More Musings on the Bird (Turkey, that is)

Thanksgiving is fast approaching! Because of this, we are making some last-ditch efforts to cram you full of recipes like a turkey stuffed for the big day. And speaking of turkey, this is a good one. It’s another Martha recipe. I have to admit to relying on the vast arsenal of MS recipes for Thanksgiving in particular.

It really isn’t the case that I favor one source for recipes over another. I will tell you that it takes A LOT for me to save a recipe. And I have made the ones I am suggesting to you over and over again (I put them in a binder with clear sleeves because I am a messy cook and paper will not survive my kitchen). They have not failed me.

Here is one for what I call The Candy Apple Turkey. It’s real name is Maple Roast Turkey with Riesling Gravy. The skin of the turkey gets thin, sweet and crispy. So much so that you might not eat the rest of it, but just peel off the skin and feast on that alone. Also, I will support anything that involves Riesling. Seriously.

Following this recipe we have a very special treat for you – The Hartmann Family Fried Turkey Instructional. This is not to be missed, and I will explain more below. But first:

Candy Apple Turkey with The Wine I Love Most on the Planet:

What You Need:

1 fourteen-pound fresh turkey, neck and giblets removed and reserved for stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Cornbread Sourdough Stuffing
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup Riesling wine
2 cups Homemade Turkey Stock, or low-sodium canned chicken broth, skimmed of fat
2/3 cup seedless red and green grapes, each cut in half

What You Do:

Heat oven to 425 degrees.with rack in lowest third of oven. Wash turkey inside and out with cold running water, and pat dry with paper towels. Tuck wing tips under body. Generously season neck, body cavities, and underside with salt and pepper.

Loosely fill the neck cavity with the stuffing. Using wooden skewers or toothpicks, secure the flap. Holding the turkey upright, loosely fill the body cavity with stuffing. Pull the legs together, and tie them with kitchen twine. Heap on additional stuffing so that it is bulging out of the cavity. Generously sprinkle salt and pepper over the bird, and set it on a rack in a roasting pan.

Cut a double layer of cheesecloth to fit over the entire turkey. Melt 4 tablespoons butter. Place cheesecloth in the butter, completely soaking cloth. Drape cheesecloth over the bird.

Place turkey in the oven, and roast 30 minutes. Baste with butter that has accumulated in the pan. Reduce heat to 350 degrees. and loosely cover bird with a large piece of aluminum foil; roast 30 minutes more. Baste again. Continue roasting, basting once an hour, until a meat thermometer registers 180 degrees.in the leg and 170 degrees.in the breast, about 3 hours.

During the last half hour of roasting, place grated ginger in a small, double layer of cheesecloth; squeeze juice into a small saucepan. Add maple syrup and 1 tablespoon butter. Heat the mixture until the butter has melted and is bubbling. Remove the maple-syrup glaze from heat.

Remove foil tent and cheesecloth from bird, and discard. Brush glaze over bird several times during last half hour. Remove turkey from the oven, and transfer to a carving board. Let rest 30 minutes before carving.

In a small bowl, combine the remaining 1 tablespoon butter with flour, and mix together until smooth; set aside. Pour pan drippings into a fat separator or glass measuring cup, and let stand 10 minutes. If using a fat separator, carefully return juices to pan; discard fat. If using a measuring cup, use a spoon to skim fat from top, and return juices to pan.

Place the roasting pan on top of the stove over medium-high heat. Pour wine into the pan, and, using a wooden spoon, stir up any brown bits on bottom. Cook liquid until reduced by half, about 6 minutes. Add turkey stock, and cook until reduced again by half, about 7 minutes.

Pass the gravy through a cheesecloth-lined sieve, and pour into a small saucepan. Whisk in the reserved butter-flour mixture until the butter has melted. Reduce heat to medium-low, and let gravy simmer until slightly thickened, about 8 minutes. Add red and green grapes to the gravy; serve gravy with turkey.

