July 4 Celebration

Each year, we celebrate the Fourth of July and the country where we live. I am not a political person, but this year, I am decidedly not feeling at all patriotic, nor am proud of certain things that are happening in our country. Still, we persevered with our celebration in the hopes that this country will right itself. Right is a poor choice of verbs in this instance. Perhaps I should have chosen the verb center.

We invited Rob, Dyce, Dyce's parents who are in town from Italy, and new friend Brad to throw down with us.

Lyn, Brad, Neal, Dyce, Ann, and Rob

The menu ended up as a pseudo-Greek affair. I like burgers for the 4th, but had a hankering for my lamb burgers which blow beef burgers out of the water. From there, it was not a stretch to want to pair the burgers with tzatziki and horiatiki. But then, Ann wanted orzo too, so I combined the orzo and horiatiki to create a cold pasta salad. Then I wanted an appetizer I could make in advance, so after a bit of head scratching, decided on tiropitakia, cheese-filled phyllo pastries. Ann volunteered to make her delicious berry and brioche summer pudding and asked me to make a sorbet. We settled on lemon-thyme and the menu was complete. The recipe for the sorbet is in a separate post.

Some wine was drunk; some food was eaten; some fun was had!

Lamb Burger with Feta and Pine Nuts

I love my lamb burgers and this year, for a change, I recorded a rough recipe because I have had requests for it in the past.

Lamb Burger Recipe

This recipe scales well so I have expressed it in terms of seasonings for a single pound of lamb. In reality, I made a 4-pound batch and I eyeballed everything. It is always a good idea when mixing a batch of forcemeat like this, to cook a tiny bit and adjust the seasonings to your liking. Also, this mix gains flavor in the refrigerator so plan on mixing everything a day or even two in advance. I scaled out six-ounce burgers, my preferred size.

Per pound of ground lamb:

1/4 c dry white wine (substitute red wine or water or stock)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon dried Greek oregano

1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes

1/4 teaspoon Pimentón de la Vera agridulce (smoked paprika)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced (I used way more than this!)

small handful of toasted pine nuts

2 ounces sheep’s milk feta, crumbled

optional, if you have spice grinder:

pinch dried rosemary, finely ground

pinch dried thyme, finely ground 

Procedure:

Mix liquids and solids well to distribute salt and spices.

Add lamb and gently mix. Using hands is best.

Refrigerate overnight or two nights.

Patty into burgers or shape into kefta (oval meatballs)

Cook to desired temperature. I like medium rare.

Tiropitakia and Tzatziki

Tiropitakia Ready for Oven

Our appetizer was the tiropitakia (little cheese pies) that you see in photos above. I just went with my gut which said to mix chopped kalamata olives, chopped marinated sun-dried tomatoes, oregano, lemon zest, and grated pecorino cheese with a tub of ricotta cheese. For savory pastries like this, I brush the phyllo layers with olive oil (and for sweet pastries, I use butter). I brushed the tops of the little triangles with olive oil and sprinkled them with oregano and coarse salt before baking until browned in a moderate oven. A recipe for tzatiki is in this post.

Orzo Salad

The pasta salad was simple. I mixed a bunch of olive oil, lemon juice, kalamata brine, and oregano (my usual horiatiki dressing) in a large bowl. Then I cut the horiatiki vegetables and cheese smaller than usual, because otherwise, they would dwarf the small orzo pasta. The usual suspects are: tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and feta. I omitted peppers because I didn't feel like I wanted them. So there.

I put all the salad ingredients into the dressing for about an hour to marinate. The red onions, I sliced very thin and soaked in several changes of cold water to mellow them out. In the morning, I par-cooked the orzo a couple minutes shy of being done, knowing that it would finish softening in the refrigerator. This is a useful technique for all pasta salads. After cooling the pasta under running water, it went into the vegetables and I tasted for salt. Salt this salad carefully because the kalamata brine, olives, and feta are already salty.

Into the fridge to mellow for a few hours the salad went. Just before serving the appetizers, I put the salad in a serving bowl and garnished with the onions. Just before serving dinner, I mixed everything well to distribute the onions and redistribute the dressing.

Ann's Beautiful Summer Berry and Brioche Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

Good Times: A Mutt of an Italian Meal

Ann and I, like most Americans, love Italian food, especially peasant food, cucina povere, for its simple and honest flavors. Unlike most Americans, however, we would almost never go out to eat at an Italian restaurant. Why pay for food that is so easy to make better at home? Although I don't think we necessarily set out to have an Italian-themed dinner, it turned out so and the saga follows.

What's Better Than Chianti Classico?
A Jeroboam of Chianti Classico Riserva!

Ann's a full-blooded Italian, no matter how you slice it. She's adopted. Her birth parents are both napoletani and her adoptive parents are calabrese and barese (pugliese) respectively. So she's spicy and opinionated southern Italian through and through. You would think that the menus that she comes up with would be southern-inflected, but really, she has no problem mixing and matching from the various corners of Italy, something that would be frowned upon in the old country. I don't know that she set out to have an Italian dinner, but that's where we ended up after she asked me to make braciole.

Such is our menu planning that Ann asks "Will you make this?" and I do. Sometimes I throw in an idea or two or a refinement here and there, but mostly because I can and will cook anything, more often than not, I leave the broad strokes of the menu to Ann. If it pleases her to have a dish, I am pleased to make it for her. I think I may have suggested gnocchi alla romana as a sop for the braciole braising sauce, but I no longer remember. It was a tag-team effort in both menu composition and cooking.

The menu in this cold, pre-Christmas season for our quasi-holiday dinner before our friends all get wrapped up in their own holiday travels and plans is pretty much all down to Ann. We split the cooking. For our antipasto, I whipped up a batch of bagna càuda from Piemonte via Provence in France. For dinner, Ann made a primo of baked polenta, also from the north in Lombardia and neighbors, while I made a secondo of braciole, a dish from Calabria and Sicilia (where the little meat bundles are called involtini). And for the dolce course, Ann made a ricotta cheesecake, cosmopolitan to Italy with Greek origins. So, quite naturally, the wine we selected was from Tuscany, just to further mix up the regions!

