Hearty Herbed Holiday Stuffing

When it comes to holiday food - especially the side dishes - I grew up the way many Americans did, with generic, easy-to-fix stuff that's been made the same way year-after-year. You know what I'm talking about: green bean/ mushroom soup casserole with those fried onion strings on top, sickeningly-sweet sweet potatoes with brown sugar and marshmallows, cranberry sauce in a gelatinous blob that retains the shape of the can, and good old Stove-top stuffing.  These side dishes have become culinary staples of our childhood; holiday comfort food, and you can't think of Thanksgiving or a Christmas dinner without them.

I'm still a fan of "can-berry sauce" but I'm here to tell you that there are more things that can be done with these side dishes than are dreamt of in our childhood philosophy. For example, I never knew how good REAL stuffing could be until very recently. And now that I do know, I look at a box of stove-top and think that the cardboard box has better flavor.

It is not known when stuffings were first used. The earliest documentary evidence is the Roman cookbook, Apicius '"De Re Coquinaria", which contains recipes for stuffed chicken, hare, pig, and dormouse. Most of the stuffings described consist of vegetables, herbs and spices, nuts, and spelt (an old cereal), and frequently contain chopped liver, brains, and other organ meat. 

Names for stuffing include 'farce' (~1390), 'stuffing' (1538), 'forcemeat' (1688), and 'dressing'. After about 1880, the term stuffing was replaced by dressing in Victorian English.

   -Wikipedia 

This year, my girlfriend made her recipe for hearty herbed bread stuffing. Let me tell you: my mind was sufficiently blown to bits. Delicious, sweet and savory bits.

For this batch, we acquired day old bread from County Line BBQ.  If you've been to County Line, you know that one of their more notable features is the fresh bread they serve. They bring a basket of this warm, awesome, molasses-y bread to the table when you're waiting for the food. And they serve it with honey butter.

Here's how to make stuffing that people will remember and crave next year:

First, acquire good bread. Find the nicest stuff you can find.
Day old bread is better than fresh bread. (you're going to dry it out anyway)
We used both a brown molasses bread and a nice wheat bread, courtesy of the County Line BBQ.

Cut the bread into small cubes.
These should be the same size so that they toast up evenly.
You need about 8-10 cups of cubes.

Here's some wheat bread being cut up as well.
This batch came out with a great sweet flavor.
You could switch the recipe up and use sourdough for a totally different taste, if you prefer.  

Mmmmm, little squares of glutenous nirvana!

In a large pot, start the aromatics with a good amount (half a stick) of butter.
This is 4 carrots, 1 medium onion and 2 celery stalks (plus leaves) chopped fairly thin. 
(The carrots need to be thin so it cooks a little quicker)

FOODIE SNOB ALERT:  
To sound like you know what you're doing, this mixture is known as "mirepoix" 
(pronounced meer-PWAH)  
and it's the base for a variety of soups, stocks, and sauces.
Here, it's being used as the foundation for the dressing.  

While the mirepoix is sauteing, start toasting up the bread cubes by placing them in a single layer on a baking sheet and slide them into a 300º oven for about 10-15 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.
You aren't really trying to toast them, so much as just dry them out to a semi-dry texture. 

Once the onions have started to turn translucent, chop up one medium green apple and add this to the mix.
The apple should be pretty firm (otherwise it turns to mush),
so use a Granny Smith, Rome, or some other baking apple variety.
Remember to cut the apple into small bits as well. If you want a 

Now come the herbs:
2 tsp dried parsley
1 tbsp powdered sage
1 tbsp dried rosemary
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp nutmeg
and 5 or 6 cloves of minced garlic

Stir everything slightly and let the aroma of all those wonderful herbs fill the house.

Who needs scented candles? My place smells like great food.

Fold the toasted bread cubes into the mixture.
Mixing too aggressively will break down the bread too quickly and you want some texture, not mush. 

Once the bread is mixed in, pour in about 2 cups of vegetable stock.
For a more pronounced flavor, try vegetable bullion.

Let everything incorporate slightly (the bread will start soaking up the broth)
season with salt and pepper and then spread everything out onto a baking dish or pan.
Stick this back in a 350º oven for aprox. 45 minutes to crisp up the top.
Make this ahead of time and when ready to serve,
you can just pop it in the oven to warm it up.

Enjoy!

No Knead Bread

“Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the vegetables, the salad, but bread is king.”

– Louis Bromfield (1896-1956)

Ah bread:  that archaic alchemy of of flour, water, yeast and salt that excites the senses, connect us with our primitive selves, and fill the house with an intoxicating aroma that every person should experience at least once. In my book, you haven't truly lived till you've baked your own bread from scratch.

