Deep Frying Fun

The turkey fryer again came out to play this Thanksgiving, and it provided great entertainment, and some, let me say with emphasis: Very Tasty Dishes. It has been quite some time since my last posting as time just zooms by indiscriminately, and here I am already at the end of November...  Thanksgiving provides a much needed excuse to slow down and to sit down and to be reminded of the many things for which I am thankful.  Not the least of these: the turkey fryer and the awesome man who yields it.

I had a couple of southern-raised folks at dinner this year and one of them suggested deep fried bacon wrapped Brussels sprouts.  Before this phrase had finished being uttered, I was in.  The turkeys (yes, we cooked two of them for only 9 people) were prepped and brined and injected and the fryer was lit.  Game on.  S cooked the first turkey (in about 40 minutes) to a golden perfection and did some experimentation with a few bacon-wrapped gems.  We learned much, and while the second turkey cooked, H and T wrapped the rest of the sprouts.  In they went, were cooked to perfection, and were deliciously nutty and sweet and salty all at the same time.  I highly recommend them.



 Here is the skinny:

Bacon Wrapped Brussels Sprouts

Clean and wrap each large sprout with a whole piece of bacon and fasten the bacon with toothpicks on two opposite sides of the sprout.  Smaller ones could probably use less bacon, but generally, the rule should be to not skimp on the bacon.


We plunked them into the oil after the turkeys were removed.  They float and bubble in the 350 F oil for 3-4 minutes or until the bacon is golden and cooked to your liking.  Remove them from the oil with a spider spoon - or any slotted spoon or sieve.  The sprouts get all nicely caramelized on the outside and it is good to let them cool down a bit and continue to cook internally.   They were Delish.  


If you do not have a deep fryer, roasting would work just as well, but will take about 8x longer as you would need to keep the sprouts in the oven until the bacon was cooked and the sprouts were caramelized a bit on the outside.

Another requested recipe was for what I call Baked Pumpkin Cheesy Goodness which is a highly modified spin on Ruth Reichl's recipe shared with us in the Gourmet cookbook and on the Gourmet website.  Ruth's is more of a 'fondue' while mine tends to be more of a stick a knife in it and spread it on a cracker with a hot pepper kind of concoction.   Here is mine:

Baked Pumpkin Cheesy Goodness

2 ½ - 3 C grated cheese

(mix of manchego and cheddar is yummy!)

1 smallish pumpkin de-seeded and cleaned out

1 C chicken broth

1 C coconut milk (or regular milk)

½ tsp. salt

Freshly ground pepper

½ tsp. freshly chopped rosemary

½ baguette cubed and toasted

Preheat oven to 400° F.  Rinse and oil outside of pumpkin including the cap.  Mix together chicken broth, coconut milk or regular milk, salt/pepper, and rosemary (or whatever herbs you might think you would like).   Alternating the toasted baguette cubes, layer of cheese, and a portion of liquid, repeat this layering ending with a topping of cheese until the pumpkin is full.  Place the cap back onto the pumpkin and slide it into the oven in a walled baking dish (pumpkin may or may not leak a little bit).  Cook until bubbly and pumpkin meat is soft (this will take probably about an hour and a half depending on the size of the pumpkin).  Serve with crackers or bread and other snick snacks.  Bits of pumpkin can be scraped out along with the cheesy yum as you go along.   Enjoy. 

Beware:  This last time, I am pretty sure I cooked my pumpkin a little too long and it sprung holes when I tried to transfer it to a serving dish....  I can vouch that the pumpkin cheesy goodness is hot!  It was a bit slumpy, but it was still exceedingly tasty.

I sincerely hope you all had as good a Thanksgiving as I had.  Thanks to all who came and cooked at ate and helped celebrate the day with me.