soup, salad

It was 11:00 at night, one hour before midnight, and the gnawing inside that started signaled I had not eaten a proper meal all day. It occurred to me in that moment of gnawing, because I'm quick like that at reaching conclusions, that snacking on a single kiwi fruit and snagging a bowl of strawberries on the fly wasn't going to cut it, even though they were pretty big strawberries as far as strawberries go, red ones too, real red, red and juicy. I virtually inhaled that bowl of strawberries like a giant mechanical vacuum strawberry inhaler, juicy and red strawberries brazenly wearing their seeds on the outside and with tops as green as the day is long so that within a minute there was nothing left but a bowl of green strawberry tops piled up like little dead green soldiers. Still that wouldn't be enough. It would take more than that. Much more. For tomorrow would be a big day, and I would have to be prepared. Yes, all this occurred to me in a flash triggered by a pang of gnawing hunger.

It quickly developed into the type of hunger that went all the way down to my stomach and stayed there tightening. Tightening like a rope that keeps twisting and tightening until it tightens and twists itself and suddenly doubles, and the double tightening keeps right on tightening until even that doubles on itself so that eventually the rope not only becomes much thicker by this tightening, it also becomes shorter. The gnawing turned into a growl -- a growling right there inside my stomach, turning and churning and growling and tightening. It growled like the snarling growls of two dogs caught in a dog fight with no exit, and not just any two common scraggly street dogs either, where there's a few threatening growls and nips then fight is over as soon as it starts, no, it was like those dogs that are made for fighting, the kind of dogs that bite off each others' ears and clamp down with their jaws and never let up. Even if one of the dogs submits and wants to stop fighting the tougher dog keeps right on attacking, because they're obsessed and they're trapped there in the dog fighting ring and there's no getting out, until the weaker one dies, and even then the dog that prevailed doesn't let up, it has to be pulled off the dog it killed and dragged away by its owner, who's the only one that can come close to the k-9 tornado without getting torn up themself, because by then the dog is completely overtaken with passion for fighting and clamping and killing that it blocks out everything else and cannot even hear its master's commands. Those kind of dogs. Mean dogs. That kind of growling. That kind of hunger.

It was the kind of hunger that only one thing could resolve, only one thing in the world. And that one thing is -- eating something.

Wut? Wut? … Damn you, Dashiell, I'm trying to say something over here.

It's true. It's late and I'm hungry. This bowl of soup can never be duplicated. It consists of three, possibly four, leftover preparations I found in the refrigerator by scrounging for things I want to clear out. When you're this starved everything looks great. Each container looked good on it's own but combining them was questionable. There was something with beans and something else I couldn't make out or remember, another container that looked like stew with canned tomatoes, mushrooms, and chicken in a thick mixture that was dark, another mixture with butternut squash and apparently chicken, possibly a previous chicken pie filling. I added a scoop of leftover risotto, that was the best thing, and frankly, the whole pile looked like a mess in the bowl. Peas dotted the pile. It wasn't soup. I added my own chicken broth and heated it. Zap. It was delicious.

* Some kind of fancy purple escarole that comes in a variety package of lettuces.
* heirloom tomato
* fancy pants olive oil
* extra super duper extreme balsamic vinegar completely unsuitable for salads
* sea salt / cracked pepper.

* Oh. And bread of course. Wonderfully odd 50% home-milled whole wheat with its incredible depth and strange roundness of flavor, its thick and somewhat difficult crust and its crumb denser than regular artisan bread. I could live on bread like this, and become fat as a cow.

egg and spinach breakfast

Behold the beginning of a fresh reawakening, a bold new approach to breakfast I'm confident will soon sweep the nation. Please allow me to introduce the New American Breakfast in which the key component is the inclusion of vegetable slow carbohydrate. Preferably fresh, this time frozen, eh, one makes allowances where one must. The point is there are none of the customary fast carbohydrates that somehow wedged their positions onto the standardized American breakfast panoply and repeated by habit through laziness and probably just being sleepy, and by their ossified habituation have wrecked such regrettable havoc. Eventually we shall look back at this moment and term this reawakening Breakfast Renaissance.

First, let's slay the old.

Huck ptewie! I spit on your menus. I crumple them with my mighty menu-crushing hands and bat them like a whiffle ball, a short distance of course because whiffle balls do not go very far no matter how hard you hit them. I crush them under my boot like I'm squashing a bug or perhaps extinguishing a cigarette butt, a fag end if you like, no wait, wait, wait, more like setting a tent post, that's what I do. At any rate, it's over between us.

