TURKEY!!!

why?

It's Christmas!!! And I had a party for my dear YWAM classmates as they would be spending Christmas out in the mission field. What's a Christmas party without the gigantic bird?

failure?

I was utterly mad to buy a bird that is 6kg and expect to prepare it and finish roasting the turkey within 6 hours! I started preparing the turkey at 2pm but the turkey was only ready for the oven at 3pm. I weighed the turkey after the stuffing and it came up to a whopping 11kg!! I was stunned and after calculations, the turkey would need 7 hours of roasting. Of course I was worried that the turkey wouldn't be ready when everyone got here. Thankfully, the turkey was sort of done when we were ready to eat. I say 'sort of' because nearing the bone areas were still raw. But, the turkey was so huge that for the 15 of us, the 2 legs, wings and a quarter of the breast filled us up. We didn't even get to the 'raw' parts of the bird. It was only after everyone left, LR and myself started to shred the meat and pack the bones that we came upon the raw bits. So into the oven for just another hour to be packed and ready for left-over recipes to come.

success?

I had a lot of fun preparing the turkey with the help of my classmates. What I particularly liked about this Jamie Oliver's recipe was that the stuffing instead of going into the cavity, was distributed under the skin of the bird. Really an unusal touch that produced a surprisingly juicy and well flavoured turkey meat. Slicing the breast meat brought immense satisfaction as well as the meat with the outer layer of stuffing mimics that of really pretty terrine that I only see at expensive restaurants! The stuffing was a mixture of dried apricots, minced meat and celery with herbs and seasoning. Super yummy, I would definitely roast my own turkey next year with this recipe but with a much smaller turkey.