Kitchen3N

Recipes and food fun from Apt 3N

Turkey Korma

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I woke up the morning after Thanksgiving like I imagine a runner feels the morning after a race: like I got hit by a truck.
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A whole week of groceries, prep, planning culminating in an evening with loved ones and good food. It was EXHAUSTING and I was happy to do it.
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But even after the last doggy bag was packed, we had quite a bit of turkey left over. It’s been our breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then last night, I recalled my friend Biny of #binyskitchen saying how she’d use her leftovers for turkey pot pies. Now, pot pies don’t fly here, but South Asian flavors do. I thought I’d cook some of the leftover turkey in a cream sauce with spices and frozen peas (to make it the slightest bit healthy) and the gang inhaled it!
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So here’s how I created it. Don’t be intimidated by the long list of ingredients. If you ever want to make South Asian food at home, you need these in stock. Fine to use a “garam masala” mix if you don’t have the last 5 spices. I wouldn’t use a curry powder to sub the first few spices, as that has turmeric and chili powder and would change the flavor of the korma.
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What is korma? Any meat/seafood/veggie dish cooked in a cream or yogurt or nut paste sauce. Simmered with warm spices (not the spicy spices) and slightly sweet. Chicken korma was my favorite dish growing up, but only reserved for special occasions, like Eid or birthdays.
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Hope you enjoy this recipe!

Ingredients

  • 1/2 onion, diced
  • 1 tbsp ghee or butter
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp ground coriander
  • 1 tsp garlic/ginger paste*
  • 1 cup turkey/chicken broth or water
  • 2-3 cups cubed turkey breast
  • 1 cup frozen peas
  • 1/8 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/8 tsp clove
  • 1/8 tsp cardamom
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup half & half

Directions

  1. In a large saute pan, heat ghee or butter over medium high heat and add onions. Cook until onions are translucent and lightly browned around the edges. Add the cumin, coriander and garlic/ginger paste. Stir, then slowly add the broth or water. Scrape all the browned bits from the bottom of the pan and allow mixture to simmer for 2-3 minutes.
  2. Add the turkey, peas and remaining spices. Stir to combine then add the milk and half and half. Let simmer for 5 minutes.
  3. Remove from heat and serve with rice or quinoa.

*You can sub garlic/ginger paste with 1 clove of garlic AND a small (maybe 1/2inch) piece of ginger minced or pressed through a zester.

Lessons in Spatchcocking

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Don’t double check your calendar. It is in fact, March. I cooked a whole turkey in March.

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What else are you going to do when your buddies over at Honest Chops send you a 17 pound bird? Since we didn’t do the whole turkey day shebang last year, I got to try out the spatchcocking technique I read about over at Serious Eats. So you see, it isn’t a word I made up for my kids. It’s a cooking technique that requires removal of the backbone (seriously, this turkey has seen better days), then pushing the bird down flat to encourage even cooking. People go all kinds of crazy to ensure breast meat doesn’t dry out. In past years I’ve tried brining in a brining bag (thanksgifiasco 2011 – brining bag broke and peppercorns were still being found in corners of my apt six months later). I’ve flipped the bird half way through the cooking process – starting breast down, the finishing breast up.

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This time I really wanted to try dry brining. But ain’t nobody got room in their fridge for a 17 lb bird to do its thing for 3 days!! I couldn’t even defrost this thing the “proper” way, according to “US Department of Health guidelines”. I left it out on my counter for 24 hours and am living to see the light of day. Please don’t do the same, then sue me if you get sick. Just do what the Man says and defrost in your fridge for 08765336789 days.

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This is not a technique I’d recommend if you’re petite like me. Unless, of course, your even more petite desi mom is around to help and manages to whack that bird flat without breaking a sweat. I should’ve known – plenty of experience with that backhand.

