There haven't been enough

Turkey day posts here on GS this year. So here it goes.

My mil asked if I wanted turkey breast or the usual turkey this year (as my husband is out of town). Knowing how her cooking can be sometimes and how turkey breast comes out sometimes, I opted for the usual turkey. While eating our turkey she told me what she was thinking of doing with the breast:

stuff breast with brie cheese, cranberries, walnuts and roll in proscuitto.

It sounds really yummy but I still prefer the traditional turkey for Thanksgiving. I hope she makes the breast for Christmas.

I recently made a 'truffled chicken' that is actually stuffed under the skin with a mix of prosciutto, petit suisse cream cheese, butter, parlsey, lemon juice, chives, tarragon and shallot. The sauce was made with pan juices mixed with red wine, butter and cream.

Surprisingly enough it was absolutely delicious.

Sorry, I turned your turkey thread into a chicken thread.

Edited by: Myanmarbound

Not a problem Myan. That chicken sounds pretty good although I'm not a big chive or tarragon fan.

T'is a fowl thread indeed.

I looked up turkey recipes in some of my older cookbooks, just for the heck of it and found a gem from 1879, perfect for when you win the lottery:

Roast Turkey, With Truffles. Truffles must be peeled, chopped and pounded in a mortar; one and a half pound will do for one turkey. Rasp the same amount of fat bacon and mix with the truffles and stuff the turkey with it. This dressing is usually placed, in the turkey two days beforehand, to impart its flavor to the fowl. Lay thin slices of fat bacon over the breast of the turkey, cover it with half a sheet of white paper, and roast two hours. Chestnuts dressed in the same way as truffles are found an excellent substitute.

1.5 pounds is 680 grams.

1.5 pounds of fresh black truffles from Oregon is US$480. The same company will sell you imported white truffles for $5,400.

I have no idea what was meant by "truffles" in 1879. A turkey sitting around unrefrigerated for 2 days with a bellyfull of bacon & mushrooms does not strike me as exactly bacteria-free. On the other hand, the bird was probably seriously overcooked by today's standards.

Maybe if we kept the turkey in the fridge for 3 or 4 days instead of unrefrigerated for 2, the flavors will still sink in some. Now all we need to do is come up with a spare $5,400.

So how much can all you GSer's contribute? Nutrax and I will cook it up and we'll meet in a central location.

Edinburgh sounds like a good central location, tae me.

I bet it does tony! I was thinking more along the lines of North Carolina. I like it out there.

Why did I say 'truffled' when I meant 'parslied'?

Truffles (black ones at least) must have been a great deal more abundant and relatively cheaper than they are now. The book I got that recipe from puts them in lots of dishes. I recently got a second hand copy of H P Pellaprat's encyclopaedic Modern French Cooking (3,000 recipes in 900+ pages) and there's truffles in loads of these dishes. Granted both books deal with gourmet cooking, the references to adding truffles in both books is eye-poppingly large.

Challenge to nutrax! How do we find the relative price and abundance of black truffles from say 1890 (start of the Escoffier era) to now?

How do we find the relative price and abundance of black truffles from say 1890 (start of the Escoffier era) to now

Anyone who can do that with supporting documentation gets the GSer of the year award!

The owner of the wine company I worked for had an (and might still) annual holiday dinner at which he served truffles. And yet he couldn't manage to give us sick days. Go figure!

Apparently, truffles grow wild in Virginia.

A letter to the editor of The Horticulturist, and Journal of rural art and rural taste, in 1857.

I thought of you, to-day, when I received from the Professor of Chemistry of Georgetown College, a great and valuable vegetable curiosity—the greater, perhaps, in America, in the shape of an enormous Truffle found in Virginia. I showed ito Mr. Mason, Commissioner of Patents, and produced quite a sensation, as they had published in their report for 1854 only an account of the Piedmontese truffles, not dreaming that they existed so close at hand. We may now hope to have Strasburg pies as soon as some American makes the fois gras. My Virginia Truffle weighs one pound eleven ounces, dried, giving double that weight green. It would have sold, in Covent Garden Market, for nine dollars !

One pound 11 ounces is 765 grams.

However, it appears that a completely different fungus, Wolfiporia cocos, was sometimes called "truffle." It was locally called "tuckahoe" or "Indian bread."
>The sclerotium (a hardened mass of underground mycelium) of this fungus has been known for several hundred years as “tuckahoe” or “Indian bread.” The word “tuckahoe” – rendered variously as tockawhoughe, tawkee, or tuckah – has its origin in an Algonquin language and means “it is round.” White settlers of the British colonies called this sizable sclerotium “Indian bread” because some native Americans dug it up and roasted it or ground it into meal...In the final analysis “tuckahoe “ is an Anglicized word of native American origin that refers to the sclerotium of the fungus Wolfiporia cocos, which appears as an oblong underground mass with a hard, scaly brown covering. It grows up to the size of a bowling ball, resembles a coconut, smells faintly of mushroom, and is edible when cooked.

Sounds like it's right up there with "mangoes," which it took me forever to discover is an old regional term for bell peppers/capsicums.

Cool, so we could just go truffle hunting in VA instead of spending $5,000.

some American makes the fois gras

I am truly amazed that they were trusting an American to make fois gras.

I can't imagine a 9lb 11oz (when dried) truffle. It must have looked like a small tree.