Hence the title of this post: a mutt of an Italian meal. And I mean this is the best of ways. Although there can be some pejorative meaning to the word mutt, as dog lovers, Ann and I know that the non-purebred dogs, the rescue mutts from the shelters, are often the best dogs combining the best traits of many breeds. And by extension, we hope our menu combines the best of the many regions of Italy.

Ann decided for this dinner that we should be a bit more formal than most of our meals that are consumed around the island in the kitchen, so she set a beautiful, simple, and tasteful table in the dining room. 

As guests Rob and Dyce and Michelle and Andreas were arriving, I was reheating the pot of bagna càuda on a low flame so that it would be good and hot for our appetizer course. If you speak any Romance language at all, you will recognize the term bagna càuda in the piemontese dialect means "hot bath." And indeed, bagna càuda is a hot bath into which to dip bread and/or crudités, typically bitter vegetables such as chicories (endives) and cardoons. For our little soirée, I used what I had in the refrigerator: sweet peppers, carrots, celery, and cucumbers.

Unappetizing Looking Bagna Càuda

Now on to what bagna càuda is for those of you who have not experienced this culinary delight that looks much like oily mud, nearly off-putting in appearance by all accounts. It is a mix of three ingredients: anchovies, garlic, and olive oil. The amalgam of these three ingredients is way more than the sum of the three individual ingredients, but you have to allow yourself to try it without prejudice. Only then can you decide if it is for you.

If you think a salty, funky, umami-laden oily mix of anchovies and garlic is a culinary delight, you are welcome at our table. Otherwise, maybe take a hard pass on dinner at our house where we make food for people who like to eat anything and everything.

My canonical recipe (actually, it is a ratio, not a recipe) for bagna càuda is one head of garlic to 3 tins of anchovies (90-100 grams) to one-half cup (100-125ml) of extra virgin olive oil. Step one is to soften the garlic so that you can make a paste of it. I like to do so by poaching it in milk and after the milk is drained away, I mash the garlic with a wooden spoon. Then I add the anchovies and heat them a bit over low flame to get them falling apart, then add the oil. If you like (as I like), rather than stirring and stirring, use an immersion blender to smooth out the sauce. Serve warm to hot.

Poaching Garlic in Milk

Mashed Garlic Awaiting Anchovies

While we were in the kitchen dipping our veggies in bagna càuda and washing it down with the double magnum of Chianti, the braciole and the polenta were both in the oven finishing up. At some point in the evening, I pulled them both out of the oven and we grabbed our glasses of wine and headed to the dining room to grab our plates to fill them with dinner.

Pork Braciole in Marinara, Baked Polenta

Pork Braciole in Marinara

Baked Polenta

Making braciole is relatively simple, but it does take some effort and patience. While it is more traditionally made from beef, such as flank cut thin, I prefer to make it out of pork shoulder which I find more flavorful and more tender. Although you can buy in some meat markets thin slices for braciole, I prefer to buy a roast and cut and pound my own. Below, you see a deboned pork shoulder on my cutting board along with my industry-standard meat pounder, a small frying pan.

I've been in a bunch of restaurant kitchens, and by and large, every cook I've ever seen pounding out meat used the bottom of a frying pan to do so. Slice your roast into quarter-inch steaks and then flatten them to an eighth of an inch. To pound the meat, place a slice on the cutting board and cover it with a piece of film wrap, then use the flat of the frying pan to gently persuade the meat to flatten out. It doesn't generally take a lot of force.

Pork Shoulder with Ersatz Meat Pounder

Pounded Pieces of Pork Shoulder, Trim Cut for Carnitas or Ragù

Braciole are quite often stuffed with a bread crumb mixture. For this dinner, we needed to keep the filling gluten-free, so Ann and I kicked about ideas, landing ultimately on white beans which Ann asked if I would flavor with guanciale, cured hog jowl. To start the filling, I smoothed out 3/4 of the beans to a purée in the robot coupe while rendering a really fine dice of guanciale on the stove. After removing the almost browned guanciale from the pan, I cooked a really finely diced onion in the guanciale fat. To the cannellini purée, I added the browned guanciale bits, the onions and their oil, a bunch of pesto, and the remaining quarter of whole beans, for texture. Naturally, I salted to taste.

Rendering Fine Dice of Guanciale

Braciola Stuffing: Cannellini Purée, Whole Cannellini, Pesto, Guanciale,
Onions Cooked in Guanciale Fat

You roll braciole exactly as you would a burrito or an egg roll. Place a small amount of filling toward the top center of the meat and fold the top down and over the filling. Fold the sides in to the center to encase the filling, then roll from the top down to close the packet. Secure with one or more toothpicks. I prefer the longer wooden drink garnish picks; the extra length means that I only need one to secure the packet. Sometimes this takes two toothpicks.

Once the packets are assembled, brown them in a pan on all sides and remove to a braising dish. Meanwhile, make a marinara. My braising pan typically takes a half gallon of sauce to cover the meat that I am braising. Marinara is trivial to make (and we used to make it on the fly at the restaurant whenever a parent would request pasta marinara for a child). For a rough half gallon, put two 28-ounce cans of tomatoes in your blender along with four large cloves worth of minced garlic, a pinch of salt, a tablespoon of dried basil, and a pinch of pepperoncini (crushed red pepper flakes). Blitz it and voilà!

Starting to Brown Braciole

Browned Braciole Ready to be Covered in Marinara

After covering the browned braciole in marinara, cover the brasier (I use aluminum foil, unnecessary if you are using a dish with a cover) and place it on a sheet tray; braciole love to bubble over and create a mess on the bottom of the oven. Braise in a moderate oven for 2 to 3 hours. You'll know they're done when they are fork tender.