The alternative presented is actually quite delicious. Imagine the possibilities once you peek over the rut cut by others before you who apparently knew less than you do, and see to the ends of horizon.

Let me put this to you again as graphically as it must be put to implant a lasting picture in your mind sufficient to induce a pleasant and satisfying change of view. As cattle are led to the feedstocks through curved corrals designed not to alarm them, pulled by curiosity as much as urged by handlers, there to fatten before being led through those same curved and padded un-alarming passages on through to the abattoir, so too are you led to the breakfast table appealingly piled with those same grains.

That's not to traduce grains, mind you, it's just that they figure far too heavily on American breakfast menus and it shows. I blame this largely on that original food pyramid produced by the US government and lobbied by interested parties, which if taken to heart would have you resembling a pyramid yourself balancing on spindly chicken legs, and that's what has happened.

There.

Now for the fun part.
* the turkey, of course, was held over from the previous post on roasting turkey and chicken. Incidentally, I've been munching this frozen right out of the freezer as the impulse strikes me. As a snack, I figure it's probably pretty good. Beats cookies.
* the spinach was in the freezer so I used it. But it was there because I put it there so I must have sensed this was coming.
* I saw the little can of diced japaleños and thought, "why not?"
* pecans, what I was going for when I noticed the jalapeños.
* compound butter. When I run out of this I'm going to hasten to make another batch. I'll just buy some fresh herbs and devote a whole pound. I love this stuff so much, and it is kind of fun squishing it through your fingers. Invite the kids! Be sure to put plastic gloves on their filthy little mitts.
*lime
* two unfertilized embryos of gallus domesticus giganticus, Jabba the Coop, Hagar of the henhouse, the poule pondeuse that made these oeufs had to be énorme.

Hachiya persimmon

These were grown in the exotic far away land of California.

This is the astringent type. The astringency due to high level of tannins which is reduced by light or by wrapping in paper. I held these in a paper bag for a few days and the astringency is still quite noticeable.

The non-astringent squat type of persimmon called fuyu, is the type I'm more familiar with but every time I see those they're wrinkly and squishy soft like an old tomato, and that puts me off.

fried eggs breakfast with risotto

This breakfast was easier to make than it was to photograph because the elements were prepared previously, the risotto and the compound butter used to fry the eggs and to dress the rice. All that was left was to fry two eggs and that is done simply within a few minutes.

That compound butter is a fantastic idea. What a splendid way to save herbs from being wasted that are on their way out. Arresting their oxidation by locking them in butter, then using that butter for nearly everything that butter is used for is a welcome addition to a gourmand's arsenal. With a squirt of lemon or lime, bang, you've got a sauce. In this case the risotto is already loaded with lemon zest and the juice of a lemon so half of a sauce is already there just waiting to combine with its other half.

This risotto is incredible and, being rice -- Rice! Impossible! -- it's a brilliant variation on a typical American breakfast of eggs, hash browned potatoes, and toast. It even has bacon, turkey and chicken and Parmigiano Reggiano* inside it, but looking at this plate makes me a little bit sad. Here's why:

You rarely if ever see fresh vegetables on a typical American breakfast menu, and that is a low down no good dirty rotten shame, in'nit, because by custom and cultural preferences, it deprives the population of one good chance in the day, every day, to eat reasonably wisely. Wutupwidat?

Think about this for a minute, what you as American if you are, prefer for breakfast. Generally; eggs fried, scrambled, poached + bacon, ham, sausage, sometimes steak + hash browned potatoes, grits, polenta, mush, call it what you will, it's all corn grain + toast. Starch upon starch upon starch, carbohydrate upon carbohydrate upon carbohydrate, day after day after day, and if not this then cereal or oatmeal, more fast carbohydrate. Now ask yourself in all sincerity, "why am I fat?" And try to tell me, "I don't understand it, I've tried everything!" Those cows on the television who keep saying that over and over are not being completely honest with themselves.

This breakfast does not address that bizarre generalized cultural preference for breakfast vegetable avoidance.

I hereby declare that I shall no longer participate in this cultural practice of disregarding vegetables for breakfast. If I'm at a restaurant and all they suggest on their breakfast menu is fast carbohydrates and fatty proteins, then I'll ask politely, "May I please have a salad or a side of broccoli?"

