How to Roast a Turkey (Tips for a Successful Holiday Meal)

With Christmas & New Years around the corner, you are no doubt planning a big meal for your family, and perhaps for your friends. A farmers' market is the perfect place to pick up most of the ingredients you need for a spectacular holiday feast.

There, you can preorder turkey from vendors like Sunworks Organic Farm (I'll be picking ours up bright & early tomorrow morning down at the Old Strathcona Farmers' Market). And while you're there, you can pick up winter squashes and potatoes that round out a traditional turkey dinner so well, you can get wonderfully rustic breads that make THE best turkey stuffing, pick up a perfect homemade pie, spectacular breads & buns, and you can get the ingredients for delicious side dishes too... red and golden beats, sweet carrots, hothouse beans, garlic, etc. Yup. A farmers' market is Feast Central... and its goods are locally shipped to market, costing less (environmentally speaking), and the money that you spend there stays in the local economy which will make our city & surrounding area a more prosperous & economically healthy place in which to live.

There's no doubt about it. Planning a big meal like this takes work, but the results are so worth it... the smell of a roasting bird filling up the house, family gathered around a beautifully set table, soft candlelight to set the mood... maybe even carols on in the background, playing softly to fill out the atmosphere of the occasion. Good company. Great food (and leftovers). A wonderful time spent together. Memories carved out, like that turkey, weighted heavily by that wonderful family binder... tradition. Yup... so worth it. But a lot of work.

Thankfully, the airwaves and the internet are full of simple how-to tips take the chaos and the intensity out of holiday meal prep. I was listening to CBC the other day, and they were interviewing some domestic engineers (yup, that's what I call 'em... you know the type... they are incredibly proficient in the kitchen, can knock recipes and tantalizing creations off the tips of their fingers without recipes, know how to display food beautifully and creatively... and most impossibly, can time meals perfectly. Domestic Engineers.). These women were from Atco's Blue Flame Kitchen spouting off some very simple, very timely advice as part of CBC's Turkey Drive. http://www.cbc.ca/edmonton/turkeydrive/

I thought I'd share some of what I heard here with you to try to take some of the guess work out of the holiday meal prep.

• Generally, allow one pound per person when deciding on the weight of the turkey that you will be purchasing. The larger the turkey, the better the deal because your ratio of meat to bone is higher.

• For a frozen bird, thaw 5 hours/pound in the fridge. This is the safest way to thaw a turkey & ensure that your family & guests do not end up tossing their cookies!)

• Over and over again I hear that you should prepare the stuffing outside of the bird... either wrapped in a tinfoil pouch or made in the slow cooker. This is the safest way to prepare it, and it allows the turkey to cook more evenly, cook more quickly, and stay juicier. I'm planning to try it this way this year. Here are some links to stuffing recipes from the Blue Flame Kitchen...

• Traditional Stuffing

• Pumpernickel & Sausage Stuffing

• Rice & Currant Stuffing

• Sausage Stuffing

• Be sure to remove the packages of giblets & the neck from the cavity of the bird! Store these in the fridge to make soup or stock from the carcas the next day, if you'd like. Wash the turkey with cold water and pat dry with paper towels. 

• Atco's Blue Flame Kitchen shares this roasting timetable for an unstuffed, thawed bird.

• 10 lb (4.5 kg): 2 3/4 - 3 hours

• 15 lb (7.0 kg): 3 - 3 1/2 hours

• 20 lb (9.0 kg): 4 - 4 1/2 hours

• 26 lb (12.0 kg): 4 1/2 - 5 hours 

• Cook at 425F for the first half hour, then 325F for the rest of the time in a roasting pan, gently tented with foil. Remove the foil for the last 30-40 minutes.

• And last but not least, click this link... How to carve a turkey!

When I was preparing this blog post, I looked back through the photos of Christmasses past and realized that I had never stopped to take a photo of our table or of the meal that we were about to eat... year after year after year! I reached out to a few people to see if they had photos I could use for this post. My sister in law came through... but not in the way that I expected, thanks to her irreverent sense of humour! Let me leave you with one last image...

Have a wonderful Christmas, a spectacular holiday and a terrific New Year from all of us at SWEFM!

