Let's talk turkey

So there we were, Terry and me and Sandy. 

Sharing a bit of social time, and a drink or two.

Sandy gets the words out of her face:" You can cook can't you?"

I look at Terry, Terry looks at me, I look at Sandy, whose eyes are also pointed in my general direction. I say: "HUH?'.

Sandy says she wants a turkey. Not just any old turkey, but a turkey roast!
For Christmas. I say an un-christian thing. I don't dig turkey. It tastes funny, it's dry, and I don't like it. Based on my dislike I've never taken the trouble to take a raw turkey and make it edible, because turkey, by the nature of the beast, and because past experience bears it out, turkey is inedible!

However, being the nice person I am, and 'cos Sandy was in a state of distress, a lady, and she desperately needed a turkey, I did agree to toss a turkey through the oven for her. Expressly no guarantees as to resultant offerring.

So, 2 days before Christmas we track down and acquire a turkey. The day before Christmas, we go out looking for all the bits and pieces that get added onto, hammered and nailed to, glued to and used to make raw turkey into not-raw roast turkey. 

This, in East London, on Christmas Eve, is not possible. We eventually settled for a bucketfull of non-listed accessories, 'cos they were kinda closely related (in the dark) to what we needed.

Back home, it was:

1. Turkey out of its bag. 
2. Guts and giblets out of turkey. 
3. Wash turkey. No soap.
4. Dry turkey.
5. Plaxo Sage and Onion stuffing gets boiling water, and stands till I'm ready for it.
6. Start oven pre-heating to 180C
7. Line oven tray with foil.
8. Put rack onto oven tray.
9. Cook stuffing in microwave.
10. Take turkey, and liberally powder the beast with chicken spice, and cayenne pepper. Most of it comes off, but sfw?
11. Now pour oil (preferably olive) into hands, and wipe all over turkey. 
12. Remember stuffing.
13. Check the stuffing out, looks a bit little, so add two slices of dampened bread, and work it into the mixture.
14. Stuffing still seems to be a bit few. Add fresh apricots. Looks okayish now.
15. Stuff turkey stuffing into the convenient stuffing thing all turkeys have. 
16. Not enough stuffing!
17. Take onion, peel, test for size.
18. Need to remove 2 layers of onion to get the onion to fit into the space provided.
19. Score onion across top and bottom, and rub in oil juice that came off the turkey.
20. Push back into turkey.
21. Put the newly accessorised turkey onto the rack.
22. Drop a large dollop of margarine into a jug, and then add herbs. I used rosemary, mixed herbs, a touch of mint, and some parsley. Oh yes, and just a smidgin of garlic.
23. Pour boiling water into the jug, get everything either melted, or in suspension, and pour it into the oven tray. About half full is okay.
24. Now you need a bunch of small potatoes, score them with a fork, and rub some of the turkey oil juice stuff (thats the oil juice that has chicken spice and cayenne pepper in it) all over them, then pack the potatoes around the outsides of the turkey.
25. Now take foil, and cover the turkey. Shiny side inside. Don't enclose the thing completely, just kinda fold the ends down a bit.
26. Toss (carefully) the turkey into the oven. Close oven door. Reset the oven's thermometer to 160C, and if you have a timer, set it for 3 hrs.

While that is happening, make a potato salad, a carrot salad, and a green salad. 

This is Potato Salad

This is Carrot Salad

This is a Green Salad, with sliced Gammon centre-piece

When the salads are done, have a smoke and coffee break.

Open oven.

Remove oven tray with turkey on.

Remove foil tenty domey thing.

Put turkey back into oven

Go shower.

Switch oven off, but leave door closed.

When all is said and done, and the roast turkey was tossed onto the table along with its poorer cousins from the Colonel, and flanked as it was with a nice selection of salads and bread rolls, the roast turkey actually looked good enough to eat! 

Okay, so I did carve some of the turkey, and I did try a piece...

All I have to say on this matter is that for anybody to make inedible turkey, they gotta be dense. My procedure is exactly as I laid it out, and the turkey was excellent!

The flesh was not tough or stringy, and anything but dry. The flavour?  Absolutely delicious.