Simmer Stock - Kitchen performing: Dinner with the Denneens

Dinner with the Denneens

The Denneens came over last night so I did up some food: Turkey Breast stuffed with Proscuitto, Garlic and Parsley and Sage; Ricotta Dumplings, Glazed Radishes, and Gratin of Sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes). My original idea for the main course was for something I was going to call "Chicken and Dumplings": Some kind of stuffed chicken part or cornish hen over ricotta and spinach dumplings with a tarragon cream sauce. Well, all that survived from that idea were the dumplings, and even there I dropped the spinach. Of course, the blame (or credit) can be laid squarely on the shoulders of the market (with a dash of forgetfulness on my part). And we finished it all off with my coffee creme brulee (which Bill said was really really good - thanks Bill!)

This is a pretty good example of letting food and fate dictate the menu rather than the other way around. When I got to the market the chicken just looked "eh". Probably more important, the thought of prepping individual chicken parts for four adults and four kids was beginning to sound a little painful. The turkey breast looked good, and I realized that all I'd have to do was brine it, stuff it, and slap it in the oven. Also, sliced stuffed anything always results in a nice presentation merely from the act of slicing. Chicken was now turkey.

The dumplings stayed on the menu because, at least around these parts, there's always an ample supply of fresh ricotta in any market. If I had remembered to actually put some spinach in the shopping cart, they would indeed have been ricotta and spinach dumplings. Instead they became ricotta, shallot and parsley dumplings.

The radishes looked good - bright magenta, firm and unblemished. They almost yelled out "hey, look at me, I'm cooool and crispy". I also saw Jim Peterson (he of Sauces fame) do up glazed radishes on the Food Network the other night, and they looked really good. So glazed radishes entered the menu as one side dish.

Finally, when passing by the sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes) I actually stopped. Sunchokes are the root of the sunflower plant and taste kind of like artichokes, but with the texture of a potato. I've been seeing them in the market fairly regularly, and have read about them in various cookbooks over the years, but I have never tried them. These were firm, unblemished and had a good heft for their volume (root vegetables that feel light are usually too old, being spongy or hollow inside). Sunchokes became the second side.

How to do it all? Well, for the radishes I pretty much followed the recipe on foodtv.com. Since it's one of their "limited time" recipes and the page will soon disappear, here are the basics: Add radishes in a single layer to a skillet with two tablespoons of butter, a teaspoon of sugar, and salt to taste. Simmer radishes in enough chicken stock to come halfway up the radishes until fork tender. Crank the heat and reduce the liquid to a glaze.

I found the sunchoke gratin recipe at Epicurious through a simple google on "sunchokes." I played with the recipe by mincing the sauteéd onions and parboiled sunchokes rather than pureéing them together in the food processor. Personally, I believe that only soups and daiquiris should be pureéd. A gratin should have some bite to it.

Francie and I first had ricotta and spinach dumplings at a restaurant in Denver about 10 years ago. I've been failing at every attempt to recreate them since. And I even have the restaurant's recipe! Generally, no matter what I do, I always I end up with a ricotta soup after dropping dumplings to cook in gently boiling water. I thought I found the solution from the Food Maven who says you should add some flour if the dumpling mixture is too wet and to roll the dumplings in flour before cooking. This was the closest I've come to getting it right, but the dumplings were still just barely semi-solid. I also ended up dropping the flour coating recommendation as it actually gave them a kind of pasty exterior. Adding flower to the dumpling mixture definitely helped, though, and next time I think I'll also try to substitute whole eggs for one or two of the egg yolks.

The turkey breast is probably the easiest part of the whole thing. Remove the bones from a 6-8 pound turkey breast (you can make a quart of stock with the bones and reduce that down to a cup to build a sauce) and brine the breast overnight (brine = 4 cups water to 1/4 cup kosher salt to 1/4 cup sugar. Make enough to comfortably cover whatever you're brining). Rinse of the breast and pat the meat dry. Open the breast out, skin side down, and spread with a mix of chopped parsley, sage, garlic and a little bit of olive oil. Cover this with a layer of proscuitto. Roll the breast back up and secure with twine. Roast in a 350° oven until the internal temperature of the meat is about 160°. Be sure to let the roast rest for at least 20 minutes before carving (that's one of the things that makes this great for company - it'll stay nice and warm and cozy for up to an hour covered in foil).

Posted on Mar 10, 2002 @ 08:20 PM