Crispy spring rolls, egg rolls or imperial rolls, whatever you call them, it's cha gio in Vietnamese. My mom's cha gio was one of my favorite things to eat growing up. Nothing compares to my mom's crispy spring rolls. I know I say that about all of her cooking, but I really mean it. When I was younger and attended a lot of Viet gatherings and parties, I would always leave thinking my mom's cooking was better.

Cha gio comes in many different sizes and can be made with spring roll wrappers or rice paper. Traditionally, rice paper is used in Vietnam, but my mom has been using spring roll wrappers for as long as I can remember, so I'm partial to them. I grew up on pork and shrimp cha gio, but a few years ago, my dad became a pescetarian. So last month when I visited my parents, my mom made shrimp and crab rolls.

I don't eat cha gio very often because it's deep fried. So it was a really special treat when my mom made the rolls. Of course, she doesn't measure any ingredients and just cooks by taste and feel. She knew I wanted to document the process for SND and indulged me by measuring everything out. Isn't she great?

The cha gio were fantastic. They contain a few of my favorite things — crab, shrimp, cabbage and shiitake mushrooms. Since they are deep fried, they are obviously nice and crispy. Wrapped up in a fresh piece of lettuce and dipped in nuoc cham (Vietnamese dipping sauce), they are absolutely delicious and take me back to my childhood.

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Another Thanksgiving, another feast in San Francisco. All of us SNDsters are transplants from the East coast or Midwest and we avoid traveling during Thanksgiving. Instead, we celebrate Turkey Day by hanging out and cooking at Jane and Mark's place. It's typically an eclectic pot luck with friends who also don't have family in the Bay Area.

This year there were 14 of us and the food was more traditional and less of an East meets West affair. Dinner consisted of...

Savory Dishes

• Deep-Fried Turkey - brined, dry rubbed and fried (Garry/Chuck)
• Gravy - made from pan drippings and turkey stock from a roasted turkey wing (Jane/Chuck)
• Uncooked Cranberry and Orange Relish - chopped raw cranberries and oranges (Stacy)
• Spicy Artichoke Dip - jalapeno, cream cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise and other heart clogging ingredients (Stacy)
• Mashed Potatoes and Parsnips - potatoes, parsnips and chives mashed using a potato ricer - (Jane)
• Cornbread Stuffing with Sausage - sage, thyme, fresh corn, buttermilk cornbread and hot Italian sausage (Chuck)
• Brussels Sprouts Lardons - brussels sprouts and bacon (Stacy)
• Chinese Sticky Rice - sticky rice, Chinese sausage and BBQ pork, shiitakes, oyster sauce, green onions and cilantro (Hungry Bear)
• Spanish Seafood Salad - shrimp, squid, chorizo, sun-dried tomatoes and butter beans on frisée (Garry)
• Three-Seed Dinner Rolls - poppy seeds, fennel seeds and coarse sea salt (Karen)

Dessert

• Fruit Salad - cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, pineapple, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, kiwis, persimmons and mandarin oranges (Hungry Bear)
• Yogurt - fresh homemade (Sukhchander)
• Apple Pie - deep dish pie with pink lady apples (Stacy)
• Pecan Pie - from Bakesale Betty in Oakland (Ajita)
• Pumpkin Pie - from Bakesale Betty (Ajita)
• Chocolate Bouchons - small chocolate brownies (Chuck)

Hungry Bear and I did the majority of our cooking at home. It's more fun cooking together at Jane's place, but it's also more difficult with only one stove top and oven. When we arrived at Jane's, there was a buzz of activity in the kitchen as Stacy, Jane, Garry and Karen were prepping and cooking.

Garry brined and dried the 12 lb turkey and I added a dry rub to the bird before dunking it into the electric deep fryer. As the turkey was frying, we snacked on a warm, spicy artichoke dip with pita chips. It was so good I couldn't stop eating it and overfilled myself with chips and dip. Thankfully, the turkey only took 45 minutes to cook, otherwise I would have eaten even more dip.

The deep-fried turkey was moist and fantastic as usual. This year we tried a brined turkey for the first time and we really like the extra flavor it added. The gravy was the best we ever made because of the pan drippings and homemade turkey stock. We normally forget about the gravy and scramble at the last minute to make it, or send Howie out to pick up a jar. I'm very happy that Stacy and Jane had the foresight to roast a turkey wing and make stock!

We really enjoyed the brussels sprouts dish. I love all things cabbage and it's even better with crispy bacon. Ina Garten's brussels sprouts lardons recipe calls for golden raisins, but Stacy didn't add them. I'm glad no raisins were used, as I'm not a fan of sweet and savory dishes. The brussels sprouts were delicious with just bacon... imagine that.

The seafood salad and Chinese sticky rice were the only non-traditional items we had this Thanksgiving. The seafood salad was very unique with jumbo shrimp, squid, chorizo and a butter bean vinaigrette. The salad was a great change of pace from the normal, heavy Turkey Day fixings.

After one big plate of food, I was completely stuffed. I usually go for seconds, but couldn't do it this year. Dessert started with fruit salad. Hungry Bear's giant fruit salad is always a big hit at Thanksgiving because it's light and refreshing. We should have ended dinner with just fruit, but we had three pies and chocolate bouchons to try.

It was a complete struggle to eat the sampler pie plate that Karen doled out. On each plate, there was a small slice of apple, pecan and pumpkin pie. Jane, Hungry Bear and I shared a sampler plate and we were at our food limit. The pecan pie from Bakesale Betty's and Stacy's apple pie were extremely good. Last week, we had Betty's sticky date pudding cake and it was amazing. It was so good we asked Ajita to pickup a pecan pie from Betty's. Somehow, a pumpkin pie also made the trek across the bay for dinner. There was entirely too much pie at Thanksgiving, but I loved every bite of it.

