I got an email asking what wine to have with turkey. Bloody hell. I would have the wine that is being served by friends who are cooking goose, duck, a damned good chicken, lamb or grilling a bleeding marvellous (literally) piece of beef. I wouldn’t drink wine with turkey because I hate and despise turkey. It is a fowl curse on the name of meat.
Invariably when we are served this filth one of two things will happen: Normally, the bugger will be totally dried out. it’ll taste of nothing and have the texture of dry cotton wool. All of those dry mountains of flavourless horribleness to hack through; I shudder to think of it.
The second thing that might happen is that you have a bird that has been injected with all the fresh water in Western Europe (jets of pallid fluid gush out when you cut into these) all so some hard of thinking mouth-breather can say, “Oh at least it is moist.” Moist? Is that such an amazing accolade? Sure, it has no taste and the texture of cotton wool, but at least the cotton wool is slightly damp. No.
“Turkey with all the trimmings”, must be one of the most hideously depressing phrases in the whole of the English language. It suggests food on the wrong side of ruined, served artlessly and ploughed through like mush from a trough, all whilst in the company of people who, at best, would all rather be elsewhere.
“Sweaty tests” is what I say to turkey, and so the question about wine with turkey would not work for me. I’d have the wine and not the turkey.
Scrooge! I love a good turkey dinner (and yes there is such a thing as “good” – my mum is a brilliant cook). Only not having one this year as there are only 2 of us for lunch…
I’m willing to be proved wrong if you have the power of roasting a turkey, Katie.
I see you’re making your pitch to appear in next year’s Christmas “Grumpy Old Men” show, David. Bah, humbug! But you’re right about turkey. The things we like about a turkey dinner are all the other things, except for the turkey. The stuffing, the chestnuts, the ham, the sausages, the roasted parsnips, the brussels sprouts. The only thing to do with the turkey is drench it in gravy and smother it with cranberry sauce and chestnut stuffing. It also helps to get pissed and put on a silly hat.
Intensively farmed turkey might be as you describe (as is intensively farmed chicken), but well bred turkey is considerably better than that. The difficulty lies in the different cooking times of the white and dark meats, again like chicken, except on a larger scale. Still, skilled cooks can manage it.
I really am willing to be convinced.
I think we will be cooking the very best chicken we can find next Christmas. Whilst the goose we roasted tasted brilliant, it is just a bit of a drag to cook and even the skilful roaster Daniel found it hard to stop it getting a bit tough.