To accompany the braciole, I wanted a starch to act as a sop for all the leftover marinara. In Italy, the sauce would often be ladled over pasta as a first course with the meat served afterwards. Ann and I, we wanted something more elegant for our dinner and I proposed gnocchi alla romana, made by cooking semolina, letting it set up on a sheet tray, cutting out rounds, and baking those rounds nicely arranged in a gratin with a sprinkle of cheese until prettily browned.

How silly of me to propose that, given that we needed to keep the dinner gluten-free and semolina is ground wheat. How fortunate though that Ann mistakenly grabbed the container of polenta (which is ground corn) from the pantry instead of the container of semolina! Not trusting the polenta cooked in milk and augmented with egg yolks and butter to fully set up enough to be cut into rounds, Ann put it directly into a baking dish and we baked the whole thing under a thin crust of pecorino romano.

Stirring Polenta

Polenta Ready for Cheese and the Oven

Ann's final contribution to our dinner was a ricotta cheesecake, made without a crust to keep it gluten-free. You can make cheesecake with almost any soft unripened small curd cheese: cream cheese, farmer cheese à la the German quarkkuchen, or ricotta in the Italian style.

Cheesecake is one of the simplest desserts to make and I have made untold hundreds during my career. Here are some tips born of experience.

The basic formula is to figure out how much cheese your springform pan requires and work from there. Naturally, at the restaurant, we were making several cakes at a time; fortunately, the basic ratio scales quite well. At home, our 10" x 2.5" springform mold holds four pounds of cheese without breaking a sweat which works out quite well for ricotta which comes in convenient 2 pound containers. The ratio continues with 2 eggs per pound plus an additional egg for every two pounds, thus 10 eggs for this batch. So, 7-8 eggs for a three-pound brick of cream cheese, if you are going that route.

For each two pounds of cheese, three-quarters of a cup of sugar seems to be about right, though I always add less to start and add flavorings to taste. The amount of sugar can vary based on how sour the cheese is (cream cheese tends to be much more tart than ricotta) as well as the flavorings you are adding. If your flavorings are sweet, you might need less sugar; bitter, such as espresso, you might need more sugar. For additional flavorings, Ann added a good slug of Mexican vanilla and the zest of three lemons.

As an aside, you may not want any sugar at all if you are making a savory cheesecake. We used to make blue cheese cheesecakes with walnut crusts that we would bake in shallow tart pans to pair with certain sweet wines. These cakes required no to minimal sugar. I can remember making black olive and rosemary tarts to accompany wild boar. Your imagination is really the limit with cheesecakes.

Although I always baked my cheesecakes in a slow oven in a water bath (covering the bottom of the pan with aluminum foil to avoid water infiltration), you can certainly bake them in a slow oven without a water bath, which is what Ann did in this case. In any case, 325-350F is about right, though we never had a thermometer on our ovens at the restaurant. You will almost certainly have to tent the top of the cakes with aluminum foil to keep them from burning, simply because the top is going to brown long before the center is set. So, cook your cheesecake uncovered until it is as brown as you would like, then tent it for the duration with aluminum foil.

How long a cheesecake requires in the oven depends on way too many factors to give a hard and fast rule, so do as we did in the restaurant and as Ann did with this one: cook it until it is done. At first, the center of the cake, when you shake it gently, will be liquid and will slosh back and forth. As the cake cooks, it will set from the outer edge and move towards the center. As the cake cooks, the batter will puff up. When it is evenly puffed all the way to the center, you can be pretty certain that it is done. Do not be surprised when the cake settles as it cools.

When cheesecakes come out of the oven, I like to let them cool a few minutes, then run a spatula between the cake and the side walls of the mold. Then I'll crack the mold open, but leave it in place on the cake and let it finish cooling. Separating the mold from the cake in the early cooling stages will help avoid cracks in the cake as it cools. Cheesecakes shrink slightly as they cool and if the edges of the cake adhere to the sides of the pan, the center may shrink away from the edges and tear cracks in your beautiful cake.

Mad Scientist Flavoring the Batter

Done to Perfection

Dusted with Espresso Sugar

Freaking Delicious Ricotta Cheesecake with Hints of Lemon and Espresso

We, the six of us, all had a wonderful time and enjoyed our meal thoroughly. After dinner, Andreas, Rob, and I held forth at the dinner table while the other three, the youngsters of the group, disappeared to the family room. Next thing I knew, the family room erupted in 80's and 90's pop and hip-hop and there was a full-fledged dance party going on! Some parting shots below.

'Tis the Season!

Shout Out to the Chianti Classico Consortium

Goat Cheese-Ricotta Gnocchi

Making cheese gnocchi is really quite simple in that it takes almost no extraordinary kitchen skills. I've taught school kids to make gnocchi, so if they can do it, you can do it. What it does take is feel and that is something that you gain by doing; you cannot learn feel from a recipe. After a couple of batches, you will begin to get the feel.

Boiled Goat Cheese Gnocchi

What I can distill from my restaurant experience of making a batch every afternoon is that a wetter dough is a better dough, to a point. In other words, have a very deft and light touch with the flour. Adding too much flour and kneading the flour makes for terribly heavy and unappealing gnocchi.

Recipe: Goat Cheese-Ricotta Gnocchi

A basic formula for cheese gnocchi, enough to serve four people, follows. You can scale this recipe as you like; I often make double batch to ensure six to eight portions.

1 pound of soft cheese*
1/2 cup grated pecorino romano
2 eggs
1/2 cup to 1 cup of flour, plus more to dust the counter and your hands

*In the photo below, I made a 2-pound batch consisting of 11 ounces (a single log of goat cheese) and the balance (15 ounces) of ricotta. If you are using goat cheese, make sure that it is at room temperature so that it is easy to work.

