Open Face Turkey Sandwich with Cranberry Bread

Well the big day finally arrived, the day when you can eat whatever you want and not feel guilty.  This is the real Thanksgiving, the day when food is king.  The wife and I had our Thanksgiving early this year because she was going back to Michigan to visit the little granddaughter while I decided to stay here and work, really, well not on Thanksgiving but the rest of the weekend.  Like everyone else I too had to plan my Thanksgiving meal but unlike most mine was already half made.  Yep I had leftovers from our Early Thanksgiving Dinner.  Instead of calling this Leftover Wednesday this week we can call it Leftover Thanksgiving it's just a day late and happens to be Thanksgiving. 

Since I am getting tired of posting Thanksgiving meals we are going to cruise through this entire meal in one post.  This is a warning because I have lots of pictures and two recipes down below ready for you to try.  So without further adieu let's roll.....

The first cast of characters we will start with today is the gravy.  Yeah I know I might have just lost some of my family because of their distaste of gravy but this gravy recipe is worth it. 

This is another recipe from the Tyler Florence cooking show we went to in downtown D.C. a couple of weeks ago and once again after I watched him make this I knew I had to try it.  If you read the recipe down below you will notice that recipe calls for roasting the turkey wing first but at his show he used smoked turkey wings, that's what caught my attention.  If you do use smoked turkey wings you don't have to roast them again (just thought I would throw that in there just in case you were wondering). 

The gravy is really pretty simple, start with cooking the veggies and herbs for a few minutes and then after that everything goes into the pot, just like cooking stock.  One other change I should note is when Tyler cooked this gravy at his show he used chicken broth instead of water like the recipe below.  I used some of my special homemade chicken broth I made about a month ago along with a little water.  I wasn't too worried about having extra broth left over because I can always find uses for it.  From here it was time to watch some football and let this simmer away on the stove for about 2 hours.

After a couple of hours I strain all the extras out and then use my gravy separator to get rid of the fat.  Now this can be set aside because we got other things to do and introduce another cast of characters.

I'll admit if you look at the above pic and look at the recipe below you will notice not all the characters are in the photo.  The problem was I had a recipe for cranberry bread I had found on a blog that sounded pretty good but when I got everything mixed together something didn't seem right.  The batter (for all you bakers out there is that what they call it)  seemed real dry.  This was heading for disaster real quick.  What to do, what to do?  Quickly I went to the Food Network website and went to my recipe box (if you don't know you can keep your own recipe box on the Food Network website) where I had saved a cranberry bread recipe from Emeril.  Sure enough Emeril's recipe called for much more liquid than the one I was using.  Time to adapt, overcome, persevere and I did just that.  Like I said above I had already started with one recipe so what I did is combine Emeril's recipe with what I already started.  My recipe below is the results.

When everything was said and done it reminded me of pancake batter.  Hm-mm, I wonder?  Maybe another post for another day?  Let's wait and see.

Doesn't look to bad for a first timer now does it?  With all the drama involving the first batter I made I wasn't too sure what I was going to be left with in the end but so far this is looking like a loaf of bread.

Now that the cranberry bread is made we can get back to our turkey gravy.  We left off with our broth made and now it's time to finish the gravy.  The first thing to be done is to make a roux.  For you first timers out there a roux is nothing more than equal part fat (in this case olive oil and butter) and flour mixed together over medium heat.  Some people think you have to use a wooden spoon but I'm not sure that really matters but what does matter is to keep stirring until you get the color of roux you want (this is really important if you are making gumbo).

Now if you just hang with me a little longer we are almost finished.  To the roux we can now add the broth we made earlier with the smoked turkey wings until it gets to the desired thickness we want.

Here is where the leftovers come into play.  If you remember a couple of days ago I posted our main entree from our Early Thanksgiving Dinner, Sausage and Cranberry Stuffed Turkey Roll.

This is our chance to use the rest of the leftover turkey up.  I gently slide the turkey into the gravy we just made and let it take a 15 minute bath to warm it up a bit. 

We are almost there and this is the fun part, we get to put the whole thing together.  First we slice up some of the good looking cranberry bread up.

 Lay a couple of pieces (or more depending how hungry you are) on the plate and top with the warmed up turkey and gravy (pretty simple eh?).  Of course I am not done there I got a little side to put with it.  Remember Part I of our Early Thanksgiving Dinner?  If you need a reminder here it is....

Yep it's Jock's Cranberry Sauce, what a better way to compliment and Open Face Turkey Sandwich with Cranberry Bread.  Now everything is in its place and here is my Thanksgiving Dinner...

Mmm, mmm, now that's good grub. 

