This will be a very starchy evening!

Chicken Broth

When we have a chicken (previously, in the US, bought cooked from Whole Foods), we like to throw the chicken, after our meal, in a pot, add some water, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, assorted spices and end up with yummy, healthy chicken broth. I thought that we'd get more flavorful chicken broth by cooking a raw chicken in the pot - figuring none of the juices would be lost in roasting the chicken first in the oven. Well, I was wrong.

Cooking the chicken in the pot takes quite a while - hours - to adequately allow the boiling/ simmering water to absorb the flavor of the chicken and other ingredients and leech the fatty goodness (the umami) out of the chicken. Since we currently do not have a large stockpot, I had been cutting out the raw chicken breasts first and saving them for another meal. However, I definitely felt that we wasted the other meat on the chicken as I didn't have patience to take time to thoroughly pick through the remains. We used to pick the carcass clean of any edible meat before moving onto the broth phase when we bought cooked chicken.

The morning after making Roast Chicken with Root Veggies, I put the chicken carcass (including the congealed fat) in the pot with water, chili peppers (should have only used 1, not 3!) and fennel stalks. Within 1 to 1 1/2 hours we had delicious, mustard colored broth with intense chicken flavor. From now on, we're cooking our chickens first, and then we'll make the broth. We'll get more meat and better broth. This time we used the broth the next day to make risotto - an unusually spicy risotto thanks to the chili peppers in the broth.

Roast Chicken with Root Veggies

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated. I wanted to try brining a chicken, and it was really easy. Only thing was recipe called for two chickens to be brined and then cooked at one time. I don't have a pot truly big enough to brine one chicken to their specifications let alone two let alone an oven big enough to cook two. I will buy a real stockpot, but in the meantime I cut down the sugar and salt in the brine to 1 cup each from 1 1/2 cups because I could only fit about 10 cups of water when the recipe called for 16. Kept the garlic at two heads (yes, heads not cloves) and bay leaves at six. Basically just brine the chicken for an hour or so, cook and then use the same pan to cook the root vegetables under very high heat. Root vegetables are really up to you. We used potatoes, fennel, sweet potatoes and onions. I threw in some leeks that we had to use at the very end so that they wouldn't overcook.

Cauliflower Pakora

From Hungrymonster.com. I made this before, and, while tasty, the batter did not come close to covering 2 pounds of cauliflower. It was thick as the recipe said it would be, but I was even wondering if it was too thin. When I dipped the cauliflower in the batter and thoroughly coated a piece, it seemed as though I was left with 1/4 cup less batter. The first few pieces where thoroughly coated, but the rest were partial at best. I'm not 100% convinced that one needs to do the frying of each batch in two stages. Because my pieces were so delicately battered, moving them in and out of the pan two times caused some batter to flake off.

However, M* loved, loved, loved this dish. He was eating it as fast as I was taking it out of the hot oil. Could it be because deep frying makes everything taste better? I liked it, but I wanted each piece to be thoroughly coated. My unhappiness had only to do with presentation.

I bought a smaller cauliflower head this time, so we'll see what happens.

update - Well with about half of the called for cauliflower, double the amount of yogurt and double the amount of chili powder, M* and I really enjoyed this dish again. I'm still struggling with the batter not fully adhering to the cauliflower. It often just stuck to the bottom of the pan - and some fell off during the process of taking the florets out halfway through the process. I think that I will try another recipe or use elements of another recipe next time. I do like this recipe because it calls for yogurt and besan (chick pea flour) only, as I can't have any gluten containing flours. In general this recipe is very easy - although I have yet to master the disposing of all of that oil. I did save it once, after straining out the pieces of fried dough. I'm not comfortable reusing it more than once though. I should probably get passed that.

Easy Split Pea Soup

From Epicurious. I made this a month or so ago with a smoked ham hock that I bought from the local butcher. It was a massive ham hock that yielded plenty of meat that I trimmed off and added to the soup. The hock was so large that it made it impossible to add the 8 cups of water to the pot. I had to add 1 or 2 cups later, after some had evaporated off. A large stock pot didn't come with the furnished flat, but I think it's a necessary investment. Cambridge in winter is definitely a prime soup location.

I didn't add any additional salt, but the ham hock provided more than enough - too much actually. M* and I are both salt minimalists. I also didn't puree the soup, as I like it chunky. I just let it cook for an extra hour or so. Didn't have the marjoram, so I added thyme.

Today, I used some leftover back bacon that M* had bought while I was gone, instead of the ham hock. This time all 8 cups of water fit in the pot since I didn't use the volume hogging hock. Left fat on the bacon - as pork fat is good, good, good. Substituted 1/2 of the butter with olive oil - but I didn't measure and I may have overdone the total butter/oil amount. Once again I didn't use marjoram - added thyme, garlic and bay leaves.

One of the reviewer comments on the Epicurious site mentioned using turkey instead of pork - may try that next time. Another comment mentioned adding miso at the end to bring out the smoky flavor, if making it vegetarian. Since I am not using the smoked ham hock this time, I'm going to add some Spanish paprika towards the end. It's supposed to have a smokier flavor than other paprikas. Oh, almost forgot - I threw in a potato that we had to help thicken it. M* loves his potatoes.

update - If I was going to use bacon again, I would trim off the fat or put it in a sack or something. The bacon fat had separated from the bacon - and it was hard to decide what was bacon fat and what was a garlic pieces that I hadn't cut all that small. Also, if one wanted to puree any amount of the soup, the bacon should be kept in a bag as well. It had come apart to the point that it was too hard to pull the pieces out. I guess I could have pureed it with the bacon in it, but that just kind of weired/ grossed me out. The paprika was a nice add to the soup. In general, it was muy tasty.