Entre Les Murs

The Biggest Turkey in Paris

A few weeks ago I looked into ordering a free-range turkey ("dinde fermier") for Thanksgiving.  My usual poultry stall in the market was happy to arrange it, but advised that the largest one could hope for was four kilograms.  This didn't seem like a very large turkey to me, but they explained that the fermier birds aren't as large as others.  I got the same story elsewhere, so I went ahead and ordered one last Sunday, explaining that it was for a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner.  They called on Friday to confirm that the bird would be available and Sunday I went with AL to pick it up.  Well, I guess I had managed to make it clear that I'd like as large a bird as they could manage, because what was waiting for me was 6.8 kg (I had to weigh it on the bathroom scale because our kitchen scale isn't large enough).  The poultry vendor seemed as surprised about it as we were, and handed it over with cautions about cooking it slowly, and advice that we could freeze the leftovers.

I wasn't able to muster enough ingredients for stuffing to properly fill the animal, but with a little filler it didn't look empty (I almost threw in the leftover rice; if we hadn't been having guests I'd have given it a whirl).  They had cleaned it nicely - even too nicely, since there wasn't a lot of skin left to sew up the cavity.  The bird fit in our Paris-sized convection oven, but only barely.  The vegetables had to sit in a pan on the bottom, which wouldn't have been possible if there had been an element.  But it came out golden and moist.

Our second guest was a Canadian co-worker of Janet's, T, whose fiancée is back in Ottawa for a couple of weeks, making us four in all.  The rest of the meal was fairly typical for the occasion: potatoes and roast veg, green beans, salad, and apple and rhubarb pies for dessert (furnished by T, who couldn't choose so brought both).  We made an appetizer from figs, having found a recipe in one of our new French cookbooks that we wanted to try out.  It must be the season for figs because they've recently appeared in the market.  Dried, they're not my favorite fruit, but fresh is another story.  The recipe - for figs stuffed with chevre and pistachios - was challenging, since there was some specialized vocabulary that we had to guess at from the context, but it did seem to work out.

The four of us gorged ourselves, but didn't manage to eat much more than half of one side of the turkey.  It's currently taking up about most of the top shelf of our Paris-sized fridge. 

Now there's nothing left to do but - *gulp* - wash the dishes.

posted 9.10.06