by rob chaney

If you got the same thing for a Christmas present every year, how long would it take to get annoying?

And yet we let tradition dominate holiday dining. Every December, most of us pull a repeat of Thanksgiving with the turkey and potatoes. For an entree that’s uninteresting the other 363 days of the year, the big bird rules the family reunion menu.

Sure, we claim to mix it up with figgy pudding and roast beast and mincemeat pie and the rest of the Dickensian fa-la-la. And true, sticking with tradition keeps the internecine squabbles to after-dinner games we all play (charades or spoons – who wants to lose a finger?).

“The current Norman Rockwell Christmas dinner would be your prime rib, served with horseradish, garlic mashed potatoes and vegetables,” said Ginny Horning of All Events Catering. “But one Christmas I did an Italian dinner that was pretty fun. We served 26 people on Christmas Day.”

That dinner started with a Caesar salad, followed by a lasagna with béchamel sauce, zucchini and eggplant. The main course was a Sicilian chicken breast stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese in a marinara sauce, with a helping of ratatouille. Dessert was tiramisu.

“The family was there, and they were all Italian, so that’s what they chose,” Horning said. “I’d guess of people catering Christmas, about 30 percent want something different.”

Sometimes what looks traditional actually has roots in a much different tradition.

For Fouad and Fadwa Haddad growing up in 1920s and ’30s Palestine, Christmas dinner was turkey. But turkey with a distinctly Middle Eastern touch.

“I would do it myself,” Fouad said of acquiring the main course. “You would buy it live and kill it. It was more or less the same, although here you use bread for stuffing, and we used rice and lamb meat, but in half-inch pieces. Each family had its own different kind of spices to use.”
Fadwa broke in with proper instructions.

“You’d cook the rice in the turkey broth, with pine nuts and almonds and spices like allspice, nutmeg, cloves and cardamom,” she said. “Serve it with plain yogurt and vegetables. And for dessert, we don’t make pies. We’d have Middle Eastern sweets like baklava.”

“When I was a little kid, it wasn’t easy to find a turkey,” added Fouad, who’s now 90 and a Missoula resident since 1981. “Then we’d use little lambs and the stuffing was almost the same. You’d stick it in a primitive oven, really just digging a hole in the ground, covering it properly. We only started using turkey around 1935 or 1940.”
And then there’s the table where the gifts of nature lead the way.

Grant Parker and hunting partner Chris Frandsen have often made “turducken.”

The domestic version involves a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed in a turkey. The wild recipe calls for a teal duck or Hungarian partridge stuffed in a pheasant stuffed in a Canada goose that’s in turn stuffed in a turkey.

“And then you fill it with stuffing in between all the layers,” Parker said. “You have to sew it up so it looks like a turkey. But when you slice it, you get different levels. In the middle two-thirds, you get a bit of everything.”

The stuffing has everything from andouille sausage to wild mushrooms, or whatever else is in the hunting-and-gathering larder. The turkey makes a white meat layer, while the goose is dark meat, the pheasant is white and the teal is dark. Each bird must be boned before it can be inserted in the next cavity.

“You go way back to some of the English kings who would have these at meals,” Parker said. “They’d have animals inside of animals inside other animals. We started doing it with wild game because it’s more fun.”

Also somewhat harder. Game animals are naturally low in fat and therefore dry out more easily in the cooking. Having everything coated with moist stuffing helps, but Parker said it remains a challenge to get the whole turducken thoroughly cooked without the outer layers toughening up.

“You have to have guests with flexibility,” he said. “I’ve never really mastered it, and it’s usually drier than I’d like. But it’s still really good.”

Deek Roomi Mahshi
(Fadwa Haddad’s favorite stuffed turkey)

1 10-pound turkey
2 cups long-grain rice, rinsed
1/3 cup butter or vegetable oil
1 pound ground lamb or beef
2 cups chicken broth or water
2 cups chestnuts, cut small
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup almonds, peeled and halved
1 tablespoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground clove
Plain yogurt
salt and black pepper to taste
chopped parsley for garnish

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Wash turkey and dry inside and out. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Set aside. Fry separately the pine nuts and almonds on a low temperature until light brown. Add meat and 3 tablespoons butter and saute until meat is tender. Add rice, 2 cups broth or water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Rice should be partially cooked. Add nutmeg, clove, allspice and chestnuts and mix well. Fill the turkey cavity loosely with the stuffing mix and close the cavity with skewers or sew shut with a needle and thread. Rub with plain yogurt and butter. Place the turkey on a rack in a large roasting pan. Add 3 cups water and cover with foil. Bake 3-4 hours, basting every 20-30 minutes until tender. Uncover the turkey for the last 30 minutes of cooking time. Place on a large platter, remove skewers or thread, and garnish with chopped parsley. Let it rest a few minutes before carving.

Note: Cook the remaining rice stuffing by adding some turkey juice and simmering on low heat until done. Serve it aside with the turkey.