All About the Turkey

The stuffing/dressing recipe is for a 10 to 12 pound turkey. Stuff the turkey loosely and put remaining stuffing in baking dish to bake later (I usually do for 1/2 hour at 350 degrees and moisten with a bit of turkey juice from roasting turkey) This is the basic recipe...we add more celery, onion and parsley and taste it until we like it. We use canned chicken broth to moisten - try to find unsalted or low salt. Read through everything before starting. When you are here, we can do a turkey together.

Old Fashioned Dressing

12 cups of bread crumbs (I buy white bread, cut it into smallish cubes and dry out completely in oven)
1/2 cup butter
1 cup finely chopped onion
3 cups finely chopped celery
3.4 cup finely chopped parsley
salt
poultry seasoning
sage
paprika (I only use it if I have some around)
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 egg, slightly beaten.

Melt butter. Saute onion and celery about five minutes. Mix with all the other ingredients. Moisten with chicken broth...don't want it too wet as you will baste the stuffing with the turkey juices as it is roasting, but it should be moist. Taste and add more onion, celery and parsley. We always add way more. And often add another egg, more butter, etc. Add seasonings until you like it. We make the dressing the night before and refrigerate overnight.

Turkey:

Take out giblet packet. Wash turkey with cold water. Pat dry inside and out with paper towels. Sprinkle inside cavity with a bit of salt and pepper. Spoon dressing into body and neck cavity. Don't stuff tightly...the dressing will expand a bit. Rub outside of turkey with melted butter. Wrap ends of drumsticks and wings with foil. Follow roasting instructions on turkey (you can get ones with the pop up thermometer). Baste, baste, baste. I usually put a tent of foil over the breast to keep from getting too brown. If you do that, take foil off for last 1/2 hour. Aim to have turkey come out of oven at least 20 minutes to 1/2 hour before serving. Put on platter. Cover with foil and then with towels to keep warm. The turkey will exude juices so keep an eye out for those and spoon into cup to use for gravy. (I once forgot and had turkey juice all over the table and floor).


Gravy:

Take the giblet and neck and hack into smallish pieces. I always discard the liver. In a pot, melt 2 tablespoons butter/2 tablespoons oil and saute the giblet and neck until brown. Toss in a can of chicken broth, a cup of white wine or white vermouth, a chunked up carrot, a couple stalks of celery and an onion quartered and let simmer all morning. Strain broth.

Take the pan that the turkey was roasted in (make sure this is one you can put on the stovetop). Spoon out most of the fat...you should have a good two tablespoons of fat left in the pan. Heat. Add a couple of tablespoons of flour. Stir and smush on low heat until the flour and fat are sort of incorporated. You want to cook this enough so the flour is "cooked" but don't want to really brown it too much. Stirring and scraping up browned bits, add the broth, any saved turkey juices to pan and whisk and whisk...bring to a boil...it will thicken somewhat...keep stirring so you don't have lumps....if you need to, you can add a bit of canned chicken broth to thin if too thick and you don't have enough juices. Just important to keep stirring. Off heat strain through strainer and you should have a tasty gravy.

Creamed Tuna on Toast

I learned this recipe from watching my mom make it. I remember having this dish after I came home from the hospital after having my tonsils out.

Melt some butter (about 2 to 3 tsps).
Add some flour (about a tablespoon or a bit more).
Cook over low heat, stirring for several minutes.
Add can of drained tuna. Break tuna apart.
Add a cup of milk.
Stir and cook over medium heat until the sauce is thickened. If too thick, add a bit more milk.

This is really a simple white sauce (bechamel) with tuna tossed in so any recipe book would have a more accurate recipe for the sauce.

Spanish Rice

Aunt Mary said that Grandma Lucich learned to make Spanish rice from a woman who ran the boarding house in Montana where Grandpa and Grandma first lived after they were married. I don't have an exact recipe, but you can't really go too wrong. We're not talking "haute cuisine."

Spanish Rice

Into a heavy skillet put 4 to 6 slices of bacon cut into squares. Cook over low heat and when the bason fat has rendered out, add a couple of large onions coarsely chopped and some rice (maybe a cup or bit more). Stir for 3 to 4 minutes. Then pour tomato juice into the pan and cook at low heat until rice in tender. Add more juice as necessary.

Monsieur Bon-Bon's Secret "Fooj"

When I was a kid, my Barnes cousins and I were always trying to make a successful batch of fudge. We used a recipe from a battered black cookbook or from the back of a Hershey's powdered cocoa box but not matter what we did (or didn't do) we always ended up with fudge that was either rock hard or ooey gooey and had to be eaten with a spoon. But now if I made fudge (very very rarely) I use a recipe that I found in the back of Ian Fleming's book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Mr. Bon-Bon's recipe always turns out well and has a wonderful old fashioned taste (much preferable to fudge made with marshmallow whip and the like.