* Note: I never use cheesecloth. I probably should, but I feel like it needlessly complicates my life, and I’m about simplicity, people. So there.

** Also, a SIEVE? Come on, really? If you guys think I do this, you’re wrong. But I encourage you to do it, and tell me about it.

*** Original Martha recipe, here.

And now for The Hartman Family Fried Turkey Instructional. Who is this Hartmann Family, you may ask. Well, I will tell you. The Hartmanns are our neighbors on Long Beach Island. My family has had a summer house on LBI since before I was a twinkle in my mother’s eye (which, as John will remind you is WAY before HE was a twinkle).

Anyway, the Hartmanns have always been our neighbors, and better ones you really couldn’t find. Always friendly, always helpful (the amount of times Mr. Hartmann has fixed random stuff around our house while we are away for the winter is probably too numerous to count), and always having a good time.

And if you’re talking about having a good time, frying turkeys for Thanksgiving is something you should consider. You should also consider safety goggles. And a shield.

So, I went straight to the source of fun and frying for this recipe, Mr. Hartmann himself. This is it, in his own words. Thank you for the recipe, and thank you for being such great people and neighbors!

The Hartmann Family Fried Turkey Instructional

To fry a turkey you need a turkey fryer which is a large stockpot with a basket or lifting apparatus, a burner (you’ll be doing this OUTSIDE) a thermometer and a large amount of oil, like 3 to 5 gallons. The fryer is available at Home Depot or Lowes and sometimes Costco.  The oil is usually in a large box. Sometimes peanut oil is recommended, but regular vegetable oil works well.

I think there is a new electric fryer out now supposedly safer but we like living dangerously.

Preparing the turkey: dry rub with mixture of your choosing under breast skin and all over the outside.  Refrigerate overnight, covered.

On Thanksgiving day, heat the oil in a stockpot outside and away from the house.  It’s a good idea to put a large piece of plywood underneath the burner stand to contain any oil overflow.  When the temperature reaches the recommended degrees, VERY SLOWLY lower the turkey into the oil.  There will be much bubbling up as the hot oil and cold water (in the turkey) do their thing (sear).

The recommended frying time is usually 3 to 5 minutes per pound.  Carefully remove turkey when done and disengage the lifting apparatus. Allow to rest. If you haven’t started drinking before this, catch up. The critical danger is over!  Enjoy!!

Oh yes, there is the matter of the left over oil. It can be used again (maybe twice more) to fry turkeys and then it starts to break down.  Store it in a cool, dark place where it will be forgotten.

Some more photos from the shore….

Read Full Post »

Bagels at the Shack

As we are continuing our SUMMER BLOW-OUT WEEK (Hot!! Humid!!! You get the idea…), we have another LBI mini-review: the Bagel Shack.

I love bread. And bread in bagel-form is one of my favorites (right under pizza-form). Finding a good bagel is tough. Some argue that New York has the best bagels around. Something about the water….I dunno. I’m not here to dispute that claim. I’m just here to say that the bagels at the Shack are daaaaaaamn good.

A few words about them:

Fluffy insides….crispy crust (with those little bubbles that show they’ve been boiled)….puffy shape….

I believe the Shack opens around 6am. And that is when the line starts to form. But it’s also when the bagels are served hot. And you can smell the bread baking….and if you can wait till you get home to eat them, you have more self control than I do.

In addition to their regular bagel flavors, they have something called THE FRENCH TOAST BAGEL (I would put neon flashing lights around that name, but wordpress doesn’t allow me to). Get this bagel.

I ate my whole wheat version with a plum, fig & lavender jam that I made myself. Cuz I’m crazy like that. Who wants the recipe? C’mon, I know you do….