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Key takeaways:

  • It’s hard removing the backbone with regular ol’ kitchen shears. If this is something you want to try, I’d recommend getting poultry shears.
  • Once I did get it out, I loved having the backbone available, along with the innards, to make turkey stock. It just bubbled away on the stove top while the bird cooked in the oven. Soups, pastas, quinoa and rice pilafs for dayssssssss.
  • The cooking temperature was wayyyy too high. I appreciated how fast the thigh meat cooked through, but at 450 degrees, things were smoking up and my smoke alarm kept ringing. I turned the heat down to 425 and carefully poured in some water into the baking sheet to keep the veggies and juices from scorching. Even then, at 1 hour and 10 minutes, the breast meat had dried out. Why oh why?!

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I have no idea where this beautiful gravy bowl came from. Does this happen to you? If you’re the beautiful soul who gifted this piece to me, please stand up. Thank you! I don’t even care for gravy – this is all beautiful, luxurious, reduced pan drippings. Happy Spatchcocking!

Technique from Serious Eats.

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp salt
  • 1 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tbsp paprika
  • 2 tsp dried thyme
  • olive oil (not extra virgin)
  • 2 lemons, halved
  • 2 onions, halved
  • 2 heads garlic, halved

Directions

  1. Combine all the spices in a bowl and smear all over the spatchcocked turkey.
  2. Placed halved vegetables on an aluminum lined baking sheet. Place wire rack over the veggies. Drizzle the turkey liberally with oil and lay on the wire rack. Bake according to directions. I would go with a lower cooking temperature, say 350 degrees F, for 70-90 minutes depending on the size of your bird. The best way to tell is by sticking a meat thermometer into the deepest part of the thigh and getting a reading of 165 degrees.

Mini Turkey Pot Pies

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Confession: I’ve never made an actual pot pie. Like with the flaky crust and roux (butter and flour mixture) thickened meat and vegetable filling. It just wasn’t something that was a regular on our dinner table. And given my zabihah-halal dietary restriction, ordering chicken pot pie at any ol’ restaurant just wouldn’t do. But, one day last summer (or was it two summers ago?) I was taking my New York-obsessed-child-prodigy of a niece around the city. After an eventful day of Top of the Rock, TKOs at Bouchon Bakery, and bumping into Naomi Watts in Soho, we were making our way through Chelsea Market and (I) decided we would have a well deserved sit down lunch at the green table.

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Everything was so good. I couldn’t eat my salad fast enough. That’s right. The salad. But when my entree came out, it knocked me out of my seat it was so good. A mushroom pot pie. It was so earthy, so filling, so delicious. Not at all bland as I’d envisioned pot pies to be (I’m sorry! It’s just all the times I’ve watched it being made, there were few flavorings beyond chicken stock, salt, pepper and parsley.) This one, I could tell was made with the broth from reconstituting porcini mushrooms. That’s what gave it that special umami note.

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I took a shortcut with these little guys since I had some puff pastry sheets in the freezer and 0.0000018394 minutes these days for anything. I didn’t even make a proper roux for the filling. I simply sauteed the awesome Honest Chops ground turkey with onions, carrots and garlic. Added some dried thyme, salt and pepper. Then vegetable stock for moisture and half a package of cream cheese for creaminess. At the end, some frozen peas and chopped parsley for color and pizazz.

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I’ve been dying to showcase this beautiful muffin pan from Anthropologie that my dear friend Jaf had gotten me for my birthday ages ago. Oh, Anthropologie, why can’t you have more stuff on sale?

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You can pretty much en robe anything in puff pastry and it will be delectable. It’s just the magical combination of butter, flour and salt. But you wouldn’t be surprised if I told you that at our house, these were topped with Sriracha, right? Don’t worry – you have my permission to do the same.