What, no?

FINE THEN! I'll wait for lunch and in this manner avoid entirely your enforced cultural predilections, you sorry fascist COW.

* Quite a lot of milk goes into that cheese. Special milk, not just ordinary milk. Milk is not water, but it's similar by weight. One liter of water weighs 1 kilogram or 35.27396 ounces. Also different types of milk have slightly different weights. For the sake of reasonable calculation, and so your head does not explode from mathematics, let's say that 1 liter of milk weighs 1 kilogram, and call that close enough. Even though it is actually more like 1.03 kilograms. 1 liter = 335.27 blah blah blah ounces. Now we can calculate how much milk goes into one pound of Parmigiano Reggiano, which is important to us because it's an awful lot. The starting vats hold 1,100 liters of milk, except they spell them litres over there. Each vat ultimately produces two wheels of cheese. The average of the wheels, they do vary in weight, is 39 kilograms. So, 550 liters of milk go into what ends up being 39 kilograms of cheese. 550÷39=14.1 That's over 14 kilograms of milk, which we're using for liters for mathematic convenience, for every kilogram of Parmigiano Reggiano. And that's a lot! In avoirdupois measurements that translates to 31 pounds of milk for 2.2 pounds of cheese, or 14.09 pounds for 1 pound of cheese. These are US gallons. So if you ever think to yourself, "gosh darnit, this pound of Parmigiano Reggiano sure is expensive," then you must remember you're buying over 14 pounds of milk. Come to think of it, a US gallon (water, not milk) weighs 8.35 pounds, so that's only just under two gallons of milk for one pound of cheese. I guess that is rather expensive. * whispers * "Never mind."

arborio risotto

Good. Ready to go.

I have this Arborio rice that shot out of the chutes from the bulk bins at Whole Foods into my plastic bag (I love those bulk bins). The bin for Arborio rice was right next to the Basmati rice. Both would work just fine, it was a tough choice. I based the choice on what I read. The Arborio looked a little more plump, slightly more pearly, and possibly starchier and it cost three times as much. :-( Very well then, I would get two pounds instead of five, this is an experiment, after all.

I did this before with short-grain Japanese rice and it seemed to me to work fine.

Well, maybe I should review first instead of jumping right in. I've cooked enough rice ever since Sueko showed me how when I was eleven years old and I've been steaming rice her way ever since, but this dish is Italian and not Japanese, maybe there's a difference I should be aware of. I pick up Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything -- how's that for a presumptuous title? -- and read his section on grains, focussing on the segments on rice, concentrating my full attention on the portions about risotto. I read them until the ADD kicked in and I jumped from the chair. I am now a complete expert … in my mind.

The key differences between Sueko's method and risotto method seem to be Japanese rice is gently steamed to complete doneness without disturbance or disruption, and Italian risotto is abraded by stirring so that the friction releases starch that dissolves into the liquid and making it creamy. Like pasta, and here's where Americans tend to go wrong with pasta, it's preferred to retain a kernel of chewiness at the center of each grain. Conversely, stirring only at the end breaks apart softened rice grains and that is not desirable. Additionally, adding water in increments and having it evaporate through cooking in a broad open pan concentrates the flavors of the liquid. That seems to be the gist of the whole thing.

See Harold McGee On Food and Cooking pg. 475.
or Mark Bittman How to Cook Everything starting on pg. 457.
or perhaps Barbara Fairchild the bon appétit fast easy fresh pg. 230

They all say similar things.

But then there's Heston Blumenthal The Fat Duck Cookbook and he does after all have the Michelin stars, admits to putting risotto on the menu initially just to show off. I love that guy. Having been inspired by Harold McGee's sceptic approach, he gets all scientifical on our assses, a sample, pg. 324:

[ … Rice lays down starch molecules in microscopic solid granules that fill the grain's central core, and these granules contain two types of starch: amylose, an orderly molecule made up of about 1,000 glucose sugars arranged in a chain with few branches; and amylopectin, a more irregular molecule made up of 5,000-20,000 glucose sugars arranged in hundreds of short branches. Each type of starch behaves differently during cooking -- the loosely structured amylopectin breaks down easily, while the neatly packed amylose comes apart more reluctantly -- so it's important to know what proportion of amylose to amylopectin is present in the rice you use. Arborio has a high concentration of amylopectin and breaks down to a soupy consistency. Vialone Nano has more amylose making it more robust and giving a very al dente finish. At the Fat Duck we generally cook with Carnaroli, which has a balance of both starches that produces texture and creaminess.