You can add salt to the gnocchi dough or not as you see fit. I think they have enough salt from the pecorino.

Bring a pot of water to a slow boil.

Mix the cheeses and eggs well. Then add 1/2 cup of flour and stir in. Next, using your well-floured hands, remove the very sticky dough to a well-floured counter. Sprinkle on extra flour as necessary to roll into logs of between 3/4-inch and 1-inch in diameter.

Using a floured bench knife or scraper, cut off a gnocchi-sized segment. Drop the gnoccho into the boiling water. In a minute or two, it will have cooked and floated to the top. It is possible that if you have not added sufficient flour that the little dumpling will have disintegrated. In that case, add flour by tiny bits and test until you have a dumpling that cooks successfully and floats to the top.

Now it's time to start making batches of gnocchi, a dozen to a dozen-and-a-half at a time. When they float, scoop them out, drain them well, and place on an oiled sheet tray until all the gnocchi are done.

At this point, you can sauce them as-is and eat right away. Or you can oil them, cover the pan with film, and place them in the refrigerator to firm to cook later. I recook mine in a single layer in a sauté pan in oil or butter and lightly brown them before saucing them. Sometimes to reheat them, I put them in a baking dish, drizzle on melted butter (or olive oil), sprinkle them with a little cheese, and pop them in the oven to warm and (if desired) brown on top.

Just be aware that with a high goat cheese content, the gnocchi are going to be very soft and tender when reheated (as the goat cheese melts), so handle them gently.

Thanksgiving 2020: Lasagna

[Updated December 20, 2025: Since the inaugural lasagna of 2020, I find myself making this lasagna most Thanksgivings. Naturally, each year, I forget exactly how I made it the preceding year. I added more details and clarification this year to help with next year. I am also sketching out recipes for others who want to recreate this dish.]

Once again, it is Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. While this infamous year of 2020 has been terrible for many reasons and thankless in many regards, we should all be able to find something in our lives to be thankful for. Despite all the negatives this year, Ann and I are grateful that we and our kids are well, that the girls have not contracted COVID despite working in healthcare, that Carter has chosen a direction for his life by enlisting in the Army (and is currently at boot), and that we are able to make ends meet, even if times are lean.

Our 2020 Thanksgiving celebration will be truly odd, one spent without friends and family. None of our friends want to risk exposure by coming for dinner any more than we want to by going to their homes. Ditto for family, but our family is all back East and getting together wouldn't have been possible anyway. Still, Thanksgiving is a time to gather and celebrate and we will miss that this year. Damn this virus!

Back in September, Ann and I got to kicking around Thanksgiving and what to do, knowing that hosting friends and family was a long shot. I had, some years ago, proposed doing an off-the-wall Thanksgiving meal: a paella, all the traditional turkey and flavors rolled into one totally non-standard pan of rice cooked over a fire in the back yard. That didn't fly at the time and we shelved the idea for the future, maybe next year. In a similar spirit this highly non-traditional year, Ann asked, "Why not make a lasagna?"

Thanksgiving Lasagna: Delicious!

Why not? Ann and I have cooked decades of traditional Thanksgiving dinners, so really, why not something totally off the wall?

For me, a lasagna will be almost new territory, my experience with lasagna being scant. It's not a dish that I ever eat and the first and only lasagna that I ever made was in 1985! You cannot count those times at the restaurant when we would cook a two-foot long sheet of pasta and weave it back and forth in a bowl, putting a filling between each fold, and rushing it to the dining room. Giant pain in the rear to plate? Check. Cool dish and fun presentation? Check. Lasagna? Definitely not.

After a couple days of imagining what a Thanksgiving-style lasagna could be, I proposed to Ann to do two layers of turkey in gravy, and between those a layer of sage pork sausage in béchamel and a layer of "turkey stuffing" ricotta, ricotta flavored with all the aromatics that go into traditional Thanksgiving stuffing. Ann said, "It needs mushrooms." And so I will add some dried porcini to really amp up the pork sausage béchamel (you know that's a fancy term for what we call sausage gravy and put on our biscuits down South!). Finally, I decided to top the whole shebang with cornbread breadcrumbs to give it a great top crust.

Despite its appearance, this dish is not a simple one. It entails significant prep work spread over days: roasting turkey with pancetta butter under the skin, making cornbread and cornbread breadcrumbs, making turkey stock, making turkey gravy, prepping and sweating the mirepoix for the ricotta, making the sausage, and then the sausage béchamel. This is all before par-cooking any lasagne and building and baking the lasagna, the fun part in which Ann and I will make a little mess in the kitchen.

Fortunately, almost all of the work can be done in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, leaving just the easy and fun part for the day of. The best thing about spreading the prep out over several days is spreading the resulting dishes out over several days too. There is nothing quite like making a complicated meal requiring hours of work only to be confronted by mountains of dishes afterward.

The results were fantastic. Sometimes dishes that take a lot of effort to prepare are not worth the effort. This was not one of those times. A highlight for the both of us were the super crunchy cornbread breadcrumbs on top.

The following post outlines how I make the dish over five days. You could certainly do it in fewer; four is easy and three is not bad. Two days is pushing your luck and stamina. The following recipes are scaled to fit a standard restaurant half hotel pan with rough interior dimensions of 11.5"L x 9.25"W x 2.5"D. This will yield up to 12 portions of lasagne, though I often cut it into eight.

You will need the following equipment for this lasagna:

half-hotel pan or other similar sized baking pan
food processor (for pancetta butter)
sausage grinder (for sausage)
stock pot (for stock)
roasting pan (for turkey thighs)

Shopping Day (was Monday November 16, 2020)

Because of COVID, I have no desire to be out at the grocery store shopping along with the crowds the week of Thanksgiving, so I am doing all my shopping the week before. Everything will keep or can go in the freezer. The turkey parts that I want, necks for the gravy and stock and thighs for the turkey layers, are frozen when I buy them at the store, so they go right back into the freezer once home.

