There are only the four of us for Christmas this year but we are having a turkey… and he weighs 14 pounds! My dad, Donald always used to call the bird Harry Turk, for no particular reason as far as I know, and so we have continued. We got Harry from a local farm shop and he has been in the fridge but is now sitting on the side in the kitchen, waiting to come to temperature.
I don’t think turkey is a dry bird, I think too often he is over-cooked! We are going to roast him in our new oven without stuffing, just a couple of oranges in his tummy and plenty of fat bacon over his chest. I’ve already boiled up the giblets for gravy, and we’ll have roast potatoes, honey roast parsnips, carrots, sprouts and sweetcorn… and maybe peas!
When I was a child Donald used to buy Harry Turk at the cattle market in Cambridge, then hang him for a couple of days. Our oven was not big enough so Donald would take Harry, stuffed and larded, to Maskell’s the baker’s by the Portland Arms Hotel first thing in the morning. At lunch time he would go down to the New Spring on the banks of the River Cam, have a few drinks with his friends then go back to the baker’s to collect the turkey, along with his fairly inebriated mates.
Apparently it was great fun watching red-faced Mr Maskell, drawing these roasted turkeys out of the bread ovens and the drunken dads trying to identify them!
We have the luxury of a large enough oven, or a small enough bird, and I hope all will be well with Mr Harry Turk!
Lois Elsden 
I came upon this whilst googling Maskell’s, in the light of the sad news that it was finally to close (although it moved from the original bakery some 20 years back). Another loss of an independent “proper” shop, mourned by twitterer Mary Beard amongst others. It seems pathetic that even a rich and relatively choosy place like Cambridge cannot sustain its last few family businesses.
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Oh dear… what a shame! It is indeed a sad reflection on the times that it’s gone… such good bread… so many memories. Perhaps it should rebrand itself as an artisan baker and quadruple its prices and start making weird stuff with odd ingredients…
Thank you Bill for commenting.
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