Kona Ranch House Cornbread

Cooks in 2 2″x11″x9″ cake pans
5 cups bisquick
1-1/2 cup cornmeal
2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking powder
5 sticks butter (1-1/4 pound)
5 eggs
2-1/2 cups milk
Combine dry ingredients and mix well. Pour melted butter or margarine over dry mixture and blend together well. Beat eggs and milk and mix with the above mixture. Blend until well mixed and not lumpy. Pour into well greased pans and cook at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, then turn the pan 180 degrees in the oven. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake another 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and the center springs back when lightly touched. Poke with toothpick to check doneness.

Tamale Pie

Made some tamale pie today and it came out wonderfully, rave reviews all around
2 pounds of ground meat (turkey, beef, whatever you like)
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp of chili powder
1 tbsp cumin powder
1 tbsp smushed or chopped garlic
1 package of trader joe’s frozen roasted corn (or regular corn is fine too)
1 8 oz can of tomato sauce
1 16 ounce can of seasoned chopped tomatoes
1 can of green chilis
4 oz red wine
1 can of cream-style corn
1 package of trader joe’s cornbread mix
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups grated Cheddar
1 medium package of Frito corn chips
Fry the ground meat up with the seasonings until it’s browned. Add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, corn, chilis, and wine to the meat and simmer for 20 minutes.
While it’s simmering, mix the cream style corn with the cornbread mix. Add 1/2 cup of the cheese and enough milk to make it runny (about 1/4 cup). Crush the fritos and combine them with the remaining cup of cheese.
When the meat is ready spread it out over the bottom of your casserole dish or 9×11 baking pan. Spread the cornbread mix across the top, reaching all the way to the edges. Cook at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, then sprinkle the frito cheese mixture over the top and put the dish back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Fabulous Thanksgiving Turkey

Here’s a picture of the turkey from Thanksgiving taken by my FriendWhoCallsMeMartha. I’m very fond of cooking for large groups because it gives me a chance to try new dishes. I go with a CYA approach which involves cooking enormous numbers of recipes so that if one of them doesn’t work no one goes hungry. In this case I think there were 10 things on the table for 10 people… maybe overkill but everyone looked blissful at the end, and I didn’t have to pull my hair out over the soggy weird polenta sticks.
I was very proud of the turkey, I brined it following my bizarre practice of finding 2 similar recipes (in this case I tapped Alton Brown and Cooks Illustrated) and morphing them into a mutant fusion, creating something totally, completely (well sort of) my own. I bought a funky little ceramic trash can labelled ‘RUBBISH’ for the brining because I didn’t have anything big enough and also because I thought it was cute.

I’ll share my recipe because it took me a long time to come up with, so maybe one of you can profit from my research.
The recipe kinda went like this (for a 20 pound turkey).

1. Clean out the turkey inside and out, stick it in the RUBBISH can

2. Make 2 gallons of brine
   1. 3 cups kosher salt
   2. 1 cup dark brown sugar
   3. 2 gallons water
   4. 1-1/2 cups apple juice (the actual recipe wanted frozen orange juice but I didn’t have any)
   5. turkey
   6. ice to fill the container
3. Brine for 6 hours
4. Dry completely and place in the refrigerator on a drying rack stuck inside of a cookie sheet (uncovered) – this gives you an incredibly crisp skin
5. Cook it on its back for an hour at 425 degrees
6. Turn the oven down to 350, turn the turkey over
7. Stuff turkey with superheated stuffing because… if you cook a turkey with stuffing it means you have to increase the time, leading to dry meat. Who wants dry meat? If you superheat the stuffing and add it after the turkey is already partly done, you minimize the impact on the turkey and still get yummy turkey-flavored stuffing.
8. Cook until it’s safe turkey temperature according to my digital thermometer
9. Let it rest for an hour because the turkey carving guy wasn’t here yet