RCD6: Baked stuffed heart (p. 520) and Apple dressing (p. 537)

Rachel cooking day post #6: Variety meats

There are certain recipes that I'm just not excited about at all. Essentially all of the variety meat recipes fall in to this category. Like most Americans, I don't like organ meats and, in our house, the only ones to regularly eat them are the dogs. And even my dogs don't like most organ meats (they are finicky). Rachel pointed out that we should probably make something, though, since I had yet to make a variety meat (and there are quite a few recipes that require them).

I figured that Baked stuffed heart (p. 520) would be the perfect test of the adage "bacon makes everything better".

Beef heart is cheap. Big and cheap. So if you are low on money, heart is a good way to go. I placed bacon on the heart and poured stock into the bottom of the pan:



The whole thing was covered in foil. It was at this point that I realized the heart had to cook for 3-4 hours. That really was something that would have been really, really good to know before starting the recipe. Of course, because I didn't thoroughly read the recipe, we started making the heart around 6 pm. I also found out that Rachel does not have a roasting pan. She has a big electric roaster but we were using that for the duck (in an upcoming post). We rigged something up with a cookie rack, a baking dish, and foil.

It eventually looked like this:



Time for stuffing!

Apple dressing (p. 537) is a very strange stuffing. I'm used to stuffings (dressings) that include breadcrumbs and, when moistened and/or cooked, hold together in some way. Apple dressing was not an example of this.

I combined apples, raisins (Rachel, a raisin-hater, had raisins on hand from last year's Glogg), lemon juice, brown sugar, sage, and a little salt and pepper:



Yep, that's the dressing.

The whole thing. Nothing else. Nothing to make it stick together in any way. And, actually, on re-read, I notice that it says "sliced" apples, not "diced" apples, so it would have stuck together even less. It reminded me of a really boring fruit salad.

We shoved it in the heart, which wasn't easy. Three cups was way, way too much and it kept falling out.



It was all cooked for about fifteen minutes:



The texture was totally different from skeletal muscle meat:



Rachel was optimistic that the heart would be good covered in bacon with the stuffing sandwiched in the middle:



Rachel pondering the heart:



I don't know what to say about this recipe. It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Really, my only experience with organ meats is from time spent in other countries (I ate a lot of intestines in Japan) and I didn't know what the heart would taste like. When I read journal articles about offal, they usually describe beef heart as "beefy" and it certainly was. It tasted like concentrated meat--not a great description but as good as I can do. It also had a sort of metallic taste. The bizarre dressing complemented the heart really well. The texture was totally different from skeletal muscle too. I think I would have liked it if I had grown up eating it but the texture really put me off.

We both ate a small slice and called it a day.

Fun facts about this post (if it's not referenced, it's my personal thought):

• There are three types of muscle: skeletal (almost all meat you would buy at the grocery store is skeletal muscle), smooth (organ meat such as intestines or tongue), and cardiac (the heart). All three have different flavors and characteristics
• Heart is high in cholesterol but low in fat. It also has large amounts of iron and folate (On Food and Cooking, p. 166)
• "Stuffing" is usually used when the mixture is cooked inside something else, "dressing" when it is cooked seperately

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Thanksgiving 2010 III: Creamed spinach II (p. 305), Sweet-and-sour (Harvard) beets (p. 259), and Apple and cherry bread stuffing (p. 534)

And more side dishes!

I made Creamed spinach II (p. 305), which, in hindsight, was a strange decision because it was almost a guarantee that nobody would like it. Nobody in our family looks at creamed spinach and thinks "Yum! I can't wait!". I had actually never eaten creamed spinach before even though I really love spinach.

I blended milk, onion, butter, flour, salt, paprika, nutmeg, and garlic in the blender until smooth:

Smooth!

I added the spinach and chopped it. I then cooked everything in a skillet for a few minutes:

And poured it in to a nice bowl:

Done! It was good but rather bland, typical of creamed spinach. I think everybody took a little to be polite but I don't think anyone was thrilled with it. Maybe it would be better if I had included the buttered breadcrumbs and bacon. Does anyone out there really love creamed spinach?

Mom mentioned that beets would be a nice addition to Thanksgiving, so we made Sweet-and-sour (Harvard) beets (p. 259). It's basically a warmed up version of Pickled beets. I had a quick little chat with Professor Google (Sir Wikipedia wasn't up to the job) about the etymological origin of the name "Harvard beets". Apparently it's a bastardization of the name "Harwood beets".

I combined sugar, cider vinegar, cornstarch, salt, and cloves in a double broiler (or, more accurately, in a bowl on top of a pot of boiling water).

'

I cooked it until clear and let it stand for thirty minutes. I added the beets:

Added a bit of butter and poured them in to a pretty dish:

The beets were good. If you like beets, you will probably like these beets. If you don't, I don't recommend eating them, they won't change your mind. Harvard beets are beets for beet lovers. They had a smooth pickled flavor. My mom said they were absolutely delicious.

The stuffing is usually one of my favorite parts of the Thanksgiving meal. Last year we made the switch to two stuffings. So this year, we decided that mom and I would freehand one batch of stuffing (it would include cornbread and sausage) and I would also make Apple and cherry bread stuffing (p. 534).

