Mjx

Most of us have had the experience of using a lousy recipe source, or worse, a should-be reliable recipe source that isn't: Baking tends to be particularly vulnerable, when it comes to recipe glitches, since the complex physical chemistry often only works within narrow parameters. I'm standing by, sort of 'on call', assisting my boyfriend's mother ('I.', who is very far from being any sort of fool, and has several decades of bread-baking behind her) with the Øland-wheat bread recipe from Claus Meyer's Meyers bageri ('Meyer's bakery', no English translation available), and waiting on the results. When I saw the dough – far wetter than what I get with a no-knead bread recipe – I assumed it was going to be baked in a container of some sort, and asked what she was going to use. My Danish is still far from perfect, so when she explained that the recipe calls for baking it on a stone, I thought I misunderstood. I asked my questions while watching her proceeded to the step that calls for kneading the dough. Fortunately, this was done on a silicon rolling mat, enabling us to corral most of the dough and use the mat as a funnel to pour it back into the bowl. Undaunted, she gave up on the kneading, but did heat the stone in the oven, flour a baking peal, and pour a small puddle of dough onto it, which she then scraped onto the stone (the result is damn tasty, even if it is only the thickness of naan). She's decided to bake the rest in some sort of container, after all. I. is convinced she must have done something wrong, although she followed the recipe to the word; the possibility that the recipe may be at fault just seems inconsistent with what should be a reliable source (Meyer's bread is famous throughout Denmark). I think it's just an unreliable work, since this isn't the first recipe from it that is not working out, and am bewildered by her insistence that she's at fault. Is this so common? Time and experience have made a sceptic of me, and if proportions or consistency seem off, I start to tinker and make notes. How implicitly do you trust recipes, and has this changed over time? Do you have a 'But I followed the recipe!' tale to tell?

I like a mix of potatoes. Sometimes I've done it out of necessity, but given the choice, I use more than one type of potato, anyway. For whatever it's worth, I like the texture of potatoes that have been roasted over that made from boiled potatoes, and is seems to mitigate the potential for gluey-ness of waxy potatoes.

Cardamom, clove, black pepper, nutmeg, allspice, and a bit of fresh thyme. 80% turkey meat/20% pork belly (mostly fat), minced onion, plus some bacon ground in for good measure; milk/egg/breadcrumb mixture as well. They're really tasty. Going to finish in the oven in 1/2" of hot stock. They sound really good (unlike what I've had in the dozen or so years I've been visiting/staying in Denmark); I've reached the conclusion that if they're not boiled briskly for half an hour, they're not 100% Danish

Yep. What seasonings are you using?

Please tell me that you are not using a standard/authentic Danish frikadelle recipe... although their density and resilience are admirable, even remarkable, texture and flavour tend to be, well... not so festive.

Fourteen people to a capon (even one of the bigger ones) wouldn't work out, unless everyone is on some sort of diet I'd forgotten about the size of Italian refrigerators (and I doubt it's cold enough there to dry-brine your turkey overnight on the kitchen counter).

You can make one from pretty much any creature (or combination), including capon. 'Yes' on the olio nuovo (although I remember having it earlier in the year than this..?) Every time I've had capon (admittedly, under half a dozen, that I can remember), it's been remarkable. It's big at Christmas, of course, and if I were roasting one I'd brine it, then roast 15-20 minutes on each side (depending on size) at about 190C°, and finish for 20-25 minutes on its back at 230C°. How many people are you feeding?

I am Italian (and also American, but I've been intrigued by Denmark since I was a kid, and my boyfriend is Danish), grew up in Florence, in fact; at this time of year, I really miss the food... what's winter, without roast chestnuts and castagnaccio?! Alternatively, if the turkeys there aren't so good, could you get hold of a capon? They're big, tender, and juicy, plus it will probably be easier to get lots of reliable advice about roasting them, there.

Kent, that looks delicious. I'm in Denmark, and unlikely to know for certain whether or not my boyfriend/his parents will want to do Thanksgiving until, well, the day before. So, I'm thinking in terms of food that represents it sort of iconically (they've never seen an actual US Thanksgiving spread in the flesh), but can be cooked in a single evening. This is no hardship, since Thanksgiving evokes no nostalgia for me: When I was growing up, nut loaf (if you don't know what that is, you're probably better off keeping your ignorance intact) was the centrepiece of this holiday, and what I'm most thankful for, as an adult, is that I'm not subjected to this annual ordeal (which also conjures up images of the disasters discussed in How Not to Die on Thanksgiving this Year). I'm thinking in terms of venison, chestnuts, some sort of pumpkin/winter squash soup, and wild rice; pictures to follow, if this happens, and is reasonably photogenic.

That sounds a little like what I do, although I'm particularly big on time lines; on a single page, I make one for each thing I'm preparing, which really helps pinpoint potential conflicts ahead of time, and really reduces the chance of unpleasant drama when coordinating a dinner party.

