#deglaze that pan with red wine and vegetable stock and flour and butter and goats cheese

[coolasakuhncumber]

Made this caramelised onion and sweet potato tart with red wine gravy and sesame seeds and it was super tasty! Bit salty but well balanced on a bed of baby spinach.

[visiononion28-blog]

drop cornbread biscuits

This past Saturday, we hosted our second Friendsgiving, stuffing 17 people in an apartment that has no business holding 17 people, but it’s okay, there’s wine for that. Our first one was in 2016; you can read about it here. I took 2017 off because I was a teensy bit busy book touring for Smitten Kitchen Every Day** It was fun to be back.

When having friends over, I like to get everything done that I can in advance and I do this for completely selfish reasons: I want to enjoy my party, too, and I can’t if I’m scrambling around all day and am bone tired by the time food comes out. But last week was abnormally busy and I only got to grocery shopping on Thursday, only to discover that one week before Thanksgiving, it’s like tumbleweeds, the lull before the weekend stampede, all past-prime rosemary and other sadness. I almost cancelled but my husband miraculously found almost everything that evening, and instead I did a very beautiful, highly recommended thing: I nixed a few things on the planned menu and swapped more complicated ones for simpler recipes with shorter ingredient lists but high reward. Here’s the menu, a few details, and completely random tips:

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* Herb and garlic baked camembert: This is in Smitten Kitchen Every Day and there will never be an SK party without it. In fact, it’s gotten so popular that my friends and family make it now too, so I outsourced it. My SIL brought three, we heated them here. It was so nice to have one less thing to do.

* Bacon-wrapped dates: No recipe, but there are a gazillion on the web. I don’t stuff them (I did it once and it was way too pesky, especially given that they’re good without stuffing) and no dip. We made a ton and they were gone quickly; my daughter called them “bacon candy.”

* Turkey: In 2016, I did a hybrid wet brine from a bunch of sources. It was delicious but not worth the logistical nightmare. And mopping. This year, I made The Judy Bird, a Thanksgiving application of Zuni Cafe’s famous roast chicken. There are many dry brine recipes out there but this was the simplest and why make something more complicated unless you know it’s necessary? Based on the turkey reviews, I don’t think it needs anything else. My changes are that I baste it with a melted 1/2 cup of butter, and then when I’m out of butter, the pan juices, and this year, I put quartered red and yellow onion wedges in the bottom of the pan (tossed with a little oil, salt, and pepper) and friends, they were glorious after getting caramelized and lightly charred in turkey-butter drippings for a few hours. Here’s a logistical tip I don’t think enough recipes make clear: You want to rest your turkey for 20 to 30 minutes before carving it, tented lightly with foil. It’s then going to take 15 minutes to carve (I had a friend holding a YouTube video tutorial in front of me because I’m very bad at it.) This gives you 30 to 45 minutes of empty oven time where you can reheat sides, which is more than most need. I have a single, not big, not great oven and it was all I needed. [I mean, needs being relative, just in case Nancy Meyers is out there and wants to lend me a set kitchen and the life that goes with it next time.]

* Gravy: I really ought to write up a recipe one day, huh, but I use a basic formula of 1/2 cup butter, 3/4 cup flour, 8 cups chicken or turkey stock, a splash of dry marsala or sherry to deglaze the pan, and a lot of salt and pepper. (You cook this the way you would a bechamel.) When your turkey is done, if you want to separate the drippings, you can replace any of that butter with fat and any of that broth with juices. Or you can skip it! The gravy will have a less nuanced turkey flavor, but it’s still pretty awesome, especially if you have homemade stock. (In a freak bit of luck, I discovered two quarts of this in the freezer from last winter and used them for the gravy, stuffing, and more.) I make the gravy right in the bottom of the roasting pan, stretched across two burners; this way I can scrape up all the good, flavorful bits. If you don’t use the dippings to make gravy, I highly recommend you use them to drizzle over the sliced turkey, to keep it as moist as possible when you serve it.

