The mysterious turducken
I have fallen a bit behind on the blog postings. Where to begin?
Last Saturday I had a date to go out with my friend Marc, who just graduated from the California Culinary Academy and now works at Jardiniere. This gives him airs, but I love him anyway. He offered me the choice of attending a party filled with young, attractive, politically active intellectuals at a mansion in Tiburon, or helping him make a turducken. I guess I don’t even need to tell you what my decision was.
An hour later, I arrived at his Bernal Heights house and met Marc’s hacker roommates and ill-behaved kitten, Hmoob. We picked up dinner around the corner at Zante’s, an Indian place that specializes in pizza. For $3, you get a massive slice that has been reinterpreted to include a naan crust, tandoori chicken topping, and lots of fresh cilantro. It was shockingly good, I have to say. As we ate, we lurched down the street to a San Fran institution called Mitchell’s for dessert. I was still stuffing Indian pizza in my maw as I croaked out my ice cream order to the counter guy, who appeared unimpressed with my advanced multitasking abilities. Marc got a mango and coconut hot fudge sundae, and I chose Mexican chocolate and a flavor called Cinnamon Snap, which was amazing. The preponderance of enormous chunks of ginger cookies in my cup put Ben & Jerry’s to shame. We sat on the bench in the chilly evening air and gorged. It was delightful.
Then we headed to the first of three markets in order to purchase the tur-, the duck, and the –en, plus most of the ingredients for stuffing. By now it was getting on 10 p.m. I wish I could tell you that I had the endurance to stay up all night helping Marc make three kinds of stuffing and assembling a magical turducken, but I am not that cool.
In fact, I am really, really lame, and had to call it quits at 1 a.m. By this point I had managed to make a huge tub of brine, but could not contribute much else, because Marc had still not finished boning the birds. The (semi-vegan) roommates and I hovered around him, watching with horror and fascination as his t-shirt grew ever more spattered with raw bird flesh, blood and guts. These procedures moved at a glacial pace, since he insisted on providing a creepy narrative of each step for our benefit (“Now I’m popping out the pelvic bone, and I’m going to strip it of all the tendons…”). I was informed that I was lucky to be receiving a free butchery lesson from a recent culinary school grad; however, I’m not sure how trustworthy these instructions really were, as they included reference to both the “arms” of the chicken and the kneecaps of the duck. Maybe ducks really do have kneecaps. I don't know. But I must ask, what place do they have in a turducken?
Anyway, I had to drag myself home to Marin and never saw anything remotely close to the finished product. Marc phoned the next day to trumpet his success. Alas, the turducken remains an enigma to me, forever slightly beyond my culinary grasp.
Last Saturday I had a date to go out with my friend Marc, who just graduated from the California Culinary Academy and now works at Jardiniere. This gives him airs, but I love him anyway. He offered me the choice of attending a party filled with young, attractive, politically active intellectuals at a mansion in Tiburon, or helping him make a turducken. I guess I don’t even need to tell you what my decision was.
An hour later, I arrived at his Bernal Heights house and met Marc’s hacker roommates and ill-behaved kitten, Hmoob. We picked up dinner around the corner at Zante’s, an Indian place that specializes in pizza. For $3, you get a massive slice that has been reinterpreted to include a naan crust, tandoori chicken topping, and lots of fresh cilantro. It was shockingly good, I have to say. As we ate, we lurched down the street to a San Fran institution called Mitchell’s for dessert. I was still stuffing Indian pizza in my maw as I croaked out my ice cream order to the counter guy, who appeared unimpressed with my advanced multitasking abilities. Marc got a mango and coconut hot fudge sundae, and I chose Mexican chocolate and a flavor called Cinnamon Snap, which was amazing. The preponderance of enormous chunks of ginger cookies in my cup put Ben & Jerry’s to shame. We sat on the bench in the chilly evening air and gorged. It was delightful.
Then we headed to the first of three markets in order to purchase the tur-, the duck, and the –en, plus most of the ingredients for stuffing. By now it was getting on 10 p.m. I wish I could tell you that I had the endurance to stay up all night helping Marc make three kinds of stuffing and assembling a magical turducken, but I am not that cool.
In fact, I am really, really lame, and had to call it quits at 1 a.m. By this point I had managed to make a huge tub of brine, but could not contribute much else, because Marc had still not finished boning the birds. The (semi-vegan) roommates and I hovered around him, watching with horror and fascination as his t-shirt grew ever more spattered with raw bird flesh, blood and guts. These procedures moved at a glacial pace, since he insisted on providing a creepy narrative of each step for our benefit (“Now I’m popping out the pelvic bone, and I’m going to strip it of all the tendons…”). I was informed that I was lucky to be receiving a free butchery lesson from a recent culinary school grad; however, I’m not sure how trustworthy these instructions really were, as they included reference to both the “arms” of the chicken and the kneecaps of the duck. Maybe ducks really do have kneecaps. I don't know. But I must ask, what place do they have in a turducken?
Anyway, I had to drag myself home to Marin and never saw anything remotely close to the finished product. Marc phoned the next day to trumpet his success. Alas, the turducken remains an enigma to me, forever slightly beyond my culinary grasp.
posted by cindym at 8:26 PM
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