I melted butter and olive oil in my skillet and sauteed celery and onion. I decided to add everything except the breadcrumbs first, so it would mix more easily. I added apple, dried cherries, Madeira, raisins, rosemary, black pepper, and salt to the celery and onion:

I think I should have cut my cornbread breadcrumbs (that feels like a Jeopardy answer--CornBreadCrumbs) smaller, but they still worked. I mixed them in:

We didn't have a casserole that was avaliable and big enough so they went in two different dishes. Mom told me that when she was growing up, they always made the stuffing in loaf pans, so we decided to go with tradition. I moistoned them with chicken stock and popped them in to the oven:

By the time the green bean casserole and sweet potatoes were done, the stuffing was finished. It didn't take very long.

The oven was pretty crowded:

I wasn't very impressed with the stuffing. I didn't really like the sweet (dried fruit, cornbread) without a stronger balance of savory (I think it needed some sausage or something). I also didn't like my giant chunks of bread, I really needed to cut them smaller. Mom thought the stuffing was really good and particularly liked the cherries. I honestly think it would be better in a stuffed pork chop, because that would balance the sweetness better. This stuffing recipe would also be really easy to adapt for a vegan or vegetarian (although mine was not vegetarian, since I used chicken stock).

The Thanksgiving meal went amazingly smoothly. At no point during the preparations were we running around like chickens with our heads cut off, which was a wonderful and novel feeling. In fact, mom and I felt like something was wrong for most of the day because it was going so well. Mom and I each made about half of the meal, which was about perfect. Mom didn't feel pushed out of her own kitchen and I got to knock out some TJOC recipes. It was a particularly nice Thanksgiving.

Grad weekend #4: Crown roast of pork (p. 498), Spinach, mushroom, and ground meat stuffing (p. 538), and Spicy apricot sauce (p. 217)

On to the main course! I decided to make a big expensive cut of meat stuffed with a delicious stuffing as my showstopper. When I read the recipe for Spinach, mushroom, and ground meat stuffing (p. 538), it reminded me of my grandmother's ravioli recipe and sounded amazing (My Nonni makes the best ravioli in the world).

I cooked spinach, onions, and a lot of onions in butter--a perfect start to any recipe:



I mixed ground pork, fine bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and two large eggs in a bowl with the mushroom mixture. Note: Mix the eggs in before adding the spinach mixture (which is hot), otherwise you have to work really fast because the egg starts to cook.



I could barely stir the mixture--it was extremely stiff. Mom got to work:



The hole in the crown roast was really small, so we baked most of the stuffing in a bowl.



The stuffing was amazing! It was so delicious. It wasn't a bread-heavy typical stuffing but it had an amazing flavor and was really flavorful. I liked the combination of the pork, mushrooms, and spinach--this won't replace the cornbread stuffing at Thanksgiving, but I really enjoyed it.

The main part of the whole meal was the beautiful crown roast that we bought at a local butcher shop. (As an aside, their staff could use some more training--the man who sold it to us told us that he knew it was going to be good because it was pale. That is totally wrong information. Thankfully, he was incorrect and it was acceptable quality).

I've been very intimidated by recipes such as Crown roast of pork (p. 498) for two reasons. First, it's an expensive piece of meat. Second, it makes a HUGE amount of food and we are only a two-person household. So a special family weekend is the perfect time to roll a recipe like this one out.

I rubbed the pork with a mixture of olive oil, thyme, allspice, salt, and pepper, which looked distinctly like sludge.



I roasted it for fifteen minutes at a high heat, then reduced the heat to very low for about an hour. When it was an hour along, we stuffed it.



TJOC says to cook the pork roast until it's 155 degrees but my father, an expert in the field, recommended I remove it at 145 degrees, which is what I did. As it rested, it cooked until about 160 degrees, which is perfectly done for pork. Please, please, please don't ruin a piece of meat like this by cooking it until it's shoe leather.

Dad in action, with his granddog hopefully looking on:



The pork was amazing! It was tender and flavorful and the rub was perfection. The rub is more like a combination for a baked good but it was really good and not too strong. The roast easily fed nine, with leftovers. Most importantly, it was striking and perfect for a holiday.

For some reason, I thought that it would be perfect to have a nice sauce to pour over the pork. I'm not entirely sure why I wanted to add one more dish to the litany. I thought Spicy apricot sauce (p. 217) would taste delicious with pork. I had a vision of a beautiful bright orange sauce covering the pork and stuffing.

Canned apricots were surprisingly difficult to find at our grocery store! There was only one brand and I'm not totally confident that it was the full amount that TJOC required.

I combined a sweet onion, jalapeno peppers, and garlic in vegetable oil and cooked it until tender:



I then added the apricots, water, brown sugar, cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, and soy sauce and cooked it until the sauce had thickened:



I pureed it, added salt and red pepper, and it was finished!



Where is that beautiful orange color I was hoping for? The picture is actually a more attractive picture than the sauce actually was--it was a very strange yellow/orange. It didn't have a very strong apricot flavor but it was fruity and spicy. It was a popular dish and did spice up the meal (Ha! Spice up!). I never make a sauce to go along with meat but I think it's a great idea in general.

