Heeeeeeeey, Crunchy Lady...

Sorry it's been a while.  Ever have one of those periods where you feel like nothing you do is important?  Like you're contributing nothing to the world or that your contributions hold no value to anyone outside of yourself?  Yeah, that's been 2013 in a nutshell so far.  But enough about me, let's talk about this...

That, my friends, is a croque-madame, and I'm hoping that it will change the way you think about grilled cheese sandwiches.  First, a little backstory...

The grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich is known in France as a croque-monsieur, or, if you pardon my French translation, "Mr. Crunch."  It's become such a staple dish for the French that the English feel the need to make fun of them for it.  At its best, it's bold ham and fancy cheese (usually Gruyère), grilled between fresh white bread and topped with béchamel sauce, then broiled until the sauce starts to brown.  At its worst, it's a Croque McDo, which just goes to prove that we Americans can ruin anything good.

A croque-madame (c'mon, even your French is good enough to figure out what this means) is a croque-monsieur with a fried egg on top.  It's called that because it looks like the sandwich is wearing a lady's hat.  For real.

Enough talk, let's make one of these bad girls.  First things first: if you don't know how to make béchamel sauce, let me tell you.  If you do, feel free to skip to the paragraph after the recipe (it's like a choose your own adventure book up in here).  Béchamel is a simple cream sauce, one of the 5 mother sauces of French cuisine, simple sauces that are the building blocks of other, more complex sauces.  This recipe is enough for 2-3 sandwiches, depending on how sloppy you want them to be:

Béchamel Sauce

1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 cup whole milk, warmed
sea salt
ground nutmeg

Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.  When butter is fully melted, whisk in flour until smoothly combined.  Cook over medium-low heat until golden, about 4-6 minutes; this will remove any floury taste.  (Congratulations, you just made a roux, from which you can make other mother sauces like velouté or espagnole.)  Whisk in your warm milk a little at a time, constantly stirring and adding milk until the sauce is about the consistency of half-and-half.  Season with salt and nutmeg to taste, then simmer for about 15-20 minutes stirring frequently.  Some recipes call for the addition of a little onion and clove during the simmer process, but if you're in a hurry you can get by without them.  If you do decide to add them, make sure to strain your sauce to keep the solids out of the finished product.

 For the croque-madame, I like to add a little depth to the sauce by grating some good Parmesan cheese (not the kind that comes in the green bottle) into the béchamel, which technically makes it a mornay sauce, I guess.  Leave it to an Italian to make French food better.

The rest of this is quite simple.  Ever made a grilled cheese sandwich?  Boom, you're qualified to make a croque-monsieur.  Ever fried an egg?  Boom, you just got a pay upgrade to croque-madame status.

Croque-madame Sandwich

2 slices of French bread (or Italian, or rye or whatever you have around/like best)
Ham, thinly sliced (I used Virginia ham, but, again, whatever your favorite ham is, bring it)
Cheese, grated or sliced (Gruyère or Emmentaler are awesome, Swiss will do in a pinch)
Dijon or whole-grain mustard
butter
seasoned salt
béchamel sauce
1 egg
fresh dill weed (settle down, Beavis, if you only have dried, that's fine)

Preheat your oven's broiler. Spread mustard on one slice of bread.  Pile on ham and grated cheese. Top with the other slice of bread.  I can't believe I just described how to make a sandwich.  Butter the outside of the sandwich (both sides, again, duh) and sprinkle with a little bit of seasoned salt.  Grill the sandwich in a skillet over medium heat.  When one side is brown, flip over and grill the other side.  Seriously, too much description.  When both sides are adequately grilled take it out of the skillet and put it on a foil-lined sheet pan.  Spoon some béchamel over the grilled sandwich and put it in the broiler.  Check it after a couple of minutes and take the sandwich out when the bechamel just starts to brown.  Fry the egg sunny side up in your hot skillet while the sandwich is in the broiler.  When the egg white is cooked through, remove the egg from the skillet and put it on top of your sandwich.  Garnish the top with a little bit of dill.

This is a fork-and-knife job, people.  For maximum enjoyment, try to get a little bit of egg yolk in each bite. Bon appétit...

Pun-free Meatballs

The mere utterance of the word "meatball" is usually enough to conjure an untoward image in the listener's mind.  What is it about this combination of meat and grain that fosters such prurient thoughts?  Is it the spherical shape?  The carnal allure of flesh?  Or just the way the words hang together?

Meat.  Ball.  Meatball.

For the remaining paragraphs, I'm going to ask all of you to grow up.  Get those sexual notions out of your brain and concentrate on this misunderstood and under-appreciated food, the delectable creation that is the meatball.  Feel free to return your mind to the gutter as soon as we're finished.