As far as ratings go I am giving Tyler's Turkey Gravy a hearty 5 out of 5 forks.  Simply put this is the best gravy I have ever ate.  The smoked turkey wings added a whole new depth of flavor to the gravy, something that just can't be duplicated by roasting the turkey wings.  If you ever decide to make this definitely find smoked turkey wings it will be worth it.

Now for the cranberry bread, it gets a 4 out of 5 forks only because I need to go back and follow Emeril's recipe a little closer next time.  If you notice I made the cranberry bread with raw cranberries mixed directly into the batter, Emeril cooks his cranberries first in his recipe and I think this may take out a little of the bitter taste my bread has when you bite into a cranberry.  It is only a slight bitterness so it really isn't too bad.  (And yes dear, I still have some cranberries left over so I can make you some cranberry bread when you get home because I know you will want to try it.) 

That pretty much does it for this Thanksgiving year and I think it is time to move on to other things.  I'm not sure where we will head but I have a couple of ideas like one more thing with cranberries and possibly something to do with pumpkin.

Stay tuned.

Jock's Cranberry-Pecan Bread

(Printable Recipe)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1 1/2 cups fresh cranberries (or defrosted if frozen)

1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted

2 large eggs

1 cup of unbleached flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 cup chopped, toasted pecans

1 teaspoon orange zest

1 teaspoon grated ginger

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9 1/4 by 5 1/4 by 2 1/2-inch loaf pan.

Combine the all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the wet ingredients together and mix thoroughly. Pour the wet ingredients onto the dry and mix together. Fold in the cranberries and toasted pecans.

Pour into the prepared loaf pan. Bake until a tester comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes.

Turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Turkey Gravy

(Printable Recipe)

Recipe courtesy Tyler Florence

Prep Time: 10 min

Inactive Prep Time - Cook Time: 2 hr 45 min

Level: Easy

Serves: 5 to 6 servings

Ingredients

2 pounds turkey wings

5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, halved
4 carrots, chopped
1 head garlic, smashed
2 sprigs fresh sage
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
8 black peppercorns
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions
Heat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Put the turkey wings (also backbone and neck if you have it) into a small roasting pan and roast them until they are golden brown, about 30 minutes. Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large stock pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion, carrots, garlic, herbs, and peppercorns and cook for 5 minutes. Add the turkey wings. Pour some water into the roasting pan and scrape up all the browned bits on the bottom; add this to the pot. Cover everything in the pot with cold water by 1-inch and bring to the boil, skimming any foam that rises to the surface. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Strain out the solids and discard. Wipe out the pot and put it over medium heat. Melt the butter with the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil and add the flour. Cook this roux, stirring frequently, until it is golden brown. Slowly whisk in the strained stock being careful to work out any lumps. Cook until the gravy has thickened, about 10 to 15 minutes.
Printed from FoodNetwork.com on Thu Nov 26 2009
© 2009 Scripps Networks, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Sausage and Cranberry Stuffed Turkey Roll

Finally we have arrived to the final episode of the Early 2009 Thanksgiving Episode and as with any grand finale we finish with the star of the show, the turkey.

Since it is only myself and the wife we really don't need to cook a whole turkey, besides everyone else cooks whole turkeys and I wanted to do something different.  Our choice this year was to cook a turkey breast.  We searched store after store the weekend before Thanksgiving not having much luck until I walked down the street to our local market and found one, figures maybe I should have started there.  The turkey breast is a good place to start for two people but that is still a lot of meat plus a turkey breast by itself is hard to stuff and I wanted to do some sort of stuffing this year.  What to do, what to do.  After much thought I finally came up with the idea of filleting half the breast off the bird, pound the breast out, and then roll the stuffing up inside the turkey.  Another plus is I still have another half of boneless turkey breast for a future episode of Good Grub.

Once the one half the the turkey breast is ready it is time to think about the stuffing.  The cast of characters for the stuffing include:

I had an idea for stuffing that included sausage and cranberries, not just any cranberries but my cranberry sauce.  Now you know why I had to start this four part series with the cranberries.  I made the cranberries ahead of time with the stuffing in mind.  The problem I ran into was finding a recipe for stuffing that included cranberry sauce and sausage.  I searched  and searched the Internet with no luck so I did the next best thing, made one up myself based on some ideas I found from several other recipes.  As you can see I wanted to keep it simple, I'm all about simple, not only for the ease of making the stuffing but I also knew I wouldn't be able to fit a complicated stuffing into a rolled up turkey breast.  I also knew using traditional style croutons would be out of the question so I came up with the next best thing and made bread crumbs with the food processor.  I thought this was a good compromise for stuffing with the only question being should I toast them or not.  In the end I decided not to toast them I was afraid if I did toast them it might dry out the turkey breast and as we all know it is a fine line between nice moist succulent meat and dried out shoe leather.