Roast turkey (p.442), Basic corn bread stuffing (p. 534) , and Corn bread stuffing with sausage and bell peppers (p. 535)

Final Thanksgiving 2009 post! Hooray! It's going to be a brief post though :)

This year, we decided to make Roast turkey (p.442). I apparently forgot to take pictures of the naked bird but, essentially, I rinsed it, brushed it with butter, and then mom seasoned it to her liking. We stuffed it and cooked it for five hours or so.



Beautiful! This was a really gorgeous bird and was tender and juicy. It was a BIG turkey too, so flipping it would have been impossible. We didn't brine it but I think it was just as juicy as the year before.

I decided that this year I would make Basic corn bread stuffing (p. 534) and truly make STUFFING (inside a bird). Mom had proactively made corn bread or me, so all I had to do was toast it.



I cooked onions, celery, and garlic in some butter, and then stirred in some parsley, sage, salt, and pepper. I tossed it with the bread crumbs.



Mom had kept her parsley plant alive for the Thanksgiving meal.



I moistened it with chicken broth...

And I stuffed it into the turkey!




What goes in, then has to come out! Rachel extracted the stuffing.



I had extra cornbread left over and thought--what the heck! I'll make both stuffing and dressing (outside the bird). I thought Corn bread stuffing with sausage and bell peppers (p. 535) would be perfect. It was particularly perfect because I HATE bell peppers and love stuffing, so making it as the only stuffing choice would be really sad for me. That being said, everyone else at Thanksgiving loved both sausage and peppers, so I had the perfect audience!

It was essentially the same recipe, except green pepper and cooked sausage were added to the rest with the seasoning and it was popped in the oven:



Mom insisted that it was delicious! I thought it was really pretty with the green pepper and would have been even prettier if we had had red pepper too. I really liked having two choices of stuffing since it's almost everyone's favorite part of the meal.

The table with the stuffing, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. Yum!



It was a terrific Tday. I love Thanksgiving. It's one of my two favorite holidays (Halloween is the other one). A day about family and food is about as great as you can get, in my opinion :) I really loved our mixed group of friends and family this year. And after we eat, we nap, and it's on to my favorite part of the holiday--going Black Friday shopping, starting at midnight! Most of the time we don't even buy anything but I think it's fun. What is your favorite holiday?

Thanksgiving 2008.3--Quick Turkey Gravy (p. 547) and Italian Bread Stuffing (p. 533)

The final Thanksgiving blog. Why did I break the blog into pieces? I figured it would be considerably easier to read rather than in one novella sized post.

I've never made gravy before, and, strangely, it was the part of the meal I was most nervous about. People are always talking about lumpy or tasteless gravy...I love gravy and wanted it to be perfect (my Aunt Charlotte makes a spectacular gravy and I would love to be able to make a similar one).

I decided on the Quick Turkey Gravy (p. 547). There were a lot of drippings in the pan. Four cups of chicken stock were added to the stock and the drippings were s



The stock/pan drippings was then boiled down until it is the correct consistency.




A little bit of water and cornstarch are mixed together (my grandmother [who grew up in the Depression] used to make a mix JUST like this for me to use as glue when I was a child).




The cornstarch is then slowly whisked into the pan and it's simmered for about a minute. Then it's poured into the gravy boat...





How was it? Perfect! No lumps at all. It took mom quite a while to try to skim the fat off of the top but she did a great job. It was slightly salty, I imagine from the pan juices of the salt-brined turkey, but still really good. And it heated up perfectly (I ate it for the next week!).


I don't like stuffing the turkey, so I make the stuffing in a dish. This year, I chose Italian Bread Stuffing (p. 533). The first step is to cook some onion and garlic in butter for about five minutes. You add that to a bowl.




The breadcrumbs are added...




Then bread crumbs, (a LOT of) Parmesan, an egg, some parsley, rosemary, sage, salt, and pepper are added.




The stuffing is then moisened with some chicken stock and poured into a dish.

When I finished the first batch there was almost no stuffing! Honestly, there was about two cups of stuffing--not near enough for people who love stuffing! So I tripled the recipe. And the stuffing was attractive when it came out of the oven.



Apparently tripling the recipe was a mistake.

The stuffing was attractive. And it was salty. Strike that--it was SALTY. Almost inedibly salty. I figure that when tripling the recipe, the enormous amount of Parmesan cheese (a cup and a half) was WAY too much for the stuffing. This recipe is struck off of the list for future years although I would love to know if anyone else have made this recipe and had better luck...


The final table (mostly). It was extremely difficult to fit everything on the table! I also made TJOC's blue cheese dressing, which I've made before. It was still delicious and easy! So delicious, in fact, that mom refused to give it up and let us take it home :) As you can see in the picture, the salad came out of a bag.





I find this picture amazing because it's of my mom but if you didn't know that, you'd think it was me! I've never thought that my mother and I looked particularly similar but this picture would say otherwise. She's washing dishes...and there were a TON of dishes to wash.