Lancegiving - an Australian Thanksgiving (of sorts) with Smoked Turkey with Mexican Chorizo Stuffing

Lance and I both enjoy watching the tv show Bob’s Burgers. And one of Lance’s favourite episodes is the first Thanksgiving episode. In it, Bob gets excited picking out the turkey ready for the feast and he names the turkey “Lance”. So for his birthday this year, Lance was bought a Bob’s Burgers’ themed present – complete with a Lance. Yep. A whole frozen turkey. You may also recall that Lance loves smoking meats, so we knew it was going to be part of his turkey’s future. Lance named his turkey Boblance and he was popped into the freezer until such time as we could spend a whole day smoking a turkey. Lancegiving, as it came to be known, was last weekend. And it was So. Much. Fun.

We invited a few friends and family around to hang out for the day. There was a tv set up outside playing thanksgiving episodes of some of our favourite shows, Brooklyn Nine Nine, How I Met Your Mother, and, of course, Bob’s Burgers. We played beer pong (minus the beer!), we hung out in the spa, we played board games, and we watched the turkey rotisserate in the smoking shed Lance had set up. It smoked for 6 hours, then we moved it into the oven for a further hour and a half of roasting before carving it up and serving it with roast veges and the stuffing.

Given that neither of us had ever cooked a turkey before, we weren’t optimistic about how it was going to turn out. There was lots of gravy on hand, just in case it was tough as old boots. But, it wasn’t really required. The turkey was incredibly succulent, with a fabulous smokey flavour. The only issue with smoking it the way Lance does is that the skin doesn’t crisp up, even with the finishing time in the oven. It tends to stay a slightly unappetising chewiness. But that is a small price to pay for such delicious meat. And as good as the meat was…it was the stuffing that really stole the show. Neither of us are the biggest fan of bread based stuffings, so I did a bit of a google for other recommended fillings. Chestnuts sounded right up my alley, but too much effort to prepare. And tinned chestnuts are hard (not to mention expensive) to come by. There were various sausage ones and mince meat ones, and rice ones. Lance had the idea of throwing some sweet potato into the mix and although he claims it was his idea, we both independently came upon the same answer to easily flavouring the stuffing – Mexican Chorizo. In the absence of some lurking in your freezer (seriously though, you should make it and have some lurking in your freezer), use a few of your favourite spicy sausages, skin removed.You will need to add a diced brown onion to the vegetables you sweat off with the sausage.

Lancegiving Smoked Turkey and Stuffing

300g Mexican chorizo

1 cup black rice

2 medium sweet potatoes, diced

3 stalks celery, diced

1 sweet red paprika, diced

100g cold butter, diced
1/4 cup porcini mushrooms
1/3 cup dried cranberries
4kg turkey

Cook the rice to al dente and set aside to cool. It needs to be cooked, but retain some bite as it will be cooked more in the turkey. Cook the sweet potatoes until just barely tender using your favourite method. As I was short on time, I steamed them. Set aside to cool. The rice and sweet potatoes can be cooked ahead of time if needs be.

Place the porcini and cranberries into a mug and just cover with recently boiled water. Cover loosely and set aside to cool.

Heat a frypan to medium high-heat. Add the Mexican chorizo and break up with a wooden spoon. As it starts to brown, add the celery and paprika. Cook until softened, around 5-10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Once everything is cool, mix together in a bowl. Mix in about half of the diced butter.

Spoon as much of the stuffing into the turkey cavity as possible, then sew shut the cavity. Spoon the rest into a casserole container, cover with foil and set aside. Smoosh the remaining butter cubes between the skin and the breast meat of the turkey.

Set up your smoker (or get Lance to) on your barbecue to reach 160C, and insert the rotisserie rod. Alternatively, just set your oven to 160C. Smoke/roast the turkey for around 4 hours, or until the breast meat reaches 130F on a meat thermometer. Preheat the oven to 180C, transfer the turkey from the rotisserie to a baking tray and cook for a further hour, or until the breast meat reaches 165F.  You can keep it going on the smoker outside if time permits, but we were getting hungry! As turkey sizes and oven/BBQ temperatures can vary, keep an eye on the meat and check for doneness from around 3 hours. The times I've given here are what our turkey took.

About an hour before the turkey is ready, slide the casserole dish with the stuffing into the oven to cook the remainder of the stuffing, for the last 15 minutes take the foil off. Any additional veges can be roasted now too.

Let the turkey rest for around 15 minutes, then carve. Remove the stuffing from the turkey and mix it with the casserole stuffing. Serve.

