Roast Turkey Breast & Mini Sweet Potato Pies

 

It’s November and few things are more associated with the month than turkey. Except in my family, where we’ve never had turkey at Thanksgiving. We usually do a beef rib roast, which has always been fine in its own right, but as I’ve gotten older and been inundated with visions of beautiful golden roasted turkeys, I start to crave it at this time of year and don’t stop until I break down and go to a diner and get some turkey and mashed potatoes. No more this year! I decided. I want turkey at Thanksgiving. 

Since not everyone in the family is a turkey-lover, I asked my mother to get just a small turkey breast. This way we wouldn’t have spent tons of money or have a lot of meat go to waste if the Great Turkey Experiment failed. Due to many years of watching Good Eats, and going on Cinnamon’s advice, I decided to brine the turkey breast. I mixed a half-gallon of apple juice with a half-gallon of water and two cups of kosher salt and let the turkey sit in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning I dumped out the brine, patted the turkey down with some paper towels, and put it back in the refrigerator to sit uncovered for a few hours (one of the Food Network chefs – I think it was Anne Burrell – said that this would help the skin crisp up in the oven). When roasting time came I slathered the breast with some softened butter and improvised a rub of rosemary, sage, paprika, thyme, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure if I should add salt to the rub, but I had always heard that brining doesn’t make meat salty, so I threw it in.

A couple of hours later (I wasn’t really keeping track of time as I had my handy-dandy digital thermometer to gauge the meat’s doneness), this beauty came out of the oven:

After a good 30-minute rest, I picked up a knife and a giant fork and went at the turkey Alton Brown style. Which is to say, instead of cutting off slices of breast, I removed the entire lobe from the bone, then cut that horizontally into slices. The meat that came off that bone was divine – juicy, tender, flavorful, and…well…salty. Oof. It occurred to me that two things could have been at fault here. 1) I shouldn’t have added salt to the rub. Obviously. 2) I brined the turkey for too long. While brines themselves do not make meats salty, over-brining can and a good 10 hours for a 4-pound breast does seem a bit like overkill.

The skin didn't really stay on, but that was a perfection I wasn't striving to reach on the first go.

The saltiness aside, the meat was still delicious and enjoyed by even the most turkey-reticent amongst us. I would say that deems this experiment a success, worthy of repeating for years to come. Just, a little less salt next time.

*

Riding high on my pie feat from a few weeks ago, I decided that I would try my hand at sweet potato pie for Thanksgiving. Pumpkin pies are so common as to be almost boring (although I still love them), but sweet potato pie is sort of its forgotten cousin. I made the pie almost identically to my winter squash pie, roasting the sweet potatoes until soft, mashing them, then letting them cool before adding them to the egg and spice mixture. However, I did make a few changes to make pie a bit healthier. Instead of 1 ½ cups of heavy cream, I used a cup of fat free evaporated milk, in the hopes that this would make the center a bit denser and produce a more pronounced sweet potato flavor. I used Splenda for baking (white and brown sugars), which lessens the sugar content quite a bit, for those with diabetic needs. Finally, instead of making one big pie, I made ten mini pies, cutting the unbaked dough into rounds and fitting them into cupcake tins. 

Mashed, baked sweet potatoes

Sweet potatoes mixed with evaporated milk and spices

On the right you can see the glass I used to create my circles of dough

I forewent the blind baking, as well, and just added the filling straight to the unbaked pie cups (from a large measuring cup, at the oven this time…no more carrying liquid pies across rooms).  About 40 minutes later, I pulled these out:

Once the pies had cooled, I whipped up another batch of my bourbon whipped cream and piped a little bit on top:

 

Pretty, yes, but how did the pies taste? The crust, I must say, was fantastic, so kudos to me on that, but otherwise I’m a little disappointed to say that they tasted exactly like pumpkin pie. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t exciting either. Firstly, I’m not exactly sure that lessening the liquid content of the filling was for the best. Yes, I wanted to be able to taste more of the filling and less of the cream, but with just one cup of evaporated milk, I missed the fluffiness that the cream imparted. I’ll have to play around with ratios of milk and cream and see if I can get the texture I want without loading the pie up with calories. Secondly, while the flavor of the filling was perfectly fine, it was just that: fine. Nothing more, nothing less. I used the standard combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice in the mixture, but the final pie begged for something more, maybe some grated fresh ginger or a sprinkling of paprika for a hint of smokiness (I like it on my mashed sweet potatoes). I’m not sure what, exactly, the pies lacked, but you can bet that I’ll tinker around with it until I get the superb flavor that I want. Sweet potato pie hasn’t seen the last of me.

