A Special Thanksgiving Treat

Apropos of the letter to John Madden, here's my recipe for the Thanksgiving Turdukenigobinail, which I wrote last year for thehelicon.com. I thought it might be a nice mix up from the letters. Here is the original link.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which means you've got a little over a week to get your holiday menu in order. This year, instead of serving that same tired bird to everyone at your table, why not go for broke with a main course that's sure to impress? We at thehelicon.com just so happen to have a time-honored recipe we think you'll all enjoy. Except for vegetarians, but they don't count.


Thanksgiving Turdukenigobinail


Ingredients:
A petting zoo's worth of small to mid-size barn animals
150,000 Butanes of heat/energy
A bag of water softener salt
Mrs. Dash Table Blend

Okay, first thing you'll need is a pig, a turkey, a duck, a chicken, a quail and a Robin's egg. Take that egg and stick it in some warm sand, then forget it for about two weeks. That's right, just set it (on a calendar) and forget it! When it's done, take it up to a strong light and make sure the inside is dark. This means our Robin fetus is done. But wait! Don't do anything with it yet, we've still got a lot of prep work to do.

Pro life? I'm too busy being pro-delicious!

Now, time to start deboning those adult bird carcasses. The key to deboning a turkey, duck or chicken is to maintain the integrity of the meat while removing the ribs, sternum, leg bones and pelvis. If you're going to do this recipe more than once, I recommend getting a bird deboning machine, as seen below.




With your birds deboned, you're ready to scald the hair off your suckling piglet. The key to pig-scalding is to make sure the water in your cauldron is at a rolling boil, I repeat, a rolling boil. I like to get a good bonfire going in the backyard before I even put my cauldron on the thing, then letting it go for at least half an hour. If you don't have a huge black cauldron you can heat your full bathtub with a welding torch, but it will take longer. Dump your dead pig in there and turn it over a few times with a pole, letting it scald for about a two minutes. Make sure you've tied a rope around the pig's head first, otherwise it will be nearly impossible to pull it out without getting hot pig water all over yourself. Don't let it scald too long, or you might pull the head clean off.

Once it's been scalded, skinning the pig should be a breeze; just peel it like an orange. Now, cut it open and get the guts out, then hose the whole thing down. Once the water in the pot has cooled, refill it with ice water and dump the salt and spices in. This is called a brine, and will hopefully kill all the deadly bacteria from your bathtub.

Now comes the fun part – putting one dead animal inside another. The duck goes inside the turkey. The chicken goes inside the duck. The quail goes inside the chicken, and the Robin fetus goes inside the quail. If you can afford it, smear some caviar on the fetus. Make sure everything's in there good and tight. Use some Pam if the parts don't fit easily, but don't push too hard. You don't want to do any smushing, you'll ruin the presentation!

Here's a rough sketch of what the whole thing will look like.

Now, take the whole sucker and stuff it down the pig's throat. If you can't open his jaw wide enough, cut the head off to get it down in there, but sew the decapitated head back on the pig when you're done. It's the same thing the vet will do for your kitty after they kill her, chop her skull off and test her brain for rabies. Anyway, enough of my silly digressing. Let's get this baby cooking!

You can cook your turdukenigobinail several ways. If you have a wood burning fireplace, you can tie the pig across the top of your chimney and keep a hickory fire going for about three days. If you have a big enough backyard you can dig a pit and fill it with hot coals, then leave the pig in for three days. If you do pottery and have a kiln, you can stick the pig in there, but this time probably only two days. Those kilns get pretty hot.

My favorite cooking method, though, is a good old fashioned Southern deep fry. Just get a hot tub full of peanut oil and turn it on until the thermometer reads 375 degrees. Try to do this sober, though. If it gets too hot, the pig will basically explode upon contact and send unquenchable flaming oil all over your body and your loved ones. This is what happened to Mel Gibson's character in The Man Without A Face.

And that's why you never heat oil above 375, Timmy! Now, who wants some Chex Mix?

It will only take a little over an hour for your meat to be cooked through, with a deliciously crispy skin on the outside. Test the inside with a meat thermometer, making sure the juices run clear and you feel the remorse of killing all six animals. Pull it out and let it cool, then pile up the Red Rider and get that thing to your dining room!

We certainly hope you have the best Thanksgiving with your family, and with this light entree on your dinner bench, we're sure everyone will be licking their fingers well into January. Bon appetit!