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Thanksgiving notes
Here are some reflections on some of the recipes we used during Thanksgiving and for leftovers. The primary flavor for the shiitake mushroom gravy in my roast turkey recipe is, of course, shiitake mushrooms. I’d asked my mom to pick them up at the store and bring them Thanksgiving morning. Unfortunately, instead of 12 ounces of fresh shiitakes, she brought 3 ounces of dried. What to do? I put the dried mushrooms in 2 cups of hot water to steep for about 20 minutes and them poured the whole thing over a bowl of 12 ounces of sliced criminis (aka baby bellas) that I had in the fridge. Since mushrooms are like little sponges, they were able to absorb a whole lot of the earthy flavor of the shiitakes that had gone into the water. While it wasn’t as intense as regular ...
... shiitakes would have made it, everyone proclaimed the gravy just as good as in previous years.
Looking for a new way to use the leftover turkey meat and especially the carcass, I decided to first make a whole bunch of turkey stock. After dinner I carved off the rest of the meat and then tossed the bones into a big pot along with a couple of carrots, roughly broken; a large onion, peeled and quartered; the ends and hearts of celery, roughly broken up, but excluding the leaves which can turn bitter when cooked; as well as some thyme sprigs and tarragon, left over from the turkey recipe. I brought it to a boil, skimmed off the foam, brought it back to a simmer and let it cook for six hours, making sure to add hot water only to keep the bones covered. I strained it, cooled it, and put it in the fridge overnight. It made the most scrumptious, gelatinous stock (good stock should be gelatinous).
Today, I took most of the stock to make turkey tortilla soup, based on the regular chicken version. Because I was starting with cooked turkey, I put the broth on and added one-half defrosted bone-in chicken breast to poach and add flavor, rather than the amount listed in the recipe and then threw the already cooked turkey in during simmer phase for the broth. Otherwise everything went as normal for the recipe. It’s a nice change of pace from the regular turkey, vegetable, noodle soup.
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