* Stuffing: I also owe you a recipe for this but although I have two stuffing recipes on this site that I adore, I made a simple challah stuffing instead — although I made it decidedly less simple by making my own challah. Each loaf will make enough bread cubes to easily fill a 9×13-inch dish. I made mine with just celery, onion, and herbs, but you could easily sauté some mushrooms, diced apples, pancetta or crumbled sausage in too. Oh, and definitely make enough to have leftovers; this is important.

* Cranberry sauce: I went old-school with this, with a very early recipe on this site. I wanted something on the sweet side because my friend Ang was bringing a more savory one with tomatillos. Both were delicious.

* Green bean casserole with crispy onions: Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it (homemade). I make the green beans extra firm (just 2 minutes, then into ice water), then the mushroom sauce. Cool them both fully before mixing them. This goes in the fridge overnight. I’ll fry the onions — always make more than you need — and keep those separate until we’re about to eat the warmed casserole.

* Slow-roasted sweet potatoes: Once I realized I’d have no time for the root vegetable gratin I’d originally planned, I added these and 10/10, would recommend because the ingredient list is basically nonexistent. I baked them for the 2 to 3 hours before the turkey goes in, because they need a lower temperature. Broil them to get a good color on the skin. Leave them out while the turkey roasts (they’ll stay decently warm for a couple hours) and rewarm them just before eating. We served these in 2-inch segments, skin and all, and I was texting the recipe to friends demanding it even before going to bed that night. It’s that good.

* Stuffed mushroom casserole: My friend Ang brought this too and it was delicious. (She thinks it needs more cheese, though. I had no complaints!)

I didn’t make any pie at all! (Although my friend Molly brought a mincemeat pie with a cheddar crust and it was wonderful.)

* Bourbon pumpkin cheesecake: I made this in a 9×13-inch pan to cut as bars instead. Same recipe. Same temperature. However, you’ll want 1.5 or even 2x the crust, and it bakes in about 30. Seriously. It’s awesome.

* Perfect Manhattans: Because why not. I made two carafes of them, just scale up the recipe until you run out of an ingredient or carafe space. Friends can pour or shake it over ice; leave cherries or orange peel strips on the side.

* Cranberry crumb bars with mulling spices: This is in The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook.

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Finally, as always, I have a last minute recipe for people who do things at the last minute. It’s never my intention, but it’s consistently my reality. I made these biscuits the first time over the summer, a season where we eat outside and act like it’s no big deal (waah), for a 4th of July ribs fest along with slaw and corn and all of those summery things. So, they go really well with warm weather. But they’re also a great quickie dinner roll, or even a fun addition to a breakfast-for-dinner night (like we had last night) with scrambled eggs and bacon. They take 5 minutes to put together and 15 to bake and there’s nothing not to love about that. They’re craggy and crisp on the outside and plush within, perfect for splitting open with your fingers, buttering, drizzling with honey, and finishing with flaky salt or nestling into the side of your holiday plate.

Previously

One year ago: Endive Salad with Toasted Breadcrumbs and Walnuts Two years ago: Root Vegetable Gratin and Cheesecake-Marbled Pumpkin Slab Pie Three years ago: Kale and Caramelized Onion Stuffing, Apple Cider Sangria and Date, Feta and Red Cabbage Salad Four years ago: Sticky Toffee Pudding, Pickled Cabbage Salad and Pretzel Parker House Rolls Five years ago: Perfect Uncluttered Chicken Stock, Cranberry Orange Breakfast Buns, Green Bean Casserole with Crispy Onions, and Apple-Herb Stuffing For All Seasons Six years ago: Granola Crusted Nuts and Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette and Gingersnaps Seven years ago: Sweet Potatoes with Pecans and Goat Cheese, Creamed Onions with Bacon and Chives Eight years ago: Sweet Corn Spoonbread Nine years ago: Moroccan-Spiced Spaghetti Squash and Chard and Sweet Potato Gratin Ten years ago: Mushroom and Barley Pie Eleven years ago: Roasted Stuffed Onions and Simplest Apple Tart [New!] Twelve years ago: Cranberries: Candied, Fruity, and Drunk

