Turkey On a Whim.

When was the last time you did something a bit extravagant, just to make yourself happy? This week, I could hardly think of anything that would make me happier than having a ton of cooked turkey on hand to eat whenever I wanted!

Yesterday was our once-a-month grocery store run, and they had young turkeys from France. Perfect! I had a lot of clementines on hand, so I decided to stuff and season it with those.

For the inside…

For the cavity, I used roughly chopped ginger, rosemary, a cut up onion, and 3-4 tangerines, including the peels, cut into quarters. I also rubbed the inside with plenty of salt, pepper and garam masala.
I also made a paste to smear underneath the skin. I chopped a clove of garlic, and mixed it with the mortar and pestle with salt, butter, garam masala, and tangerine peel (minced.)

At this point, my daughter walked through the kitchen and cooed, “Aw, what a cute little turkey…”

I am a very lax cook, and almost never follow recipes. I’m not really sure what the temperature in my oven was, since I’m not really sure about the farenheit to celsius conversions. But I think it was around 350. I put the turkey on a bed of chopped celeriac and carrots, then poured about 1/2 cup of sherry in the bottom, as well as salt and a few globs of butter for the veggies.
 
I baked it breast-down so the juices would pool there first, and then after 45 minutes or so, I flipped it over. This took some doing, and I just ended up grabbing the bird with two hot pads, rather than trying to use spatulas and things.

Whew! It fits!

I cooked it for about 2 more hours, tenting it with foil for the last hour, since it was getting pretty brown. I pulled the turkey out and let it rest, while I chopped some daikon and added that to the roasting veggies.

I’m glad this isn’t a cooking show, because at this point I’d have to do that really awkward thing and take a bite for all of you, roll my eyes back and say, with food in my mouth, “Oh. Wow. This is SO good.”  And it was good! I squeezed a clementine over the cut up meat, and poured some of the pan juices, and it was sincerely very good. And now my wish for the week will come true– a turkey-eating free-for-all!

Now, what’s that one thing that you could do to improve your quality of life?