Rayner is entitled to his opinions, but the article is too heavy-handed to be described as 'tongue in cheek', even by the the most elastic parameters of the most compliant imagination. The greater part of the humour to which I've been exposed throughout my life has been British, and I recognize tongue in cheek when I see it, even in when it verges on the grotesque (e.g. a good deal of Little Britain or Come fly with Me), but this just comes off as a tedious and dribbly rant. Yawn.

If it's a toss-up between a slow eater and a fast eater (Rayer fails to explain why 'fast' should be regarded as the normal eating speed; what happened to all the speeds between fast and slow?), I'll go with the former. I can live with sitting about waiting for someone else to finish their food, but the fast eater is, in my experience, also quite likely to be the chewing-with-the-mouth-open/talking-with-the-mouth-full eater, and those are two things that make me feel a level of rage that borders on the homicidal. Even if the fast eater manages to keep his or her mouth closed while there's food in it, it's really unappetizing to watch someone shovel in their meal without ever putting down a utensil, as though they're competing/have a train to catch/fear that someone is going to take their food from them, if the don't finish quickly enough.

PC's idea sounds really good (I have non-celiac issues with wheat); macarons are another great option.

Which sources have you found in your online searches, so far?

That's a shame, I would have expected travel insurance to pick that up. Of course, travel insurance isn't going to help when you have to cancel/reschedule a reservation in your home town because you're stuck in casualty waiting for the report on the x-ray of your arm, but I'm hoping that, at least when faced with concrete evidence of a legitimate reason for cancelling, most restaurants are reasonable. I've often wondered about this, in fact: What is the usual policy, when someone can't make it owing to accident/violent illness/etc, and provides incontrovertible proof of it?

I did (it doesn't always get everything up, but this time it was fine)... and I did!

Remarkably, this came out well; not just 'not dreadful', but really tasty and moist. And I have no idea how this happened: There was skin missing, the temperature seemed way, way too high, by rights, this should have been a desiccated ruin. I'd still love to hear what the rest of you do with pheasant, and how.

Don't know how I managed to miss mm84321's previous post on pheasant, which looks delicious. Roasted one tonight myself, and despite apparent impending disaster, it came out quite well. It looked a tad mummified, but was actually tender and juicy. The bird was one of the three here, but I don't know which: And here it is, about to go into the oven, and not looking very promising: I'm still stunned that it turned out really well, since I was preparing for brooding and self-flagellation on a grand scale

I'm getting a little discouraged. A number of roasting recipes recipes recommend starting the pheasant briefly at high temperature (230C°/450F°) then reducing the temperature (to 177C°/350F°), and roasting until the thigh registers 57C°/135F°. This inverts the process I use for roasting a chicken (one recipe claimed that the legs burn if the heat is higher at the end), but wasn't illogical, so I decided to give it a go. I rubbed olive oil over the outside, stuffed the cavity with fresh rosemary, draped the bird in a double layer of pancetta, popped it into the oven, and began washing up. I glanced at the temperature about ten minutes later, and was horrified to see that it had already hit 77C°/171F°. I yanked out the bird, and took a look. The surface wasn't particularly browned, notwithstanding the fact that the oven felt like a blast furnace. I poked the probe in one or two other places, and got mixed readings. I turned down the heat, turned off the hot air, and put the bird back in. I'm trying to look at this philosophically (I can always, I don't know, braise it afterwards? turn it into soup?), but I have a sinking feeling in my stomach about the outcome. On top of this, the only metal roasting pan has vanished, and the ceramic one I'm using cannot be deglazed on the stovetop, so I'm going to lose a lot of fond

I just unbagged the bird, and discovered that actually, most of the skin over the breast is missing (the bag was transluscent, and when I noticed some skin, I assumed it was all there) The only birds that have all their skin are the two I plucked, and they've been frozen for a holiday meal. Would it be taking chances to cover the breasts really well with pancetta, and roast? I think the one I've got is one of the younger birds (one of the two was really young, the spurs were still small), but I have to wait until my boyfriend's father is done with his trumpet lesson to ask.

I'm really grateful for the skin, but yeh, it takes ages to pluck: I should know, since I did the fine plucking on two of the birds. I'm trying to tak every measure possible to avoid drying the bird, particularly since its size is going to make it difficult to accurately place the probe of a thermometer, and the oven temperature is way off.

I definitely appreciate the advice about brining, since I was wondering about that, and how long the bird should be brined for, given its relatively small size. I've been thinking about tucking pancetta under the breast skin (may prove to be too fiddly to be workable, but seems like it might be worth at least trying), has anyone tried anything like that?

The bird is 770g/27oz (no feet or wings, since they were unfortunately trimmed away and discarded as garbage), so probably smaller than the bird recommended for the recipe, but I'd love to hear it, anyway... adaptation is always an option.

My boyfriend's father recently shot several pheasant, and we've been given one as a gift. It is presently sitting, cleaned and plucked, in our refrigerator. I've looked at a couple of other threads that discuss pheasant, but none seem to include any detailed, tested recipes; I love pheasant, and really want to do this one justice. I haven't got a sous-vide rig, so that isn't an option, but pretty much anything else is on the table.

How about a food mill? If you want a chunkier texture to your finished product, you might pick through the fruit by hand until you get bored, then put the rest through the food mill.