Read Full Post »

Fried Scallops can’t use an iPhone, so neither should you. (A Review of The Clam Bar of Harvey Cedars Shellfish Company)

For this week’s review, Elana and I decided to expand the geographic horizons a bit and feature a Long Beach Island staple – The Clam Bar of Harvey Cedars Shellfish Co., located on center street in Beach Haven on Long Beach Island.  The Clam Bar is pretty much exactly how it sounds: a horseshoe shaped bar with about 25 wooden stools surrounding it.  A surly woman (“Nel” is her name) shuffles clockwise around the interior of the bar, serving her patrons.  The Clam Bar is perfect for us right now.  It is The Jersey Shore’s style of comfort food – lots of simple, yet tasty, seafood offerings – many of which come fried.  And comfort is needed on this Sunday.  Despite the marvelous weather, Elana is somehow battling a cold, and I am still considerably hungover from an unnecessarily late Saturday night.  It is equally comforting to know that the Clam Bar will accept my excessively casual appearance – a not-totally-dry bathing suit, wrinkled tee, and flops – I blend right in.  We bring our parents along because, well, parents get hungry too I suppose.

Upon sitting down at the bar we are immediately greeted with both good and bad news.  The good – a woman next to us discovers an actual pearl in one of her oysters. Really, she showed us.  The bad – Nel’s assistant politely advises us that Nel is not a fan of Elana’s iPhone and to “put it away before she gets angry.”  Elana (wisely) refrains from explaining to the assistant that we are merely using her camera function on the iPhone. Thus, pictures of the food could unfortunately not be captured for this review.  Myself and my family spent the next 15 minutes trying to figure out if Nel actually saw the iPhone or if the assistant was acting rogue on this one.  In retrospect, it is a comical scene – yet at the time, we feel like we may be in Nel’s penalty box for the techy infraction – she has already served two other groups with food that have come in after us.  “I think we are ready to order now” – Mom says, and Nel finally takes our requests. Nonetheless, big time service demerit here.

For appetizers, we order a dozen raw clams on the half shell as well as clams marinara, which, as the menu claims, are hot and spicy.  The raw clams were extremely fresh – which is part of their whole act.  Upon ordering the claims, Nel heads over to a shucking station – a center island inside the bar where tons of clams are kept on ice, shucked, rinsed and served within nanoseconds.  With some horseradish, cocktail sauce, and lemons – they are delicious.  Dad agreed – opting to couple his clams with a mere dash of Frank’s red hot.  The clams marina are good – little neck clams sitting in a pool of hot marinara – however they were not “hot and spicy” as advertised.  This appetizer comes with bread for mopping up the sauce – a nice bonus for a hungry Italian family.  The marinara sauce is solid, but nothing to write home about.

The dinners are also strong – Elana ordered shrimp cocktail – the ones that require the customer to do the peeling him/herself.  Yet she did not love the Dijon mustard sauce, which she found to be bland, but really liked the consistency and taste of the shrimp.  Myself and Mom went with some fried heavy hitters – Mom ordered the shrimp, and I got the scallops.  They each come in a plastic basket, served over a couple thousand fries.  Both are extremely tasty – a perfect brown cornmealish crust surrounds these treats and lends itself to good consistency.  The scallops have a snap to them, yet are still juicy and filling.  Dad goes for the Soft shell crab sandwich.  The crab meat was small in its portion at times and tough, yet had excellent sauce & tomatoes.  Lastly, the french fries were quite satisfying – not too greasy or soft, nor charred or overcooked.  I, myself, could have used a little more natural salt flavor with the fries, but everyone else disagreed with me.

We did, however sneak the iPhone into the bathroom for a couple of pictures.  Nel had no idea.

Ultimately, The Clam Bar is a worthwhile experience.  It’s unique, down and dirty, local atmosphere combined with fresh, above average food, make it a fun, casual place to go should you find yourself at LBI during the summer. The food is affordable and it is BYO, as well.  Just don’t piss off Nel!

Overall Experience – The Big Lebowksi

Read Full Post »