As I've mentioned before, I grew up in a big Italian family.  We used to go to Aunt Sarah's just about every Sunday for spaghetti dinner.  We used to go there in the middle of the week so I could play with my cousins and eat Spaghetti-Os out of a can too.  Part and parcel.  Anyway, being first generation Italian-Americans, Sarah and her sisters learned to cook from their mother, who learned to cook in that funny looking boot-shaped country.  A fair amount gets lost in translation on the way down, but those Sunday dinners, to the best of my recollection, were fairly well-informed in the old ways, even if everything was bought at the supermarket instead of grown in the backyard.

I learned a fair bit about cooking from my mom (who learned from her mom, who learned from her mom, who learned on the boot, remember?), but I've also done a lot of digging into traditional Italian culinary history.  The meatball, believe it or not, can be traced back to the Apicius, the oldest surviving cookbook in the world.  The recipe hasn't changed too dramatically in the last two thousand years: minced meat, moistened bread and spices, cooked in liquid.  Of course Marcus Apicus recommended a mixture of peacock meat with wine-soaked bread and garum (common Roman condiment similar to Thai fish sauce), all wrapped in pork caul, the natural webbed fat that surrounds pig intestines.  That part of the recipe has changed quite a bit.

I've tried quite a few variations on the so-called "authentic" Italian meatball before settling on a recipe that I like.  I don't use veal because every creature deserves the right to grow up before the world eats it.  I don't use milk-soaked bread anymore because it's difficult to maintain cohesion with that much moisture in play.  I don't use a lot of unnecessary spices either.  Italian cooking is about simplicity, and if you follow these simple steps, you'll be richly rewarded.

First, get a stock pot out and dump about a half gallon (three 1.5 pound jars) of marinara sauce in there, plus another 2-3 cups of water.  Heat it up to a nice, even simmer.  You're going to be cooking the meatballs in this sauce, so make sure it's flavored to your liking before you drop the meat in.  While that's warming up, mince one shallot and two garlic cloves.  Heat some olive oil in a small skillet and saute the shallot and garlic until it softens up a bit.  Don't burn the garlic!

Put one pound of ground beef (80/20 is best, no leaner than 85/15) and one pound of hot Italian sausage in a bowl.  I make my own bulk sausage, but if you have a store-bought favorite you should use it.  I prefer hot Italian sausage - heavy on the red pepper flakes and fennel seeds - because I like a spicy meatball, but if you're not into all that heat then a sweet Italian sausage will do just fine.

To your two pounds of meat, you're going to add one cup of dry bread crumbs, two eggs, three tablespoons of fresh Italian flat leaf parsley, 3 oz. of ricotta cheese, 3 oz. of grated Parmesan or Romano cheese (or 1.5 oz. of each), 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper (I use Penzey's Black & Red when I want to kick up the heat even further), and the shallots and garlic you sauteed earlier.

 This is the fun part.  Give your hands a coating of olive oil (so the meat won't stick to them), then mix up all those ingredients until the glob of meat is uniform.  You shouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two meats anymore, nor should you have any obvious clumps of cheese or breadcrumbs.  Once that's done, heat up that skillet again, make a small meat patty and cook it up.  Taste it and make sure the flavor and texture are to your liking.  This is the last chance you'll have to adjust anything.

Oil up your hands again and start forming your meatballs.  I find that a one-inch ball is just about perfect in terms of presentation size vs. braising time.  Two pounds of meat plus the additional ingredients should yield between 25-30 meat balls.  You could make them bigger if you want a "wow" factor; cooking them in sauce means they won't dry out, though I've had issues with large meatballs and desirable texture.  You could also make marble-sized polpettine if you like, but I don't understand the appeal.

As you roll these out, gently drop them into the sauce, starting around the edge of the pot and working your way toward the middle.  Once they're all in there, give the pot a little jiggle to let all the balls settle in.  DO NOT STIR YET!  The meatballs are still fragile and you don't want to bust them up before they get a chance to set, which will happen in about 15 minutes.  I generally pull one out after about 20 minutes to do a doneness check.  You're looking for 165 degrees if you're using a thermometer.  You can also cut one open and see what color they are inside.  You're looking for tannish-brown without any traces of red rawness.

When the meatballs are done, serve them however you'd like.  In our house, it's usually on top of a pile of spaghetti with garlic bread, on the first night at least.  If you're not feeding a big Italian family, you're going to have a bunch of leftover meatballs and more sauce than you know what to do with.  Some ideas for leftovers...