Fooj

1 pound granulated sugar
1/4 pound finest butter
1 tbsp water
4 tbsp unsweetened chocolate
1 small can of evaporated mild
1 tbps corn syrip

Put all the ingredients into a saucepan. Melt slowly on low gas until mixture thickens slightly and is absolutely smooth. Turn up gas and boil very quickly until it forms into a soft ball when a sample is dropped into cold water. Remove from heat and beat well with a wooden sppon. Pour the whole mixture into a flat, greased pan, mark in squares and leave to set. When cold, DEVOUR!

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup

Make a day or two or even three days ahead...it tastes even better.

1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and diced
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1 medium to large butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
6 cups chicken or vegetable broth (Swanson's makes a good vegie broth)
1.2 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste
small pinch of cayenne pepper
large pinch of nutmeg

Melt butter with the oil in a large heavy casserole over medium heat.
Add the onion and cook until soft but not brown.
Add the cumin and coriander and stir for 1 minute.
Add the squash, sweet potatoes and broth and bring to a boil.
Reduce head and simmer for half an hour or until the cubes are soft.
Process through blender or food processor in bathces.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Add cayenne and nutmeg to taste.
Stir in cream.
Makes 4 to 5 servings or more depending on size of serving.

Caesar Salad a la Roger

Caesar Salad

Roger developed this recipe after many, many visits to Gusti's restaurant in the 60's in Washington, D.C. We would order the salad, watch as it was made tableside and take notes. At that time, a raw egg yolk was used. Now Roger boils the egg until it is just soft boiled, eats the white (gross) and uses only the yolk. The family thinks his is the best!

The amount of most ingredients may be adjusted depending on amount of lettuce used. Also ingredients may be adjusted for personal taste. Obviously the amount of garlic and anchovies used is a matter of taste. Use caution in adding mustard as a little bit goes a long way. The salad dressing should have a moderately thick consistency but if it is too heavy or thick, there is no problem in adding a small amount of water to thin the dressing.

Ingredients:

1 head of romaine lettuce, washed, dried well and torn into bite-sized pieces
Parmesan cheese
Three or four slices of good quality white bread including heel of bread
Garlic
Anchovies
Olive Oil
Red wine vinegar
Dash of Worcestershire sauce
Lemon
English mustard (powdered)
1 egg
Pepper

Make Croutons:
Cut slices of white bread into cubes and toast (along with heel of bread) in 350* oven until dry and slightly golden.
Remove from oven and let cool.

Make Dressing:

Crush 4 to 6 cloves of garlic with 3 or 4 anchovy filets in a wooden bowl.
Add dried heel of bread (if needed you can use some croutons as well).
Add approximately 1/4 cup of olive oil and 1/8 cup vinegar and Worcestershire sauce.
Add the juice of 1/2 lemon.
Add the yolk of a soft boiled egg.
1/2 level teaspoon of dried English mustard.
1/2 teaspoon pepper - preferably freshly ground.

Crush and mix these ingredients with a wooden spoon until it reaches a medium consistency - sufficient to coat leaves without too much clumping. If the mixture is too thick, beat in a small amount of water.

Let stand for 1/2 hour to permit the flavors to suffuse.

Toss with romaine lettuce, croutons and two tablespoons of good quality parmesan cheese.

Remember when making this dressing you can always add ingredients but not subtract them (particularly the hot mustard as learned from experience) so adjust to your taste as you go along.

Apple Tart

I found this recipe at the end of a paperback collection of short stories - all murder mysteries and all the victims done in by apples in one way or another. This is one of the best apple tart recipes ever. Looks as if you've purchased it at a fancy French bakery and especially easy if you have a food processor.

APPLE TART

Cake:
1 cup sugar 1 tsp baking powder
1 cup unsifted flour 1 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp butter cut into pieces 1 large egg
4 Granny Smith apples (I have tried other varieties of apples...don't...they just don't work)

Topping:
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp cinnamon
1 large egg

Put all cake ingredients except apples into bowl of food processor and process until the mixture has the consistency of cornmeal. (You can do this by hand using two knives or forks) Spread the mixture evenly in the bottom of a well-buttered 9 -inch springform pan. Do NOT pat the mixture down...smooth without compacting it...

Core and peel apples and slice into thin slices.

Arrange apples in layers on top of the crumb mixture (make overlapping concentric circles). Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 45 minutes.

Just before the 45 minutes are up, mix together the topping ingredients. Spoon the mixture of the apples and then return to oven and bake for another 25 to 30 minutes until the top is firm and golden brown.