My timing at the grocery store proves to be impeccable. After searching for turkey thighs without luck but having been told that they would be for sale, I approach a man stocking a meat case and ask him about them. As he finishes slicing open the box in front of him, he reaches inside and pulls out a package of frozen turkey thighs for me. I am almost too early to get them. I am so glad that I do not have to make another trip to the store with COVID spiking again.

Shopping List

Produce

Orange, seedless, 1 (for relish)
Cranberries, 12 ounces (for relish)

Onions yellow, 2 large (1 for stock, 1 for ricotta)
Leek, 1 large (leaves for stock, remainder for ricotta mix)
Celery, 1 head (for stock, for ricotta mix)
Garlic, 1 head (for sausage)

Italian parsley, 1 bunch (for stock, ricotta mix)

Sage, 1 bunch (for stock, for ricotta mix, for sausage) dried also works well)

Thyme, 2 bunches (for stock, ricotta mix, rillettes, sausage)

Meat

Turkey necks, 4 pounds (for stock and rillettes)

Turkey thighs, 6-7 pounds (for lasagna)

Pancetta, 4 ounces (for pancetta butter)

Bacon, 1/2 pound (for rillettes)

Fatty pork shoulder, 1 pound (for sausage)

Spices

Nutmeg, whole, 1 (for rillettes)

Sage, dried, to taste (if needed, for sausage, ricotta mix)

Salt, to taste

Black pepper, to taste

Crushed red pepper flakes, to taste

Dairy

Ricotta cheese, 1 pint

Butter, 4 ounces

Pecorino romano, 4 ounces
Milk, 1 quart (for cornbread, béchamel)
Eggs, 4 large (for cornbread, for ricotta mix)

Mozzarella, grated, 2-3 cups (for lasagna)

Pantry

Sugar, granulated, 1/2 cup 

Porcini mushrooms, dried, 1 ounce

Cornmeal, 2 cups
Flour, all purpose, 3 cups (for cornbread, béchamel, gravy)

Lasagne, 22 each (2 boxes)

White wine, 1/2 cup (for sausage)

Vegetable oil or pan spray

Sunday (was Sunday November 22, 2020)

Thanksgiving prep begins today, five days out from the big event. I take the turkey thighs out of the freezer to thaw over the next couple of days. Today's job is making the stock from which I will ultimately make the gravy. First thing this morning, four pounds of turkey necks that I thawed over the last couple of days go into the oven at 350F to roast. After an hour or 90 minutes, I flip them over and roast them another 45 minutes to an hour. Timing is not critical as long as they brown well on all sides.

Turkey Necks Ready for the Oven

Turkey necks are one of my favorite parts of the bird and are a source of fine and flavorful dark meat. I always make my stock from them. Besides being great for stock, necks are also delicious eating on their own. One of my favorite ways to prepare them is to brine them and then smoke them low and slow until they are deliciously golden and falling apart, a sinful treat.

Turkey Stock Mise en Place

Great gravy requires great stock and great stock requires patience. After the necks roast for the better part of the morning, the stock takes the entire afternoon, coming down from a gallon to about a quart and a half, all told.

To make the stock, the roasted necks go into a stock pot with all their pan drippings; the tough outer leaves of a leek; a medium onion, chopped with peel on; a heart of celery, chopped; two of my last remaining sprigs of lovage; a bunch of English thyme; and a sprig of sage. This gets covered in water and left to simmer all afternoon. The house smells like Thanksgiving which is so appropriate because it is gray and 37 degrees and raw and miserable outside. The kitchen should be and is a haven, a pleasant respite from outside.

Turkey Stock and Neck Meat

After cooking at the barest simmer all afternoon, the stock is ready. Ann helps strain the stock and I put it into containers for the refrigerator. Once the necks cool enough to handle, I start picking the meat, a favorite task of mine because it reminds me of picking necks with my mother. It is extremely difficult to pick all the meat from the neck bones with your fingers, leaving delicious morsels to eat for anyone willing to suck on the bones. I helped my mom picked neck bones just for this reason, so that I could snack on the remaining meat. I give Ann a few necks bones to try; they are delicious.

Turkey Neck Stock

This recipe will yield a quart and a half of stock, enough to moisten the turkey neck rillettes and to make the turkey gravy. In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, I often collect miscellaneous scraps in a bag in the freezer to augment the stock. This might include chicken bones/skin, thyme stems, parsley stems, onion peels, leek leaves, and so forth. The list below is the bare minimum for making stock.

4 pounds turkey necks

1 cup water, chicken stock, or vegetable stock for deglazing

outer leaves of one leek

1 medium onion, cut in 1/8ths with peel on

1 heart of celery or three outer stalks, roughly chopped

1 small bunch of fresh thyme

1 bundle of parsley stems

1 sprig of sage

Water to cover, several quarts

Roast four pounds of turkey necks, rubbed with oil, in a moderate oven, say 350F. Flip them when they are well browned, after about an hour. Continue to roast, about another 45 minutes, until well browned all around.

Remove the turkey necks to a stock pot. Deglaze the roasting pan with the cup of water or stock, scraping well to incorporate all the brown bits from the bottom of the roasting pan.

To the necks in the stock pot, add the pan drippings and all the aromatics. Cover with water and simmer for 3-4 hours.

Strain the stock and refrigerate to solidify any fat on top of it. The fat will be the base for the gravy later on.

While the turkey necks are still warm from the stock pot, pick meat and reserve for rillettes.

Turkey Neck Rillettes

Rillettes are a happy by-product of having about a quart of turkey neck meat from the stock. Naturally, the neck meat would make a great soup, but it is the holidays and I like to celebrate with rillettes. Rillettes are hard to describe, but let me offer the phrase "meat butter."