After the ingredients for the stuffing were decided on it is only a matter of preparing them for the bird. Obviously the sausage had to be cooked ahead of time so I decided towards the end of cooking the sausage I would add the cranberries, sage and bread crumbs. 

It sure looked good and it even tasted good, good enough to make a meal by itself but let's not get sidetracked, maybe another day. 

The real problem we face now is how to get the stuffing into the turkey breast.  I did find a couple of recipes that described pounding out the breast, similar to what you would do with a chicken breast, and if I was going to stuff this bird that is what I was going to have to do.  Since I don't own a mallet for pounding our meat I used and can from the pantry, works for me.  First I covered the breast with plastic wrap and then pounded the breast out.  Next put the stuffing mixture on one end and then roll the breast up to form a turkey roll.

The only thing left to do is get get this bird in the oven but before I do that I decided to put some smokey bacon on the turkey roll up and see if it would help keep the breast moist.  I actually got this idea from Tyler Florence when we went and watched his cooking demonstration a couple of weeks ago in downtown D.C. I wasn't really sure about this step but I wanted to try it and beside if bacon is involved it can't be a bad thing.

After letting it cook for 1-1/2 hours at 350 degrees I pulled it out of the oven.

I think we are making progress now.  All there is left to do now is to get this thing on the table after we give it a little rest.  After a little nap time we can cut and serve.

Looks pretty good for something I pulled out of my ass head.  I'll have to give this a 3.75 out of 5 forks.  It had good flavor and the bacon gets credit for that. I think I overcooked the turkey just a little but the breast still was moist. 

I think to make it better next time I will use a little less sausage and a little more bread crumbs, cranberry sauce and sage but I think I am on the right track.  Next time I will brine the breast before I start too.  I almost always brine my turkeys because I think it makes them much more moist and juicy but I decided to cook this one with brinning.  Also why we are on next times I think next time I will omit the bacon because the skin doesn't get nice a crispy like turkey skin should be.  And besides I won't need the bacon once I get my charcoal grill back that will impart all the extra good smokey flavors I want.

Overall a pretty darn good Early Thanksgiving Meal with an overall rating of 4 out of 5 forks. 

My goal this year was to do something a little different than normal and I think I accomplished that.  In  Sportscenter fashion let's recap this years Early Thanksgiving Meal:

• 
  
  First we started with my version of cranberry sauce which is getting great reviews from other family members.
  
  
  
• 
  
  Next was the Honey Wheat with Rosemary Dinner Rolls based on a recipe I got from Big Sis's blog called Don't Blink.
  
  
  
• 
  
  Then the real surprise of the meal was Tyler Florence's Whipped Sweet Potatoes and Bananas with Honey recipe.  This is a definite must try even if you don't like sweet potatoes like me.
  
  
  
• 
  
  Any finally we finish up with today's Sausage and Cranberry Stuffed Turkey Roll.
  
  
  

Happy Thanksgiving and don't eat too much.

Leftover Turkey Salad

It's the end of an era my Thanksgiving turkey is gone. I used up the last of it tonight for dinner.



I like to make salads for dinner so simple, so fast, and so good. What it really comes down to is I was to lazy to cook anything tonight so what could be better?

One more bonus for a lazy night I only dirtied 4 things tonight, 1 fork, 1 knife, 1 bowl and one glass for my milk. The only meal I know better for dirty dishes is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

One last look and then the recipe at the bottom.



Cranberry Glazed Turkey Salad
Salad greens
Leftover Thankgiving cranberry glazed turkey
Favorite salad toppings
Favorite salad dressing

Mix together.

Serves 1.

Cranberry Glazed Turkey

Finally I am posting the turkey recipe I had on Thanksgiving. The reason I'm 4 days late is I needed time to digest everything. Well not really I've been a little busy working on a project for the last 3 days. My plan was to work again today but my brain didn't kick in until mid to late afternoon. Since I already wasted most the the day I thought I might as well sit down and take care of this all important meal. Let's get rolling.

Just as a reminder in case you were to lazy or just didn't want to here is where we left off on turkey day.



Cranberry glazed turkey cooked on the grill. Just in case you get hungry for this turkey, which I doubt since everyone by now has had their fill of turkey until Xmas, there is a full blown recipe at the bottom of this post. I made a couple of minor changes and I will let you know where as we take photo trip through this meal.