Acorn and Butternut Squash Pie with Bourbon Whipped Cream

On Saturday I went to my first Chicago Women Cooks-in-Training meetup. I discovered the group through A., a girl I met at my first Spanish meetup, who explained that the group was a bunch of women who were interested in learning to cook. I consider myself a semi-decent cook already, but I’m always down for learning more and sharing dishes with others. The theme for this particular meeting was autumn fruits and vegetables, a celebration of all the wonderful produce that comes at end of the summer season. Once I saw the theme I knew exactly what I would make: an acorn and butternut squash pie.

Now, have you ever made an acorn and butternut squash pie, you may ask? The answer would be no. But wait, have you ever even tried acorn squash, you may also ask? Again, the answer would be no. But how different could the two winter squashes be from pumpkin? Not that I’ve ever made a pumpkin pie, either, but I’ve seen my mother do it a thousand times. And I’ve heard much about how sweet acorn squash can be, so I figured it would probably pair well with the butternut, which I already know and love. And to top it off, I’d make bourbon whipped cream. The idea seemed simple enough to me.

The basis of the pie was JoC’s recipe for pumpkin pie. The first step was to make the crust, which I’ve made before and still have some issues making. Mainly, I can’t seem to roll out the crust evenly. I dealt with this by cutting off some of the thicker part and putting it behind the thinner parts to create the fluted edge (the edge was done just by pressing in on one side with a knuckle and pressing out on the other side with two knuckles). The instructions then said to brush the crust with some egg yolk, then follow the general instructions for pre-baking crusts, which are to dock it with a fork, cover it with foil, and weigh it down with beans or pie weights. I’ve seen this method on TV before, but I thought it was odd that I was being told to brush the pie with the yolk prior to covering it with foil. How would that allow the crust to brown and wouldn’t the yolk just stick to the foil? Yeah…those ended up being good questions because the crust did not, in fact, brown and it did, in fact, stick to the foil. I was sorrowed by the thin layer of what should have been crispy crust adhering fervently to the foil. 

Beautiful, golden, yolkiness that could have been all over my crust

Sigh. But, oh well—that part would be covered by the filling anyway. I had already baked the two squash and run the flesh through my potato ricer (I think the texture you get using a ricer is much smoother than what you get just using a masher). It was at that point that I took my first taste of acorn squash, which I can only say made me a little weak in the knees. It was so good, so sweet, so freakin’ wonderful. Why have I never had acorn squash before? Lord. One cup of the mashed acorn squash met one cup of the mashed butternut squash, joined by a couple eggs, some brown sugar, some white sugar, and some heavy cream. The spices were your standard cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice. 

Baked acorn squash

Acorn squash puree

Baked, seeded butternut squash

Butternut squash puree

Upon pouring the filling into the baked crust, I noticed that it seemed like it would be too much. I filled it almost to the top, let it settle, then decided I could fit the remaining filling in. And fit it did, but when I picked up the pie to put it into the oven, the filling sloshed over the crust and started dripping down the foil guards I had placed around the edges. Even worse, once I set the pie in the oven, the rack tilted a little and a little bit of the filling spilled out onto the oven floor. With some quick maneuvering, I managed to put a cookie sheet underneath the pie to catch the drips and wipe up the filling with a paper towel before it started to burn. And I only touched bare skin to oven wall once—pretty good for averting disaster if you ask me.

The pie took forever to bake. It was at least 30 minutes past the suggested baking time before the center stopped trembling whenever I pulled out the rack to check on it. There was definitely too much filling in there and the liquid that had spilled over the crust resulted in a lovely blackened hue. Yeah, it burned. 

 It wasn’t pretty, but it smelled good, and it seemed a shame to waste it. I had planned to make bourbon whipped cream to accompany the pie, so I said to myself: Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to pipe whipped cream over the top and no one will ever know. 

And that’s just what I did. I had planned to make the whipped cream at A.’s place since I was going to the Spanish meetup first and couldn’t have whipped cream sitting out for that long. With a fifth of Jack Daniels in my bag, some sugar, a measuring spoon, and my giant star tip, I picked up a half-pint of cream at Jewel before heading over to A.’s where I proceeded to “photoshop” my pie. In the rush to get everything together for the meetup, I forgot to put my camera in my bag so I wasn’t able to get a good shot of the final pie, but you can see it in the group photo below.

That's mine on the left, all covered in whipped cream.