There's huge disagreement about which rice is best for risotto, and each type has it passionate advocates: moreover there's another little-discussed feature of rice that can have a decisive effect on the flavor of risotto - aging. ]

Blumenthal then goes on to elaborate on an Italian company owned by a guy who read a Sanskrit manuscript that extolls the virtues of aging rice and further elaborates on what they found.

Then there's me.

I never had risotto prepared by an expert so I have no standard against which to measure success, but I do know what I like.

My risotto will have everything that's good, and then some. Mine will be over the top. I'll try to stop short so the grains retain their al dente centers. But that's a bit of a hat trick, in'nit?

Know what pisses me off? Here's what: those shows on the Food Network that set up an impossible and improbable situation, establish a ridiculous and unnatural time limitation, then have the results of a contest between aspiring celebrity chefs judged by people who, newly endowed with the powers of judgeship, take themselves far too seriously and fancying themselves expert beyond anything they've proven to us, actually presume to judge people most likely better than themselves at what they're doing against the impossible conditions they have established. I want to punch them in the nose. I want to knock their heads together, and these impulses run counter to my generally kind and gentile nature. How dare they pull their, "let me finish," or "it made me mad," or "I found a hair and then the entire thing became ONE GIGANTIC HAIR TAKING OVER THE WORLD !!!!!" Pffft. Get over yourselves.

Take for instance a guy I happen to like a lot, Tyler Florence. He's very good. But honestly, he's impossible to listen to while he's demonstrating. It's as if his mind is addled and he's groping for filler vocabulary. He says the word "right" between every other word. Right this, right that, get out the milk, right, pour it in the pot, right, turn on the heat, right, give it a stir right. Right. Add the cheese, alright, put it all in a bowl, right, then to finish it off, right, daub the crème fraîche. Look at that. Right. And you're good to go.

Then as a judge, Tyler made a Federal case out of a woman contestant being rushed through her stint saying she'd reuse the marinade she already used for the beef to flavor the sauce. She didn't say she'd use the marinade again raw she just said she'd reuse it to flavor the sauce. I assumed she'd cook it in the sauce just as she would cook the beef that was marinated in it. If anything in the mixture was alive it'd be killed by cooking just as whatever was on the beef would be killed. But not Florence, oh no, he insisted she'd sicken the whole town, and he kept on it like that was a key disqualifying strike against the woman. Frankly, he was unworthy and unable to handle the power of judgeship that was vested in him.

"How good is that?"
"How easy is that?"
"How perfect is that?"
"How fast is that?"

I don't know. It's your show. You tell me!

"And you're good to go." Fine! I'm gone.

What is it with these catchphrase addicted cooks pirating each other's limited language range? It is so annoying. These are the people who presume to judge others coming up by virtue of their tenure on the network. They're not smart enough to judge other people and they cannot handle the responsibility.

I saw a man judging who I never saw before, he spoke with an Italian accent. He told the guy being judged who made risotto, "This is not risotto. In fact, this is a affront to Italian risotto. Go kill yourself." OK, I made up that last part. But the man did make his point most severely. How could he say something so harsh to a guy struggling to meet their unreasonable demands?

If they ever judged my risotto, I'd say, "Oh, bite me! You gave me 20 minutes and a box of Uncle Ben's, ferchristssake, you dope. What do you expect? Who do you imagine I am over here, Rumpelstiltskin or what? " And promptly get myself kicked off.

Enough of all that. Here goes.

1½ cups arborio rice
5-6 cups chicken broth.
2 significant pinches of saffron
¾ cup white wine
6 oz. bits of turkey and chicken meat
3 thick slices of bacon cut to small pieces
¼ a big fat white onion, diced.
2 garlic cloves, smashed and minced
2 tablespoons chicken fat that formed at the top of the broth when chilled
1 handful shitaki mushrooms de-stemmed and diced
¼ cup fennel root shavings along with the frond
½ cup frozen peas
½ cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano
¼ cup pecorino Romano (extra for the plate)
1 tablespoon lemon zest
juice of one small lemon.
S/P
1 kitchen sink ← Not really.

The bacon is rendered for its fat, lifted from the pot and held until the end.