Turkey Rillettes with Cranberry Relish

Rillettes are finely shredded meat moistened with stock, butter and/or fat (lard, bacon grease, duck fat) and seasoned with herbs and spices. Rillettes are most frequently made from fatty cuts such as pork shoulder or duck legs slowly cooked (or confited) in their own fat. Turkey necks are lean, so they take additional fat to become an unctuous meat spread.

I like to make rillettes a few days in advance of serving them; they improve in flavor in the refrigerator. They need to come to room temperature so that they are spreadable. We serve them on crackers or crostini, topped with a dab of cranberry relish.

4 cups turkey neck meat

1/2 pound bacon, rendered

1/4 pound butter, at room temperature

turkey stock, up to 1 cup

Fresh thyme leaves, to taste

Salt, to taste

Nutmeg, freshly grated, to taste

Unlike pork shoulder, turkey neck meat can be a bit stringy and tough, so mince it finely with a knife to make it easy to eat.

Render the bacon and use it for something delicious; this dish only needs the bacon grease. Let the grease cool. By all means, if you have duck fat, use that.

Bring the butter to room temperature so that it is spreadable and mixable.

Mix the turkey and the two fats. Add enough stock to make a spreadable paste. Season to taste with fresh thyme, salt, and nutmeg. You can use any spices and herbs you like and some people add a shot of Cognac or Armagnac to their rillettes. 

The rillettes will probably take more seasoning than you expect. Fat dulls the taste buds and so rillettes will benefit from being slightly over-seasoned and served with a wine with good acidity.

Monday (was Monday November 23, 2020)

Today I just have a couple of things that I want to get done: making the cornbread for the cornbread breadcrumb topping for the lasagna and making the pancetta butter to use in roasting the turkey thighs.

Cornbread Hot out of the Oven

Cornbread is a thing of beauty and I have some locally milled corn that will make delicious cornbread. This cornbread is destined to be crumbled and dried out in the oven for a topping, so I am not worried about making hipster, fluffy, tender, melt-in-your-mouth cornbread by adding a lot of leavening and fat. In fact, I am making old school pioneer-grade cornbread: equal parts flour and cornmeal, a bit of baking powder, a bit of salt, an egg, and enough milk to make it into a batter. I measure nothing: this is how I always make cornbread, by feel. The result is outstanding and Ann and I cannot resist nibbling.

Old-School Cornbread

This recipe yields a 9x9 pan of cornbread, about three times too much for this lasagne. This is a good thing; it leaves two healthy portions to eat when it comes out of the oven, say with a good pot of beans.

2 cups cornmeal

1-3/4 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

2 large eggs

enough milk to make a batter, start with 1 cup and add more as necessary

Grease a 9x9 pan, pour in the batter, bake in a preheated hot oven (450F) until golden brown on top, 25-35 minutes.

After cooling, reserve a third to a half for crumbs to cover the lasagna.

Pancetta Butter

Pancetta Butter

It is tradition now at our house, our 12th Thanksgiving together, to stuff pancetta butter between the skin of the turkey and the breast meat before roasting it to yield a moist, tender, and flavorful result. Being empty nesters, we no longer cook an entire bird to feed a crowd of friends and family. We switched to thighs a few years back because they are so much better than breasts which are prone to dry out and be flavorless. Even so, our tradition remains that we put pancetta butter under the skin of the thighs. All the resulting pancetta-flavored fat in the roasting pan becomes the base for the amazing béchamel layer.

4 ounces pancetta, cold, finely diced

4 ounces butter at room temperature

Pancetta and most fatty meats work best when cold. I suggest that you finely dice cold pancetta, then put the dice back in the refrigerator to chill before processing. Process the pancetta in a food processor until it cannot get it any finer.

Add the butter and process until smooth.

Put the pancetta butter on a sheet of film wrap, roll it into a log, and put it in the refrigerator for use in roasting the turkey. You do not have to roll it into a log, but it makes it easy to slice off a coin that will slide easily under the turkey skin.

Tuesday (Was Tuesday November 24, 2020)

I have a few things to do today: roast the turkey thighs, make cranberry relish, and toast cornbread breadcrumbs. None of these things take a lot of time and in between, I have plenty of projects around the house to keep me busy.

Roast the Turkey Thighs

My four turkey thighs weigh 6.6 pounds, exactly 3 kilos, will take 3 hours to roast at 350F, and will yield a 2-liter container stuffed full of pulled turkey. I put an ounce of pancetta butter under the skin of each, give them a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and put them in the oven. There should be a couple ounces of pancetta butter left over; you will use that in making the sausage béchamel.

Despite not setting a timer, there is no possibility that we could forget them and overcook them: after 45 minutes, the smell of roasting turkey is driving us insane! The timing will be shorter if you use say 6 smaller turkey thighs rather than 4 larger. Your nose and eyes will tell you when they are done.

6-7 pounds turkey thighs

6 ounces pancetta butter

vegetable oil

salt

1 cup of water or stock, for deglazing the roasting pan

Cut off a quarter of the pancetta butter (2 ounces) and reserve it for the béchamel step. Divide the remaining pancetta butter into equally sized pieces, one for each thigh.

Loosen the thigh skin with your fingers. Slide a piece of pancetta butter under the skin and massage it over the meat as well as you can.

Rub the thighs with a little vegetable oil and season with salt.

Place in a 350F oven until the skin is brown and crispy, 2 to 3 hours. It is not necessary to baste the thighs (I do not), but it may help the skin to brown.

Remove the turkey from the pan and let cool enough to pick it. Reserve the meat for lasagna assembly.

Pour the grease from the pan into a small storage container. While the pan is still warm, deglaze it with up to a cup of water or stock, scraping up all the brown bits. The deglazing juices go into the container with the fat and the whole thing goes into the refrigerator. The fat and roasting juices will go into the gravy.