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Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

3 Ways to Play with Sweet Potatoes

My goal each week is to bring you recipes that are first and foremost, easy to make, and second, that use meat & produce that are in season (and during market season, that are available at our market). In that vein, I just can't possibly be done with sweet potatoes.... 

As we learned last week, sweet potatoes are a fantastic vegetable. Remember, a general rule when considering nutrition science in your home kitchen is that the more vibrantly coloured a fruit or vegetable is, the more packed it is with nutrients and antioxidants. That holds very true for the humble sweet potato. High in fibre (especially if you eat the skin), potassium, antioxidants, betacarotene and vitamins E, A & C, sweet potatoes help to arm you against heart disease & cancer and delay the effects of aging on the brain. And because sweet potatoes have so much fibre, they are a far better choice for diabetics than white potatoes because the fibre helps to keep blood glucose levels from spiking. So even though they have a far sweeter mouth taste, they have a lower glycemic index and are a far better choice.

Sweet potatoes are a wonderfully versatile vegetable... and this week we explore that versatility with a few simple recipes. Sweet potatoes can become delicious oven-baked fries, they can add thickness and be the sweet basis of delicious creamed soups (like last weeks sweet potato ginger soup), they can add flavour and colour and creamy texture to slow-cooked stews, they can be mashed and accompany roast chicken or turkey or ham, and they can even form the basis of pancakes or waffles! Yup, sweet potatoes are a great ingredient in your kitchen arsenal.

oven roasted sweet potato fries
Who does't love fast food french fries? It's too bad that they're so bad for you! Oven roasted fries are a great compromise as they're far better for you than the ones served up at the heart-attack-on-a-plate fast food joints. And they are very, very simple to do.

Roasting brings out the inherent sweetness in this wonderful veggie. I never peel my potatoes, whether they be sweet potatoes or regular potatoes, as the peels are good for you and have a terrific amount of fibre in them. Simply scrub your potatoes, cut out any blemishes (dark spots, digging scrapes & scars), then cut them in half, then into wedges. Depending on the size of the potato you are working with, you might need to still slice the wedges again... what you are going for here are a series of potato slices or wedges that are all approximately of uniform thickness. If you don't have to watch your salt intake, sprinkle on pickling or coarse sea salt instead of the regular grained salt called for below. Personally, I love the crunch that the big crystals give the roasted fries.

ingredients
3-4 sweet potatoes (to make enough wedges to cover your cookie sheet)
1-2 T. olive oil
1-2 t. salt
1-2 t. pepper
2-3 t. rosemary or other favourite herb (optional)

Then, toss in a bowl with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, a teaspoon or so of sea salt and a generous pinch or two (or three or four) of your favourite herbs (I love rosemary & black pepper, freshly muddled together in a mortar & pestle). Bake on a parchment paper lined cookie tray for about 15-20 minutes at 400F, or until slightly starting to crisp & char on the outside. The length of time will depend on the thickness of your potato wedges... less time for thin; more time for thick.

maple Mashed Sweet Potatoes
ingredients
3-4 sweet potatoes
1-2 T. butter
1-2 T. maple syrup
salt to taste

Simply boil up a batch of sweet potato cubes until soft (about 10 minutes... way faster than regular white potatoes), then drain and mash them with a pat of butter and a tablespoon or two of maple syrup. The maple flavour brings out the inherent sweetness in the potato leaving you with something that melts in your mouth! And the texture of the sweet potato mash is so soft & light that the end result is something divine! If you want your mash to have a smooth texture, peel them first. If you want a more rustic hash, leave the skins on.

The Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics cookbook invites playing with sweet mashed potatoes... if you feel like experimenting, try adding one of the following combinations to your mash:

• maple syrup & ground cardamomom
• bourbon, pears, pecans & brown sugar
• coconut milk, thyme, and ground allspice or ground nutmeg
• grated fresh ginger root and ground cinnamon
• horseradish or wasabi

sweet potato pancakes 
Think sweet potatoes don't have a place at your breakfast table? Think again! Delightfully delicate and permeated with the enticing aroma of lemon, these deep golden-brown pancakes are moist inside with crisp edges. No one will ever know that there's veggies in them!