Feels Like Summer - Mango Tamarind Prawn Cocktail Sorbet

Lance doesn’t like sorbet. In fact, when he saw me pouring this mango mix into the ice cream maker, we had a conversation a bit like this:

“Ooh, you’re making me ice cream! What flavour are you making?”

“Not ice cream, something different”

“What? Hang on, are you WASTING our mangoes making sorbet? You don’t love me!”

And yet, there I was, making sorbet for us as part of our date night dinner. Now, I see what you’re thinking  - maybe he’s right. Maybe if I know he doesn’t like sorbet but I’m still specifically making it for an important meal – then maybe I don’t love him. First, how dare you question my love! Secondly, remember the pie incident?
Yeah. And remember our Wills Domain Degustation? Lance loved the herby sorbet palate cleanser.

I would never serve Lance a sorbet for dessert. Nor would I serve him a nut milk ice cream, or coconut milk ice cream for dessert. This sorbet? Not a dessert. This sorbet is an entrée (or appetizer, for my American readers! Hi!) Riffing on the herby sorbet we both loved, I decided to make a more ‘savoury’ sorbet that would in essence be the sauce for a fun spicy and fruity prawn cocktail. Using some of our homegrown mangoes and jalapeno, I added some tamarind for a tart hit. Served with some cold prawns that are dusted with some smokey hot paprika and the traditional iceberg lettuce bed, it was quite the cute little dish. And a perfect date night/dinner party appetizer as everything can be made in advance. Just churn the sorbet right before you want to serve it.

Mango Tamarind Prawn Cocktail Sorbet

2 cups water

5 tsp tamarind puree
¼ tsp pepper
½ tsp salt
2 jalapenos
3 mangoes, flesh removed

1 egg white

cooked, cooled prawns (6 or so per person)

iceberg lettuce, shredded to serve

hot smoked paprika, to serve

Finely mince the jalapenos and add the mangoes, water, tamarind puree, salt, pepper, jalapenos and egg white and blend until fully homogenised. Leave for 5 minutes to allow some of the air to leave the mixture, and then give one quick stir before pouring into your ice cream maker. Churn for 30-45 minutes, depending on your machine's instructions.

Place lettuce on your serving plate/bowl. Scoop a ball of sorbet on top of the lettuce, arrange the prawns artfully and dust with smoked paprika. Serve immediately.

Leftover sorbet can be tightly wrapped in the freezer for a week. Soften in fridge 30 minutes before serving like this again. Alternatively, blend up with a little tequila for a killer cocktail!

Baking up a Storm - Apple and Mulberry Pie

Just before I travelled to the USA with my husband (then boyfriend) and sister-in-law, we had communally watched the movie Waitress. Which, if you haven’t seen it, has a large portion of energy devoted to making and naming pies. We had also just finished watching the tv show Pushing Up Daisies, which we referred to as “Piemaker” after the main character who (amongst being able to bring people back from the dead temporarily) makes pies. It’s worth noting, in America “pie” is a dessert. Embarking on a 2 month trip around various US cities, we were primed and ready to indulge in as much pie as we could. And we found the mission impossible.

Back then, my food knowledge wasn’t as developed and my knowledge of good places to eat in the US was non-existant. So partially it could have been where we chose to eat. I think a large part of it is that our trip consisted almost entirely of big cities – not the kinda places that would have the diners and pie shops I’d seen so often in US movies. But it left us with a sense of desperation with every failed attempt to find a restaurant that would serve what us Aussies thought of as quintessential American food. In a twist of irony, literally the ONLY piece of pie we ate in the whole two month trip was in Canada, when we visited Niagara Falls. Despite being good pie, the mere fact we weren’t in America eating it somewhat lessened it as an experience.

Since then, the desire for pie still comes and goes in waves. Sweet pies and in particular fruit pies don’t seem to be as big of a thing here in Australia – meat pies obviously are ubiquitous! Certainly in my family, the custard pie was king growing up. Mum also made apple pies and lemon meringue pie (a personal favourite) but they don’t hold the same comforting sense memories for me as other baked goods. Not wanting to waste all our mulberries on cocktails, I decided to make an apple and mulberry pie. Upon tasting it, Lance’s reaction was ‘you know what, when we spent all that energy looking for pie in America – I think this is exactly what we wanted’. High praise, indeed!