Apparently my photoshop skills were so great that when I introduced myself and my pie, I heard one girl comment that she’d thought it was store-bought. Truthfully, though, piping that whipped cream was the easiest thing I’d done through the entire pie-making process.

But, how did it taste? Fantastic. Fluffy, subtly flavored by the two squashes, and topped by the not-overly-sweet whipped cream with just a hint of the bourbon kick, it was easily one of the best things I’ve ever made. This was a great idea.

Even though this pie wasn’t a 100% success, I decided to share it anyway because I think an important part of any type of cooking is knowing that not everything turns out right the first time you try it. Hell, sometimes things don’t turn out right the tenth or the fiftieth time you make it. What’s important is that you learn from your mistakes and try it again. There were two main things that went wrong here. 1) I thought it was odd to brush the crust with egg yolk, then cover it with foil, yet I did it anyway and ended up with a less than crispy, browned crust. 2) It seemed like there was too much filling to pour into the crust, yet I DID IT ANYWAY, and ended up with ridiculously long baking time and a burned crust. The upside is that these are mistakes I now know not to commit when I make another pie of this nature again; I couldn’t have figured these things out without trying to make the pie.

There are two morals to the story here. 1) Trust your instincts when baking. They probably won’t do you wrong. 2) Don’t be afraid to try new things and share them with others. Not everything will turn out perfectly, but sometimes you just may surprise yourself.

Well, Butter My Biscuits!

Back in the summer I signed up for several cooking-related meetup groups, one which being What's Cookin' Chicago?, one of largest of its kind. It took me a while, but I went to my first meetup with this group last month, a class about making biscuits. Now, I love me some biscuits. If I’m being honest, I love me some KFC biscuits, but the part of me that believes that anything home-cooked is a million times better—and usually better for you—than anything born from a fast food freezer tries to pretend that isn’t true. But, every time I’ve tried to make biscuits I’ve failed to produce that wonderful, fluffy, buttery, golden goodness that comes from behind that chicken counter.

Unfortunately, the day that I showed up to take my biscuit class, the studio’s oven wasn’t working. This meant that while we would learn about composing the biscuit dough, we wouldn’t actually get to bake it and taste it. To account for this snag, Joelen, the group’s organizer, had baked some beforehand so we would know what the doughs would produce.

I learned two important things at this biscuit class. 1) There are two types of biscuits: fluffy and flaky. 2) I prefer fluffy biscuits. While I did realize that some biscuits have that lovely, all-encompassing, melt in your mouth kind of feel and others do not, I never realized that it was due to two specific baking methods. The main difference is that the fluffy biscuits contain cake flour and are formed by lightly shaping the dough into balls and then pressing down on them to flatten them a little. Flaky biscuits use only all-purpose flour and are rolled out. The dough is then folded in on itself, then rolled again, then folded, then rolled, so you end up with layers of dough with thin sheets of butter in between, much like with puff pastry. (So, I’m told. I’ve never made my own puff pastry.) Both samples of the finished biscuits were good, but I knew immediately that it was the fluffy variety that I had been searching for all along.

Although we didn’t get to bake any biscuits that night, Joelen sent us the recipes she had used so we could try them at home. And try them I did. I decided to make two variations of the fluffy biscuit, the first with nice savory dill, and the second with sharp cheddar and bacon. Because what’s not better with bacon? The basic ingredients were all-purpose flour, the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, butter, and buttermilk. You can then change up the biscuits anyway you choose—add some thyme or some green onions or some blue cheese or some crumbled sausage, whatever you like.

 

 

The biscuit method of baking is similar to the pie method of baking wherein you mix your dry ingredients, cut in your cold butter, and then mix in your wet ingredients and any of the special add-ins. I did just that, mixing in my dill and my cheddar and bacon in last. There seemed to be some dry parts of the dough that didn’t mix in well with the addition of the buttermilk and had crumbled at the bottom of the bowl, but I just tried to incorporate them as much as I could. As instructed, I divided the dough into 12 portions and shaped them into balls, pressing down on them lightly when I placed them on the baking sheet. The biscuits got one more brushing of buttermilk before going in the oven.

 And when they came out? Heaven. Beautiful, hot, meltingly good, scrumptious biscuits. I think I used a bit too much dill, because the flavor was slightly over-powering, but other than that both varieties came out amazingly well. I shall never want for tender, fluffy biscuits again. At only $25, the class was well worth it. I definitely plan on taking more.

With dill

With sharp cheddar and bacon