For breakfast, serve them plain or with butter or maple syrup. For lunch or supper, top them with sour cream and put a chunky salsa on the side. For dessert, serve at room temperature, drizzled with equal parts lemon juice & honey stirred together & top with whipped cream. For another simple lemon syrup, stir together 2 T. of fresh lemon juice with 1/2 cup of pure maple syrup.

For ease of cooking, combine the wet ingredients in a 1-quart measuring cup with a pouring lip, stir in the dry ingredients, and then pour the batter directly onto a hot skillet.

Serves 4
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 3 minutes per batch
Total Time: about 35 minutes

ingredients
1 cup peeled & grated raw sweet potato (grate finely... or grate in a food processor, then switch the blade to chop it into a thick paste)
1/2 t. freshly grated lemon peel
1 large egg or 2 medium eggs
1 cup milk
2 T. oil or melted butter
1 c. unbleached white flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
2 T. sugar

directions
In a bowl, combine the grated sweet potatoes, lemon peel, egg, milk & oil or butter. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, salt & sugar. Gently stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients just enough to combine. Do not beat or over stir. Set aside to rest for 5-10 minutes.

Warm a lightly oiled skillet on medium-high heat. When a drop of water bounces on the skillet, and before the oil smokes, pour on a scant 1/4 cup of batter to form each round pancake. After about 2 minutes, when the pancakes are evenly dotted with bubbles and about half the bubbles have broken, flip the pancakes. Cook the second side until lightly browned, about 1 minute. Continue to cook batches of pancakes until all of the batter is used.

Serve right away or keep warm in a 250F oven. If you plan to serve at room temperature or reheat later, cool the pancakes in a single layer on a flat surface and then stack for storage. If storing for more than a few hours, refrigerate.

These make really great, easily portable snacks, quick to grab on the go. Call them "Lemon Pancakes" (that's the predominant flavour anyway) and your kids will never know that they're about half veggie!

For inspiration: Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics, p. 129
Sweet Potato Pancake Recipe: Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics, p. 47
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Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

Sweet Potato & Ginger Soup

Following along with our winter "what's-in-season" cooking theme is a wonderful root vegetable that keeps, like the hard spaghetti squash of last week, so well over the course of the winter.

Typical sweet potatoes available in our Canadian market

Sweet potatoes are a tad confusing because they come in so many shapes, sizes, colours and varieties... and because they are often confused with yams. They can be knobbly or smooth, long, skinny & pointy, or round and fat. Adding to the confusion is the fact that a sweet potato, despite being a tuber, isn't a potato at all! Sweet potatoes are New World vegetables and feature heavily in South American & Southern U.S. cooking. They are one of the oldest vegetables known and have been around since prehistoric times. Native to South America, they cook faster than white potatoes and can be baked, fried, boiled, nuked (microwaved), roasted and eaten raw. For the purposes of most recipes, the differences between them matter little.

Brigette, our SWEFM volunteer
coordinator, used to see Pete in
his Greengrocer's shop when she
lived in Halifax. It's a small world!

According to Pete Luckett, the most common variety of sweet potato in Canada is the copper skinned variety with bright orange flesh. The flavour will depend on the variety... as a general rule, lighter-fleshed sweet potatoes are more delicate, nutty rather than sweet, while darker ones have the distinctly spicy-sweet taste most of us would expect. He also advises that you never peel sweet potatoes, as their flesh darkens as soon as it is exposed to air. Simply wash them off, giving them a light scrub.

Sweet potatoes are wonderfully versatile... they can become delicious oven-baked fries, they can add thickness and be the sweet basis of delicious creamed soups and slow-cooked stews, they can be mashed and accompany a succulent chicken or turkey or ham roast, and they can even form the basis of pancakes or waffles! Yup, sweet potatoes are a great ingredient in your kitchen arsenal.

Still not convinced that they should be a part of your culinary repertoire? Then you have to consider the health benefits. A general rule when considering nutrition science in your home kitchen is that the more vibrantly coloured a fruit or vegetable is, the more packed it is with nutrients and antioxidants. That holds very true for the humble sweet potato. High in fibre (especially if you eat the skin), potassium, antioxidants, betacarotene and vitamins E, A & C, sweet potatoes help to arm you against heart disease & cancer and delay the effects of aging on the brain. And because sweet potatoes have so much fibre, they are a far better choice for diabetics than white potatoes because the fibre helps to keep blood glucose levels from spiking. So even though they have a far sweeter mouth taste, they have a lower glycemic index and are a far better choice.

