Maker's Table

Harvest Meal

 

Tonight's ingredients, all now underway. Carrots, leeks, and herbs from my garden. Beans local. Cranberries regional (and organic). Chicken that led a happy life. Rejoice.

Grilled Turkey Burgers

The other night I threw my favorite turkey burgers onto the grill. I gently kneaded together a pound of ground turkey, a handful of chopped cilantro and chives, and about a half a cup each of breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese. The results were moist and meaty, the cheese adding a little umami burst. Serves four.

If you try this at home, cook them to 165°F.

Rustic Braised Chicken with Fennel and Black Olives

Here's another in the series of Three Ingredient Meals. The fennel and rosemary are aromatic complements to the dark chicken and olives.

The Three Ingredients
6-8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, about 1-1/4 pounds
1 large or two small fennel bulbs
1/4 to 1/3 cup pitted black Saracena, Kalamata, or similar oil-packed black olives

The Other Ingredients That Aren't Supposed to Count
3-4 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
3 Tbs olive oil
1 cup chicken stock
1 Tbs fresh rosemary
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Rinse the chicken thighs and pat dry. Trim any excess fat or cartilage and cut each thigh into two pieces. Sprinkle with salt and a few grinds of black pepper.

Rinse the fennel bulb and trim the long fibrous stalks, reserving any feathery greens. Cut the fennel in half lengthwise and cut out the hard core. Slice the fennel crosswise into 1/4 inch pieces. Chop the greens coarsely.

Heat a large skillet over a medium-high flame and add 2 Tbs oil. When the oil shimmers, add half the chicken pieces and cook about 2 minutes, then flip to brown the other side. Remove and set aside, then brown the remaining chicken and set that aside, too.

Heat the remaining olive oil and add the garlic and fennel. Sauté until the fennel begins to soften and brown, about 5 minutes. Place the fennel in a 9 by 13 inch baking pan and place the chicken pieces and its juices on top.

Return the pan to the heat, turn the flame to high, and pour in the chicken stock, scraping up any browned bits. Boil the stock until it's reduced by half. Pour this over the chicken and fennel in the baking pan.

Scatter the olives, fennel greens, and chopped rosemary over the chicken. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 10 minutes, until the top is lightly browned and the liquid is reduced.

Serve with crusty bread, freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and a few drizzles of good-quality extra virgin olive oil.

Grouse, Served

Tonight I prepared the grouse that had fallen out of the sky and into my hands.

I breasted-out the bird, pulling two three and a half ounce cutlets from the bones. These I pounded and sautéed in butter, then simmered briefly in a sauce I'd made from dried cranberries and tart cherries that had macerated in Madeira all day. I'd reduced the fruit with rosemary, duck demi-glace, and cream to bind it. I scattered a bit of fresh rosemary on top for the service, which added a bright, herbaceous note. The rice was whole grain long brown, because I like its nuttiness. The green beans were local. And we opened a bottle of Windy Oaks Pinot.

The meat tasted sweet and delicate, with no hint of the gameyness some had warned about, maybe because I'd rinsed the breasts, washing off the blood that can impart a gamey flavor. It tasted somewhat of chicken, and slightly of, oddly, pork tenderloin. It had a wild, free, animal quality that reminded me of autumn.

See more photos of preparation.

Grouse

This morning this ruffed grouse hurled itself against our dining room window, fell fifteen feet to the ground, and died in my hands. I buried it by the woodpile, offering a little prayer. But then I thought better of this and dug it up.

It's now in my refrigerator, and we plan to eat it. Rebecca Gray, wild foods editor of the newest Joy of Cooking—and also, by happy circumstance, a coworker and neighbor—offered guidance and advice.

First, the grouse should rest a day in the cold of the fridge. This mimics the old-world practice of hanging fowl, which tenderizes the meat and adds flavor. Then, I should "breast-out" the bird, cutting each breast away from the breastbone and ribs. The breast meat is the tastiest part of the bird, and breasting-out is easily done by someone like me who's never dressed a fowl. Finally, I should cook the breasts in a quick pan-sauté, and Rebecca suggested a traditional fruit accompaniment like wild grape or cranberry compote stewed in port.

I find the prospect of eating this grouse both horrifying and exciting. I've never eaten wild fowl, nor ever experienced an animal dying in my hands one day to be consumed the next. Both, of course, are two of the most natural things in the world.