And for the other side of the world: Six Months Ago: Pasta Salad with Roasted Carrots and Sunflower Seed Dressing 1.5 Years Ago: Rhubarb Upside-Down Spice Cake and Tall, Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes 2.5 Years Ago: Failproof Crepes + A Crepe Party and Crispy Tortellini with Peas and Proscuitto 3.5 Years Ago: Crispy Broccoli with Lemon and Garlic, Not Derby Pie Bars, Liege Waffles, and Mushrooms and Greens with Toast 4.5 Years Ago: Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp Bars and Five Egg Sandwiches

** have you bought it? There’s so much great Thanksgiving and holiday stuff in there, like a chocolate pecan slab pie, a kale caesar that we have out at almost every dinner party, a wild mushroom shepherd’s pie, and a few of my favorite cookie recipes, ever. Between now and December 12th you can order either my first book, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, or Smitten Kitchen Every Day, my second with a custom inscription of your choice from The Strand and it will arrive by Christmas.

Drop Cornbread Biscuits

Servings: 8 to 12

Time: 20 minutes

Source: Land O Lakes

Print

Shown here are 8 large biscuits; you can make 12 smaller ones, just use the short end of the baking time range.

1 3/4 cups (230 grams) all-purpose flour

2/3 cup (90 grams) cornmeal

1 to 2 tablespoons granulated sugar (use 1 for a more savory biscuit)

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon fine sea or table salt

1/2 cup (115 grams) cold butter, in cubes

1 cup (235 ml) cold buttermilk (buttermilk substitutes)

Heat oven to 450°F. I covered my baking sheet with parchment paper but it shouldn’t be strictly necessary, and many shouldn’t go in this hot of an oven, so use your own discretion.

Stir flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt in the bottom of a large bowl with a fork or whisk. Add butter and toss to coat cubes in dry mixture. Use your finger or a pastry blender to break the butter into smaller and smaller bits, until the largest is pea-sized. Add buttermilk and stir once or twice, until a dough comes together.

My very scientific method of dividing the dough evenly is to press it gently into the bottom of your mixing bowl into roughly a circle. Cut into 8 or 12 wedges. Pull out one triangle of dough with a soup spoon for each biscuit, pressing it into a craggy, messy ball, then drop it onto your baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 12 to 14 or 15 minutes; smaller ones should be done at 12, larger ones at 14 or 15. Remove from oven and serve warm. Biscuits are best on the first day. On the second, gently rewarming them will improve the texture.

Source: https://smittenkitchen.com/2018/11/drop-cornbread-biscuits/

[mealsforsquares]

Thanksgiving, Part 2

And it was time, then, to start on the rolls, which felt weird, but also I didn’t want them to overprove, y’know? So I started some water boiling in a wide pot, and took the dough balls out of the fridge. I cut the wax paper underneath each dough ball, and dropped each dough ball into the water, flipping it after a minute to give it sixty boiled seconds on each side. I then removed them to towels (the wax paper having been pulled off already), then transferred them again to a silpat-lined pan and sliding them into a 400 degree oven until they were the right shade of golden-brown.

I started a pan on the stove, and fortified it with a handful of dried mushrooms, some red wine, and some soy sauce. This was going to be my secondary vegetable stock, made of trimmings from the rest of the day, replenished as the day went on. As I would peel an onion or a carrot or what have you, the uneaten part of the vegetable would go into this secondary stock, which I would use in part for all of the various stock applications that I had going today - it’s a meal that requires a great deal of stock.

Since I was already starting with the high-temp stuff, the next thing to come up was the stuffing*. I slowly melted some butter in a dutch oven, then diced 2 apples and threw them in there to get soft and buttery. I toasted a generous handful of walnuts in a dry skillet, then chopped those and tossed them in after the apple. I did the same with four small onions**, and then with four largish ribs of celery (I love celery so much, you guys). I minced a couple of cloves of garlic, then the leaves of a bunch of sage, and added those to the pan also. While they softened, I whisked together three eggs, and finely minced a goodly portion of parsley, salting and peppering this one heavily, since it was to carry the bulk of the seasoning for all of the stuffing. I mixed some stock in with the eggs, and used some more stock (it turned out to be about a quart or so total). I dumped my dry breadcrumbs into a pyrex baking dish, then followed with the now-gnarly-looking vegetable liquid and stirred it all around to make the bread as moist as possible. I then loaded that into the oven as well, to become the joys of soft, vegetable-filled stuffing. With crispy bread bits on top.

