The Stove on Sunday: Barefoot Contessa's Truffle Butter Turkey

Thanksgiving always holds a special place in my heart after spending it with friends in Massachusetts, back in 2005, so my mum always tries to create a pseudo Thanksgiving dinner for me.  Our guilty pleasure is American TV chef Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa.  We love her and her recipes as well as finding some of her idiosyncrasies quite irritating.  Her poor husband, Jeffrey, only ever seems to be cooked chicken because it's his favourite and she says "How good is that?" an awful lot.  On the build up to Thanksgiving, the Food Network were running all of her Thanksgiving episodes, including this rather indulgent recipe for truffle butter turkey.  We decided to test run this for a potential new way of cooking our turkey at Christmas, as it's no secret that it's not the most delicious of poultry.

Ina only used the crown of the turkey rather than the full thing, which we never do, as some of the more tasty meat is the dark meat in our eyes and cooking without the bones can make it dry also.  However, we decided for the sake of the test run, we would just use the crown too.  After all, we're not really American and it's not really Thanksgiving to us, so a whole proper turkey seemed a little bit extravagant for a Thursday evening.

You will need:

Turkey Crown (or whole Turkey)

3 oz Truffle Butter

Fresh Thyme

Some Black Garlic (this was our own addition)

Salt

Pepper

Olive Oil

How To:

1. Place the turkey in a roasting pan and pat dry with paper towels

2. Release the skin from the meat carefully, so as not to tear and begin to place the truffle butter underneath.  We actually mixed our truffle oil with standard butter instead.  We also had black garlic recommended to us by a friend, so we also placed a few cloves of this under the skin too.

3.  Press your hands across the turkey skin in order to evenly distribute the butter.

4.  Season with salt and pepper and drizzle olive oil across the meat before placing into the oven at 325 degrees F for approximately three hours, remember half way through to cover the turkey with foil so as not to burn the skin.

5.  Serve with your favourite roast vegetables.

On tasting the meat it was a little dry, which we attributed to the fact we were just using the crown but it was quite impressively flavoursome considering it was cooked without the bones and the dark meat.  It had a richer taste than usual but it did not overpower.  Considering we spent somewhere near the region of £70 for our turkey last year and it didn't taste as delicious as this one we figured that we could actually get away with purchasing a much cheaper turkey and instead cook it in this manner to ensure the flavour.  To ELLE and Back brings you another credit buster, in the form of a turkey dinner, of all things!

We also took on board Ina's table decoration ideas...

"How good is that?" *wink*

The Stove on Sunday: Goat Cheese Tarts and Currant Danishes

I'm obsessed with goat's cheese.  Anybody that really knows me, will predict that if the ingredient is on the menu, that's the meal I'll go for and God forbid there's two!  My mother hates the stuff so creating something in our kitchen with it is strictly forbidden.  Last night seemed to be the perfect time to defy this rule though, with her gone for the evening.  My sister and I decided to take full advantage of this opportunity and cook up one of my favourite Barefoot Contessa recreations, Goat Cheese Tarts.

I've made smaller versions of these before as they are a wonderful summer lunch dish with a side of salad but last night we upped the anti and went for full size tarts, one each.  Greedy!  I don't really consult the recipe anymore so some things may be slightly different from Ina's version.  Or if you're not vibing the tart, how about you head on over to this Something for the Weekend post I did back in September last year which features a goat cheese pizza....see, obsessed.

You will need:

1 packet of puff pastry (or a recipe to create your own if your that brave)

1 large tomato

2 large onions

4oz goat cheese

1 cup of grated parmesan cheese

Balsamic vinegar

Salt

Pepper

How to:

1.  Defrost the puff pastry and then roll out.  When reached the desired thickness, make sure it's not so thin that it breaks, place a small plate over and cut around with a knife.  Then create another circle within this circle by scoring with the knife.  Make sure you don't cut right through though as you don't want to seperate the pastry from each other.  Prick the middle circle all over with a fork.  Doing so means that the middle circle will not puff whilst the outer circle will, to create a border for your tart.  Repeat for your second tart.

2.  Sautee the onions until brown, seasoning with salt and pepper.  I also added some balsamic vinegar to give some extra flavour and caramelise the onions slightly. You could add white wine instead though, which I have been known to do on occassion.

3.  If you have a trusty servant, like myself, then hopefully they will have grated the parmesan for you whilst you were concentrating on the onions.  Place some of the parmesan over the middle of the tarts to cover this area completely.

4.  Place all of the onions over your parmesan.

5.  I like to slice my goat cheese so it sits on the top, I had 2 thick slices per tart but you would only need one thick slice per tart for smaller versions or you can even crumble, dependant on your preference.

6.  Slice the tomatoes and place one slice on top of each slice of goat cheese.

7.  Sprinkle the last of the parmesan over both tarts and place in a preheated oven  at 180 degrees celsius for 20-25mins. 

 They should eventually look something like this...

These make two huge tarts that could be eaten individually or sliced and teamed with salad or you could make 4 smaller versions with the same amount of ingredients.

Most likely you will have some puff pastry left over and if you fancy yourself being a true domestic goddess, my recommendation would be to pop in the fridge for the morning so that you can make a quick indulgent breakfast synonymous with a Sunday morning in the McNally household, Mini Currant Danishes.  The ingredients are usually things found rattling around your cupboards, the currants for example are leftovers from my Christmas baking rampage (don't worry best before date was Nov 2011).  There are no strict amounts with this, it's more a shove on what you need kind of recipe.

You will need:

Leftover puff pastry

Currants

Brown sugar

Butter

Cinnamon

How to:

1.  Roll out the remainder of the pastry and line with a thin layer of butter.

2.  Sprinkle a healthy amount of currants and brown sugar.  I also like to add a light sprinkle of cinnamon too.

3.  Roll the pastry up and then slice to form the mini danishes.

4.  Place on a baking tray and add a dab of butter on the top of each danish.

5.  Pop into a preheated oven at 180 degrees celsius for 20-25 mins.

Serve with coffee.  Bliss.