 How about a toasted meatball sub with shaved smoked provolone and garnished with fresh parsley?

Or a pan of lasagna?  I know you've got enough sauce left over and probably a whole bunch of ricotta too.  Grind up those leftover meatballs and throw in some fresh spinach between those layers of pasta.

Whip up an Italian omelet for breakfast.  Saute onions, mushrooms and bell peppers, combine with chopped meatballs and ricotta cheese for the filling, then top with marinara, fresh parley and lightly shredded Parmesan.  Bacon and pepperoni bread optional.

Bay of Delicious Pigs

My four regular readers have probably noticed that I've written a few articles about pork loin roasts.  There's a good reason for that: they're relatively cheap (who isn't on a budget these days?) and, when prepared the way I tell you to, delicious.  At the risk of getting monotonous, I'm going to write one more article about pork loin and then I'm going to shelve this subject for a while.

Last time we talked pork, I was telling you my plan to make a bacon-wrapped loin roast with Hoppin' John and dijon carrot slaw.  As you can probably guess by the photo above, that all turned out great.  Still, since I was only cooking for the lady and me, we had a fair amount of leftover pork.  I'm a lazy man around the house (well, until my resolution kicks in) so most of the remaining pork got eaten as it was prepared.  However, toward the end of its shelf life, I decided to dress it up a little bit by turning those last few slices into sandwiches.

Specifically, Cuban sandwiches.  There's something mysterious and magical about the Cuban sandwich, despite its simplicity.  Roasted pork meets ham, plus Swiss cheese, mustard and pickles on crusty bread, all pressed together and served hot.  If it's that easy, why do so many attempts miss the mark?  As with most sandwiches, the answer is simple: if the bread's wrong, the whole thing is wrong.

Traditional Cuban bread is similar to commonplace Italian or French bread, but with the addition of lard to the dough.  My wife has been experimenting a lot with baking of late (despite my culinary prowess in several areas, I am a shitty baker) and makes a pretty impressive rustic Italian loaf.  However, when I suggested that she bake a pan Cubano for our sandwiches, she was put off a bit by the idea of larding up the bread.  I suspect that revulsion, along with the fact that the hardening lard makes the bread nearly inedible after 24 hours, explains why it's nearly impossible to get Cuban bread north of the Everglades.  We settled instead for some ciabatta mini-loaves.  Yeah, it's not authentic anymore and I'll bet you'll view the rest of this post with disdain, but you know what?  It wasn't going to be authentic anyway, because I was repurposing leftover pork loin instead of slow cooking a shoulder in mojo marinade anyway, so shut up.

I sliced my pork loin pretty thick and I knew I was going to need thinner pieces for these sandwiches, so I beat my meat.  Yup, just plopped it down there on the counter and pounded it out.  I'll be here all week, folks.  First, I had a little bit of tenderloin on these slices so I separated that into small chunks, then I hit the remaining loin portion with the tenderizer mallet until they were a little under 1/4-inch thick.  A layer of mayonnaise on the bottom bun (optional), a little bit of shredded Swiss cheese, then the tenderized loin, then the tenderloin chunks (the pinkish meat on top in the following photo).

If you ever find yourself in Ybor City, you might see something called a "sandwich mixto" which is another name for a Cubano, so named because it is a mix of ham and roasted pork.  You might also see something called "medianoche" which is a Cuban sandwich made with soft egg bread instead of crusty Cuban bread.  Nothing wrong with that either.  Anyway, throw some shredded Swiss cheese on top of the roasted pork (I like to layer the cheese throughout the sandwich to help it all stick together), then add thin sliced ham (you can also add some salami, but it's not an essential ingredient), more cheese, dill pickles and more cheese.  Dress the top bun with yellow mustard and finish off the sandwich.  Now for the fun part...

A Cuban isn't a Cuban unless it's pressed to within an inch of its life.  I guess, in retrospect, it's social commentary on the oppressive Castro regime, but I'm sure that's not why the sandwich is made that way.  Probably more to do with, you know, taste than politics, especially since the sandwich predates the dictator.  Anyway, if you happen to have a commercial panini press at home, you're in luck.  If you don't, you have a couple of options.  The George Foreman grill is a common bastardization of the panini press, but you may find that your sandwich is too big for the Foreman to accommodate it.  I went with a griddle pan on the stove top, plus a heavy cast iron skillet (with a layer of aluminum foil between it and the sandwiches) and a little bit of extra downward pressure provided by my burly man muscles.  I've actually seen people use foil-wrapped bricks to crush their sandwiches.  The instrument of oppression is secondary to the drive to make the sandwich submit to your will.