In 2006, the New York Times posted an article on how to make artisan bread (in other words, not Wonder Bread) without having to knead the dough - ostensibly this makes it easier, though I personally don't think kneading dough is anything big chore. This recipe has been tested by thousands of people and re-blogged hundreds of times. Its a tried and true way to make an awesome loaf of bread.

I've been wanting to make this recipe for a while because I've seen the results first-hand. The bread is light, full of wonderful airy holes, and has a respectable, but not molar-destroying crust. And since today is Thanksgiving, it's 30 degrees outside and my house's heater decided to die, the idea of getting the oven fired up and baking some bread sounds like a great way to warm up.

Music for this endeavor: Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant Massacre" - because its Thanksgiving and when else are you going to appreciate a 20 minute song?

Keep in mind that because there isn't much kneading, you are relying solely on your yeast to do all the work, so this is going to take some time to accomplish. The dough needs to rise for at least 18 hours before it goes in the oven. So as long as you time things out correctly, you should be golden.

So here's how to make a stupid simple artisan bread that will make you look like an expert baker.


INGREDIENTS

• 3 cups all purpose or bread flour (plus a little more for dusting)
• 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 cups water

Add the flour, yeast, salt and water together and mix until its a shaggy mess. 

Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough sit in a warm (70 degree) area for 12-18 hours. If the house is cold (like mine is), a good tip is to put the dough in a cold oven with only the oven light on and leave it overnight.

This is what my dough looked like after about 15 hours of sitting in the cold oven.
It pretty much doubled in size, with lots of bubbles over the surface.

Scoop the bread out of the bowl and lay it onto a floured surface.
Fold it over a couple of times.
This is as close to kneading as you are going to get. 

Toss the bread back into the bowl and let it rest for about 15 minutes. 
Some people suggest lightly spraying the bowl with cooking spray before you put the dough back, but I didn't think it was necessary. 

After 15 minutes, place the bread on a sheet of parchment paper. Shape it into a ball (or whatever shape your cooking pot is) by tucking the ends underneath it and stretching the surface a little. Let it rest/ rise for another two hours. 

After two hour the dough will have doubled in size again. It should be plump and leave dents in the dough when you poke it with a finger.  This was just right.

About a half hour from the dough finishing its last rise, pre-heat the oven to 450 and place your baking container inside to pre-heat. This is the pot that I cook my bread in. I picked this up at a yard sale many years ago.

Its got a nice glazed interior, but the rest of it is unglazed terracotta, which makes it ideal for baking bread in. Any heavy-duty metal or glass pot with a lid will work. Just make sure that the handle on the lid is oven safe to 450 degrees.

Once the oven is heated and the dough is ready, CAREFULLY pull the pot out of the oven and dump the dough into it seam side down. You can jiggle it around a little bit to settle it into shape, but its going to bake into its own shape anyway. The dough is going to stick a bit to the parchment paper, but just scrape it off and shape the dough. The more rough the top of the dough is, the more "artisan" it will look when its finished. 

Bake it in the oven at 450 degrees for 30 minutes with the lid on,
then take the lid off and bake for another 15-30 minutes.
You're shooting for an internal temperature of around 210 degrees.
 If the bread sounds hollow when you thump it with a finger, you're done. 

And voila: fresh baked bread from scratch. 

The crust had a firm, noticeable crunch, but the center was soft, tender and delicious.

The perfect accompaniment to a great meal.  

Enjoy!

Winter Advisory Bread

It's rare that we get any significant weather here in Austin, so when we get the occasional winter storm (which I absolutely love,)  my head starts thinking about how to make the day at home fun. One of the best ways to have fun and stay warm is to bake something!

So we dug through the pantry and found a box of  Fleischmann's bread mix. This was something we grabbed from the clearance shelf of our HEB a while ago and tossed it in the pantry for occasions such as this.

There are plenty of bread recipes out there (and I will be submitting another one soon) but for a quick and easy thing to do on a cold stormy night, this can't be beat.

So with Ray LaMontagne blasting out of Pandora, and the sleet bouncing off the covered plants outside, we set about the business of baking bread.

Let's crack open that bad boy and see what's inside. 

Not much. 

So you start by adding the yeast.

Then the sugar.

Then add 1 cup, plus one tablespoon of hot water. They recommend 100 - 115 degree water. 

OK, I don't understand the whole "plus one tablespoon" thing. Why can't you set the mix so that you only need one cup? It can't be that difficult to alter the ingredient amounts.

Science, bitches!

Stir that nasty looking mixture together and then let it sit for three minutes. 

The yeast will re-animate themselves like little eukaryotic zombies and attack the defenseless sugar crystals in an epic battle of fermentation.