The next thing up was the cranberry sauce. I’ve not made a lot of actual regular cranberry sauce in my time, but I have made mostarda often to go with duck. The problem is that R probably wouldn’t have any taste for mostarda, being based as it is on basically pickling mustard seeds in wine and mixing them with sugar and vinegar to make a kind of jam. But I could use most of hte same flavors as the mostarda to make the cranberry sauce. So I popped some mustard seeds into some wine and set it on the fire to simme. I squeezed out three navel oranges (the kind of oranges tha twere the most readily available under the circumstances), and added the juice of two lemons. I made a sachet of cloves, allspice and cinnamon and dropped it itnot he simmering syrup. I added a cup or so fo sguar and let it all reduce down to a thick=ish srup. When it was done I added the cranberries and stirred them around to sort of smash open in the stuff, and then set it aside to cool, at which point it would thicken. It was a very fresh-tasting cranberry sauce, and that was the idea, since everything else was roasty and herbaceous. It was nice to have something to brighten up the palate on the table.

The centerpiece, other than the duck, was going to be a vegetables wellington. I was working from a recipe and had never mad eit before (both of which are things that I don’t ordinarily do very much of), so it was a little more difficult than usual, but it came out pretty well.

I started by peeling and boiling some carrots for the internal garnish to the pate***, then removing them from the water, hitting them with pepper and fresh thyme, and roasting them until they were soft. While that was happening, it was time to work on the duxelle.

I pulverized a package or so of crimini mushrooms, then got them in a pan and slated them, and waited for them to brown off. When they were almost brown, I added one finely minced shallot. I mixed together a large dose of bourbon with a splash of soy sauce, and added that when the mushrooms were brown. When they were just about dry from that, I added about a cup of bread crumbs, then moved the whole thing to a bowl. Into the bowl, I added the minced mushroom bacon from back in part 1, as well as a handful of minced herbs - I minced a generous bunch each of parsley, tarragon and chervil and added about half of them at this point (the other half would go into another part of the thing). I seasoned it and set it aside.

Now it was time for the puree. I dumped a pound of cashews into a quart of stock, then cranked the heat and let the whole thing boil until the cashews were nearly dry, at which point I ran them through the food processor until they were a fine paste. While that was happening I drained and rinsed a can of white beans****, then popped them in a low oven until they dried out and started to split. I cleaned a bag of shiitake mushrooms - took the gills out and all that, reserved the stems for stock - broke them into parts, and then cooked them until they were brown in a lot of hot oil, occasionally deglazing the pan with some stock to make sure to get all the browned bits up. I minced two cloves of garlic, and added them to the mushrooms once they were brown. I then transferred the beans and the browned shiitakes to the food processor, and processed them to another homogeneous paste. I placed a dry pan on the heat, and used to it to toast a half cup of sunflower seeds and a half cup of pumpkin seeds. When they were browned, they also went into the food processor, and were made into another paste. All of the various pastes - the beans/mushrooms, the cashews, the seeds - were combined with the other half of the herb mixture, and mixed together until the whole thing was homogeneous.

Some phyllo dough was laid out and brushed with oil, and a third or so of the pate***** was spooned out onto it, and then the whole thing was folded up like a burrito and set aside. At this point it became apparent, if it wasn’t already before, that phyllo dough is a huge pain in the neck, and setting it aside is the sort of thing that one should only have to do in particularly rough nightmares about going straight to kitchen hell. But I persevered.

