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Turkey, goose or something else.

AJB Temple

AJB Temple

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We had two family events. I cooked goose at one and my son cooked turkey (XXL) at the other.

I've given up with goose. For small group we had a 4.1kg free range bird and it was 81 Euros. Twas tough as old boots, despite careful prep and cooking. Produced 700ml of excellent rendered fat, roasted bones and innards produced 2 litres of quite jellified rich darkish stock. But the meat served only 4 people and the legs are hard work.

Turkey gives a lot more meat per kilo. Served 12 easily and was similar price. Won't bother with goose again. Last year I did Beef Wellingtons with filet. Frankly much better IMO.
 
Must say I’ve never cooked a goose, so thanks I probably never will now!
Mmmm, turkey stock, so jellyfied it stays in the dish if you turn it over. Imparts a wonderful depth of flavour to any dish you add it to.
Ian
 
By kids demand it and any opportunity to rekindle the spirit of Waterloo goes down well.

1kg of fillet beer, 35 mins in oven
20231225_123907.jpeg

Gordon Ramsey’s recipe
20231225_124554.jpeg
 
We did turkey this year, and it was as boring as ever. We've done goose many times, and yes, it produces a ton of excellent fat, but we've never had it tough, nor small. Salmon of course is the traditional christmas main course, but a good venison joint is the winner for me.

Never mind all that, what really counts are the roast potatoes, and I got them spot on this year. The christmas pudding was also excellent......a secret family recipe which is prepared on the day (or the day before), and cooked in the microwave. Yep, believe it or believe it not.
 
We had a capon as usual spiced up a little this time with chilli and harissa, it was very nice and the leftovers will make a nice soup.


Pete
 
Well. it’s simple. Turkey doesn’t taste nice. Or at least it doesn’t to me.

We had rib of beef. As we have done the last few years. Failing that a duck, or pheasant is the fall back position. Goose is ok too, and allows you to make Top Gun jokes.

The best gadget in the world - a meat thermometer. I can’t believe how I got by without one. Perfect shade of blushing reddish pink. Mmmm, there’s some in the ‘fridge just now, and some fresh horseradish. Small excursion required….
 
Ah roast potatoes. I am normally an expert even if I do say so myself, but not good this year.

Problem was variety. I was shopping in a German supermarket (excellent - far better than we get in the UK these days, with proper meat and fish and cheese counters) but the potatoes I bought were hopeless for roasties. The Germans don't really do roast potatoes at all, it's just not in the culture. They tend to have boiled potatoes a lot in the in laws location, and you get the same whether in restaurants or at home. The options really are boiled, potato dumplings or cubed and sautéed. At this time of year the market stalls sell their version of Rosti of course and they are great. I tried to do roasties as usual, par boiled but they didn't fluff all that well after steaming off in the colander, and they formed a hard skin in the oven rather than absorbing the fat and going lovely and crispy.

Is Salmon traditional? I've only done it once at Christmas and that was years ago when I was in the Netherlands and I cooked it wellington style with sultanas. However, we have gone right off salmon. Farmed salmon is so flabby these days, and the feeding methods and sea lice infections have put us off. The so called wild Atlantic salmon we can get locally in the UK looks as if it has had food dye additives.
 
Blimey, Andy, that's a bit risky mentioning Wellington's name in France!

Looks like you made a proper job, though.
 
AJB Temple":o7k1o7n7 said:
The so called wild Atlantic salmon we can get locally in the UK looks as if it has had food dye additives.
Click to expand...

Isn’t wild Atlantic salmon endangered? Or am I getting mixed up with another species

Mark
 
I raised the subject of having something other than turkey but was shouted down.

I cooked a crown the day before, carved cold in the morning and re-heated sealed in foil with some of the cooking juices in an airfryer/mini oven.
Nice and moist and tasted like it should (like it or love it)
That left the oven for Roasties (maris piper), parsnips, Boars in duvets* and family demanded Yorkshire puds
I only had two sprout (Devil's haemorrhoids!) eaters round the table so just a handful in the steamer along with peas and carrots

*Full size bangers wrapped with 2-3 slices of smoked streaky bacon.
I tried a different wrapping method. I laid out two rashers of bacon in a vee shape on the chopping board with the widest point a little over the length of the sausage. I used still frozen bangers and rolled up the bacon which stuck to the frozen sausages. Worked a treat.

