2014 Xmassukah Feast with Turkey and Cupcake Porn

Foodies,

Xmassukah came early to the Bronstein family in the Montreal homestead this year due to the fact that half my family is flying out to Vancouver on the 24th to see my older brother who is recovering from benign brain tumor removal surgery this year to lift his spirits during his very long and trying recovery. As such, I came in early to Montreal to throw our usual insane feast on Dec. 20th.

Complicating matters is the fact that the sister whose house we usually host everything at broke her wrist in an accident at the daycare where she works so she was invalid to do any actual prep work though she was able to drive to the grocery store and bring me and the stuff back. Fortunately, my father had taken a trip to the US during American Thanksgiving and managed to score a sweet 22 lb turkey for a mere $11 US which was supplemented by a smaller 18 lb turkey from the local Provigo supermarket.

I arrived in Montreal on Thursday night only to find that my family didn’t bother to put the turkeys in the fridge earlier this week as they do every year. So I broke the usual defrosting rules again and left them out overnight in the sink only to wake to rock solid still frozen turkeys the next day. Puzzled, I looked closer at the birds and saw that the smaller one was pre-stuffed (blech) with a pre-made bread stuffing so it basically had a large ice block in the middle. The other turkey was simply so large that a single overnighter wasn’t doing the trick. So I left them out all day Friday as well and they were just barely but fully defrosted finally by late Friday night.

I then made the usual cornflake and turkey gizzards stuffing but this time took out the now defrosted bread stuffing and mixed it in to my two large stock pots full of stuffing. To my shock, the turkeys were actually large enough to hold all of the stuffing within them but for one regular square Pyrex pan full which I covered with the two necks and derrieres. The turkeys then went into the oven breast side down at 225 degrees on convection mode from 11 PM Friday night to 10 AM Saturday morning.

You may recall from last year’s post that I was doing injections into the breast and legs every hour to keep the turkey moist but that was done during the day. As I wanted to keep my sister stress free, I didn’t want her cleaning up after me with her one good hand so I made sure that all of that would be done by the time she even woke up with the turkey done. It was. Further, turning the beasts breast side down kept them inundated in their own juices and rendered fat which in turn kept the breast meat perfectly moist.

Now if I’m being picky, I would have to honestly say that injection is a better way to go overall especially if you like carving the turkey at the table itself and making a show of specifically slicing the breast first. This said, you can see in the pictures above that the visual is just as beautiful on the finished birds though it may strike you as odd as you see the wings up instead of the legs. One also has to consider that you would have to literally turn the entire bird over by hand if you wanted to slice the breast first which could be messy at the dinner table.

With the main course out of the way, there was nothing left to do but prepare a salad and two key lime pies and set the table. All this labor was done at a leisurely pace. When the fam arrived at 6, we pulled the turkeys out of the oven to carve, pulled out the stuffing (a touch more difficult due to the fact that the cavity opening is now upside down and not as easily accessible), and made gravy from the massive amount of drippings and rendered turkey fat.

My family’s contributions to the meal were roasted potatoes and root vegetables, Chinese stir-fry, Korean bulgogi, asparagus in balsamic dressing, shrimp rings, Montreal smoked meat puff pastry turnovers, split pea and beef soup, a chocolate layer cake and the cutest Xmassukah chocolate cupcakes.

Oh yes, in terms of taking apart that turkey. As the regular BBQ’ers on this board know, one of the advantage of low and slow cooking is that the collagen and gelatin inside the bird breaks down with long slow roasting and leaves meat easily rendered by hand, let alone a knife. So I took off the wings first, then cut through the thighs and removed them and the now loosened drumsticks, and was then able to easily turn the bird over and take apart the breast meat. Everything was literally falling off of the bone to the point that there was no stereotypical carcass left to pick – even the bones were falling away leaving no structure left to speak of.

Once again, another amazing Bronstein Xmassukah feast albeit with a bit of a somber shadow as we are all of course worried about our brother out in Vancouver and sad that he couldn’t join us in Montreal for obvious health reasons but glad that some of will be there on Xmas Eve and Day to lift his spirits. The fact that he is still here with us is the best Xmas present my family got this year.

Enjoy the early Xmassukah food porn and have a safe and happy holiday. I look forward to the shared food and wine porn and stories.

One other note: to clarify, my family did not make these awesome Xmassukah cupcakes. They were made by one of my sister’s best friends Janice who has been running her own home business doing custom cakes and cupcakes to order for friends since 1986. She is so good at it as these pictures obviously attest to that she has never had to advertise once in over 28 years of doing this. All of her business is via word of mouth and she has never worked another job since doing this.

She actually completed orders of over 400 such cupcakes this year. Herself. With no help. She told me she has no interest in owning her own bakery store or having employees. Considering her ability to churn out and low employee overhead of exactly zero employees, the business is very profitable plus she gets to work from home in her own customized kitchen and set her own schedule and workload. I gotta admit, it’s hard to argue with that one.

Love your posts, those cupcakes look delicious by the way.

Looks like a great meal. Hope your brother recovers quickly!

Wow, sounds like an amazing spread of food, and the turkeys look delicious! Super cute cupcakes, too.

Hope you got to enjoy the holiday with your brother (assuming you were one of the ones traveling) and that he is recovering nicely.

Thanks for the well-wishes for my brother, guys. <3 I did not travel out to Vancouver, instead keeping company and entertaining the nieces and nephews who could not afford to fly out. Basically, it was a split-shift Xmassukah holiday if you will for my family.

The interesting thing about this year’s Xmas is because everyone had to get the shopping and the traditional family gathering out of the way early by one weekend, the actual Xmassukah week was lesiurely and relaxing as we got to laugh at all the people fighting for parking spots in the malls and wailing in despair at the stock-depleted shelves facing them once they finally made it to the stores.

While this was going on, my remaining family and I were like, “You wanna go to the mall to buy some popcorn at Kernels? Let’s get some ice cream while we’re at it!” and leisurely shopping and chillaxing and laughing at all the last minute stressed-out shoppers. When I wasn’t taking the nieces and nephews to the mall, we were like “Let’s go swimming at the community centre! Wanna go to the library and check out some comic books?” And since there was no huge dinner to prep for anymore, I was cooking up a storm making brownies and cookies for the kids and shrimp linguini and chicken stir-fry for the adults.

It was actually such a nice holiday that I’m seriously considering telling my family I want Xmassukah dinner and gift-giving a week early next year as well.