classy but trashy

Classhy Prince n' Pauper T.V. Dinners
Lurkin' Turk'n

Part 2- Cooking Challenge

For my classed up T.V. dinner version I chose to use soy based meat imitation product. While I am not totally vegetarian (beef jerky, anyone?!), occasional incidents such as the one I'd just had with the gristly turkey meat illustrate why I was a veggie for 11 years and why I now lean heavily toward faux meat consumption. My taster, Katie, is of the same persuasion so I knew we were golden. While I prepared the rest of meal, I left my turk’n soaking in vegetarian turkey gravy.

I had actually never made mashed potatoes or stuffing from scratch before, so I was very excited to do both.

The potatoes were easy. After boiling for 25 minutes in heavily salted water, I smashed up my two organic yukons with a fork. I then added a generous dollop of Smart Balance Light “butter” and a hefty spoonful each of light sour cream and Tofutti vegan cream cheese. I stirred and mashed for a good 10 minutes (I think I might need a food processor…) then sprinkled in a healthy dose of (herbless) garlic salt and onion powder. I topped off the mixture with a few shakes from the parmesan can because, well… it’s what I do. Switching to a whisk I kept the whipping up for another ten minutes. Voila! Fluffy, rich and creamy potatoes.

My stuffing was the part that I was most excited, as well as a touch nervous about. I’m not really one to follow recipes so knowing there was a certain level of structure to the stuffin’ cookin’ process got me to actually bust out the measuring cup for once!

For bread I picked up a rustic cranberry loaf as well as a beautiful rosemary baguette fresh from San Francisco Baking Co. in North Beach.

4 cups cubed bread

2 tbs butter

1/2 cup chopped onion

3/4 cup chopped celery

3/4 cup sliced mushrooms

1/2 cup crushed pine nuts

1 cup veggie broth

1 egg slightly beaten

2-3 chopped garlic cloves

2 tsp dried thyme

few shakes of celery salt
salt n pepa to taste

Preheat oven to 400 and bake cubes 20 min til golden. Place in mixing bowl and reduce oven heat to 350
Melt butter in large pan, add onion, celery and garlic. Sauté for about 13 min, add mushrooms and cook for about 2 min more. Combine veggies with bread.
Add seasonings, broth, egg and pine nuts. Stir well and put mixture in greased casserole dish.
Bake covered 1 hr.

Whole Foods’ organic white corn was the only on the cob corn I could find this early in the season and I picked up a single ear. Generally I do all my corn cooking on the grill, but today I needed to boil it before cutting the kernels off.

A tip for perfectly boiled corn: dissolve about 1.5 tbsp sugar in a full medium pot of warm water. Add corn and bring all to boil together. Boil no longer than 8 minutes.

Finally, I rubbed my awaiting faux turkey in a mixture of sea salt, rosemary, sun dried tomato flake and dried lemon peel. I threw the “bird” in the oven (still at 350o) for about 20 minutes, turning once.

Once everything was all ready, all I had to do was fill up the plastic tray that’d been rinsed of it’s former occupants. I added a smidge of butter and salt to the corn and served.

Katie and I finished the whole plate! I was very happy with the stuffing and immediately regretted not picking up more corn for later- it was delicious!! One element I particularly enjoyed was the potatoes. They looked like just average run of the mill mashed potatoes, but the Tofutti, sour cream and parmesan absolutely took their flavor to such an unexpected place. I will definitely be using and playing with that recipe in the future! All in all, Lurkin’ Turk’n was a success. I got to learn some new tricks and I hope you will be able to use some, too-- Tune in next week for meal two of Prince n’ Pauper T.V. Dinners!