All ready on the table 2 mins past 1pm - minor fail on my part but I argued the the first item of food and hot plates were on the table as the pips sounded!

Bob
 
Malc2098":20k7b8pd said:
Blimey, Andy, that's a bit risky mentioning Wellington's name in France!

Looks like you made a proper job, though.
Click to expand...

A few years back I carefully cut out some pastry numbers for the top of the welly, 1815. :) :)
 
The main value of turkey as a Christmas roast isn't that it tastes particularly good. It's that unlike beef it won't fight with All The Trimmings, and unlike any other poultry except goose it'll easily feed an entire extended family.

If you're feeding double-digit numbers of people and want pigs in blankets, chestnut stuffing, sausagemeat stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy all on the plate, you need something big and relatively bland, and you can't beat a turkey for that.

If anyone's unconvinced I'll point out that cranberry sauce is what most people think of as traditionally going with turkey, but that combination isn't actually very good. What cranberry sauce goes well with, as a flavour combination, is pigs in blankets and/or stuffing (or goose, but that's another topic). The main point of a turkey dinner is everything except the turkey.
 
:lol:
Andyp":2d94o2jk said:
Malc2098":2d94o2jk said:
Blimey, Andy, that's a bit risky mentioning Wellington's name in France!

Looks like you made a proper job, though.
Click to expand...

A few years back I carefully cut out some pastry numbers for the top of the welly, 1815. :) :)
Click to expand...

:lol: :lol: :lol:
 
Not that bothered about Christmas dinner, probably because my breakfast takes the edge off my appetite.

Christmas breakfast in the lurker household is the same as for previous generations; pork pie and toast :text-lol:
 
What is S&P?

When I was little, the Christmas morning treat was a cup of tea with a drop of whisky in it, from my dad. The taste and smell is engraved in my mind. The best thing about Christmas of childhood was my mother's trifle. We also had home made Christmas cake with icing peaks, and Christmas pudding with silver coins in it. My mother at some point stopped doing these things. We usually had goose from the farm and my recollection is they were much bigger and tastier (but of course I was much smaller). All of the vegetables came from my grandfather's garden, and the potatoes came on a flat bed truck from the potato merchant in a big hessian sack. He had bought them from our farm earlier in the year, so it was a bit weird really.
 
I cooked char-grilled hand-dived scallop starter topped with crispy prosciutto
Steak au poivre with grass-fed beef from an award winning farm/butcher in Knightwick
Simple jacket potato
2019 Leonville Barton St Julien
and the best company in the world. My missus.

No sprouts were harmed in the making of this meal.
 
Four Bird roast and a Haunch of wild Venison with full sized sausage/bacon pigs in blanket and all the trimmings of roasties and veg. some decent smooth red to lubricate the consumption followed by lemon deserts and Champaign to clear the pallet followed up with the odd Almanac or two while we discussed the merrits of the meal.
 
Son made a gammon and leg of lamb roast. In the Weber.
Baked potatoes in the oven. DIL made mixed salad with feta cheese.
Her SIL bought coleslaw, 2 different types.
The SIL bought a 3-chocolate cake (note the emphasis) :D :D
Son’s MIL made large trifle.
My wife took cheeses and biscuits.
Then filter coffee.
GS & GD cleaned their plates!

It was a good meal and company. 8-)

Everything on the menu was verboten for me, so for a few days my meals will be just boiled veg to re-balance the system. :(
 
Turkey again for us. We used to when it was just the two of us have a chicken from my uncle grown extra long and huge. Then we moved onto a turkey, when he stopped doing them tried a couple of farms but settled on a lovely little local farm less than 15mins from home.