The chicken fat is lifted from the top of the broth where it settled and hardened in the refrigerator. The rest of the broth is gelatinized.

The onion is sweated in those two fats, the garlic added, along with the saffron, finally the rice, cooked until fully coated and glistening. Cooking the rice in the fat for a few minutes is an important step for risotto that should not be overlooked.

First the wine is splashed in to start the steaming and boiling action, then the chicken broth being warmed in another pot is added in 1/2 cup increments. Stirred, and added, stirred and added, stirred and added, for 22-30 minutes, however long it takes to reach al dente, which requires constant testing because all rice species differ in this.

The rest of the ingredients are added at the end, with the cheese at the very end off the heat.

This dish took over a quart of my splendid homemade turkey/chicken broth. Boiled down, it further concentrated the flavor which was already fairly well concentrated. Along with the other flavorful ingredients, it amounted to flavor on top of flavor on top flavor on top of flavor, all absorbed by the highly-absorbent plump rice grains until POW flavor burst right out of the pot. If the new catchword is "umami," this dish has umami to spare. Flavor haters should back away toward the door.

The wine is that cheap stuff used on airlines, the 1-glass bottles I keep around for cooking to avoid opening a regular size bottle, which of course I would then have to drink and I'd be falling all over the place. I get these little bottles at the liquor store next door to the apartment where I live.

The saffron is brought in from Iran by an eBay vendor. It's a large amount that I've kept in its tin in the refrigerator crisper (which rightfully would be called a limper because that's what happens to all the vegetables that go into it). The tin has been around for a couple of years and the saffron still packs a punch.

I kept testing the risotto for flavor and doneness using two spoons, one to scoop a sample to transfer to another spoon used to taste. I kept the two spoons separate, as if someone else would be eating this dish too, because you never know. I suppose I tested five times attempting to hit the magic point of perfect al dente, and I do believe I hit the mark, bizarrely inappropriate imaginary Food Network judges notwithstanding.

I set the timer on the stove for 25 minutes and cut the heat just about a minute before the bell chimed.

The non-rice elements were added at the last five minutes to bring up their temperature.

The Parmigiano was added off the heat.

Originally I intended to finish with some of the compound butter for beyond reasonable extravagance, but I forgot to include it. I can still do that with the remainder of the risotto as I go through it plate by plate along with more cheese, just to ensure it's always, always WAY over the top.

Turkey, chicken broth

There were actually two of these containers but for photographic artistry and to focus the viewer's attention I elected to shoot only one. I'm very pleased with this stock. The stock is delicious and I'll be able to use it any number of ways. It's a vast improvement over anything I could buy, and I always feel like I'm slumming it when I resort to boxed or canned broth, although I'm happy they're available, and I do avail myself the convenience at those inopportune moments when I find myself haplessly stockless.

You can see oil settling at the top. This will form a disc when chilled that is easily removed and discarded or used (biscuits, vegetables, cold remedy, whatever -- schmaltz, the Jewish mother's panacea)

Boy, that butcher at Tony's had a great idea when he said to roast the bones before making stock. Seemed like a pain-in-the-butt extra step when he suggested it but I must say it's a brilliant idea. The thing that compels me is I had so many bones and scraps that I was afraid they would not fit in my largest pot. Roasting the carcass might shrink the whole mass.

Praise be to Maillard. He did not invent the process, he just studied it and gave it his own name. But at least we now have a handle for what's going on here -- a whole series of complex reactions upon reactions that layer flavors way beyond the thing started out with. I always wondered why I preferred my steaks a little bit burnt, or at least enjoyed those burnt portions the most. [ My deaf friends said they'd stop teaching me ASL if I didn't order my steaks medium rare. Bastards. Mocked my protestations. We had lunch together each day for an entire summer when I was between terms and fourteen years of age. They could not tolerate seeing a good steak ruined. ]

The thing is, all the little bits get toasted, not just the bones. I do love crispy skin, and I don't care how bad it is for you, I love it. Hardly any made it from the roasting pan into the pot. As I fingered through the toasted bits digging for bones to crunch with the pliers, I ate every little bit of toasted skin I came across. It was delicious, like chicken crisps. That was lunch.

