Thanksgiving: We Love Stuffing

Stuffing was never high on my list of Thanksgiving loves. I never loved the flavor, and was put off by the number of ingredients involved.

That all changed about three years ago when I started making my own, with lots of bacon and sausage.

Anything that can act as a vehicle for as much meat and savory goodness as you can stuff into a pan is good by me. Thanksgiving dishes give me an opportunity to go a little bit crazy and not worry so much about the healthier way that I usually eat. Portion control in the stuffing and mash potatoes department are completely gone. I figure once a year, I can really let loose and pack in the good stuff.

If you can line up all your ingredients and cook the elements you need in advance, this stuffing will come together quickly and easily. There will be lots of dicing, browning and dishes, but all for the good cause of making the best stuffing ever.

This year, I used port to rehydrate the dried porcini mushrooms and added dried California figs, instead of dried apricots.

You can amend this recipe however you'd like: use wine instead of port; morels instead of porcini; pecans instead of chestnuts. Whatever you do, keep the earthy flavors balancing out the sweet and nutty flavors and you'll have yourself a wonderful stuffing.

Below is the recipe, but here are links to some of the main ingredients, which I've posted before:

Roast Chestnuts

Corn Muffins

Oven-baked Bacon

Thanksgiving Porcini, Bacon, Sausage, Cornbread and Chestnut Stuffing

serves 6

Ingredients

  • 5 corn muffins, crumbled (click here for the recipe)
  • 10 to 15 roasted chestnuts, chopped into bits (click here for the recipe)
  • 2 to 4 slices oven-baked bacon, chopped into small bits (click here for the recipe)
  • 4 dried figs, sliced into small pieces
  • 8 ounces dried porcini mushrooms
  • 1 cup port (or red wine or brandy)
  • 2 hot italian sausages, casing removed
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 sweet onions, diced
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 1/4 cup walnuts, smashed
  • 6 sage leaves, minced
  • 1 cup chicken stock

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat.
  3. Add the sausage, breaking it up into small pieces with a fork.
  4. Sauté for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until he meat has browned.
  5. Meanwhile, put the porcini mushrooms and port in a small saucepan over medium-low heat.
  6. Cook the porcini until they have absorbed 2/3 of the liquid.
  7. Once the sausages have browned, add the onions and garlic and cook until they soften, about 10 minutes.
  8. Take a rimmed baking dish and place the corn muffins, chestnuts, walnuts, sage and bacon bits into it.
  9. Add the porcini and the port to the sausage pan, stirring for about five minutes.
  10. While everything cooks, grab a pair of kitchen scissors and cut the porcini into small pieces. You may also need to chop up the sausages a bit, too.
  11. Remove the sauté pan from the heat and add the ingredients to the rimmed baking dish, mixing everything up.
  12. Pour the chicken stock over the stuffing and mix it in to help the cornbread to absorb it.
  13. Place in the oven for 30 minutes, stirring once. It may take a bit longer, it's done when you find the sausage nice a crispy.

Grits, Fried Green Tomatoes and Bacon: The Perfect Meal

Grits, fried green tomatoes and bacon were the first combination that came to mind when I started work on this installment of our Cook The Book project.

We are covering cereals from Marion Cunningham’s The Breakfast Book. There are six of us participating in the project: Rachel of Ode to Goodness, Sammy of Rêve du Jour, Emily of The Bon Appetit Diaries, Aimee of Homemade Trade and Claudie of The Bohemian Kitchen.

I've never made either of these dishes before. Both turned out to be very easy and very satisfying. I was surprised at how much I loved the grits. They are a cross between traditional polenta and a warm grain cereal, like cream of rice or farina. Those were two of my favorite warm cereals growing up, so it makes perfect sense that the grits made me so happy. It's such a filling dish that I think I can get six to eight servings out of each batch.

The recipe said you could serve the grits as a sweet dish with milk and sugar. Savory breakfast is more my taste, so I tried the grits two ways: one just with butter and one with black truffle oil and bacon.

The black truffle oil was my favorite, but way too rich to eat very much of it. The fried green tomatoes were nice and crispy, as an alternate cornmeal texture against the smooth silkiness of the grits. I have plans to make a ton of this, and will likely experiment with some other combinations.

Good Grits

adapted from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book, copyright 1987, Alfred A Knopf

Ingredients:

Method:

  1. Bring the water to a boil and add salt. slowly stir in the grits, and stir for a few seconds more.
  2. Turn the heat to medium-low (closer to low than medium on my stove) and cover the pan.
  3. Cook, stirring once or twice for five minutes (I left it for up to 10 minutes).
  4. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter or the black truffle oil.
  5. Serve hot.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Ingredients:

  • 4 small hard green tomatoes cut into slices
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt (you may want to add more at the end depending on taste)
  • 1 to 2 eggs, whisked until yolks are incorporated with the whites, in a shallow dish
  • 1/4 to 1/2 cup cornmeal, on a small plate
  • Tobasco or Chalula sauce for serving.

Method:

  1. Heat a skillet over high heat.
  2. Place the tomato slices in the egg wash, turning to coat them completely.
  3. Transfer the egg-coated tomato slices to the cornmeal and coat them completely in corn meal.
  4. Add the olive oil to the hot pan, swirling it around to cover the entire surface of the pan.
  5. Place the tomato slices in the hot oil and cook for four minutes, or until the coating on that side has browned well.
  6. Turn the slices over and cook for an additional four minutes on the second side.
  7. Remove the slices to a paper towel lined plate, sprinkle with salt and serve.