After the turkey cools to the touch, pull it off the bone and put it in the fridge. I save the bones in a bag in the freezer for my next batch of soup or stock.

Turkey Thighs with Pancetta Butter Under the Skin

Roasted Turkey Thighs: That Skin!

For the four huge thighs you see above, I checked them at two hours and twenty minutes The skin was a little pallid and a knife did not pierce to the center as easily as it should. I went off to do some work in the garage, coming back to remove the thighs after three hours. The smell on coming back into the house was intoxicating. Just look at that skin! I confess that Ann and I did sample a bit. We may be watching what we eat carefully, but this is Thanksgiving and were we to pass on eating some crispy insanely good turkey skin, you would have to revoke our foodie cards!

Cranberry-Orange Relish

Cranberry-Orange Relish

My old standby cranberry relish is a single orange, a bag of cranberries, and enough sugar to bring the relish into balance. Since when did cranberries start being packed in 12-ounce bags? They used to be a pound, but I admit that during my restaurant days, we would buy them by the case, probably 10 or 15 pounds of loose cranberries at a pop. It has been a long time since I handled cranberries in retail packaging.

1 seedless orange
12 ounces of fresh cranberries
1/2 cup (or more) granulated sugar, to taste

Quarter the skin-on seedless orange lengthwise. If the orange has a large core or area of pith, cut it out. Slice each quarter crosswise into 3-4 pieces and put them into the food processor it goes, skin and all. Blitz the orange into small pieces as in the photo above.

Add the cranberries and a half a cup of sugar. A few brief pulses is enough to create the sauce in the photo above.

Taste and adjust the sugar to your liking. Ann and I like our sauce rather more tart than sweet, especially when paired with fatty rillettes. This sauce is better after it has worked in the refrigerator for 48 hours, so do not be afraid to make it well in advance.

Cornbread Breadcrumbs

Cornbread Breadcrumbs

The cranberry sauce made, crumble the cornbread onto a sheet tray and put it in the oven below the turkey. Turn the crumbs at ten minutes and remove them at 20 minutes. After they cool, put them in a seal-top bag so that they will not go stale.

Wednesday (Was Wednesday November 25, 2020)

With one day left before Thanksgiving, I have a relatively small list of things to get done with most of the work devoted to prepping vegetables and herbs. I knock out two trivial tasks first: rehydrating porcini and grating pecorino romano for the top of the lasagna. The porcini will go in the béchamel. I save the porcini soaking liquid for another use, often added to a pot of beans.

Rehydrate Porcini and Grate Pecorino

Cover an ounce of dried porcini with water, cover, and leave on the counter overnight. Tomorrow, drain and chop them for the béchamel.

Grate four ounces of pecorino romano, sufficient to put a thin layer on top of the lasagna.

Rehydrating Porcini

Grating Pecorino

Ricotta Mix

Next up is the vegetable prep for the stuffing-flavored ricotta cheese layer. Our stuffing always includes leeks, onions, and celery. For one pint of ricotta, one large onion, one large leek, and two stalks of celery is plenty. For herbs, I go out to the yard and cut parsley, sage, lovage, and thyme. [Oh how I wish I could still go out in the yard and harvest herbs! Not happening here in the high desert.]

Veg for the Stuffing-Flavored Ricotta

1 large yellow onion, finely chopped

1 large leek, finely chopped

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

1 bunch of fresh sage, augmented as necessary with rubbed sage (half for sausage)

1 bunch of fresh thyme (half for sausage)

1/2 bunch of Italian parsley

1 pint ricotta

Salt, to taste

2 large eggs

Finely chop all the vegetables. Destem the herbs and finely mince them. Reserve half of the sage and thyme for the sausage. 

To a large skillet over medium heat, add butter or oil (your choice) and then the vegetables and herbs. Cook until the vegetables are limp and translucent, but do not brown. As I am cooking the mix, I taste it and adjust the herbs. I often find myself wanting more sage and thyme. Be aware that dried sage is much more intensely flavored than fresh.

Add the vegetables to the ricotta in a large bowl. Stir to mix well. Add salt to taste. Stir in two eggs and refrigerate.

Ricotta Mix

Grind the Sausage

I will not hold it against you if you do not make your own sausage, but I do it out of tradition. Over the years, I have made a lot of sausage of many kinds. The one that reminds me most of my childhood in Virginia is flavored simply with garlic, red pepper flakes, thyme, and sage. But surely, I use much greater quantities than most people for I love assertive sausage. Garlic is not common in Virginia sausage, which tends to sage and black pepper, but I have to have it. One pound of sausage is plenty for this dish.

Sausage Seasoning: Garlic, Red Pepper Flakes, Sage, and Thyme

1 pound fatty pork shoulder (or combination of meat and fat)

1/2 cup white wine

1/2 bunch fresh sage leaves, finely minced

1/2 bunch fresh thyme leaves, finely minced

1-1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

6 cloves garlic, finely minced

Cube the pork shoulder (or pork and fat) into a size that will fit in your grinder. Before grinding with the small grinder plate, I like to put the cubes it in the freezer for 20 minutes to make them easier to work. I do not double grind this sausage; one pass is enough.

In a bowl, mix the white wine and the seasonings, then mix in the pork. Check the seasonings by cooking a tiny bit and adjust as necessary. Refrigerate.

Ricotta Veg and Herbs and Sausage, Ready for Tomorrow

After all the prep was complete, Ann and I made a run to the wine store to pick up a case of local Pinot that has come in as well as to look for a bottle of Barolo to accompany our lasagna. We drink local Pinot all the time, but for this special meal, we want to drink our splurge wine, Nebbiolo. If we could afford it, we would have a cellar full of Gaja Barbaresco. We cannot and rarely can we even pop for a good bottle of Barolo, but for Thanksgiving, we take the plunge.

