Talking turkey

It’s pretty much the hottest day of the year and I’m about to eat a full Christmas dinner in deepest Berkshire. Just what is going on. Especially as I’m not turkey’s number one fan. It’s okay but to date its not had a guaranteed place on my christmas table….

When I was a kid we always had roast turkey for Christmas dinner and it was good, but it never seemed as nice as the excitement it generated amongst everyone else. For me it was never quite a tasty and juicy as roast chicken. Maybe the plethora of trimmings overshadowed it …. what with tons of chipolatas wrapped in bacon, my mum’s top notch roast potatoes and my gran’s secret chestnut stuffing I’m not sure the turkey had much of a part to play. At least not for me.

So once I got to be in charge of cooking christmas dinner I varied what was on offer. If we were having turkey cooked for us elsewhere close to Christmas. I’d cook something else. If we were hosting the main event I’d stick with turkey (and still secretly wish it could be chicken we were having), if there was just the two of us well then I had free rein beef, duck, goose,chicken, pork, ham all possibly except lamb eaten over the years.

So is this turkey different? Well for a start I know a lot about where its from and how its been reared. On the basis that an animal that has lead a happy life is supposed to taste better then this has all the hallmarks of being winning. It’s also been cooked by Brenda Copas and is about to be carved by her husband ‘Old Tom’. What the Copas family don’t know about rearing, cooking and carving turkey probably isn’t worth knowing. They’ve been rearing turkeys since 1957 and still use traditional methods and breeds. All the turkeys are grown to maturity and the different breeds provide the size variation rather than many producers some of whose turkeys are slaughtered younger to provide smaller birds. Copas say that for traditional breeds its the way the turkeys are reared rather than the breed that creates the flavour.

We’ve visited the farm and met the turkeys (curiously inquisitive animals whose odd looks belie a docile nature). We’ve heard about what makes the turkeys special:

– grown to full maturity

– only raised during the traditional breading season and not year long

– raised outdoors in orchards, grass fields with maize banks for foraging

– access to shelter at all times and spend overnight in big roomy barns

– slaughtered with the highest possible welfare standards and low stress environment

– dry plucked by hand

– game hung for 10-14 days

– hand prepared and packed

Tom carves, plates are handed round and after a toast we tuck in. Its good, very good. Lots of flavour, moist, tender. The breast meat is excellent with a good balance of delicateness and proper flavour to satisfy everyone the legs are gamier and much more remisent of other birds. Some of each is a good contrast. Several people have seconds (this is getting rather like real Christmas) some of us are pretty full so save a little space for dessert.

So will I be switching to turkey every Christmas??

Wisely sheltering from the sun

That’s a really difficult one, now I know what excellent turkey tastes like and how to cook it…well its definitely much higher up my list but I’m a contrary thing and I’d probably still vary from year to year depending on who I’m cooking for. One things for sure I’d be seeking out a Copas turkey and if I was too slow and missed out (after all they do only rear about 50000 turkeys each year) then I’d be looking for something that was reared in a similar way from a farmer with high standards.

Copas Turkeys have a Great Taste Awards Two Gold Stars (2010) and having been a judge for the 2011 awards I know how high the standard is to achieve that .

Order your Copas turkey online or through one of the butchers who stock them. Be quick they sell out fast.

I was a guest of the Copas family and  Story PR.

Eggs-eptionally seasonal

This article was first published in Francoise Murat & Associates newsletter in April 2010.

We’ve just had Easter eggs, egg-decorating competitions at school and the hens are laying well again. With year round supplies of eggs in the shops we forget they are seasonal. We forget that when we talk of eggs we mean hen’s eggs. Anyone who keeps a few hens knows that during the winter they hardly lay at all and it takes until spring for them to get back to producing an egg a day. Jane Grigson talks of eggs as a rarity in the winter months and preserving them in late summer in isinglass to last through the autumn. Others cite coating eggs in wax to preserve them. Modern hen breeds produce up to 250 eggs per year but that’s still 165 days when they don’t lay, earlier breeds produced as few as 50 eggs.

Its not just hens eggs that are seasonal, now is the time to track down something different. It’s relatively easy to find duck and quails eggs in farm shops and markets, goose eggs are a bit more difficult to come by. Other eggs are harder to find. You need a good local source and then you might be able to try bantam, guinea fowl (not until June), gulls or pheasant and even turkey eggs. Friends and neighbours with a surfeit of eggs from now through until summer will be happy to share. Be sure to offer something in return, bird feed isn’t cheap even if the grass they have foraged on is free.

With this in mind I decided to collect a selection of eggs and do a little comparative taste test. I was able to get bantam and different hens’ eggs from friends. Duck, goose and quail I spotted at the farm shop but when I went back to get them someone had come in and snapped up 6 lots of 24 quail eggs, and all the duck eggs, that’s a lot of eggs. I bought a goose egg and then found Clarence Court sell duck and quail eggs via Ocado so I bagged some from there. On the ever-fascinating Twitter, I saw Sarah of Brays Cottage having scrambled turkey eggs for breakfast (as part of her Norfolk Diet) and she kindly got some more from her neighbour and sent them by post.

With my collection of eggs ready I pondered how to cook them for the taste test. Both old and new books listed a huge number of recipes and ways of cooking eggs. Treatises on egg farming, the science of cooking eggs, and eggs in different cuisines diverted me. I was reminded that Grimod de la Reynière says ‘The egg is …such an indispensable necessity that the most skilful cook will renounce his art if he is forbidden to use them’. After all the searching I decided simple was best. I planned a grand breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, then recalling how full I was last time I had goose egg for breakfast I decided hard-boiled was better as I could sample a slice of each and then save the rest for later.

But how best to boil an egg? Something so simple the British public was offended when Delia Smith promised to teach us. A little background reading of Harold McGee and Hervé This on the science of cooking eggs made me realise that it wasn’t quite as simple as it seemed. Hervé This investigates how to cook the perfect hard-boiled egg to ensure that: the shell doesn’t crack, the shell peels easily, the white isn’t rubbery, the yolk isn’t sandy, the egg isn’t sulphury and the yolk is centred!

Hervé This’ Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs – as interpreted by me:

  1. Take one or more egg
  2. Prick egg on the wide end with a pin to make a small hole, this prevents cracking.
  3. Place egg in water that’s is between 70-90C i.e. not boiling.
  4. Cook at below 90C for the usual time for the type of egg; this cooks with no rubberyness, no sandyness or sulphur smells.
  5. During the cooking keep rolling egg over in the water, this keeps the yolk centred.
  6. Lift egg from the water and place in cold water, this stops the cooking.
  7. Place egg in vinegar for several hours, the shell will dissolve. I find that eggs that are slightly older peel more easily.

And the taste test. The main differences are in yolk and white colour and ratio. The tastes were almost indistinguishable. Good fun to try the different eggs though.