Last night was my experiment. I fully preheated the oven to 500 deg. I prepared my chicken - rinse, dry, salt, pepper, into a #7 Griswold pan - and let it sit at room temp for a good half hour while the oven preheated. Put it in the oven on the second lowest rack. That's all there is to it, right? When the breast was a beautiful golden brown I checked the temp. The breast was already at 180. I poked at the thighs a bit and found areas as cool as 140. Clearly it needed more time in the oven despite the breast already being overcooked. After another fifteen minutes or so (I wasn't paying attention to the clock during any of this) the thighs were just barely approaching 165 so I pulled it out of the oven. Immediately after setting it on my counter I noticed that while the top of the drumsticks were nice and brown like the breast, the majority was a flabby pale beige. Same for the entire thighs and most of the wings. While carving the chicken I took a bite of the breast. Predictably it was dry, but my wife seemed to enjoy it nonetheless. I chose to eat the dark meat and sadly peeled off the skin. It was flavorful and extremely juicy if somewhat undercooked for my taste. In hindsight I know I made one mistake. I put the chicken in head first, whereas the instructions make a point of saying legs should face the back. Given this, I will give the method another shot even though being in the back didn't help the wings out any. On a positive note, I'm convinced of the small-pan tip. The oven didn't smoke at all, and the splatters on the wall were minimal. Who'da thunk, "place in pan and throw in oven" could yield such varied results.

I agree on the pinkness. You can also get a pinky tinge depending on what the bird has been eating. If the texture is smooth and soft and glossy, it's under done. If it's cooked turkey texture, it's cooked. :) I can't deal with all the turkey gymnastics that other people put their birds through. The whole point for me is that it starts early and doesn't need any fussing. Mine goes on a short, silicone covered rack in my "goosepot", which is basically a 15 qt. Le Creuset oval dutch oven. I should say that I always start with a top quality, free range bird, usually about 22 lbs. in the Spring, which means it has defrosted for a few days in the fridge, there being no fresh turkeys that size at Passover time. Recently, I gave up on stuffing, which also shortens the cooking time so I may go back. Without stuffing, I put a lemon and a broken up tarragon branch in the cavity, and a blend of dried herbs and maybe garlic pepper, shaken all around. I don't know that it makes a difference, but it feels like cooking. :) A bottle of cheap (palatable) white table wine in the bottom of the pot. My birds are always too big for the pot lid, so I do the loose tent of heavy duty Reynolds Wrap. Just a sheet of foil, dangling loosely. Then I put it in the oven for the proper amount of time for the size of the bird, take it out, let it rest, and get one of the guys to carve because I'm way too busy at that point to care what happens to it. But it is always gloriously, beautifully brown and juicy. Not crispy skinned. We don't eat the skin, but it is appetizing looking. Because I have a tight fit in the roaster, and the wine in the bottom, people will tell you I'm steaming, rather than roasting the turkey. Fine by me. It tastes good. :) And one year I did six turkey breasts and thighs in the steam oven because I needed more turkey and the big oven for something else. :) I know you know how to cook. Maybe the trick is to not try so hard?

Thanksgiving is the only day we eat turkey. The rest of the time, give me a roast capon or a duck prepared almost any way at all. DH and I are just not turkey lovers. My niece makes a very fine brined and roasted turkey, but once a year is enough for us. We're sauce and gravy people. Stews, braises, casseroles - we love them. I do a fair amount of cooking and a lot of dining out, and we hold that a fine sauce is a work of art. Even though we eat a lot of steaks and roasts, a great sauce is always to be admired. There are too many bad ones around to not acknowledge when something is done correctly. One of our favorite restaurants does a great poached monkfish. This is the fish known as "the poor man's lobster" for both its taste and texture. It's a great little fish, with wonderful flavor. But nap it with Amoricaine sauce, and it rises to a whole 'nother level. This is a Bretonnese classic, and for good reason. Red wine and marrow Bordelaise on a rib-eye? Absolutely! Black truffle cream sauce on a filet? Yum! Mop that goodness up with a well made starch - roasted fingerling potatoes, barley risotto, fresh pasta, freshly baked bread rolls. Gravy and sauce was the way to extend meat to feed a lot of people. Most of the world still loves sauced dishes as treasured childhood memories. Like soup, they are warmth and comfort, soothing and homey. Chicken strips that are velveted and steamed with lop cheong sausage (classic Chinese technique) are stunningly tender, almost as soft as sous vide but we like the flavor and texture better. Perfect with a roasted garlic-oyster sauce gravy over lots of rice! Far better than stir-frying or roasting. As Charles Phan of The Slanted Door restaurant in SF points out in today's WSJournal, steaming is considered the ultimate test of a professional chef in Asia. Getting back to the NY Times' and Pepin's suggestions for steaming, one of the greatest dishes in Chinese cuisine is steamed sliced chicken breast with thin slices of Hunan ham. My mother introduced me to this dish (she took classes from one of the leading Chinese restaurateurs in San Francisco) and it still ranks with DH and me as one of the three finest poultry dishes we've had in our 45 yrs of dining. A glaze should always be light. Heavy-handedness is the mark of a bad cook. Peking Duck would not be the same without the glaze applied, for example.

I had a German shepherd/boxer mix dog as a kid. She could and did eat anything. My first from-scratch cake was a devils food with a thick, rich chocolate frosting. We put it on the coffee table with plates etc., as we'd invited friends to come for cake and coffee. I was so proud of that cake. It never occurred to us that LuLu would bother it, she was very good about not taking food etc unless we gave it to her. I walked out into the living room just in time to see her oh-so-casually saunter by the coffee table...and nibble off the cake with the side of her mouth as she passed. She must have been making passes for a while, because she'd managed to eat about 1/4 of the cake. She used to pick all the low hanging pears from our tree, she'd circle the tree staring up until she found the ripest one before jumping up to grab it. She ate a lot of pears, they never seemed to bother her. The only thing she ever ate that I recall making her sick was the time she got into the coffee can full of bacon fat we kept under the stove. It was a 10 pound can, and it was getting pretty full, I noticed as I was draining that morning's pan. When I came home from school, there were these odd little pools of some light brownish-grey stuff everywhere and the house reeked of bacon. LuLu was nowhere to be found (she often hid when she knew she'd done something wrong). In the kitchen, the cabinet under the stove was open, and the coffee can only had a few inches of fat left in it. LuLu was eventually found, huddling in the corner of the yard looking pretty miserable...still retching once in a while. To the day she died, some 15 years later, she wouldn't touch a piece of bacon. If you offered her one, she'd back away from you, whites of her eyes showing!