And that's it. That's all the prep that I can do in advance, spread over four days. Tomorrow, I have to make gravy and mix it with the turkey, cook the sausage with the mushrooms and make a thick béchamel, and par-cook the lasagne. After that, Ann and I will assemble the lasagna and put it in the oven.

Thursday (Was Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2020)

Ann and I decide that we'd like to eat late afternoon, four or so, which means that we need do nothing in the kitchen before one in the afternoon. After working out in the garage and doing some yard work on the first non-rainy day in many days, I come in, wash up, and get to cooking. The final prep and assembly takes an hour and the lasagne takes 65-70 minutes or so in the oven. Allow an additional half hour or so for the lasagna to cool; it will be far easier to slice and serve when not scalding.

Make Turkey and Gravy

Step one today is to make the gravy which will sauce the pulled turkey meat. The roux (flour) base of the gravy will help set the turkey layers.

Roux for Gravy

fat from top of container of pan drippings from roasting turkey

2 big heaping spoons flour

roasting pan drippings

1 quart of turkey stock
pulled turkey

Separate the fat from the top of the container of pan drippings from roasting the turkey. Turn on the flame to medium and let the fat cook for a couple minutes until it boils off any congealed stock clinging to the fat. It will stop popping.

When the pan stops crackling, add the flour, two big heaping spoonsful. A word of warning: adding damp flour to smoking hot fat is not something you should do haphazardly. The hot fat will flash the water in the flour to steam immediately and it may erupt violently in a volcano of superheated roux. There is a reason in the bayous that they call roux Cajun Napalm. Perhaps you should add flour to cool or cooler fat.

Cook the roux, stirring well and fairly constantly, until it becomes a pretty brown. When it reaches the desired color, carefully add all roasting pan drippings and most of a quart of turkey stock. In no time over high heat, it has become gravy. I season it and mix all but a tiny bit into the turkey, saving that bit to smear in the bottom of the lasagna pan.

Sausage Béchamel

To start the béchamel layer, I first cook the sausage that I made yesterday. I put the sausage, the leftover pancetta butter, and chopped porcini into a large skillet and start it cooking. When the sausage is cooked through, I stir in a spoonful of flour and cook it for a couple of minutes. Then I add milk, a pint or so, maybe a couple ounces more. I cook the béchamel until it becomes thick. My official taste tester checks it out and proclaims it awesome. She says, "Make this next time we have biscuits and gravy!" I am proud that a Manhattan-born Italian girl recognizes it for what it truly is, what we Southerners call gravy. The Italians would call this besciamella and the French béchamel.

Pork Sausage, Rehydrated and Chopped Porcini, and Pancetta Butter

Sausage Gravy Cooking

2 ounces pancetta butter

1 pound sausage

rehydrated porcini, drained and chopped

1 heaping spoonful of all purpose flour

1 pint milk

In a large skillet, cook the sausage and chopped porcini in the leftover pancetta butter.

When the sausage is cooked, stir in a spoonful of flour and cook for a couple of minutes.

Add milk and cook until the sauce is thick. Season to taste.

Par-cook Lasagna Noodles

All three of the layer fillings complete, there's only one thing to do: cook some noodles and get after it. I count out 22 lasagne, four for each of the five layers, and two spares. I cook my noodles until they just become pliable, four minutes, rather than the 8-10 minutes the package suggests. I cool them immediately under running cold water to stop them from cooking further. I have no fear that the noodles will not finish cooking in the oven: I have cooked literally tons of pasta in my life, one, two, or five pounds at a time.

Cook 22 lasagne, four each for five layers, two spares until just pliable, four minutes.

Cool immediately under cold water.

Assemble the Lasagna

Preheat the oven to 375F. Spray the half hotel pan with pan spray (or smear with oil or butter).

Reserve a little gravy and béchamel for the bottom and top of the lasagna.

Mix the turkey and the remaining gravy. Divide (just mentally is fine) the turkey into two portions for two layers. Remember that the mozzarella is just a little neutral glue that you will use in thin layers, perhaps a cup per layer.

Smear the reserved gravy on the bottom of the pan to keep the first layer of noodles from sticking and/or drying out. Build the layers in the following order from bottom to top:

thin layer of gravy

pasta

half the turkey in gravy

scant layer of mozzarella

pasta

ricotta

pasta

béchamel

pasta

the other half of the turkey in gravy

scant layer of mozzarella

pasta

thin layer of béchamel (to keep the pasta from getting hard)

grated pecorino romano

cornbread breadcrumbs

Cover the lasagna with foil, put it in the oven, and set the timer for 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes, uncover the pan and let it go for another 20 minutes to brown the top.

Lasagna Ready to Bake

Lasagna out of the Oven

After cooling for an additional 20 minutes, the lasagna is ready to serve. I cut it into 12 portions, each of which is a massive meal for one person. We head to the table, a pretty table that Ann has set for just the two of us, and start in on our pieces of lasagna. After all the work, it turns out so well, but is so filling that we immediately feel the need to walk around the block before dusk turns to dark.

Thanksgiving Napkin Rings

We sip on glasses of Barolo while the lasagna bakes and finish the bottle with dinner. Though we mainly live on Pinot Noir, we are Nebbiolo fiends. We love it for what it has in common with Pinot: light body and high acidity. And we love it more for how it differs from Pinot: firm tannins and extraordinary complexity of nose and flavors. For us, this particular bottle is in the middle of the pack of all the Nebbiolo we have tasted. It ranks even lower on the price-to-value scale. We are spoiled: we judge it an adequate wine, but the unspoken verdict is that we are disappointed. It should be much better for the price we paid. Still, a bottle of Nebbiolo in a sea of Pinot Noir is a breath of fresh air.

Barolo: It's What's for Thanksgiving

And so ends Thanksgiving 2020. Maybe, just maybe, I'll fire up the paellera and do a Thanksgiving paella next year. We'd need a crowd though: one of my paellas feeds 12-16 people. Now where can I get some turkey wings to put in the paella?