The Makings of a Feast

I'm letting FB tell the rest of the Thanksgiving tale....

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Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Okay, today I am going to share this great recipe that I made for your Dancing Donkey writer, along with friends.

Now, I think I mentioned how the whole raising the turkeys did not turn out so well last year, right? For one thing, those turkeys became too friendly and followed me around the farm. They would then hang out on the porch or in the mudroom while I was in the house, and they were not exactly housebroken. The worst thing about them was that, as they matured, they started harassing my older border collie, Scout, which I did not like one bit.

(I have to inject a comment here...that one damn turkey was so mean I wanted to sell raffle tickets to see just who got to eat him.  We could have made a fortune!  He attacked cars, people, dogs, shadows...He went after my Tanner when he was so sick and knocked him right over.  If I could've caught the bugger that day, he wouldn't have made it to the dinner table. Even the vegetarians among us were lining up to buy a ticket, he was really that awful.)

So anyway, we had no turkey this Thanksgiving. However, one thing I have a lot of is BEEF!!!

What makes for a special holiday meal?

Prime rib!!!

Amazingly, although I have eaten this in restaurants with great enthusiasm (especially when someone else was paying for it), I have never made this at home! Well guess what? It is EASY!!! I found this great recipe online called Chef John’s prime rib. Here is how it is done.

1. First get a rib roast and weigh it. Mine had two ribs in it, and this was plenty for three people. Preferably get grass-fed, local beef, like mine!!
2. Defrost it the day before the feast.
3. First, pat dry with a paper towel and then rub some butter or unfiltered olive oil or plain olive oil all over that roast.
4. Leave the roast out, so it can come to room temp, for four hours before cooking. For example, I wanted my roast ready to eat at five in the evening, so I took my roast out of the fridge at ten in the morning.
5. Preheat the oven two-and-a-half hours before you want to eat. I turned the oven on at two o’clock in the afternoon to prepare for my five o’clock dinner.
6. Multiply the weight of roast by five. For example, mine was just over three pounds, so three times five equals fifteen. This is the amount of time that the roast is to bake at 500 degrees. If the roast was five pounds, it would bake for twenty-five minutes. Are you with me on this?
7. Okay, after the oven has preheated for one-half hour, put the roast into a cast iron pot or something like that and put it in the hot oven uncovered and bake for the allotted time period.
8. When that time is over, DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR. Just turn the oven off, walk away for two hours, and take your dogs for a hike, including the Maremma.
9. Come back in two hours, and your roast is now ready to eat!! It will taste as good or better than at the best restaurant!! And your dogs are right there to get any scraps, so no doggy bags needed!

To go with this roast, I put a bunch of sweet potatoes in the oven when I first turned the oven on to preheat. Then I just left them in there with the beef for two hours, and they were delicious!

I also made some Delicata squash on top of the woodstove. Here is where things got a little exciting. I cut the squash in half, put them in a Pyrex casserole dish, and covered them with foil. When we came back from the hike with the dogs, I lifted the foil to check on the squash, and the dish exploded into a million pieces!

Glass all OVER the place!! Out came the broom, out came the vacuum, but soon the mess was cleaned up, and the brave ones of us still ate the squash! The lesson learned here is, don’t put the squash in a glass dish and put it directly on the woodstove. Use cast iron for this job.

Those are my pearls of wisdom for this Thanksgiving Day!

Now let’s hope that Kris adds some pictures of Bess, Kelsey, and Scout.

Or some donkey pictures instead, since we did puppy pictures yesterday.  Happy thanksgiving!