More phyllo dough was laid out, and this time it was lined with the duxelle, with carrots placed on top of it, which were then covered by more of the duxelle, and then the first burrito was placed on top of it, leaving a double-burrito after it was all folded back over itself again. Then more of the pate was added to more phyllo dough, which was then rolled up again, and the whole thing became enormous and unwieldy, and then was covered in more layers of phyllo dough. Then the thing was brushed with more olive oil to brown up properly, and then gently wrestled (phyllo dough being the only substance known to man that would give me cause to use the phrase “gently wrestled”) into the oven to roast for awhile.

While it was cooking (I had no idea how long it was going to take) it was time to start the duck in a freestanding roaster - this served two purposes, it left th eoven free and able to be used, and it also made it easier to collect and distribute the juices when it was time to fry brussel sprouts and make gravy. The duck was presented fairly simply - covered in herbs, salt and pepper, then cooked slowly and gently, flipping and pricking with a fork periodically to render out as much fat as possible, and basting it occasionally with soy sauce. It took a little over an hour to come up to temp and yielded a couple of cups of duck fat, which was positively marvelous******.

While I was waiting for my duck fat to render out, and for my mains to cook, I started prepping the garnishes for the brussels sprouts. Into a cold pan went some diced bacon, whcih I cooked slowly. I poured very hot water over some onions to take the raw edge off of them, and put them in a bowl. I grated some manchego over the onions, and tossed the accoutrements with some raisins. When the duck was done, I reserved several tablespoons of the duck fat for gravy, and poured the rest into a cast iron pan. I added the brussel sprouts that I had alread par cooked (see part 1), and let them get nice and brown, then pulled them out and mixed them with the onion/bacon/raisin mixture and finished them with the fat that came off the bacon and a squeeze of lemon to brighten it back up.

The potatoes were very straightforward affair - I cut a half dozen yukon gold potatoes into cold salted water, boiled them until tender, and then stiuck them in a bowl, adding goat cheese, heavy cream, butter and more fresh thyme, and mashed them until they were the correct consistency. I covered them in foil and kept them warm.

(At this point the wellington came out of the oven, and the stuffing and rolls went back into the oven to warm before service)

I heated the duck fat that I had reserved in a pan, and added a roughly equal amount of flour to make a roux. I added some more minced fresh parsley, then some pepper, then some dry mustard to keep the flavors going. I poured the stock in over the roux and whisked it mightly, let it come to a boil briefly, then lowered th heat and called it gravy.

So the real question is: how was it all? It was fine. The rolls were especially nice, bagellish and rollish, and very good with butter. The wellington was tasty (although it had rather too much tarragon), but big and unwieldy. Next time I’ll trim it down a little bit and make it smaller, and it will be much easier both to manage and to enjoy. The wellington was also quite filling. The duck came out as well as ducks always do - rich and very slightly gamey and delicious, perfectly balanced by the cranberry sauce. The brussels sprouts were a work of art, although as they had been cooked in duck fat and dressed in bacon fat, they had no choice but to be utterly delicious. The stuffing was great and took the gravy well, the gravy was savory and unctuous, which also complimented the tangy, sharp potatoes. The pies were fine, although I remain a weak pie cook. I should probably work harder on these things.

All in all, it was very satisfying, and there was not a complaint to be had. Plus the leftovers made it all the way through, so life remains a succesful endeavor.

* stuffing is also relatively easy to reheat

** soon it will be the end of the time of the heirloom onions, and I will be so sad

*** the recipe had too many layers, but conceptually was sound: a pate was made, then wrapped in phyllo dough, which was then also wrapped in duxelle, which was then wrapped in more phyllo dough and then baked. The recipe called for a weird interstitial layer that I didn’t think was entirely necessary.

**** normally I would use dried, but 1) there wasn’t a tonne of stove space and 2) the pressure cooker was being used as a slow cooker to make mulled cider all day.

***** I’m using “pate” to refer to the bean/mushroom/cashew mixture, duxelle to refer to the other mushroom puree.

****** actually it was soy-sauce enhanced duck fat, which was even better for my purposes here, since I almost always use soy sauce in my gravy anyway.