Thanksgiving Chicken

Rosemary & Garlic Roast Chicken:

• I brined the chicken.
• — and to the regular salt/sugar brine, I added the left over liquid from some braised pork that I made the day before.  Because: why not?

The Rub

• In my coffee grinder, I blended:
• Several springs worth of fresh rosemary leaves.
• A small handful of black pepper corns — I don’t know, maybe 20-30.
• A hearty shaking of paprika from a tin with the spout opened at the “pour” setting.  Enough to give the rub a reddish color.
• Cumin seed.
• Then:
• In a bowl, I mixed the blended spices with:
• About 4 cloves of pulverized garlic.
• Kosher salt.

Assembly:

• I removed the chicken from the brine and dried the skin thoroughly.
• Then, I rubbed my rub under the skin on every part of the chicken that I could get under the skin of (which is almost the whole bird).  I rubbed what was left of the seasoning on the outside of the skin.
• Then, I stuffed the inside of the bird with:
• 2 quarters of a white onion.
• 2 halves of a peeled mandarin orange.
• A few sprigs of rosemary.
• Several whole, peeled cloves of garlic.
• Finally, I rubbed the entire outside of the chicken with bacon grease.

Baking

• I fashioned a baking rack from two stovetop burner grates, covered with aluminum foil.
• Those, of course, went into a baking pan.
• I sealed off each end of the bird by suturing it with toothpicks.
• I also tied the drumstick ends together — although, I’m not sure what good that does and probably won’t do it again.
• I put the bird, breast up, into a preheated 425ºF oven.
• I roasted it for about 20 minutes, until the skin was golden brown.
• Then, I turned the oven down to 350ºF.
• I used a brush to baste the chicken, not to keep it moist mind you, but to get some more grease up onto the skin to help it become crispy.
• I flipped the bird breast down.
• I brushed some grease/juices onto the newly upward facing side.
• The bird continued to roast at the lower temperature for between a half hour or 40 minutes.
• After that, I flipped the bird back to it’s original position.
• Of course, I basted again just before and just after the flip.
• I continued roasting the chicken, basting one more time, until the internal temperature hit 160ºF.

Thoughts: OK, sure, there’s nothing about this recipe that is specifically related to Thanksgiving.  It’s what I made for the holiday though.  And, it was a tasty bird, that I’ll say.  For all the rosemary and garlic I used, the flavor was still pretty subtle.  It’s pretty hard to get flavors to roast themselves into the meat.  Similarly, you really wouldn’t know from tasting that there were any pork products involved.  You could just rub the skin with vegetable oil to help it crisp.  But, I think the bacon grease does add a note of something or another.  Likewise, with the orange inside — all you really need is some slow-release moisture.  A wet sponge would probably work just as well.  Only, if you use one, you probably shouldn’t ever tell anyone.

Cuttlefish Stew

Cuttlefish Stew with Tomato & Spinach:

• First, in a pot or pan with tall sides, heat a ¼ cup or so of olive oil.  (No, I didn’t measure it.)
• Dice a ½ an onion and sauté it until there’s not an inordinate amount of moisture left.
• Clean as much baby (little) cuttlefish as you’ve got, or want to eat, and cut the bodies into halves.
• Drain and liquid from your cuttlefish and save it.
• Add your cuttlefish to your onions and sauté until they’re no longer translucent.
• Now, you need liquid.  I’ll bet white wine would be good.
• I didn’t have wine though. I had juice from steaming clams.  So, I used that.
• I also poured in the juices that had drained from the cuttlefish a bit earlier.
• In the rare possibility that the cuttlefish didn’t release juices that deglazed your pan, now would be a good time to make sure everything’s deglazed.
• Stir in a large can of chopped tomatoes.  Or, in my case, chop up a large can’s worth of whole tomatoes and stir those in along with the juice.
• Pour in some water.  Remember, you’re making stew or soup, or whatever.
• Add a large amount of dill.  I used dried dill.
• Season.
• Add in quite a few shakes of paprika.
• Plus a little saffron.
• Then a teaspoon or so of cinnamon.
• Maybe some more dill, depending on how you feel.
• Now, with the clam juice, and all, the fishiness was a bit intense.
• So, I stirred in a couple of capfuls of cider vinegar and a huge, plastic bear rending squeeze of honey.  You couldn’t taste either vinegariness or sweetness later, I swear…
• Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, until the cuttlefish are soft.
• Then, throw in a couple of handfuls of rice.
• Next, chop up about a quarter of a bundle of fresh parsley and stir it in.
• After that, de-stem and wash an entire package of spinach.  If it’s not packaged, use a lot.
• Stir in the the spinach, and cook it until it’s nicely wilted down.
• Cover the pan and let it sit until the rice will be tender enough to eat.
• I served it with bread for mopping.