This years was 8.6kg, always cooked same way as my Mum did when I was a kid. Michael Barry recipe from the Good food show, it never fails to produce the juiciest turkey. Knife was dripping as I carved it. We feed 6 on Christmas Day, 9 on Boxing day and share left overs with my Mum. We both are very much into the left overs hence the huge bird. Sandwiches, curry, pie and potted turkey with scraps.

Also it has to have chestnut stuffing, remove wishbone and fill spaced under neck skin and carve with the breast. Delicious.
 
Found a use for left over Christmas pudding this morning. Add it to porridge in lieu of the usual dried fruit. Delicious.
 
Ahh. Leftovers.

Roast rib of beef with fresh horse radish on rye sour dough, chicken lever parfait ditto, and one of my infamous raised pies.

Leftovers.jpg

Wasnae bad.
 
All looks really great. Sadly, my wife has instructed that I need to get much fitter and also thinner. This means exceedingly struct limitations on home made sourdough, pasta (also home made usually), and my absolute go to favourite food - spuds. Sweeties (of the sugary kind) also banned. Already stopped beer and wine at the end of BBQ season in September and she has not observed enough improvement. :shock: Therefore my evening drink is what she calls "luxury water". This is what you and I would call water (or in my case horrible water) cold and filtered from the fridge.

Not a NY resolution thing. More a knee thing :|

Hope you chaps are not similarly afflicted in the coming months.
 
Oddly enough, I am not really the vegan type. :lol:

Maybe I'll go the full Jordan & Mikhaila Peterson route and just eat beef. :shock:
 
Adrian, isn’t there the old joke about how to live to a century. Give up wine, sexual congress and song. And, will I live to be a hundred? No, it will just seem like that.

I was told about twenty years ago that if I didn’t mend my ways I would be dead in two years. And now, in Elton’s words, I’m still standing.

Mind you the only eating beef bit is apposite. The rib is still going. Stroganoff this evening. Nice fresh mushies. And full fat cream, damn your eyes.
 
Doug":1vdmsx65 said:
Here you go Adrian sign up for veganuary https://veganuary.com/

I’ve never met a fat vegan :eusa-think: & you certainly know when you’ve met one :lol:
Click to expand...

I had a look at that site.
Register but I use an alternate e-mail Hotmail address.

Then received 4 e-mails on one day.
That then starts to look like spamming.
I can them kill them easily, does not clog up my home e-mail.


I am not vegan, but when I have broken all my eating rules, I then go vegan for a couple of days to settle down the blood pressure and kidneys.

Rule 1 - No salt
Rule 2 - no processed foods of any kind (bacon :( :( :( )
Rule 3 - no red meat
Rule 4 - Spuds in the form of chips - once a month
Rule 5 - Sweet potato, same as spuds
Rule 6 - Go easy on the tomatoes
Rule 7 - Go easy on the olives, pickles
Rule 8 - No tomato sauce, Soya sauce or stuff like that
Rule 9 - no chinese food (soya and salt)
Rule 10 - Go easy on the cheese(s) :(
Rule 11 - Watch the proteins

The dietician said the plate of food should look like a rainbow with the different colours veg, meat only chicken, pork and fish.

Do a fast walk every morning, 3km in about 45 minutes.

And I still just cannot loose weight. :( :(
As long as I wear shorts I am fine. :D Jeans too small. :(
 
Phil":bbad81zx said:
......
The dietician said the plate of food should look like a rainbow......(
Click to expand...

But did they say what size and how high the food should be piled ? :eusa-whistle:

Either increase the length of the walk or shorten the time, perhaps.
 
RogerS":31rjm9n1 said:
Phil":31rjm9n1 said:
......
The dietician said the plate of food should look like a rainbow......(
Click to expand...

But did they say what size and how high the food should be piled ? :eusa-whistle:

Either increase the length of the walk or shorten the time, perhaps.
Click to expand...

One can only eat so much in a sitting. So have a snack 2 hours after eating.

If I walked any faster I will fall flat on my face :lol: :lol:
When I resumed walking last year the same route took 55 minutes.

This popped up on the new feed.

https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/20 ... 61#image=1
 
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