Recipe: Salvadoran Turkey (CHUMPE!) plus a South African Thanksgiving!

It's a two-for-one today kids!  One of my best recipes, plus a recap of our awesome South African Thanksgiving.

I've been meaning to post this since ... oh, well, Thanksgiving!

But with all the Kgalagadi pictures to sort and post ... ehhh!

Anyhoo, as yesterday I did pupusas, I thought today I would do my other favorite celebratory meal:  Salvadoran Turkey, or as we say, Chumpe!  (PS, if you say "chumpe" to anyone outside El Salvador they won't know what you mean.  It's a strictly Salvadoran word, derived from the indigenous Pipil language, but I digress.)

Here is the Pan con Chumpe, a saucy, drippy sandwich packed with Salvadoran turkey, veggies and delicious sauce.

As Thanksgiving was coming 'round, our friends the Glasses very generously invited us all to their house to celebrate it.  As South Africa doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, it was all new to them.  They were delighted to help us and we were delighted to share one of our favorite holidays with our adopted South African family.

South African turkeys tend to be a lot smaller than the massive 25-pounders we get in the States.  We didn't think that one turkey was going to be enough for everyone who was coming to dinner, so we decided to make two turkeys.  So Gill made one, a lovely, savory, herb-encrusted roasted beast, and I made a Salvadoran one.

This is my mother's recipe.  Made a bit differently than most chumpes are, but SO, so, SOOOO good.  And best part is that since it's essentially stewed, it's even better made the night before, which can make planning a big feast a heck of a lot easier.  If I do make it the night before, I leave it to cool all night in the oven, then in the morning take it apart, slice the breasts, and chunk off the dark meat.  Put the slices/pieces into baking dishes, cover with some of the sauce and put in fridge.  Then, when you're ready to eat, reheat them gently in the oven and the leftover sauce can be quickly zapped in the microwave.

Oh, and one more thing, while this is a recipe for the whole bird, you can easily adapt it to just make a turkey breast or a couple of thighs or drumsticks for a less fancy dinner.  A couple of thighs make a great Sunday dinner.

So now, finally, onto the recipe!

Ingredients:

Turkey (I used about a 14 pounder)

Rolls

Romaine (Cos) lettuce

Slices of tomatoes

Slices of peeled cucumber

Thin slices of radishes

Watercress

Marinade:

1/4 cup of softened butter

1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup of yellow mustard

1 Tablespoon coarse salt (or 1 1/2 teaspoons fine salt)

1 1/2 teaspoons fresh cracked ground pepper

1 1/2 teaspoons Adobo or other favorite savory spice blend, I used cajun this time

Sauce:

2 medium green peppers, whole

2 medium onions, quartered

2 large cans chopped tomatoes

1 small can tomato and onion mix

1 very big handful cilantro/coriander

1 very big handful flat leaf parsley

2 celery sticks, chopped

3 bay leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 - 1 teaspoon sugar (optional)

Lots of olives, whatever style are your favorite.  I use Kalamata.

Procedure:

Wash turkey well inside and out.  Pat dry.  Mix all marinade ingredients together into a liquidy paste.  Don't worry if it's not a perfectly smooth mixture (I often forget to leave the butter out to soften and end up with little lumps of cold butter in the marinade.  Not to worry.)  Bathe the turkey in the marinade, inside and out and between the skin of the breast and the meat.  (The skin really isn't a big deal with this recipe, so don't worry if it rips.)  Then take a very sharp, small knife and poke holes in the turkey, all over, front back, breast, thighs, etc.  Leave to marinade overnight in the fridge.

The next day:

Take turkey out and in a deep roaster, put it in a hot oven (400F/200C).  Let it brown, probably about 30-40 minutes, start to check it after 20 minutes.

Then turn it to brown the other side.  This can be a bit tricky.  As you can see, it took lots of weird kitchen utensils and three of us to do it:

Now, as the other side browns, you can make the sauce:

 

Put the quartered onions and green peppers in a dry pan over high heat.  Blister the heck out of them:

When good and charred, split the peppers in half and take out the seeds.  Add them (in rough chunks) along with the onions into a big bowl with all the other sauce ingredients, except the bay leaves and the olives.  Blend, blend, blend till smooth:

Then pour over the browned turkey:

Add olives and tuck in the bay leaves:

I usually wait till it's cooked a couple of hours before I add salt/pepper as the marinade will flavor the sauce.  I will also add a half to a full teaspoon of sugar if the tomatoes aren't very sweet and the sauce tastes a bit "acidy."

Lower the heat (350F/175C) and bake the turkey for approximately 3 hours or until it's basically falling off the bones.  If it starts to get too browned at the end, cover with foil.

And there you go!  That's it!  Can you believe that I didn't get a picture of the chumpe when it was out of the oven?  You must forgive me but with all the pies and the other turkey and the side dishes ... things got hectic!

Now, you can have the chumpe with rice and salad, or as "Pan con Chumpe," which is my favorite way, so that's how we had it:

Basically, you just stuff a lovely roll (Ciabatta, french, etc.) with lots of turkey meat, romaine (a.k.a cos) lettuce, slices of tomato, slices of cucumber, thin slices of radishes, watercress (if you like it).  Then top it with tons of sauce and ... curtido!  Yes, the same stuff that I mentioned yesterday that we eat with pupusas.  And yes, the recipe is coming tomorrow!  It makes for a pretty huge sandwich.

How do you eat such a huge thing?  Like this:

How's that again?  Like this!:

Making the crazy eye is really important!  Notice how lovely and sweet Aaron looks while I look like a maniacal, starving cave woman (which, after cooking for 24 hours, I probably was.)

It really was the perfect Thanksgiving, as two turkeys (one American style with Aaron's family, one Salvadoran with my family) is how we always celebrate!  And along with all the trimmings, we made homemade pies!  From complete scratch! 

Fresh pumpkin, cooked down for the pies; there's no such thing as canned pumpkin in South Africa:

The pies in progress:

Here's Gill's gorgeous turkey:

Aaron, being "the man of the house" and carving it!:

Everything turned out wonderfully!  The table was gorgeous and groaning with all the food:

 

And then dessert came!  Look at how scrumptious the pumpkin pie turned out!

And the Cherry Pie ...

Cherry pie is Aaron's favorite ... can you tell?  He's so cute ... I can practically see the drool ...

And here is Aaron's pie plate.  Every year Aaron has at least 4 different kinds of pies, and this year was no different:  pumpkin, cherry, pecan and apple:

I wasn't far behind ;o)

 

Kids, it doesn't get better than panes con chumpe, with stuffing and cranberry sauce, finished with homemade pumpkin pie, enjoyed with a bunch of jolly South Africans (and some Norwegian visitors thrown in for good measure.)  And though we missed our families very much, I can definitely say that this was one of our best Thanksgivings ever!

P.S.:  Big thank you to Bron Glass for taking most of the pictures in this post!!!  You are a photographer extraordinaire girl!