Location: My tiny kitchen
When it comes to turkey, many people would make a face and tell me they hate it. “The bird that tastes like cardboard? No thanks!”. Unfortunately, all of my family, which including ET, are not big fans of turkey. The funny thing is I, on the other hand, love turkey. I could eat it as often as chicken. I believe that turkeys could be moist and delicious if they are cooked properly. I admit I have an obsession with cooking turkey. Being someone who is crazy about cooking, it could be my innate desire to conquer any food, especially those that are yummy-challenged. I try to find every excuse to serve turkey – at Thanksgiving, Christmas, even at Chinese New Year! Finally my family has had enough of the bird, or to be exact, they had enough of my turkey obsession. For this Thanksgiving, after getting some very strong hints from ET, I decided to serve prime rib.
I was glad that I made prime rib instead of turkey. The most difficult part about making the prime rib is waiting for it to be roasted in the oven. There was almost nothing to prepare at all. The results were satisfying, well at least that was what ET told me anyway (although I suspect he would compliment on anything I serve for Thanksgiving as long as it’s not turkey).
Set oven to 350F.
To start, prepare a Mirepoix, which is a fancy French term for a combination of onion, carrot and celery. To make my Mirepoix, I cut 1 onion, 3 carrots and 1/2 celery into big pieces. Place the vegetables in the bottom of a roast pan. Into the vegetables add:
- 1 cup of beef broth
- 1 tbsp of thyme
- 1 tbsp of rosemary
I bought a prime rib with two ribs and I asked the butcher to give me a piece of fat. You might think asking for a piece of fat is strange. By placing the fat on top of the beef, the meat stays tender and juicy during roasting.
Place a roasting rack on top of vegetables. Place the prime rib on top of the rack. Place the fat on top of the beef.
When the oven is ready, put the beef into the oven. Roast at 350F for 1.5 hours. Turn the temperature to 425 and roast for 1 hour. The time and temperature specified here cooked the beef to medium. To be accurate, use a meat thermometer to check the meat after roasting for 2 hours.
When my meat thermometer read medium, I took the beef out of the oven and covered it with aluminum foil. I let the beef rest for 1/2 hour before carving it. While waiting, I prepared the potatoes.
The potatoes in this recipe were served with black trumpet mushrooms. Black trumpet mushrooms are commonly used in French cuisine and they have a unique fragrance which some people say smell like apricots. The mushrooms I used are dry and therefore I soaked them in water ahead of time. Finely chop 1/2 cup of mushrooms. Stir fry the mushroom for 1 minute with 1 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of minced garlic. Set the mushroom aside when done.
Take 4 red and 4 yellow nugget potatoes, quarter them and boil them in salted water until they are fork-tender.
Drained the water from the potatoes and let the potatoes to dry off. On a non stick pan, melt 2 tbsp of butter. Put the potatoes into the pan, lower the heat to medium and pan fry the potatoes until they are crispy. Mix in the mushrooms, add in freshly ground pepper and 1 tbsp of salt. Turn off the heat when the mushrooms, salt and pepper have been thoroughly mixed into the potatoes.
The last thing to prepare is the gravy. This is easily done by using the juice from the roasting pan. Drain the juice from the pan into an oil separator. There should be 2 cups of juice. In a quart pan, melt 2 tbsp of butter. Create a roux by mixing in 3 tbsp of flour:
Pour the juice into the pan from the oil separator, leaving the oil behind. Let the juice boil until it is thickened. Taste the gravy and add ground pepper and salt to taste. To make a richer gravy, melt 2 tbsp of cold butter in the gravy.
The prime rib was tender and we all really enjoyed it. I still miss my turkey though. I found some fresh young turkeys at Safeway which are slightly larger than chicken. It won’t be long before I put one of them in front of ET 
