Via Mare's Pavo Embuchado (Stuffed Roast Turkey)

I am posting this recipe adapted from Via Mare's Pavo Embuchado for a few Filipinos who are looking and asking for this particular recipe either for Thanksgiving Day or Christmas. I don't have a photo as I have not cooked our Thanksgiving turkey yet. I'm not using this recipe's stuffing because I plan to prepare it for Christmas, therefore I cannot give a review but with the amount of good stuff (mostly meat) in it, you can just imagine it will be scrumptious. For Thanksgiving I always make a simple bread, apples (or quinces), and chestnuts stuffing that I bake outside the turkey in a separate casserole.

Via Mare Stuffed Roast Turkey
turkey
1 15-lb turkey
3 carrots, washed, scrubbed, and cut into 2-inch pieces
2 onions, cut into chunks,
3 celery sticks with tops, cut into 2-inch pieces

stuffing
1 pound ground pork
1 pound lean ground beef
½ cup grated Edam cheese
½ cup stuffed green olives, chopped
1½ cup Chinese or Virginia ham, chopped
2 pieces chorizo, chopped
1 cup chopped Vienna sausage
4 eggs
1 cup raisins, optional

• Prepare the turkey: Wash and dry the turkey thoroughly. Rub generous amounts of salt and pepper inside and out. Leave in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours.
• Stuff the turkey: Mix all the ingredients, fill turkey, then rub all over with olive oil. Arrange the vegetables in the middle of the roasting pan and place the turkey on top of the vegetables. Carefully add the broth along the side of the pan. Roast turkey in 325° F oven for 4 to 4½ hours. Transfer turkey to a slicing board. Add more broth to the roast pan, if necessary, to deglaze. Strain and use for gravy.

Note: I prefer to brine (water, salt, pepper, sugar, 1 torn bay leaf, and 2 cloves of smashed garlic) the turkey overnight or at least 4 hours. The result is a moist and well seasoned bird.

Laing

laing stewed in coconut milk, prawns, and pork

Recently, I have been reading about laing as pizza topping in many Filipino blogs. Laing is a Filipino dish made with taro leaves stewed in coconut milk. I have never cooked it before and neither did my mother. She used to buy from an ambulant suki (a favorite purveyor of anything from food to house ware) who cooked her delicious laing wrapped in whole taro leaves. My mother preferred to buy rather than cook laing to help the hawker make money and because she did not want to do all the tedious work.

Occasionally, I would buy the canned laing but on my recent trip to the Filipino grocer I saw a package of dried taro leaves which has a recipe card attached to it, the laing served on a young coconut shell. What a great idea! I don't have a young coconut and put the laing in an empty mature coconut shell. It surely would have been better if you get bits of young coconut with every bite of the laing. I tweaked the recipe a bit by reducing the amount of dried leaves by half and came up with a tasty laing, not as delicious as those of my mother's suki but hey, it's good enough for me.:D

Laing
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
¼ cup minced prawns
¼ cup minced pork
2 tablespoons fish extract (patis)
1 14-oz can coconut milk
2 ounces dry taro leaves
¼ cup water, if needed
2 bird's eye chili, sliced
salt, to taste, if needed

1. In a wok or large skillet, heat the oil and saute garlic, onion, and ginger for 3 minutes. Add the prawns and pork, stir fry for 2 minutes. Add the fish extract and stir fry for 1 minute.
2. Pour the coconut milk, mix very well then mix in the leaves.
3. Cover and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes, checking if it needs water.
4. Add sliced chili, taste and adjust seasoning, and dish up. Serve with steamed rice or as a side dish.

Shepherd's Pie

I was watching last Wednesday's Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay who every week tries to diagnose and treat an ailing restaurant. The restaurant featured serves Irish food and is owned and operated by a father, his 2 sons, and a daughter-in-law. The chef is the younger son with a sous chef from hell. He picked up a chicken wing that fell on the floor and promptly put it in the fryer right in front of Ramsay and the camera saying all the germs it picked up from the floor will die from deep frying anyway, eww. The dishes they serve are less than below average. The clients complained of cold, dry, and simply tasteless dishes most specially the Shepherd's Pie, a very typical British dish. During the make-over period, Ramsay prepared a pie that he says is his own mother's recipe and after tasting his pie the restaurant owners and crew oohed and aahed. He then made them taste the son's pie and they all made faces indicating it is yucky. That hurt the chef, you could see it from his face and he did not show up in the restaurant for 5 days.