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Ingredients

  • 3 tbsp olive oil (not extra virgin)
  • 1 small yellow onion, diced small
  • 2 thin carrots (or 1 large), diced small
  • 1 lb ground turkey (white meat)
  • 2 large, fresh cloves of garlic, minced (garlic is fresh when the bulbs are held together quite tightly)
  • 3/4 tsp dried thyme
  • 3/4 tsp salt (more or less depending on your stock)
  • 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup vegetable or chicken stock (can use water if needed – just check the seasoning at the end)
  • 1/2 cup frozen peas
  • 4 oz cream cheese
  • 1/4 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
  • 2 puff pastry sheets, defrosted (leave it out on the counter for 2 hrs to defrost)
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray muffin pans with non stick cooking spray.
  2. Heat oil in a large skillet over pretty high heat. Add onions, carrots and meat, breaking up the chunks of meat. Cook until meat is no longer pink, 5-7 minutes. Next add the garlic, thyme, salt and pepper. Stir until thoroughly combined. Add stock and lower the heat to medium. Let cook 2-3 minutes until liquid reduces a bit. Add peas and cook for 1 more minutes. Turn off the heat and add the cream cheese and parsley. Stir until cream cheese has blended in and parsley is incorporated. Set aside.
  3. On a floured surface, roll out one sheet of the puff pastry until it’s slightly larger than the area of the muffin pan. Using a sharp knife, cut out 6 or 12 rectangles, according to the size of your muffin pan. You should get 12 pot pies out of a regular muffin pan, or 24 mini pot pies from a mini muffin pan. Fill each gap with a rectangle of puff pastry, with the corners hanging extending beyond the borders a bit. Add 1 to 2 tbsp of the meat mixture and fold over the corners to cover as much as possible. Do this for all the rectangles. Brush each one with the egg and bake in the preheated oven for about 18-22 minutes. Tops should be golden when done.

Turkey Tacos

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This meal starts on Thanksgiving. All our usual get togethers were canceled or deferred to a different host’s house. Neither set of parents were up for hosting anything. And my husband doesn’t like turkey. So, that’s that.

Or is it? I bought some turkey thighs on my last halal meat run. I’ve never cooked turkey apart from the usual brine and roast so I thought it would make for an interesting meal. After my initial research (the usual run through of allrecipes and foodnetwork) I found this very casually written, though pretty thorough recipe for turkey tacos on chowhound. I almost didn’t follow the rules…I thought, everything good in life always starts with sautéed onions and garlic AND THEN the rest of the ingredients. Alas, I was a good girl and made the stock (with the addition of salt) and was rewarded handsomely.

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At first taste, when testing the meat for doneness, I wasn’t crazy about it. It had an overwhelming turkey smell, without enough seasoning. But patience, young jedi, pays off. After I took the thighs out and let the stock reduce…I added two ladlefuls to my stir fried shredded meat and it was magical. Like the type of magic you see in restaurant kitchens when the wine hits the mushrooms or the pasta hits the sauce and the chef does this szuszh (sp?) with the pan and you wish it were in your mouth right now.

I didn’t have the usual taco ingredients (tortilla, avocado, etc.) so I just made some roti and cut up whatever salad ingredients I had on hand. The result: my 2 year old actually ate it. Nuff said.IMG_0502

Ingredients:

  • 1 medium onion or 2 small, peeled and quartered
  • 5-6 cloves garlic, smashed with the side of your knife
  • 1 heaping tsp cumin
  • 2 bay leaves
  • juice of 2 limes
  • juice of 1 orange
  • 1 packet of dried ancho chillis (4 chillis in total…or use a can of chipotle peppers in their juices for more heat)
  • 2 turkey thighs (about 3 lbs)
  • 1 heaping tsp of salt
  • vegetable oil

Directions

  1. Combine first nine ingredients in a large pot. Pour enough water to cover the meat. Bring to a boil over high heat then reduce to a simmer. Let it simmer until meat is tender (this took me about 45-50 min).
  2. Remove the meat and let cool. Meanwhile, discard the bay leaves from the stock and blend the remaining ingredients with an immersion blender (or in a blender). Let reduce while shredding the cooled turkey meat.
  3. In a large skillet pour 2 tbsp vegetable oil over high heat. Stir fry shredded turkey, allowing it to stick to areas. After about a minute or so, add two ladlefuls of the reduced stock. Give it a final stir, getting the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat.
  4. Serve with tortillas (or any flat bread), tomatoes, avocado, red onion…anything you like on your taco!