People who associate turkey with stringy, characterless meat have never had good turkey. But I love it and no other meat replace it during Christmas. Brining ensures a succulent bird and careful roasting yields crisp, bronzed skin.

Now, the connotations of red and gold here are purely gustatory. The use of Chinese ingredients mimic the traditional red braising stock, which accounts for the red, and gold spells royalty (to me at least). It is a flimsy explanation but it certainly evokes grandeur and prestige, does it not?

I have one confession. There is no photo of a killer, bronze-and-bulging-breasted turkey because I went off to write bits of this article during tanning time. It was such a macabre spectacle, you could mutate your cells just by staring at it. And so I stress in the following instructions to stay with it during its final 20 minutes. Still, its meat was divine, even 6 hours after the shoot. Not a single sliver left and rightfully so.

Ingredients

• A 6.5 kg turkey
• 60g goose fat with 1 tablespoon each of maple syrup and pomegranate molasses

For the brine:

• 500ml Shao Tsing rice wine
• 250g gula melaka
• 2 oranges, quartered
• 2 onions, quartered
• 3 celery stalks, chunked
• 4 inch ginger knob, sliced
• 6 dried tangerine peel
• 3 tablespoons coriander seed
• 4 tablespoons Szechuan peppercorns
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
• 4 cloves
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 120g table salt
• 125ml pomegranate molasses
• 100ml maple syrup

For the brine:

Warm the rice wine in a positively huge pot. Simmer for about 5 minutes to burn off some of the alcohol and then add the gula melaka. Stir several times - once it has dissolved, add everything else. Simmer for just a minute more and shut off the heat.

For the turkey:

Once the brine has cooled to blood temperature, lower in your turkey and pour in just enough cold water to immerse it almost entirely. Splash his majesty with its fragrant, festive bathwater. Cover with a lid, carry it -heave-ho!- to the refrigerator and push it in. Leave it for 24 - 48 hours. You could brine the bird directly in an icebox too, as I did last Christmas. Just add some ice.

6 hours prior to mealtime, drain the bird of its brine and let it warm to room temperature in a sturdy roasting tin.

3 hours 10 minutes before mealtime, preheat the oven to 220 C. If you want the stuffing in the bird, coerce it in and stitch it up. Lubricate the bird with the maple syrup-goose fat emulsion. Cover the tin with spacious tent of foil and march it off to the oven. Cook for 30 minutes before decreasing the temperature to 170C and cooking for about 70 further minutes.

It's tanning time: strip off the foil, raise the heat to 210C and cook the bird for about 20 - 25 minutes, or until just cooked through and impeccably bronzed. I implore you to stay with it. It is very vulnerable to scorching and if it does reach coloured perfection before its time is up, return it to the foil.

Remove the turkey from its tin onto a serving platter. It has to be a colossal one. Loosely cover with its foil again for about 20 - 25 minutes before carving. This allows risen juices to seep back into the meat, and also gives you the time to make the gravy.

Red & Gold Turkey
Stories and photos copyright © Bryan Koh, unless otherwise stated.
Not to be reproduced without permission from the author.

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