How to prepare a boozy, drunken Turkey dinner for 13 or worse.

Since I, as a new immigrant, was not familiar with Canadian Thanksgiving cooking traditions, I followed my own ideas, helped along by Julia Child and other guides. The main difference is in my stuffing. I find apple, onion, carrot, breadcrumbs and other traditional stuffings quite boring, and have therefore jazzed up the farce. The idea of cooking an unstuffed bird has no attraction for me. The worst turkey I have ever encountered was an unstuffed one, eaten at three in the morning, after a Quebec midnight Christmas mass. A massacre it was. Brining, BTW, is not necessary with this stuffing.

Cooking a turkey filled with a warm, boozy stuffing keeps the bird moist and speeds up its cooking. It also avoids the problem of having to cook an uncooked stuffing sitting in the middle of a cold bird. And maybe the alcohol will seep into the meat. As a student I had an experimental physicist friend who injected brandy into a rabbit to be cooked, but such a subcutaneous strategy seems a bit extreme.

So what do we need for the stuffing? The list depends on your preferences and available ingredients, so what follows is a general theme for your variations.

Nuts and raisins:

1. the evening before the meal, marinate a cup of slivered (peeled) almonds in brandy or cognac. (This year I only had Remy Martin available, which seemed a bit excessive, so I used armagnac instead.)
2. Also marinate a cup of small walnut pieces in rum or some lesser alcohol - you will have to discard the rum later as it will have picked up the tannin of the walnut peel;
3. Finally, marinate a half cup of raisins in some white wine. I used some leftover Sauternes, but other white wines or sherry will do as well.

You will need some quality broth for the stuffing, the gravy and the sprouts and chestnuts, so
4. make a broth from the turkey neck and, if you wish, the giblets. My wonderful butcher, Sanagan's Meat Locker in Kensington Market, sold me an organic chicken carcass, so I used that and the turkey bits for the broth, which I reduced to concentrate the flavour. Do not salt.

5. If you like to add cooked liver to the stuffing, which gives it a kind of country paté cachet, cook the turkey liver and the heart in some salted water, and dice them.
6. In a deep sauce pan, fry half a diced large onion or some shallots in butter or olive oil. Add a diced sourish apple, cored and peeled, such as a Granny Smith.
7. Add some celery, parsley, salt, pepper. (Avoid carrots and such - you not want a vegetable stew.)
8. After these ingredients have browned, add the drained nuts and raisins. Retain the cognac and the white wine.
9. Add two cups of bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and some of the stock. Add some cognac, some of the wine, and enough stock to have a moist paste but not a soup. (Throw out the rum - it's bitter.)
10. Add the cooked diced liver and heart, if so desired. I had wanted to add a small can of foie gras but could not locate the can until it was too late. If you can have poutine with foie gras, why not stuffing with foie gras?
11. Heat this to a near boil.

You can taste this warm stuffing now, as all the ingredients are cooked. Add salt and pepper as desired.

12. You should have your turkey at room temperature and patted dry by now. Stuff the turkey pretty tightly with the stuffing - do not forget the neck cavity. I bought a free-range turkey from Sagana, about a 12-pounder.
13. Close the breast cavity, if necessary with aluminium foil if you don't want the trouble of trussing. Also close the breast cavity with the neck flap.
14. Roast the turkey in your preferred manner - I prefer to have a salted, buttered turkey sitting breast-side up in an Ikea roasting pan on a grill rack. Start at 425 and after 20 minutes lower it to 350.
15. You may baste the turkey with butter or oil every 20 minutes or so - that will add to the gravy.
16. When the breast has browned cover it with aluminium foil.
17. After two hours test the turkey's internal temperature in the thickest part of the thigh and the breast. The internal temp should be at least 165F. You may find that the turkey ccoks pretty fast, especially if filled with warm stuffing. Three hours might do it, but use the thermometer.
18. Take the turkey out, and let it rest under foil for at least 20 minutes. Actually you can let the turkey sit longer if necessary.

I prefer to carve the turkey by separating the legs, and cutting off the dark meat. Then cut away the breasts as two wholes in a deboning technique, and slice the breasts across the grain. Assemble for presentation together with the leg meat. Of course you serve the stuffing separately.

I do the gravy the Dutch way. The cooking fat should not be very fattish - if so spoon off some fat. Sprinkle 4 or 5 tbs of sifted flour in the roasting pan, avoid clumping and brown the flour. Scrape the roasting pan to mix in the roasting bits. If you want you can add one or more stock cubes and mix in but taste for salt first. Add some stock and some milk or cream until you have the consistency of heavy cream. Taste and finish. (You can add some red wine to the gravy, if desired.)

This year I served the turkey with potatoes mashed with celeriac, butter, milk and grated Parmesan, but I forgot to add the typical Dutch grated nutmeg. I also served organic, farm-fresh sprouts just off the stalks, bought from Phil in Grange Park. (Phil is an organic farmer who used to be a rock drummer. He still collects drums and especially cymbals from all over the world - plus antique microscopes!) I parboiled the sprouts - two different times for two different sizes - as you can see from the picture the sizes vary greatly. I trimmed and halved chestnuts, peeled as I describe above, and mixed the sprouts and halved chestnuts with the remainder of the stock.

Apart from that I served mashed sweet potatoes mixed with quince puree, and pureed butternut pumpkin with cinnamon. You can add other seasonal vegetables: glazed carrots, parsnips, cooked beets, and such.
James brought a wonderful carrot and ginger soup, as well as two Cortland apple pies. Hilary made the cranberry sauce by blending raw cranberries, ginger, orange peel slivers and orange juice plus some sugar. Hilary and Rose also brought two salads, served as a separate course, à la française.

Bon appétit!

photos: Michel's version of Walter's recipe and Jeannette's loose interpretation of the above stuffing recipe, as well as Phil's sprouts.

Finally! How to peel chestnuts

Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving next Monday. For many years I have been frustrated by chestnuts - the time-consuming ways to peel them by boiling them, roasting them, etc. I googled and did other research but still no simple, foolproof way to peel fresh chestnuts. Until today.

I had two pounds of fresh Italian chestnuts - fresh is important as this technique depends on the moisture content of the chestnuts.



1. Adjust the blade of a retractable utility cutter (Stanley knife in some parts of the world) to the thickness of the chestnut skin. This way you don't have to control the depth of the cut, and you are unlikely to cut yourself. Put on a glove for security if you wish.

2. Make a cut all the way around the fat part of a chestnut (although other complete cuts may work);


3. Put the chestnut in a microwave and cook at high heat for around twenty seconds - you may actually hear the chestnut hiss as the moisture escapes;

4. Take the chestnut out carefully - it is hot.

5. The two halves of the skin should have split apart and separated from the chestnut;



6. The brown inner skin should have come off as well.

7. When the chestnut has cooled, or earlier, take the peel off. Voilà! Ready to cook, use in sprouts and chestnuts or other recipes.
I have done 5 chestnuts at a time for 60 seconds. Longer times dry out the chestnuts.

Microwaves heat the moisture in chestnuts, so this technique does not with older, dry chestnuts.