We fried four turkeys Thursday. I think they're digested by now. There were about 12 of us eating off and on from 2 PM to midnight, with about as many people coming and going along the way. We ate 48 pounds of turkey, we did. That seems like a lot, but then this turkey was really, really good.
We also fried twinkies. (Here's the recipe, which was originally published in the St. Petersburg Times. The name of that last URL is "The Twinkie Transform." Indeed.) Anway, you freeze the things, then powder them with flour, then roll them in a batter made of milk, flour, baking powder, oil, vinegar and salt. Toss them in the fryer and a few minutes later you've got a donut with a twinkie filling. This being Northern California, several of our company had never had a twinkie before. The rest of us were from the rest of America (or as my Republican friends call it, "America"), so we were familiar with the twinkie. But these were better.
(Somehow, the twinkies we fried before the turkeys and the twinkies we fried between the third and fourth turkeys tasted about the same, even though the oil was black with turkey stuff by then. Weird. I also hear pigeons won't eat a twinkie if it's left on a sidewalk. Hmmm.)
Since we still had several gallons of hot oil, the real question was, What else can we fry? The answer: garlic mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. The potatoes were inspired. My friend rolled them into a ball and rolled the ball into the batter, then tossed it in - and predicted it would look like a potato when it came out. He was right. It tasted like a hush puppie with garlic mashed potatoes inside. In other words, excellent.
We weren't sure how to fry the pie. Pumpkin pie doesn't roll in batter very well, although we tried. Finally, we just dropped the pie on the frying rack and poured the rest of the batter over the top. Presto - hot pumpkin pie with a layer of fried on top! Not bad.
Next year I'm going to try and freeze some pie and cut it into cubes so it can be battered properly. I'll let you know how it goes.
(A version of this post appeared on the author's home page, Robbed by a Fountain Pen.)
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