gobble, cluck, and quack

most of my memories of christmas eve involve us eating chinese food for dinner, not because we are jews but because it was always a way to get my sister and i out of the house so ‘santa’ could come drop our presents off. i don’t know why we never opened gifts on christmas, maybe one day i will ask my parents. but it was always christmas eve, and my parents would call and order food and then me and my sister and my dad would go take a ride to get it and when we got back-quelle surprise!- our presents would have arrived. my dumb ass didn’t even figure out what was going on, what eventually tipped me off was that santa used the same wrapping paper that i found in my parents closet. i always liked christmas eve because it was just the four of us, christmas day was much less fun because it usually involved going to other relatives’ houses. now that i am almost thirty i guess my parents figure there is no point to exchange gifts anymore, a decision of which i actually approve. so this year i came to the realization that chinese food is actually pretty gross, so i figured i’d just make some pasta or something for christmas eve. a few weeks before christmas, i got a cryptic e-mail from my uncle, who is actually not my uncle but in fact my dad’s ex-boss/now good friend but is so awesome that i wish he was related to me, asking who would be coming for christmas dinner. he and my father are consummate gourmands, and while i think of myself as more of a gourmet, he loved that i am an enthusiast of food/eating/cooking. eventually he admitted that he was ordering a turducken for his christmas dinner and wanted to send us one as well. this was on the heels of me eating beef heart (which i have not been able to shut up about, because it was so awesome and i feel like maybe it imbued me with some kind of super human powers) so i was like, hell yeah send us a turducken, i love to eat animals! he said if we didn’t like it could take it to the homeless shelter since i had stolen a line from erin while railing against the gluttony and excess of gross traditional thanksgiving food proclaimed it to be ‘homeless shelter food’, which it totally is. or maybe tv dinner food.
so last week a giant box showed up on the porch, a huge styrofoam cooler with this giant frozen turducken. it barely fit into the freezer and it had to thaw for three days and it had to cook for twelve hours. that means it went into the oven at five fifteen am. the instructional brochure that came with it said that there were 20-25 servings. my aunt made turducken gravy from the juices (which made me excited even though i don’t like gravy, i do really get off on when things are homemade from scratch). i made mashed potatoes with caramelized onions and a chocolate cake with caramel-milk chocolate frosting and homemade vanilla ice cream. the turducken stuffing was just breadcrumbs and spinach, i think. you have to let the bird (birds?) sit and cool for an hour after they back that long, and then you have to pull out all the twine holding it together (which i tried to do as gingerly as possible with a kitchen shears, but the drumsticks just fell right off the body!). my dad sharpened our best carving knife and we got to work:

can you see how the thing steamed up my camera lens? geez. this picture showcases the copious amount of stuffing, it was hard to even see the meat of each bird inside the other, and my final verdict is that it was basically turkey, but really good. i love duck but was a little grossed out because i had to rip off a big piece of rubbery skin before i could eat it. also, you know how you always see pictures online of people who put like, bacon on their turduckens? and you probably think, now that is just going overboard. but honestly, a little bit of salty bacon (or maybe pancetta, mmm) would have really topped it off. we had nine people in total, which is the most people we’ve ever had over on christmas eve, so it was lovely and festive and there were no presents or candy in our stockings or white chinese food containers. there is of course a ton of leftovers, which i guess means we are going to be eating a lot of turducken meat sandwiches for the next few days.

i also think that all this meat made me dream that i went to the grocery store and at the deli counter they had guanciale, which i have been obsessed with ever since i had it on a pizza at spacca napoli last month. i have no idea where to find it but in my dream they had it at the jewel down the street and it was $70 per pound so i could only buy a quarter pound. i told my mom about this dream this morning and her response was: you need to get a hobby. what, like cured meats can’t be a hobby?

(big thanks to my uncle bill, your christmas gift fed a very thankful hoard that braved the freezing rain for the promise of a taste of this three-species behemoth.)

Tags: food i make, turducken, xmas