Who am I kidding? (Actually, whom am I kidding?) If you’re the cook for tomorrow you’re not reading blog posts, and this won’t arrive in your inbox until 6:00 this evening, at which point it will be far too late for you to go to the grocery store and buy a butternut squash. I actually should have posted this additional material on Monday, or even Sunday afternoon, as a friend told me at church that morning that she hadn’t been able to access the New York Times articles/recipes by Melissa Clark. But there it is. Maybe you’ll decide to make her pie for Christmas dinner. And you can still roast your turkey the way Melissa says to do it even if you decide not to do the dry marinade. I think you should be able to access the video at least:
“Melissa Clark’s Splayed Turkey with Herbs”
Be sure to note that while she says to put the roasting pan directly on the floor of the oven, you shouldn’t do that if you have an electric stove with an exposed heating element. I’m going to move my pizza stone up into the large oven, put the rack on its lowest position, put the stone on the top of that, and the roasting pan on top of that. I’m going to put as much of the garlic-herb mixture into the bird’s cavity as I can, then add the halved zested lemons. I’ll wipe off any clinging salt/herbs on the outside of the turkey and brush the skin lightly with a small amount of baking soda (maybe 1 tsp.?) dissolved in a couple teaspoons of water. That’s supposed to help the skin brown. I’ll leave it up to you to watch the video to see how to “splay” turkey. I think it’s going to be really good!
Here’s what I put into my dry brine, which is a little different from hers:
2 tablespoons kosher salt (I use Diamond Crystal)
8-10 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
As much black pepper as I could stand to grind (maybe 1 tsp.)
1 dozen or so springs of thyme, roughly chopped
Zest from two large lemons, grated on a microplane (Save the zested lemons to put inside the turkey cavity) mixed with about 1/8 tsp. lemon oil (Remember, the flavor in citrus zest comes from the oil in it; citrus oils are a fabulous shortcut. However, for this recipe I was afraid that it would be too difficult to evenly disperse the small amount of oil in the dry brine, so I did a mix of both.)
2 crumbled bay leaves
A couple of glugs of olive oil (which I realized as I was typing this post is an ingredient not in the original recipe; I may have shot myself in the foot by adding this, but we’ll see. The oil may interfere with the brining process.)
And here’s a non-New-York-Times reprint of her pie recipe:
“Melissa Clark’s Un-Pumpkin Pie”
Ho-kay. I’m off to prep almost five pounds of beautiful fresh green beans. (I may have overdone the amount a little; they were so beautiful!)
I’ll report back after tomorrow to say how everything came out!