The key here is to melt the cheese, heat the meat and crisp the bread without burning it.  I found that my bread got toasty on the bottom well before the cheese in the middle melted, so I gave them one more downward push and then finished them in the oven to get more even heat than the stove top griddle could provide.  If I had a panini press, there'd be heat coming from both the top and bottom.  Probably should've heated up my cast iron.  Eureka moment: if you have a pizza stone, heat that up in the oven and then use it to press the sandwiches.  Boom, homemade panini press.  Be careful though: obviously balancing a 450 degree pizza stone on top of sandwiches on your range is a little dangerous.

Once everything's all hot and gooey, you're all set.  The salty sweet of the ham plays off the savory roasted pork, the acidity of the pickle gives depth to the tart spice of the mustard and the luscious melted Swiss is contrasted by the crispy, toasted bread.  If there is such a thing as the perfect sandwich, the Cuban has to be in consideration for that spot.  So simple, yet so richly complex.  And to think something this good came from transformed leftover pork loin.  A food that I shall not speak of again until, oh, let's say, June.

Sir, you are no longer a child...

So a guy walks into a Subway in Florida and orders a Philly cheesesteak with ketchup, is told by the sandwich artist on duty that cheesesteaks don't get ketchup (and that Subway doesn't have ketchup at all), then a verbal altercation breaks out between the two which leads to the worker allegedly threatening to kill the customer.  Getting past the absolute absurdity of the entire situation, I have reached these three conclusions:

1) The customer says he's from South Jersey and calls himself a cheesesteak "connoisseur."  I have to call the veracity of the rest of his statement into question if he, a so-called "connoisseur," thought he was going to get an authentic Philly cheesesteak from Subway.

2) Later he says "By the way, when you buy a cheesesteak in Philly, you put ketchup on it, ok?"  Yeah?  Well, you know, that's just, like, uh, your opinion, man:
a) Here's the ordering guide for Pat's: you don't ask for ketchup at the window, bro.
b) Geno's says you can put it on your own sandwich yourself, but their owner also said if you put anything besides cheese and onions on a cheesesteak, you killed it (among other things).
c) Jim's is better than both of these clowns.

3) Clearly the Philly cheesesteak sellers could use an advisory council similar to the one that the hot dog industry has.*  The cardinal rule for hot dogs - and I think it should probably apply to all meats - is that if you are over the age of 18, you don't put ketchup on a hot dog.  You're an adult, dude.  You have a fully developed palate.  Try enjoying food instead of eating like a child.**

The court sides with the defendant.

*Note to self: look into job opportunities with the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council.
**Ketchup is a perfectly acceptable condiment for fried vegetables, but that is about it.  It should never be served on meat of any kind unless it has been transformed into another condiment altogether.

The new calendar

It's amazing to me how much stock people put into the idea of a new year.  Without getting too much into the philosophy of time - after all, time is just a construct of man to prevent everything from happening at once - I can safely say that if there's snow on the ground at 11:59 on New Year's Eve that there will still be snow on the ground when the ball drops at midnight.  Nothing is dramatically altered when we put up a new calendar: the amount of change from December 31st to January 1st is roughly equivalent to the amount of change that occurs from Flag Day Eve to Flag Day.

But yet, new year traditions abound.  Oh fuck it, let's call them what they are: superstitions.  Some say that you should throw the doors of your home open wide at midnight to allow the old year to escape, as if it were some kind of squirrel or raccoon that needed to be ushered out of your house.  Seems like actual squirrels or raccoons would be more likely to come into your house in this circumstance, which would be in direct violation of the "first-footer" superstition that demands the first visitor of a house in the new year be a healthy, prosperous man of dark complexion.  Then there's the notion that nothing should leave the house on New Year's Day - not even garbage - as it is a harbinger of net loss in the new year.  I feel bad for anybody who throws a party, especially one where people follow the age-old practice of vomiting out the demons of the past year.*

Of course, these superstitions also tend to involve food.  I remember growing up in a house that always had some variety of pork and sauerkraut on January 1st.  What I didn't know as a child (and I'm not sure if the family knew either) is that this came about because the pig roots forward when it forages.  Cows stand still when they graze and chickens scratch backward into the dirt when they peck for food.  So, symbolically, eating pork is a testament to progress.  A little strange that we don't emulate other pig behaviors on New Year's Day, though I suppose if you're one of the aforementioned garbage retainers you could make the argument that you're wallowing in your own filth for the sake of future prosperity.