In an attempt to salvage dry turkey the meat that was pulled from the two birds was left to soak in the original liquid released by roasting. That attempt worked. That liquid already rich with marrow set to a beautifully clear aspic, so the whole pan of turkey and chicken bits could be overturned as one large Turkey/chicken infused Jello mold. That Jello mold of roasted turkey and chicken bits, now at room temperature, was set in a colander placed atop another pot. The aspic melted and drained leaving only the the re-moistened meat behind, and the melted aspic was added back into the liquid boiled with the roasted bones. So now all the original liquid released during roasting and all the marrow cracked open from the bones and the toasted extravagance of the carcasses, the neck, the gizzards, livers, etc., are unified in one liquid.

Liquid gold.

The extra step of roasting the bones suggested by the butcher at Tony's produced a broth slightly darker than normal, and little bit concentrated due to using two carcasses, a turkey and a chicken (the chicken marketed as roaster so it would have produced a fine broth on its own, the turkey marketed for small size implying not old enough to be a roaster) along with the size of my pot (not huge) and the amount of water (gallon max, and that was pushing it). I'm fine with that.

Clarification: I learned a new way to clarify broth which I do not intend to employ. Ice filtering. Freeze the broth with the oil removed. Then in the refrigerator, over a period of a few days, allow the ice to melt through layers of muslin. The aspic remains solid and the result is a clear broth. I do not care about clear broth, but I do care about the flavor that is sacrificed to the gelatin which apparently is discarded. Seems an awful waste to me just for clarity. Another method is by a beaten egg white raft set atop gently simmering broth that produces conduction in the pot sufficient to lift particles up to the raft where they're captured and held. Again, the raft is then strained through layers of muslin. I, a rough-and-tumble carefree slapdash kind of guy, care not a fig for refined clarified stock, broth, or consommé. Hey! That's my story and I'm stick'n with it.

chicken omelet, compound butter

Omelette de poulet, très chic. Egg curd heated up over moderate heat in the compound butter prepared for insertion under the skin of the turkey and chicken shown in that earlier comparison post down there ↓ . No sauce, except for more of the melted compound butter and a squirt of lemon. The lemon was just sitting there so I thought, "you know, I could use you," made all the difference.

Technique: Gently blend two large or three ordinary eggs into a bowl and break the yolks into the whites with a fork. Do not over beat them, do not homogenize the mixture. Prepare the filling if you intend one. Grate the cheese, fry the sausage, mushrooms, whatever. Arrange these ingredients mise en place along with the bowl of beaten egg. Also have a plate ready. Over moderate heat, and by moderate I mean low, allow the butter to melt until it foams. Dump the egg mixture all at once. If the eggs were refrigerated, and being American eggs they probably were refrigerated, they'll cool down the pan even more on contact. Stand there and observe the eggs begin to set. Using a fork, gently push the set curd from the edges toward the center of the pan and allow liquid egg to run into the vacated space. Tilt the pan if necessary, or give the liquid an encouraging nudge with the fork. Work around the edges of the pan like the face of a clock or perhaps a compass. In this manner, build up the bulk of the curd in the center of the pan leaving the edges flat. See what you're doing here? Fluff fluff fluff, that's what you're doing. As you notice the curd NEARLY fully set, BUT NOT YET FULLY SET, remove the pan from the heat and add a small amount of cheese or herb, or whatever you intend for the center. (The original omelets have no filling but we're Americans here I'm supposing and we do as we please, and if empty omelets are proper then I don't want to be right). This whole process should take no longer than two minutes. Use a flexible spatula to loosen the edges from the pan, tilting the pan, tap the whole thing toward the edge and roll it onto a plate. Tidy up the edges, tuck them in to make it appear as if you knew what you were doing. There's another technique over high heat that is furious and fast, which involves violently shaking the pan to jolt the curd in the desired direction, but that is so immature et très déclassé.

I have noticed my sauces becoming more and more simple and also thinner. I do not have an explanation for this development except possibly maturité! This sauce, herbed butter and lemon, is positively perfect for the thing it is dressing, and I hereby declare that I shall henceforth use this forevermore. Or at least keep it in mind.

The pan shown is 1/2 turkey and 1/2 chicken pulled from the finished birds the previous night and resting in its own fatty liquid, now congealed, in the hope of salvaging the turkey which is rather dry. Ok, it's possibly 2/3 turkey and 1/3 chicken but I don't really know for sure, I didn't weigh it. OK, FINE! Let's say, 3/5 turkey and 2/5 chicken. What do I, look like a Math major over here?