Meatless Moussaka – Inauthentic but Delicious

Mushroom Moussaka :

The Eggplant:

• Preheat your oven to 400°F.
• Peel and slice an eggplant into thin rounds.  Two eggplants might be better, but I only had one.
• Salt both sides of the eggplant slices.
• Lay them out between two layers of paper towels for a half hour or so to draw out some water.
• Rub olive oil over both sides of the eggplant, arrange them on a cookie sheet, and bake them for 15-20 minutes.  The idea is to brown them just a little and to draw out more moisture.  (You don’t want moussaka soup.)
• When you’re done, turn the oven down to 350°F.

Meanwhile, the Moussaka Innards:

• Sauté a chopped, yellow onion until it starts to turn translucent.
• Add in a few coarsely chopped carrots.
• And about four pulverized garlic cloves too.
• Sauté a little more.
• Throw in a whole normal-sized package of baby portobello mushrooms, coarsely chopped.
• Stir in a hefty amount of oregano.  In this case, fresh oregano will be especially worthwhile.
• Add in a large can of puréed tomato’s worth of puréed tomatoes.
• Simmer.
• Stir in a dose of ground cinnamon, a big spoonful or so.
• A spoonful of paprika will also be good.
• I put in a giant pinch of ground ancho chili.
• The secret ingredient is a spoonful of Ghirardelli hot cocoa mix.  Well, really, it was just the closest thing I had to pure cocoa powder.
• Season with salt and pepper.
• Continue sautéing.
• Shortly before it becomes fairly thick, add in a lot of finely chopped fresh parsley.  Dried parsley just won’t work here.  I put in about half the bunch as bundled by the store.
• Simmer for a couple more minutes.  It should be thick.

The Cheese Sauce:

• Make a simple roux + milk + cheese sauce:
• Melt some butter.  I’ve got some Smart Balance, supposedly healthier, buttery-ish spread that I use for toast.  If you use it for cooking, it tastes like you used the yellow butterifying goo on movie theater popcorn.  So, this time I added a dab of it to the regular butter just to, what do they say on Food Network?  Kick it up a… something or another…
• Stir in a whopping handful of flour.
• Keep stirring − until it’s deeply golden and smooth.
• Add just a little milk.
• Incorporate.
• Repeat incorporation of milk in small increments until what you’ve got is sort of like a thick pumpkin soup.
• Add in more milk until it’s thinner.  It all depends on how much cheese you use and how much sauce you want.  (It needs to cover your baking dish.)  I probably used about a cup and a half in total.
• Stir in about a half a cup of cheese.  I used a blend of hard mozzarella and cheap Parmesan that is relatively soft and flavorless when compared with the good stuff.  It’s my standard.
• Stir and melt.
• In a little bowl, whisk 2 egg yolks.
• Whisk a dose of hot sauce into either your yolks or your cheese-milk.
• Whisk the yolks into the milk.
• Season with salt and pepper.
• Your result should be thick enough to sit on top of the moussaka you’re about to put together.

The Assembly & Production:

• In a baking dish, arrange alternating layers of:
• Eggplant slices.
• Topped by a very light sprinkling of cheese.
• Topped by a medium-thick layer of the tomato veggie sauce.
• Repeat until everything is used or pan is almost full.
• Then,
• Pour your cheese sauce over top.
• Top your cheese sauce with light sprinkling of cheese.
• Bake at 350°F until the cheese on top has satisfactorily browned.

The Review: Winner! Sure, you can’t use vegetables to make it taste like it has lamb in it.  The flavor of what I had was pretty nice though.  I enjoyed the texture of the large chunks of carrot in what is otherwise a pretty soft mound of food.  Well, really, I guess I should say it was a good solution to a moussaka that was, without meat and without enough eggplant, much softer than it normally would have been.