Interestingly, there's no hidden meaning behind the sauerkraut: it was simply a readily available winter vegetable that was complimentary to the traditional pork.  Though I'm not superstitious, I'm happy to learn that I wasn't ushering in bad tidings by turning my nose up to this rotting cabbage for the past thirty-some years.

This year, I think I'm going to make a bacon-wrapped pork loin roast (because if pigs really do bring good fortune, why not double up?), some Hoppin' John - traditional Southern New Year's food with black-eyed peas, rice, chopped vegetables and smoked pork (I'm using jowl bacon, but a hock will do just fine) - and Dijon slaw with fresh cabbage and carrot, prepared thusly:
1/2 lb. grated carrots
1/2 lb. shredded cabbage
1-1/2 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1-1/2 tbsp. scallions
1 tbsp. chopped parsley
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. dried rosemary
1/2 tsp. sugar

Combine carrots, scallions and parsley.  Thoroughly mix mustard, olive oil, vinegar, salt, rosemary and sugar, then combine with carrot mixture.  Chill overnight, then combine equal parts carrot mixture and cabbage before serving.

Happy New Year everybody!

*OK, I made that vomit thing up, but here's a big list of actual new year superstitions to help you ring in 2013 in a manner befitting a society without advanced technology.

Stuff your stocking (and your pork roast)

Since it took me almost a month to do an ex post facto documentation of Thanksgiving, let me see if I can't get ahead of Christmas like a responsible food blogger should do.

My parents got divorced a long time ago - pushing 30 years - so for as long as I can remember I've had two Christmas celebrations, one with Mom's family and one with Dad's.  Each holiday gathering has its own traditions, including the food.  Uncle Mike (my dad's brother) always brings these little roll-up appetizers - pickles and cream cheese wrapped in dried beef - that I just can't get enough of.  Grandma Rose (my mom's mom) brings her caponata, an Italian cross between ratatouille and salsa that's heavy on eggplant and olives and suspended in a sweet and sour tomato sauce.  Both sides have a traditional Christmas ham: mom's is a spiral sliced Honeybaked, dad's is hand carved and served with simple sandwich fixins.  There's usually a complementary poultry on dad's side; most years it's pulled chicken though there's occasionally an upgrade to roast goose or duck.  On mom's side the secondary meat is a bacon-wrapped pork loin stuffed with bread dressing that her butcher calls a "Colorado roast."  It's always one of my holiday favorites (because, no surprise, I love pork) but I've always found it to be slightly lacking.  This year, I aim to fix that.

For one thing, I have no idea why they call this a "Colorado roast."  A quick Google search reveals that they are the only butcher shop in the world that uses this terminology (they're not located in Colorado, by the way).  So if regional reference is out, then what about culinary usage?  "Colorado" is a Spanish word meaning "red" as used in the dish Chile Colorado, a red chile sauce used to marinate and smother your choice of carne.  But there's no red chile sauce in the Colorado roast, so again, I'm stumped.

Secondly (and most importantly) the roast comes pre-made and ready to cook from the butcher, which is great if you've never butterflied a pork loin before, but it requires some kitchen precision to make sure the pork is tender and that everything is safe to eat.  Whole pork needs only to be cooked to 145 degrees to be considered safe, but when you add bacon which must be cooked to 155 (not a problem since it's on the outside) and the stuffing which must be cooked to 165, the tendency is for the pork loin to dry out as the temperature rises, which isn't very appetizing.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you've probably learned by now that brine is the secret weapon for retaining moisture in lean meat.  So here's how Justin's Colorado Roast is going down: first, I'm going to brine our pork loin in a mixture of salt, sugar, chile de arbol and cumin, then I'm going to butterfly it and marinate it overnight in chile colorado sauce, then I'm going to mix up some cornbread stuffing with more chile colorado sauce and roll that into the loin before I wrap it all in bacon and roast it.  A tender, delicious and appropriately named roast that is fit for a holiday banquet.

Now, since I don't have a time machine to show you how the roast turned out 3 days from now, you're going to have to use your imagination as I show you some pictures of a similar roast I made a couple months ago.  Or, you can just make this roast for your own holiday celebration.  It's pretty good too.

First, brine your roast.  BRINE YOUR ROAST.  Lean meats almost demand to be brined, especially if they have to be cooked to a higher than normal internal temperature.  Let it sit in the brine for 24-48 hours.  It'll be worth it, trust me.

After removing the roast from the brine and rinsing it off, you're going to need to butterfly your roast.  This can be pretty tricky, but as long as you've got a sharp knife you should be all set.  What you're doing is called a "roll cut" as you're basically using your knife to unroll the pork loin.  Hold the knife parallel to the cutting board somewhere between a half-inch to an inch above it.  The thinner you cut the roast, the more surface area you have for incorporating stuffing later.