If you don’t have mulberries, you can sub other berries – blackberry would be quite nice. I like the tart/fresh depth of the berries amongst the sweeter, more predictable apple. The cardamom plays particularly well with the mulberries. The pastry is the simplest of pastries, just flour, butter, salt. I like the sweetness of the filling to shine, with the crunch of the dusting of sugar before baking. Feel free to use frozen pastry if you can’t be bothered making it yourself. And finally, the best part of this pie is the thin disc of marzipan hidden in the bottom, which adds another level of flavour with the sweet almondness a lingering background flavour.

Apple and Mulberry Pie  with Hidden Marzipan

Pastry

3 cups plain flour

3/4 cup rye flour
200g butter
1 tsp salt
8-10 tbsp cold water
1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tsp water (eggwash)
sugar to sprinkle

Filling

4 pink lady apples, peeled, cored and cut into slices

250g mulberries, stalk removed
6 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp corn flour
5 cardamom pods, seeds removed and crushed in a mortar and pestle
1/2 tsp cinnamon
100g marzipan

For the dough – cut the cold butter into small squares and place in a standmixer. Mix the flours and salt together well, then add to the mixer. On a slow speed, mix together until it forms a sandy consistency. Add the water, 1 tbsp at a time until the dough comes together. Try not to mix more than is necessary. Separate into two even pieces, form into discs, wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least an hour to rest. (I made mine in the morning, and baked the pie that night).


Prep the apple as described above. Place pieces in a small saucepan with the corn flour, cardamom seeds and cinnamon. Mix well to coat the pieces. Add the maple syrup and stir to coat. Places over a low-medium  heat and cook for 5 minutes, just until the liquid goes sticky and apple pieces start to soften. Set aside to cool.

When the dough is ready, preheat your oven to 170C.

Grease your pie dust lightly with butter. Dust your work surface lightly and gently roll out the two discs into rounds of pastry big enough to fill your pie dish. Carefully lay one piece into the bottom of the pie dish, ensuring there is no tears. Cut shapes into the second piece (alternatively, just slash steam holes when it's formed).

Between two pieces of baking paper, roll out the marzipan into a thin disc the size of the bottom of the pie dish. Lay this on top of the bottom piece of pastry. Pour over the apple pieces, then scatter the mulberries over the top.

Carefully drape the second piece of pastry over the top, crimping the edges to seal. Brush with egg wash, sprinkle with white sugar and pop in the oven for 35 minutes, or until the top is golden.

Set aside to cool 10 minutes, cut and serve with ice cream, cream, custard or a combination of all of the above!

Plantain Love - Garlic and Kale Mofongo

I don’t know a great deal about the various South American cuisines, other than I enjoy eating most of the flavours. So, with an ignorance of the provenance of mofongo and therefore what is and isn’t actually “mofongo” I am calling this a Kale Mofongo. From what I have read, mofongo is fried plantains roughly mashed together with broth, chicharrones (or bacon), with various pepper and onions as the flavouring ingredients. This has the peppers in the form of chile flakes, and instead of salty bacon, it uses salty anchovies. The kale just makes it much more vege based.

This recipe is barely adapted from a recipe for pasta from the New York Times website. The only two real main differences are the substitution of noodles for plantain and the substitution of rum and broth for water. I figure, why wilt with water when you can wilt with more flavour?? Plus, I seem to have a fairly strong habit of cooking with booze. My love affair with plantains is well and truly continuing. Definitely hunt some down if you can find them!

Garlic and Kale Mofongo

2 green plantains, cut into 5cm discs, peeled.

3 tbsp olive oil
4 anchovy filets
½ teaspoon crushed red chili flakes
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons capers, drained and stored on paper towel until ready to use
1 bunch kale, ribs removed, chopped
1 shots (30mL) dark rum, such as Angostura
¼ cup chicken or vegetable stock
Half a lime

Heat the olive oil in a large frypan (preferably one with deepish sides for when you’re tossing everything together) to medium heat. In batches if necessary, fry the plantain pieces until golden on each side, and soft – around 3-5 minutes per side. Transfer to a paper-towel lined plate and set aside.

To the same pan, add a little more oil if the plantains soaked up a lot. You want the bottom of the frypan to be well-coated. Add the anchovies, chili flakes and a fat pinch of salt. Fry, stirring, until the anchovies have dissolved and the chili flakes are toasted, around 3 minutes.

Add the garlic and the capers, cook for 5 minutes. Add kale and rum and cook until kale goes bright green and wilts and about half of the liquid has evaporated. Add the plantains and stir through, mashing as you go with your wooden spoon into the oily, garlicky kale. Everything should be coated with the flavoured oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then squeeze some lime juice over the top just before serving.