The reject pie brought me back to the day my son came home from school with a plate of shepherd's pie he made in school as a project when he was a student in a British School in Hong Kong. He proudly presented us the pie saying he made it all by himself, of course with the teacher's recipe and guidance. One bite of the pie and we nearly gagged, it was the most horrible food I have ever tasted in my life. The onions were raw and crunchy, the meat was dry and under seasoned with just salt, pepper, and nothing else. And the mashed potatoes was equally forgettable. But we couldn't tell him because we didn't want to hurt his feelings. We took a few more bites of the dreadful pie and I threw the rest while he was at school the next day. I can't remember if we ever told him that the pie was awful.

Well, anyway, back to the reality show. Ramsay was able to "save" the restaurant and the Shepherd's pie became its signature dish that everybody seems to love. I looked for his recipe online and prepared it today using beef in place of lamb. I don't know if this is the same recipe he gave to the restaurant but I don't really care because this pie is very very good.

Adapted from Gordon Ramsay's Shepherd's Pie
2 pounds lamb or very lean ground beef
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, grated
1 large carrot, grated
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon chopped rosemary
1 cup red wine
1 cup chicken broth
2 tsp salt, or to taste
3 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese for mashed potato

• Prepare the mashed potato, recipe here. Add 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese. Cover, set aside, keep warm while preparing beef.
• In a large skillet, heat olive oil, stir fry beef until no longer pink. Drain off excess grease. Add onion, garlic, and carrot and stir fry for 3 minutes. Add wooster sauce, tomato paste, thyme and rosemary, cook for 1 minute. Add wine and simmer until wine has almost evaporated. Add the broth and simmer for 5 minutes or until sauce has thickened. Taste and adjust seasoning.
• Transfer beef to a deep dish. Spoon mashed potato on top of beef. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese. Fluff with a fork to create peaks. Bake in a 400° F oven for 20 minutes or broil until top is golden brown.

Click here for Gordon Ramsay's recipe.

Polvorones

One of the many many sweets and snacks that Filipinos inherited (and made a better version of) from the Spanish is polvorones. The Spanish polvorones are baked after shaping by hand, they're not quite cookies nor shortbread, somewhere in between. The candy-like Filipino polvoron is never baked but the flour is also toasted before mixing with sugar, powdered milk and butter, then shaped using either a round or oval mold that are made in the Philippines and nowhere else (they can be purchased from Filipino groceries or eBay). I grew up eating plain polvorones and sometimes the ones with crushed peanuts or toasted sesame seeds but recently various flavors and add-ins have been popping up in the Filipino grocery: the ubiquitous buco-pandan, ube, langka, crispy rice or pinipig, crushed oreo cookies, and the latest, graham crackers. Well, why not join the crowd and here is my contribution: raw cacao nibs. They are so addicting! What's not to love: sugar, butter, milk, and raw crunchy bitter chocolate. Mmmmmm.

Peruvian raw organic cacao nibs

The package says they are nutritious and I think these are highly recommended by vegans who advocate eating raw food. I bought the cacao nibs to add to candies, baked goods, and to eat with cereals but I also love munching on them like peanuts. They are a teeny bit bitter, they are pure chocolate after all, but I love extremely dark chocolate anyway. Cacao nibs, a guilt-free and healthy super yummy snack.

Polvorones

4 cups flour

3/4 cup powdered milk

1½ cups super-fine sugar

1 cup very soft butter

• Toast flour in a skillet or in a 300°F oven for about 10 minutes until light brown.
• Into a bowl, sift toasted flour, milk, and sugar. Add the butter and mix thoroughly.
• Fill mold and press lightly, unmold onto individual pieces of rectangular or square (depending on the mold) multi-colored or white tissue paper, twist ends of paper.
• Tip: To prevent crumbling, refrigerate unwrapped molded polvoron for a few minutes or until set.

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with cacao nibs, graham crackers, buco-pandan, and toasted sesame seeds