Now that you've got the loin all splayed out, you've got the option to pound it out with a meat mallet to get it to the thickness that you want.  I really wouldn't recommend going any thinner than a half inch, since you still want it to resemble a roast and not just a rolled up meat paper.  However, if you've got some thick spots in your butterflied loin, feel free to whack away until you've got a uniform thickness.

If you're going to further marinate the roast, do it now.  The extra surface area will absorb more flavor than if you marinated it whole.

Next you want to cover the entire surface of the roast with your stuffing.  Like I said, for Christmas I'm planning on using a cornbread stuffing, but for this roast I used Monterey Jack cheese and green chiles.  Once you've got a liberal application of stuffing mixture, roll the roast back up until it looks like its original shape.  It's going to have a seam in it, so you're going to have to tie the roast up with twine.  If you're wrapping it in bacon, the twine goes on the outside (duh).

For the record, I rubbed this roast with Bolner's fajita seasoning and placed it on a bed of onions, bell peppers and whole garlic cloves (my plan was to make pork fajitas out of the roast and the pan vegetables). It's ready to go in the oven: blast it at 450 for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 325 for about 30 minutes per pound.  The meat needs to get to 145 degrees but the stuffing needs to be 165.  A cheese based stuffing like the one above should have no trouble getting to that higher temperature if the meat around it is adequately hot.  A more dense stuffing (like the cornbread) will be a little trickier.  If you can take separate readings, do it.  If not, you can cook the whole thing until the meat reaches 160.  Your brine will help the meat retain moisture, so don't worry about blowing past 145 degrees.  Tent it in foil for 25-30 minutes: it will carry over up to safe temperature and the juices will settle throughout the roast so you don't get a gushing mess when you carve it.

Note in the photo above that I still lost some juice when I carved this.  Regardless, this pork was almost perfect: beautifully colored (pink pork, as long as it's cooked to proper temperature, is safe to eat), fork tender and robustly flavored.  I can't wait to plop this down next to the Christmas ham this year.  A roast worthy of any foodie holiday.

TurkeyFest Part 2: Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

Before we start, I suggest you read Part 1 where I explain the origins of TurkeyFest.  It's going to be a minute before I talk about food and I don't want you to get lost without the back story. 

I met Russell in college when I was a sophomore (that's him on the left and me on the right, being oddly charming in the presence of girls circa 1999).  He lived down the hall from me and we piqued each other's interest with our off-beat tastes in music (I was getting into indie rock and weird breakbeat techno, he was all about power pop and being "down with the clown.")  One night early on in our friendship, we were talking about where we grew up.  It went something like this:

Me: I moved to Toledo when I was in the 6th grade.
Russ: I grew up there.  What part?
Me: Well, I guess it wasn't really Toledo that we moved to.  It was Sylvania, really.
Russ: Yeah, uh, me too.  Where in Sylvania?
Me: Well, I guess it wasn't really Sylvania proper so much as it was Sylvania Township.
Russ: Um, whoa.  Me too.  Where did you live?
Me: Off of Whiteford Road.
Russ: No.  Fuck you.  What street?
Me: Janet Avenue.
Russ: <runs away screaming like a dude in a David Blaine special>

We lived across the street from each other.  Not at the same time, mind you, but we both played baseball with the neighborhood kids in the vacant lot next to his house, we both knew about the dirt-bike track back in the woods off State Line Road and we both knew that the guy who lived on the corner was a pederast.  After that revelation, Russell and I developed a special bond and a friendship that has endured through tragedy and triumph.

In 2005, Russell asked me if I'd come to work for his family's business, a little apparel and merchandise shop out in Versailles, Ohio where his family had moved to just before he started high school.  They were looking to expand their sales in the political market to follow up on the mild success they'd had catering to labor unions.  I was delivering for a pizza shop at the time and thought it seemed like the adult decision to make, even if I was actually taking a pay cut to do it.  A few years later, we were the primary manufacturers and fulfillment house for the Barack Obama campaign.  Things were going well, to say the least.

Russell met Elissa and got married in 2009 (that's me presiding over their ceremony, reading the script from a Blackberry).  They're perfect for each other in that they're not afraid to dream and they're not afraid to take a risk in support of those dreams so long as they have each other.  Elissa moved to Chicago last year to pursue a career in comedy: studying, writing and performing at Second City among other hilarious things.  Russell stayed in Ohio, balancing his obligations between his wife and his business by logging entirely too many miles on Interstates 70 and 65.  The business, which had been booming in 2008 was hit hard by the recession and limped along for years.  As part of a company restructuring, Russell made his exit and started packing for Chicago to be with Elissa again.