First thing first and I think the best way to start a turkey anymore is to brine the turkey. The cast of characters is as follows:



The brine keeps the turkey nice and moist for when you get ready to eat. I know there is a lot of salt but remember the salt does not soak up into the turkey. I'm not sure what really happens but I think the salt seals the pores of the turkey to keep the moisture inside while cooking. If you really want to know the hows and whys watch Alton Brown because on one of his shows he explains the reasons. This brine is real simple, no cooking involved, just mix all the ingredients and stir until the salt and sugar are dissolved. Now just add the turkey breast side down and find a place in the ice box.



Since it is Wednesday night and the night before Thanksgiving and the turkey is brining away in the ice box we might as well make the cranberry glaze tonight before we sit down with a cold beer for the night. Again it's not really all the hard but before I show you how easy it is I need to introduce you to the characters involved.



This is one of the places I didn't do as the recipe below suggests. I didn't use any orange liqueur like in the recipe. I have a hard time buying all the different liqueurs and spirits some of these recipes call for. If I did I would have a better stocked liquor shelf than most of the bars and taverns here in Wisconsin. What I did is use more orange juice in place of the orange liqueur.

One again dump everything into the pot and cook. This is what it looks like in the beginning.



And here is what it looks like after its cooked.



From here strain it and stick it in the ice box too.

On Thanksgiving everything gets put together. What I liked about this meal since it is only a turkey breast we are cooking is it only takes 1-1/2 to 2 hours to cook.

The final cast of characters for this meal are as follows:



Notice that one ingredient to the right? Nope that's not dressing, although I've had some worse, it's hickory wood chips. This is the other difference from the recipe below I cooked mine on the grill. So for the final time this year let's "FIRE UP THE GRILL!!!!!!"



Yippe Kay Yay is there nothing better? Notice the snow and the snow shovel? I had to shovel off the deck earlier in the week so I could use it today. It was a struggle too with the cold and wind blowing, not ideal grilling weather.

While I'm waiting for the grill I sprinkle the bird with some Emeril's Essence.



When the turkey has about 20 minutes left to cook it's time to brush it with some of the cranberry glaze I made last night. That's right just like brushing on barbecue sauce. After the turkey is cooked let it rest and slice it up.



After cooking a turkey breast like this I'm not sure I would cook a whole turkey again. The white meat was so moist and favorable and remember it only takes 1-1/2 hours to cook. This is a 5 out of 5 forks recipe.

I have to give credit for this recipe to Emeril. I had another recipe all picked out when I was searching on the Food Network web site for some other recipes and came across this one. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to make it I mean after all whats better at Thanksgiving than turkey and cranberries.



Cranberry Glazed Breast of Turkey
(Emeril recipe from the Food Network Web Site.)

Brine:
3/4 gallon water
2 cups white wine
1 1/2 cups orange juice
1 cup kosher salt
1 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup chopped ginger
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
4 bay leaves
4 sprigs fresh thyme

Turkey:
1 (6-pound) whole turkey breast
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon Essence

Glaze:
1 (12-ounce) bag fresh cranberries
1/3 cup chopped ginger
2 teaspoons orange zest
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup orange-flavored liqueur (recommended: Grand Marnier)

Combine all of the brining liquid ingredients in a large non-reactive container (a stockpot works well for this) and stir to dissolve the salt and sugar. Rinse the turkey well under cold running water. Place the turkey in the brine, cover, and refrigerate, turning occasionally, for at least 12 hours and up to 24 hours.

While the bird is brining, make the cranberry glaze by combining the cranberries, ginger, orange zest, sugar, orange juice, and water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally, and reduce to a simmer. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes, or until cranberries burst and sauce is very thick. Strain through a fine mesh sieve into a mixing bowl to cool. When cooled, add the liqueur and stir to combine. Cover and refrigerate until you are ready to glaze the bird. (Make sure to return the glaze to room temperature before serving. If the glaze gets too thick, thin it with a bit of water.)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Remove the turkey from the brine and discard the brine. Place the turkey, breast side up, in an aluminum foil lined roasting pan. Pat dry with paper towels. Rub the turkey with the vegetable oil and sprinkle on all sides with Essence. Roast the turkey until it is golden brown and almost done, about 1 hour and 20 to 30 minutes. Remove the turkey from the oven and brush all over with about 1/3 cup of the cranberry glaze. Return the turkey to the oven and continue cooking until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the breast registers 160 to 165 degrees F, about 10 minutes longer. (If the turkey begins to get too dark before it is cooked through, cover loosely with aluminum foil until it reaches the desired temperature. Transfer to a platter and let rest at least 15 minutes before carving. Carve into thin slices. Serve with the remaining glaze passed at the table.