Once again, our Turkey Day meal was delicious. It was fun cooking and sharing great food with old and new friends. There was an overabundance food at dinner and I could go on forever. I'll end this post now, but I'll follow up with new posts/recipes on the cornbread stuffing, Chinese sticky rice, chocolate bouchons and fruit salad.

I hope you also had a great Thanksgiving and were able to hang out with friends and family!

SNDsters: Chris, Winnie, Chetana, Isabel, Polly, Sukhchander, Ajita, Stacy, Karen, Garry, Mark, Jane, Hungry Bear, Chuck

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I wrote this article for another blog last year. I thought it would be interesting for anyone thinking about deep-frying a turkey. I made a few minor updates to the article. After this Thanksgiving, I'll post about our turkey day festivities.

Every Thanksgiving, we get together at Jane and Mark's place and cook a big feast. It's usually an East meets West affair, with a combination of traditional turkey day favorites along with a variety of Asian dishes. Over the years, we've had roasted turkeys the conventional way, brined and even a Peking turkey, which is a turkey prepared Peking duck style. Several years ago, we deep-fried a turkey and it was spectacular. Now it's our preferred turkey cooking method.

Most of us are dark meat people and think white meat is dry when roasted in the oven. The white meat of a deep-fried turkey is the juiciest white meat we've ever had, and it's not greasy at all. Even better, you don't have to slave over the oven for a couple of hours. It takes less than 50 minutes (3.5 minutes per pound) to fry a 14 lb turkey. There's no way we would go back to roasting a turkey in the oven again.

If you are apprehensive about deep-frying a turkey, it's most likely due to health concerns and/or the potential fire danger. Prior to having deep-fried turkey, I thought the meat would be on the greasy side, which is not the case at all. From an article previously on Epicurious...

Today, though everyone from Martha to Emeril has gotten in the act, fried turkey is still a foreign concept to many, who think of it as a comically large, batter-fried, dripping-with-grease bird. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. When dropped in a vat of boiling peanut oil, the turkey becomes a crispy amber beacon of juicy deliciousness — to put it in technical terms. "The hot oil has a flash-frying effect on the turkey, which seals the skin and all the moisture in it," says Aricka Westbrooks, owner of Jive Turkey, a fried turkey restaurant and distributor in Brooklyn, New York, of all places. Since the high temperature of the oil seals the skin, the result is moist, juicy meat with what Westbrooks describes as a velvety texture.

The high temperature keeps it from absorbing much oil — some studies claim a whole turkey absorbs less than a tablespoon. The key is to keep the oil above 340°F. According to the National Turkey Federation, a 5.9-ounce serving of fried turkey prepared with a dry rub has approximately 383 calories and 21 grams of fat. Compare that to roast turkey's 362 calories and 16 grams of fat. (Calories and fat grams of roast turkey vary according to preparation.)

High oil temperature is the key in preventing greasy turkey meat. Most recipes call for an oil temp of 350 degrees F. From an oil 101 article...

Maintain a frying temperature of 190 degrees C (375 degrees F). The batter-coated or breaded surface will quickly form a protective shield, preventing the oil from penetrating the cooled food and making it greasy. The food will cook by conduction or indirect heat.

If the oil is not hot enough, oil will reach the food before the coating cooks enough to form the protective layer. The result is greasy food. If the oil is too hot, the coating will burn from the direct heat of the oil before the food has had time to cook.

Safety is probably the biggest issue with deep-frying a turkey. Nobody wants to burn their house down. Deep-frying anything can be dangerous because of the bubbling vat of hot oil. It's even more hazardous when a big bird is involved. I'm sure you've seen videos of oil splattering over the stock pot and igniting. I won't deny it is dangerous to deep-fry a turkey, but if you take some safety precautions, you can minimize the danger.

I highly recommend reading and following these safety tips from UL.com. A few other tips to highlight are:

• Use a large stock pot - get the largest stock pot possible to prevent overflow of oil.
• Buy smaller turkeys - for first timers, smaller turkeys (10 - 11 lbs) are going to be easier to handle than larger birds. I would generally recommend 12 lb turkeys or smaller to avoid any oil overflow. Additionally, bigger turkeys don't fry as evenly, as the outside maybe overdone and the inside underdone. It's better to deep-fry two smaller birds, than risk the fire danger of frying a large bird.
• Submerge your bird - dunk your turkey in the pot filled with water and mark the water line to determine the appropriate amount of oil. Make sure you dry the turkey afterwards.

I've used a traditional propane turkey fryer, which consists of a large stainless steel pot and an outdoor gas-burner stove/stand, and an electric deep fryer. The oil heats up faster using the gas-burner type. Additionally, you'll be able to fry, boil or steam larger amounts of food using the gas-burner models, but the electric fryers are safer because there's no open flame to ignite the oil.

I've made delicious deep-fried turkey using both an electric deep fryer and a gas-burner model. But I prefer the electric deep fryer for safety reasons, and an adjustable thermostat makes it easer to maintain oil temperature. Electric deep fryers are more expensive, but worth the extra money for the safety.

When performed with care, deep-frying a turkey can be safe and will produce the best turkey you'll ever have. Give it a try this year and save some time in the kitchen. You'll love deep-fried turkey.

Deep-Fried Turkey Resources

• Cooking Tips: Deep-Fried Turkey (Barbecues Galore)
• Southern Fried Turkey Instructions (Don Drane)
• A Deep Fried Delicacy: How to & Rubs (Eatturkey.com)
• Paula Deen Recipe (Food Network)
• Oil 101 (Whole Harvest)
• Deep-Fried Turkey Videos (YouTube)
• Deep Fryer Safety Tips (UL.com)

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