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Turkey Giblets
These should be carefully preserved as they come in very handy for making sauce or gravy, or they can be used to make dishes by themselves. The old-fashioned system of tucking the gizzard and the liver into the wings when trussing for roasting has long since been condemned by common sense, they being spoiled by drying and hardening in the cooking. The gizzard, liver and heart should be placed in a pan of water as soon as it is removed from the interior of the bird. The liver should be well squeezed in the water in order to disgorge it of its blood, and the heart should be cut open and also disgorged. The gizzard or crop should be cut open and all the stones or other contents be washed out; the thick white lining can be peeled off. The feet must be scalded and skinned, and any odd pieces of the neck may also be skinned and otherwise cleaned for making gravy. Turkey Giblets on Skewers Remove the gall from the livers of two or three turkeys, and cut them into moderate-sized squares, split the hearts in two, open and empty the gizzards and wash them well in warm water. Run a thread through the gizzards, put them into a saucepan with a quantity of stock, and boil them for three-quarters of an hour. Drain, divide and trim off the hard skin, and cut them into the same sized pieces as the livers. Season the giblets with chopped parsley, pepper and salt, and baste them with a small quantity of oil, and mix with them the same quantity of thin squares of bacon as there are gizzard and liver squares. File the meat on skewers in alternate order, roll them in finely grated breadcrumb, place them side by side on a gridiron and broil them over a clear fire, turning them when done on one side. When nicely browned put the skewers of giblets on a folded napkin laid on a hot dish, and serve.
Two things in one entry: a general note on cleaning giblets, then a broiled skewer dish that needs the giblets from two or three birds. Read the second half as a use for the trimmings from a large holiday roast, or buy giblet packs.
- The hinge: the gall bladderRemove the greenish gall sac from each liver before anything else, and discard any part of the liver stained by it. A nicked gall bladder makes the whole skewer bitter and nothing later in the recipe will fix it.
- Gizzard is not cropOscar writes "the gizzard or crop" as if they were one organ. They are not: the crop is a thin pouch at the base of the neck, the gizzard the thick muscular grinding stomach. It is the gizzard you want, and the tough inner lining -- described here as "thick white" -- peels away once it is split and rinsed.
- Boiling the gizzardsThree-quarters of an hour in stock is right for gizzards, which are working muscle and need long moist cooking to become tender. Do not give the livers or hearts the same treatment; they go straight onto the skewers raw.
- "Run a thread through"Presumably to keep the gizzards together so they can be lifted out of the pot in one go. A small mesh strainer or a cheesecloth bundle would do the same work.
- Broiling over a clear fireA clear fire means coals burned down past flame, no smoke. On a modern range use a grill over medium-hot coals, or a broiler element with the skewers about 4 inches below it. Turn once; the whole thing takes roughly 8 to 10 minutes.
- Cook the liver throughPoultry liver and heart should reach 165F. The crumb coating browns quickly and can look finished while the centres are still raw, so judge by cutting one piece open rather than by colour.
- Skewers and crumbsMetal skewers, or wooden ones soaked 30 minutes. The oil basting is what makes the fine dry breadcrumbs adhere, so oil first and crumb second, pressing them on.
- The feetThe scalded, skinned turkey feet in the opening paragraph are for stock or gravy, not for the skewers. They are a good source of gelatin, though not commonly sold.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Giblets from three turkeys, alternated with bacon, would make only a few skewers -- a small first course at most. The "folded napkin" is a linen napkin on the platter, the standard service for fried and broiled skewers.
Giblets earned this much attention because a turkey was expensive and nothing edible was thrown away. The habit Oscar condemns, tucking liver and gizzard into the wing pockets while trussing, is described as old-fashioned; it kept the parts with the bird but reduced them to leather over two or three hours of roasting. The skewer dish is a hotel kitchen's version of the French brochette, and is related to the attereau, in which small pieces of offal and bacon are threaded and crumbed, and served upright on a napkin as a savoury or hot hors d'oeuvre. That a Waldorf cook would collect the livers of three birds to make one small course says a good deal about the scale of the kitchen: a household making one turkey could not, but a large hotel could.