Those final developments happened just as I was making plans for this year's TurkeyFest.  I called Russ to ask him when he was leaving.  He said it would be around December 1st.  I asked if we should have TurkeyFest this year; given all of the drama this fall, I wouldn't have held it against him if he just wanted to bolt out of town as soon as he could.  "I'll stay for TurkeyFest," he said.  It seemed a fitting last hurrah for Russell in Columbus, an appropriate celebration of the changing face of OxFam, but this joyous yearly tradition was taking on a somber tone.

I knew this was going to be a pretty big event - TurkeyFest usually reels in about 20 people over the course of the day - so I talked to my buddy Ryan who owns the Tree Bar here in Columbus about renting the bar out to accommodate the larger-than-normal crowd.  I'll take this opportunity to plug the Tree Bar: one of my favorite places to drink and watch rock shows also happens to be an excellent place to throw a private party on a Sunday night.  Thanks Ryan...

ASIDE: Yeah, this happened a while ago and you may not find these descriptions of turkey preparation helpful for quite some time, but if you're looking for some interesting ways to prepare a Christmas bird, maybe these will give you some ideas.  SPOILER ALERT: all three of my turkeys turned out great, and I honestly don't know if I could pick a favorite.

I had 3 birds: a 13 pounder, a 14.5 pounder and a mammoth 19.5 pounder.  I don't usually like to cook big birds like that because they take forever and have a tendency to dry out.  More on my plan to combat that in a second.  This year's theme was "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em."  Since I had such good luck with smoke in the summer, I decided to introduce a smoke element to every bird. The 19.5 pounder would get slow cooked in the smoker, the 14.5 pounder would be soaked in a smoked beer brine and grilled, and the 13 pounder would be the old tried-and-true "spicy turkey" but with chipotle peppers instead of sport peppers.

On Friday night (two days before the party), I pulled out the big bird and made a simple brine (standard  gallon of water, 1 cup kosher salt and 1/2 cup brown sugar, plus some garlic and Worcestershire sauce for flavor).  I ended up disassembling the turkey before brining: first I detached the drum sticks and wings, then I cracked the backbone to separate the breast from the thighs.  If I had kept the bird whole, it would've taken forever to cook in the smoker.  This way, I cut the cooking time considerably and fended off any drying out by brining and making all the pieces smaller.

On Saturday morning, I spatchcocked the 14.5 pound bird, cutting out the backbone, breaking the breast plate and removing the keel bone before laying it flat.  I made a brine with two smoked beers - 2 pints of Aecht Schlenkerla Marzen (a heavily smoked lager beer from Germany) and 3 pints of Dark Horse Fore smoked stout (part of the Dark Horse brewery's winter stout series) - plus a little apple cider and vegetable stock.  That bird sat in the brine for about 24 hours.

 
I had never spatchcocked any bird before.  It seems involved, but it really does cut the cooking time down and isn't nearly as hard as it sounds.  This method would also come in really handy later on, as I was scrambling to get everything done.  More on that in a bit.

Later that morning, I made a chipotle brine for the 13 pound turkey with a whole can of chipotle peppers, cumin, oregano and paprika.  That bird also sat in the brine for about 24 hours.

Saturday night, I took out a few handfuls of oak wood chunks and put them in a pan, then emptied a bottle of Old Crow whiskey so they could soak it up.  My hope was that I would get the same effect as using oak from old bourbon barrels.  I have two old bourbon barrels in my basement, but Erin won't let me chop them up into homemade smoker chunks.

Sunday morning, I started the smoker up around 9 o'clock and put my bird pieces on over the bourbon-soaked wood chunks about an hour later.  It took me a while (and the addition of a lot more hot coals) before I finally got the smoker temperature up to where I wanted it, but the oak smoke kept hitting the meat, so I was OK with it even though I knew I was going to have a timing problem at the end of the day.

I decided to do the spicy turkey ASAP so I could clear up room in the oven for the smoker bird, if it came to that.  Here's how it works: first you season two sticks of butter with salt and cayenne pepper.  If I had been thinking clearly, I would've used the ground chipotle pepper I have in the pantry.  Hindsight 20/20 on that one, I suppose.

The butter slabs go in the freezer while the rest of the turkey is prepped.  Having them cold makes them a lot easier to work with later.  Next we whip up a stuffing mixture of onion, bell pepper, chipotle peppers, garlic, salt, cayenne pepper and white vinegar.  Gotta mince this all really fine, because you'll want it that way when you realize how you're going to cram it in the turkey.

