 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Not Grandma's turkey dinner
By JANET K. KEELER © St. Petersburg Times, published November 15, 2000
Turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry, that marshmallow-yam thing, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie. There you have it. Thanksgiving 2000. Or Thanksgiving 1957. Or '75. Or '94. This year, if you've got an ounce of Martha in you, wake up Thanksgiving dinner by inviting new flavors to the table. To that end, we asked chef Jeannie Pierola of SideBern's in Tampa to put together a menu that would be challenging and fun for home cooks. True to SideBern's motto, "One World Under Food," Pierola stands Thanksgiving on its end. "The concept of this menu is traditional," she says, "but the flavors are not." A Florida native of Spanish heritage, Pierola infuses her Thanksgiving menu with ingredients that have become standard in the Sunshine State. There's a tad of Pilgrim and a whole lot of the Caribbean in her Red Chili Mojo Roasted Turkey with Plantain Chorizo Cuban Bread Stuffing. Adobo Pan Gravy? Pure flavor crescendo with a Latin backbeat. Pierola says she devised the recipes the same way she does the menu for SideBern's, the worldly sibling of Tampa's venerable Bern's Steak House. "First, I thought of what I want to eat," she says, laughing. "Then I built a menu that had things relevant to Thanksgiving." The components are there, all right. They just aren't prepared in a way you'll recognize.
Let's start with Pierola's turkey. There are many ways to prepare turkey; the deep-fried and smoked versions were featured in the first two weeks of this series. Beyond that there is brined turkey, turkey roasted with nothing but salt, pepper and butter, turkey cooked in bags, turkey with thermometer buttons that pop up when the bird is done, kosher turkey, turkey breast, stuffed versus unstuffed, basted versus unbasted. There is no shortage of advice, ideas or recipes. Pierola adds another twist: the free range turkey. "They are not filled with hormones, and the flavor and texture is better," Pierola says. They are also not readily available in grocery stores. If you want a free range turkey, call a butcher shop or specialty food store today. With Thanksgiving just a week away, you'll need to get your order in ASAP. (In a test of this recipe, I used a Butterball turkey, and it tasted fine.) The Red Chili Mojo marinade has the consistency of mud and a complex aroma owing to the melding of ancho chilies, cumin seed and cilantro. Olive oil is the binder and lime juice -- I used key limes -- is the acid. The marinade is quick to put together, but I had to make two stops to find the anchos, at a Kash n' Karry. An ancho chili is a dried poblano, a mildly hot Mexican pepper, and is reddish-brown. Badia Spices, a Miami-based maker of ethnic spices, packages anchos, and you can find them and their other products usually in the spice aisle. Ask someone for help if you can't locate them. The dried chilies are reconstituted by sitting in hot water for about 30 minutes. I was concerned about the heat from the peppers, so I removed some of the heat-holding seeds before I added the chilies to the marinade. This was unnecessary; the peppers aren't that hot. The turkey marinated overnight in the refrigerator, and the smell of something good permeated the air each time the door was opened. The turkey is initially cooked in a very hot 450-degree oven, breast side down on an oiled rack in a roasting pan for 20 minutes, then flipped and cooked breast side up for another 20 minutes. Oven temperature is lowered to 300 degrees for the duration of the roasting. The high temperature crisps the skin and helps keep moisture in the bird. The flipping gives the bottom part of the bird a chance to brown. Expect the skin to go dark in places during the high-heat roasting because of the 2 cups of olive oil in the marinade. Though the recipe doesn't call for it, I tented the turkey loosely with aluminum foil after the 40-minute high-heat roasting, removing it for the final 20 minutes. At about 31/2 hours, the white meat of my 11.5-pound turkey was registering 180 degrees on the meat thermometer. Out it came, to rest the required 20 minutes. During the resting period, juices are drawn back into the meat, and the meat becomes more firm for carving. I didn't stuff the bird, nor did I remove the wing tips to use in the gravy, as Pierola's recipes called for. I've been dissuaded from stuffing poultry by the bacteria scare and have found I don't miss the sometimes-mushy stuffing that comes from the bird. The gravy, with its unusual complement of oregano, thyme, cumin, cinnamon and cilantro, was a triumph without the wing tips. The highlight of Pierola's menu is the Plantain Chorizo Cuban Bread Stuffing. The slightly sweet plantains and the spicy chorizo sausage are the basis for a complex layering of flavors. Together, the moist turkey, flavorful stuffing and lushly decadent gravy (there's heavy cream in it!) put on a show fitting a Florida Thanksgiving. Where we were once thankful for the harvest of native foods, this dinner reminds us to be thankful for the flavors introduced by immigrants. Pierola's Curried Pumpkin Chai Meringue Pie might be the most innovative and unusual dessert you'll try this season. Curry in pumpkin pie? What the heck is chai? The name doesn't reflect that the bottom layer of this pie is a sugary pecan melange. This recipe is an example of how difficult it is to pinpoint the ingredients in complexly flavored food eaten in a restaurant such as SideBern's. Take, for example, the chai. Chai (rhymes with shy) is a spiced milk tea that originated in India and has gained popularity in the United States in recent years. The spices are usually cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves and pepper. The black tea is lightened by whole milk or cream. In Pierola's pie, 1 tablespoon of chai is steeped for 30 minutes in 1/2 cup of heavy cream brought to a boil. Whole foods stores sell chai in liquid concentrate, tea bags or powder. I bought the tea bags and used two of them, just guessing at the amount. You could leave the chai out and it wouldn't make any difference in the look or texture of the finished product. However, the gentle embrace of these spices added another layer to the overall taste. The curry is another interesting addition. Some who taste the pie won't know why the pie tastes different. Prepared curry is made up of turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, cloves and other spices. Here, it tempers the sweetness of the pecan mixture and adds depth to the hearty flavor of the pumpkin. I will make this pie again, but next time I'll drain as much liquid from the canned pumpkin pie filling as I can. The filling is whipped with the chai-infused cream and curry powder. It is then folded into whipped egg whites and sugar to form the meringue. My pie didn't hold its shape well after cutting and weeped later. Too much liquid in the meringue, I think. Pierola's Caribbean-accented Thanksgiving menu won't be for everyone, tastewise or effortwise. The recipes, she says, are simple and direct, and no special skills are needed to succeed with them. They do take time, though, for cooking and shopping. You'll probably have to shop at two stores, maybe more depending on where you live, for ingredients. "This menu is for someone who gets into food, someone who wants to play with their food," she says. Let the games begin.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
