Tacchino Natalizio alla Neretese
...in the style of Nereto. An old Longobard town in the north of Abruzzo’s province of Teramo, Nereto grows walnuts and breeds turkeys. And when the turkeys grow fat on the walnuts, their just-dressed flesh, roasted with aromatics, indeed tastes of the sweet, smoky nuts. A classic dish for Christmas there, I fix it for our Tuscan version of Thanksgiving. And because our local turkeys, as is likely the case with yours, do not feed on walnuts, I gift the bird with a luscious paste of them smoothed under the skin of its breast. I like the Neretese-inspired turkey infinitely better than the more famous tacchino alla Canzanese, turkey in the manner of Canzano, which typically asks that the bird be relieved of his bones and poached with a calf’s foot and knuckle, then cooled and presented in its jellied broth.
Recipe information
Yield
serves 8 to 10
Ingredients
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. In the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, pulse the walnuts with the garlic. When the walnuts are processed to a fairly fine texture, drop in tears of oil through the feed tube—only enough to form a thick paste of the nuts, less than 2 tablespoons’ worth. Loosen the breast skin of the turkey by gently slipping your fingers between it and the flesh. Carefully spread the walnut paste thickly over the flesh and under the skin of the breast, as evenly as possible. Sprinkle sea salt and freshly cracked pepper in the bird’s cavity and over its skin, and stuff it with several whole branches of rosemary, the bay leaf, and the lemon zest. Massage the bird generously with olive oil, trussing it then, if you wish. Place the turkey on a rack in a large roasting pan into which you have poured 1 cup of the wine. Roast it on a rack in the hot oven for 1 hour, basting with the accumulating juices and an additional cup of the wine mixed with the 1/4 cup of walnut liqueur. Reduce the oven’s heat to 325 degrees and roast the turkey for an additional 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast registers 165 degrees. Baste faithfully every quarter of an hour. Transfer the bird to a holding plate, and remove the aromatics in the cavity. Over a lively flame, heat the accumulated juices in the roasting pan, stirring, scraping at the residue, and adding the remaining cup of wine and the remaining 2 tablespoons of walnut liqueur. Reduce the pan juices for 4 or 5 minutes. Carve the turkey and present it with the warmed pan juices, great chunks of charred, roasted polenta, and poached Savoy cabbage that has been sautéed in olive oil and spiced with olio santo (page 155).
