Ming Tsai Gots Nuthin' On Me...

So it's become a bit of Christmas tradition around my parent's house that I cook either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day depending on whether or not we're going someplace for Christmas dinner. No Fa-rah-rah-rah-rah Chinese take-out at our household. Last year I made a ham so this year I decided to try my hand at baking a turkey.

I'm not a big fan of Emeril but one of his recipes on Food Network caught my eye so I decided to give it a try. I started off by "marinating" my turkey in a brine solution made with brown sugar, salt, lemon and oranges for about 4 hours.



After that I took it out of the solution and stuffed it with carrots, celery, onions and seasoned it with butter, bay leaves, pepper, salt and thyme. I tied that sucker up and threw it in the oven for about 3 hours.



After basting it every 30 minutes with turkey stock, the finished product looked like this:



The gravy was pretty simple to make as well. To start, I chopped up some carrots, celery and onions and threw them into a solution of turkey stock and water, along with the turkey neck and other extras and reduced it to make the turkey broth.



After the turkey was done roasting, I deglazed the drip pan with a cup of white wine and the turkey broth and transferred the mix to a saucepan that I had made a roux in. To add some more flavor, I also threw in half a can of cream of mushroom soup and some more salt and pepper to take off some of the white wine flavor.



For the sides, I made some herb roasted potatoes, collard greens, stuffing and an English Pea casserole.






So in the end, the final meal looked like this:



My cousin, who is in town from Taiwan, had never had turkey before so it was definitely an interesting experience for him. He known for being a really picky eater but he enjoyed it so I'm assuming that's a good sign. My mom, who went to culinary school, said that it was all really well done so that's another big thumbs up in my opinion.

All in all, Christmas was good. My favorite gift this year was a copy of the new edition of The Joy of Cooking which I had been eyeing for a while so that was a nice surprise. The parentals also give me a nice fund for the move to Vegas so that was greatly appreciated as well. My sister had suggested that I get my mom a framed picture of myself and my mom since I don't think that she has one and it turns out it was the gift she liked the most. I guess it's true that sometimes those small gifts are the best ones.

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and if I haven't already told you in person, Happy Holidays!!

Ho, ho, ho!!