Pumpkin, The Turkey

This is Pumpkin, the Turkey. Inspired yet again by the noble spirit and kindly actions of my friend Aral (www.aralecho.blogspot.com), I just "adopted" her through the Farm Sanctuary's Adopt-A-Turkey program. Pumpkin was saved from a crowded, noisy, stressful, and generally awful factory farm - a survivor of the Commercial Turkey Industrial. If you want to read more about the horrendous industrial practices of commerical turkey production, check out:

www.adoptaturkey.org

As you can no doubt tell from my previous post, I am not a vegetarian. Even when I counted myself a part of Tribe Veggie, I still ate fish and poultry. Still, it should come as no surprise that I'd rather have a rare-breed, free-range turkey, which has been fed a natural diet, been able to enjoy sunlight and gentle breezes, and had room to stretch out her feathers in all their winged glory.

Still, in deference to Aral and all my other veggie friends, today I'd like to share a recipe that I found on the web for tofu turkey. I haven't made it yet myself, but I think I will try it, maybe as a pre-Thanksgiving dinner for visiting family. Poor unsuspecting things!

No. Actually, it sounds really good! Here goes:

Tofu Turkey
Ingredients :
5 1-lb. blocks organic tofu (firm)
1 1/2 tablespoon vegetarian chicken stock powder (optional)
1 1/2 teaspoon each; sage, thyme, summer savoury, black pepper
1/4 cup toasted sesame seed oil
1/2 cup tamari (soy sauce)
3-4 cups of your favourite stuffing
Directions:
Serves 10.
1. Mix together sesame oil and tamari, set aside.
2. In a large bowl break up the tofu well by hand or with a potato masher. Add herbs and pepper and vegtarian chicken stock powder (optional), mix well.
3. Line a medium, round bottomed colander with one layer of cheese cloth or a clean dish towel. Put the tofu mixture in colander and fold remaining cheese cloth over the top. Place the colander in the sink or over a large bowl and place a heavy weight on top. Press for aprox. 2-3 hours (longer if soft tofu is used). Make your stuffing.
4. After pressing and with the tofu still in the colander, scoop out the centre, leaving about an inch of tofu around the edges. Place your stuffing in the cavity. Put the tofu mixture you scooped out over the dressing and press down firmly.
5. Flip the formed turkey on to an oiled cookie sheet and brush the top with the oil and tamari mixture, cover with tin foil and place in a 350° oven for about 1 hour brushing with oil mixture every 15 min.
6. After 1 hour remove foil and bake uncovered for about 45 minuites, watching carefully so as not to burn. At this stage you are forming the skin or crust. Brush 4-5 times more during this hour.
7. When the bird turns a dark golden brown, remove from oven. Serve hot with mushroom gravy and all the trimmings.
Source: Dan O'Brien & Karen

This recipe got very good responses from web readers. One kitchen savvy reader made the following adjustments to the recipe, which seem like they might be worth trying:

"I used half the amount of tofu and doubled the spices. Cooked at 400 degrees for half an hour and then at 325 degrees. I added mustard to the soy sauce mix and halved the amount of soy sauce. This was all due to reader comments...and the tofu turkey was really good...the only reason I didn't like it was b/c it tasted and felt too much like real turkey. That grosses me out, but the taste was really good."

So, there you have it. I hope you'll try it and let me know what you think.

Happy cooking!