Mother's and Daughters: Thoughts for Mother's Day

    Mother's Day is just around the corner. It's one of my favorite days. My daughter always makes me feel very special and does a great job celebrating me.

On the holiday, Isabella has made me a nice breakfast on her own for the past four years. She's an inspiring daughter, and at thirteen is more than capable of making breakfast,. I loved it when a few years back she asked me to close my eyes, come into the kitchen, and turn the oven on for her. Or when she was five and made me a grilled cheese sandwich in the microwave, because she was not old enough to use the oven. I cherish her Mother's Day breakfasts and can't wait to see what she has on offer this year.

The extra-special part for me is that this is our day together to just be mother and daughter. I am a single parent, so whenever Isabella is at my house, it is just the two of us. But Mother's Day is a day when we put aside all our day-to-day madness, bickering and chores and enjoy each other.

I always knew I'd have at least one child.  I love kids and babies. They make me feel happy and secure and I know how to communicate with them on their own level. Kids and babies are just small people, and I tend to treat them as equals to adults. They are smart, funny, insightful and loving. This is why I became a mother.

And I'm very glad I did. I love being a mother enjoying my child and treating  her with  patience and understanding, regaling her with silliness and offering unbridled love. As Isabella gets older, I have to adjust the way I use these traits, but they are all still necessary. Patience is way at the top of the list these days, so is silliness (however, not in front of her friends, thank you very much). I find that with every passing year, we come to an understanding of how we relate and move into these new roles, sometimes with ease, sometimes not.

Gran Fran (my very own mother) and I are not always on the same page, but we talk or IM almost every day. We collaborate on food projects and discuss ideas for upcoming work that we're doing. There is bickering and eye rolling a-plenty, but I will say that we are as bonded as ever. Though we live on opposite coasts, we are incredibly close.

We may not always see eye-to-eye on everything, but Gran Fran does have good advice on many of the stagesIsabella is going through. Having raised five kids, four of them girls, Gran Fran and Joe have seen it all. If Isabella and I start  bickering when we are with Gran Fran, she helps defuse  the situation by gently (which for Gran Fran means yelling instructions at top voice) reminding me that I was no cakewalk at thirteen and to give the kid a break.

From my echo (Isabella) my shadown (Gran Fran and me, here's to Mother's Day and all of the fabulous moms out there. May your kids treat you well more often than not and celebrate you always!

You can find recipes for my first installment of Mother's Day here.

  

 

 

Mother's Day: Corn Muffins, Minted Strawberries, Iced Almond Milk Cappuccino

A wonderful Mother's day breakfast created by three generations: me, mymother and my daughter. It's not a complicated meal, but it is delicious and means a lot to me.

My daughter usually makes me corn muffins on the big day. I've always loved them, and she knows it. She generally serves them with a side of strawberries.

When I serve strawberries, I like to soak them in a simple syrup infused with mint. That's my contribution to this meal.

As for my mother, Gran Fran, no matter how long it has been, to me Spring and Summer at her house mean iced blended cappuccino drinks.

Please enjoy this with your family and let Mama put her feet up and relax while you scurry around and meet her every need.

Isabella's Corn Muffins

Ingredients

  • 1 stick, 8 tablespoons, unsalted butter, melted
  • 1 cup almond milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup gluten-free flour (recipe found here or pre-packaged mix found here)
  • 1 cup corn meal
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/3 cup sugar

Method

  1. Heatoven to 400 degrees.
  2. Melt butter.
  3. Brush some of the melted butter on 12-cup muffin tin.
  4. Place tin in oven.
  5. Mix together milk, melted butter, and eggs
  6. Mix together dry ingredients.
  7. Swiftly stir wet ingredients into dry; do not overmix.
  8. Carefully, spoon ingredients into hot, buttered  muffin tin
  9. In lower third of oven, bake 25 minutes or until golden brown.
  10. Remove from tin; wrap in dishtowel in dish or basket if serving immediately.
  11. Otherwise place on wire rack, wrap individually in foil, seal in plastic freezer bag. Reheat before serving.

Natasha's Mint Marinated Strawberries

Ingredients:

  • 6 mint leaves minced
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 4 large strawberries cut into pieces

Method:

  1. Put mint, sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat.
  2. Stir constantly until all the sugar has dissolved.
  3. Pour the mint simple syrup over the strawberries and let them sit for five minutes.

Gran Fran's Almond Milk Blender Cappuccino

serves 1

you will need a blender (ok, seems obvious, but thought I should mention it)

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups hot coffee, if it’s winter; cold if it’s summer
  • 1 cup almond milk (Gran Fran uses whole milk)
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 6 ice cubes if it’s summer
  • Cinnamon, optional

Method:

  1. Place all ingredients in blender; adjust amounts to fit capacity of blender.
  2. Hold down cap of blender with a dish towel.
  3. Turn blender on high.
  4. Blend until frothy and creamy.
  5. Pour into glasses or cups. Sprinkle with cinnamon if desired.
  6. Serve immediately.