Really Good Turkey Burgers

The quick take-away
Cook turkey burgers to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. (See the FDA website for details.) Read my recipes for quick, juicy turkey burgers.

The longer story, with recipes
I've only been cooking meat for ten of my twenty-two cooking years, but even when I was a vegetarian, I read all the meat recipes in my favorite food magazine, Fine Cooking, because, well, I'm a food nerd, and because I thought it might come in handy some day.

I'm the kind of person who learns how to do things by reading. When I was twenty, I learned how to make soup by reading each soup recipe, in sequence, in the Moosewood Cookbook, imagining each step of the process, from dicing to garnish. I followed the process imaginatively, and the repetition cemented in my mind the method for soup: sauté aromatics, add stock and other goodies. Simmer. Purée if it's that kind of soup. Add dairy (but then don't let it boil). Etcetera. Soup as archetype, soup as prototype. Soup. Simple. Then, I repeated the process with salad, bread, cake. Read it and eat.

So that's also how I learned to cook meat: by reading recipes. But when I started eating meat, and actually had to cook it, I realized meat was tricky. Meat isn't soup. Meat's not cake. Meat's more like bread: infinitely varied, sometimes yielding to a light hand, sometimes demanding heavy intervention. Tenderloin, for example, can't take much handling. You introduce it, casually, to the heat, then offer it a brief repose before slicing. Stew beef is tenderloin's brutish cousin. Stew beef likes it rough.

As a newly recovering vegetarian, I always overcooked my meat. I'm wiggy about food safety, having done a lot of canning in my day, and, terrified by the prospect of shelves of canned produce packing enough botulinum toxin to give the entire cast of Nunsense a pout like Goldie Hawn, I always erred on the side of caution. Meaning, essentially, my meat was always overcooked, gray to the core. I figured any redness in the center was unsafe because that meant it hadn't gotten hot enough to denature protein, meaning, by extension, not hot enough to kill microorganisms.

Then I took a meat class. I learned that solid cuts of red meat—roasts, loin cuts, chops, steaks—can be safely cooked to the point where they were still pink in the middle because it's only the outside that's been exposed to bacteria, and as long as your sear is hot enough to kill that, the meat is safe. In other words, there's nothing to "kill" inside except flavor. I got a food thermometer, and it has been my guide, my Virgil, to tender, juicy, wonderful, safe red meat cooked medium rare.

But burger meat is different. Grinding the meat exposes all of the meat to air and the microorganisms in it. So I cook my burgers, meatloaf, and meatballs thoroughly, to the recommended USDA internal temperature. For ground beef that's 160 F.

Which brings us, finally, to ground poultry and the nominal subject of this post, turkey burgers. Unlike red meat, even solid cuts of poultry must be cooked thoroughly, because poultry pathogens are different from beef pathogens and are destroyed at higher temperatures. Poultry must be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 F, a point at which the juices run clear.

Since ground poultry doesn't have as much fat as ground beef or pork, cooking turkey burgers to that temperature can yield a dry, tight patty. Fine Cooking to the rescue. The September 2008 issue suggests using ground turkey that contains some dark meat, for a total content that's about 93% lean. This is still leaner than most hamburger meat (80% to 85% lean), but has enough fat to keep the inside moist and flavorful.

Below are two methods for turkey burgers: one with dark meat—now my preferred method—and another for occasions when you only have lean meat on hand. I use Stonewood Farm turkey exclusively, because the birds are raised humanely and without antibiotics or hormones. Stonewood sells their ground meat in 1 lb packages of Regular, Dark, Sweet Italian Sausage, and Hot Italian Sausage varieties. They're all good.

Turkey Burgers 1

In a large bowl, place 1 lb regular and 1 lb dark ground turkey meat. Add about 1/2 cup chopped fresh herbs and a tablespoon of fennel seeds. Season with salt and pepper. Knead lightly, being careful not to overwork or compress the meat too much. Form into six large or eight medium patties. Grill, pan-fry, or broil, flipping once, until the internal temperature is 165 F. Remove from heat, let rest about 5 minutes, and serve.

Turkey Burgers 2

Follow the above method using all regular turkey meat (the Stonewood sausage meats seem to qualify as "regular"). Season as above, but add about 3/4 cup grated parmesan to the mix and cut back on the salt. If you're planning to pan-fry, you can rub the patties lightly with oil and dredge in breadcrumbs (panko or Italian) to form a crust that will help keep the interior especially moist.