The bubbles are their victory cry.

Every recipe can be improved so we improved ours by adding orange zest and candied cranberries, as was suggested by the box.

I love the Microplane zester. It's an amazing tool.
It was even cool when it was just a wood rasp, but it's so much better now.

Calling them "sweetened cranberries" instead of "Craisins" makes the whole thing sound much more sophisticated. Remember, most people don't realize how stupid easy it can be to make bread, so anything you can do to that will easily impress your friends should be done.  This inst "bread from a mix," this is an "artisan multi-grain loaf with orange zest and sweetened cranberries."

Anyway, add the Craisins to the mix.

Then add the flour mix a little at a time. 

Stirring everything together evenly. 

 

It won't be long before you have a gloopy, shaggy mess of awesome staring right back at you. 

Because when you stare into the awesome, the awesome stares into you. 

Now take that gloopy pile of awesome and with all the dexterity of a Ph.D.,  place it carefully into a greased baking pan. You'll probably need a little flour to keep it all from sticking. 

Now you have to cover it and let it sit in a warm, draft-free place for about 25 minutes. Remember, this is a recipe that doesn't require kneading, so this means you are relying on the yeast to do all of the work in turning this into bread. It helps to give it a fighting chance. 

Make it look purdy by cutting a few lines into the top. 

I brushed a little butter over everything as a final touch once it was ready to go.

Toss this mess into the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes. 

And the end result is pretty astonishingly good. 

The whole house was filled with not only the amazing smell of fresh baked bread, but bread with a hint of orange in it as well, which is exactly what you are shooting for when its 34 degrees and miserable outside. 

We had ours with some leftover pot roast as we sat on the couch and watched Netflix. It's the perfect way to celebrate those rare winter weather moments.  

Enjoy!

Scarborough Pumpkin Soup

I'm calling this "Scarborough Pumpkin Soup" because it uses parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Get it?

Damn, I'm creative.

This of course, got me thinking about the song and the significance of the ingredients.

The tune, made popular by Simon and Garfunkel in 1965,  is officially called "Scarborough Fair," and is a traditional English ballad that originated in the 1600's, though the ingredients mentioned first appeared some time around the 1800's. Apparently it's a tale of a young man instructing the listener to instruct his former love to perform a series of impossible tasks - like making a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well. If she completes these tasks, he will take her back.

So basically it's "ye olde English" way of saying "I'll take you back when monkeys fly out of my butt."

According to wikianswers.com, the four ingredients symbolize four virtues that the subject of the song is requesting of his former love:

Parsley (Petroselinum crispum)
Allegedly aids in digestion and removes the bitterness from food.

Sage (Salvia officinalis) 
Symbolizes strength.

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)
Represents faithfulness, sensibility, love and remembrance.  

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)
Symbolizing courage.

Regardless of the reasons, the four herbs work well together in soup, which is why I decided to use them in the first place.

Plus, I still had some leftover pumpkin puree that I needed to get rid of to make room for more pumpkin puree this year.

I made the soup using some duck stock that I spent the morning making (I threw some duck parts in a pot of water and let it simmer for 4 hours.) You dont really need to use duck stock. Chicken stock works just as well. I just had it available and decided to use it. I do have to say that it gave an incredible flavor to the soup.

Also this recipe uses the three ingredients, onions, carrots and celery as a base. In French cooking, this is known as a mirepoix (pronounced "meer-pwah") and is the starting point for a lot of French soups, stews and sauces.

So now that you know the secret meanings behind the herbs and the fancy name for chopped veggies in a soup, here's how to make this awesome creation:

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 onion, diced
• 3 carrots, shaved/ peeled
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped
• 1 apple, cored/ slice
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 cups cooked pumpkin puree
• 3 cups duck broth (chicken broth works good too)
• 1 tbs dried parsley
• 1 tbs dried sage
• 1 tbs dried rosemary
• 1 tbs dried thyme
• salt and pepper to taste

In a large stock pot add the carrots celery and onions. 
Let them cook down just a little and release some of their flavor.

Add the apples and stir.

Add the garlic and stir. Dont let it brown. 

   

In goes the pumpkin, followed immediately by the broth.

 

In go the herbs.
I like to place them in my hands and crush them a little more as they go into the soup.

A quarter-sized amount of dried herbs in my palm equals about a tablespoon. 

 

Cover, and let the whole thing simmer for about 35 minutes.

After simmering, blend using a stick blender or a regular blender with the center clear section of the lid removed and a paper towel in its place. 

This allows the steam to escape without exploding the soup everywhere. 

Once blended, return the soup to the pot and serve it with a pinch of fresh parsley on the top.

Enjoy!