Here comes the fun part: grab a small, sharp paring knife and start cutting slits in the breast meat from inside the cavity.  You're gonna be like, "whoa, whoa, whoa, isn't all the juice just going to run out of my turkey that way?"  No way, dude.  Remember all that butter in your freezer?  When you stuff those (and your pepper stuffing) into those slits, the butter is going to baste the meat as it melts.  Plus it doesn't hurt that you brined it, because you're really smart. (BTW, I promise the next picture is not weird porn.)

After you're done stuffing all those slits in the breast meat (and hell, why not flavor up the thighs, legs and wings too, if you're feeling so bold), throw any leftover stuffing into the cavity and truss your bird closed.  If you've never trussed a turkey, chicken or other poultry, I highly recommend it.  Not only does it cut down on cooking time since you're making a nice uniform roast out of a gangly bird, but the finished product is Norman Rockwell-quality and perfect for "oohs" and "ahhs" before carving at the table.  It's also relatively easy to do, plus you get to learn a new knot.

Season the outside of the bird with salt and cayenne pepper (again, for this variation I should've used ground chipotle pepper).  Start the bird breast side down: you want to protect the delicate breast meat from the high initial heat.  Roast it at 450 for 20 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350.  90 minutes into the process, flip the turkey over so the breast side is up.  If it looks pale, don't worry: it's got 90 minutes to brown up.  After 3 hours, the turkey should be up to a safe temperature (165 in the breast) and should look and smell amazing.  This is a show-stopping crowd pleaser, ladies and gents.

I fired up my Weber kettle grill with charcoal and had the spatchcocked bird on by 1 o'clock.  The primary advantage to spatchcocking is that it speeds up the cooking process, but I was having trouble with keeping my grill hot too.  I made a "ring of fire" around the outside of the grill to indirect cook the bird and keep the temperature uniform, but I don't think I had enough coals to start, so when I put the lid on the fire just petered out.

When the spicy bird was out (about 3 o'clock), I temp checked the smoker bird and the spatchcocked bird.  They were both around 130-140 in the breast, so despite my fire troubles, I was most of the way there.  I transferred both turkeys to the 350 degree oven (spatchcocking a bird meant it could lie flat on the bottom rack while the smoked bird stood tall on the middle rack; plenty of oven space) and let them cook in there until they got to safe temp.  The oven finish also crisped up the skin in a very nice way.

While those birds were in the oven, I set a 12 oz. package of cranberries in foil on the smoker for about an hour and a half, then attempted to make a BBQ sauce with them but I couldn't get the texture right.  I adjusted the flavor to something that was acceptable and decided not to call it BBQ sauce anymore.  I also made a vegetarian apple cider gravy: starting with a standard roux base, I added apple cider and vegetable stock at about a 5:1 ratio, plus some onion powder and ground ginger.

Everything was done by 4 o'clock except the smoked turkey thigh meat which took another 25 minutes or so.  I had to rest everything before carving, and I was pushing up against my deadline (party was starting at 5), but we got out the door by 5:10 with three turkeys in tow and ended up being only fashionably late to the party instead of tragically late.

Not to brag or anything, but all three of my turkeys were juicy and fork tender in addition to be remarkably flavorful.  I think my only stumble is that the spicy turkey wasn't bursting with that smoky chipotle flavor that I was going for; I should've used more chipotles in the stuffing and replaced the cayenne with ground chipotle pepper.  The spatchcocked bird had an almost decadent richness to it from the deep, complex maltiness of the smoked stout brine.  The smoked turkey appeared to steal the show, though.  Wood smoke is a tough element to get right: too little and it's not worth the effort, too much and it can mask the meat with undesirable bitterness.  I got just the right amount of smoke flavor in the bird and it was gobbled up (bad pun, sorry) in no time.

Actually, we had about 30 people and within an hour of opening the buffet line, all the carved white meat and most of the dark meat on all three turkeys was gone.  All that was left were legs and wings.  I was actually kind of disappointed that there were two renaissance fair-quality smoked turkey legs sitting in the buffet warmer at the end of the night.  I quickly got over that when I accepted the reality that I would get to eat those.

Surprise of the night: the cranberry sauce that I was not particularly fond of ended up being the hit of the party.  Just goes to prove that sometimes you get rewarded just for showing up.  It's a lot like friendship: even when you don't think what you're doing is earth-shattering, you never know what it's going to mean to a friend.  That's what I'm going to miss most with Russell not being in my neighborhood anymore.  Dude always showed up, I just don't know if I ever let him know how much it meant to me.