Sweet Potatoes are more perishable than other types of potatoes because their skin is thin, delicate and susceptible to scraping and bruising. To avoid shortening their shelf life, The Sweet Potato Buyers Guide from A.V. Thomas Produce recommends that they be kept in a cool dry area with good air flow. Dampness and heat will cause them to spoil, so don't store them near a heat source and don't wash them until you are ready to use them. You might think this means you should refrigerate them, but DON'T! Refrigeration causes the inside of the potato to become hard and will affect its taste.

sweet potato & ginger soup

Frozen ginger grated with the Lee
Valley wood rasp.

This is a very creamy Thai soup, packed with flavour, that has been a favourite of mine for many years. Yup, it's a Thai recipe. 

We think of sweet potatoes as being a North American vegetable that goes hand in hand with a Thanksgiving feast, but did you know that sweet potatoes are even more popular in Asia with 90% of the sweet potato world export market being made up of sweet potatoes from there? 

They cook up very quickly (10 minutes), so they can be ready in a (culinary) heart beat! This recipe is so simple to make, but so creamy in a deliciously smooth, tangy, sweet way, that you just would't think it could possibly be good for you!

Just a little kitchen tip: when grating ginger root, I find it far easier to grate it from frozen. Buy ginger in bulk & put it in the freezer in a ziplock bag. It isn't messy or fibrous when you grate it in a frozen state (and yes, you can grate it with the skin on). I also use a wood rasp... yup, a wood working tool that I got from Lee Valley Tools years ago and it is incredibly sharp (another trick my father taught me). They now sell them with a metal catching trough on them that makes using the rasp in the kitchen a cinch. kitchen wood rasp. And fresh in for christmas stockings this year, they have a hand protecting container that slides along the rasp surface and collects ginger bits in a little glass bowl. Check it out... Zester Mate.

Coconut milk comes in small tins
that are the perfect size for this recipe.

Also, a little shopping tip: buying coconut milk can be a bit confusing as there are many varieties and price points from which to choose. I've found that there really isn't much of a difference between them, except when it comes to "lite" coconut milk (like cloudy water) and regular coconut milk (which has a heavy cream on top... give it a good shake before opening the tin). I usually make a trip to Lucky 97 downtown or T & T at West Edmonton Mall to stock up as it's far cheaper there than at your regular grocery store.  (While I'm there I also stock up on fresh kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass and ginger as they're all infinitely cheaper there and can easily be popped in the freezer & used later with no special prep & no ill effects whatsoever. Rice is far less expensive there too). At those Asian grocery stores, coconut milk can be found in small tins that are the perfect size for this recipe. 

Don't worry about buying "lite" coconut milk. It is used in a very small amount for this recipe, and despite being high in fat, saturated fat, regular coconut milk is high in the right kind of fat... medium chain triglycerides... that are essential for our health, so it is a very nutritious, heart happy, addition to this recipe.

Yield: 8-10 servings

3 simple ingredients... the soup
before blending with just sweet potatoes, stock & ginger.

ingredients

6 c. cubed, peeled sweet potatoes (peeling is optional)

3½ c. chicken or vegetable stock

1T. minced ginger root

½ c. unsweetened, light coconut milk

3T. fresh lime juice

½ t. salt

½ t. pepper

1/4 c. sliced almonds, toasted

1/4 c. chopped, fresh cilantro

instructions

1. In a saucepan, combine the potatoes, stock & ginger. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover & simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.
2. Transfer to a food processor or blender, or use an immersion blender directly in the pot. Purée until smooth.
3. Return to the saucepan. Whisk in the coconut milk (be sure to scrape & include any of the yummy coconut cream that is stuck to the side of the tin), lime juice, salt & pepper. Cook over low heat until just heated through.
4. Ladle into bowls. 
5. Sprinkle with almonds & cilantro.

Vibrantly coloured, creamy & delicious...
this is the soup once it is puréed.

Info from The Greengrocer's Kitchen, by Pete Luckett, and from The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, by Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
Recipe from Anne Lindsay's New Light Cooking, p. 66

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Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee