Abra

Thanks for the link, GG. My search should have turned that one up, but didn't. The eG search engine and I are not on the best of terms. And to make matters even more embarrassing, I see that I even posted on that thread. No wonder I thought it must exist! However, having read through it all again, I realize that this thread isn't redundant, because we have a lot of different memebrs posting these days, and each one might hold the key to the ultimate stuffing. Heels of bread dried and saved ALL YEAR?!?!?! Jeepers, Ruth, I think you win the prize. I've been eyeing that recipe Ling posted for the last couple of years, deterred only by the sausage. I'm glad to hear that it's really good. I have a bunch of roasted chestnuts in the freezer that I'd like to get into this year's stuffing......

I can't believe there's not already a thread on this, but I couldn't find one with a search, so here goes. For many of us, Thanksgiving is all about the stuffing, by which, technically, I guess I really mean dressing, since I actually don't stuff turkeys anymore. But terminology aside, I love and adore stuffing, and will happily eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I can manage to have enough left over from Thanksgiving. Every year I must absolutely make my mother in law's stuffing recipe, about which the less said the better. However, that's in fact a good thing! Because my loved ones who prefer that listless and stodgy rendition are happy, I get to make a new recipe each year purely to satisfy myself, and usually, I get to eat quite a lot of it all by myself. Which is why I call it stuffing not dressing, since I'm always stuffed, and dressing myself gets a lot harder right after Thanksgiving. So this year I haven't found the right new recipe to try. Would you share? What's the absolute best? I tend towards bread, and meatless, but hey, I'm open to change. Please, blow me away with your stuffing excellence!

Like almost all of the other personal chefs I know, I use Mastercook. I use only the shell, not their recipes. It's easy to copy and paste from eG or Epicurious or anywhere at all into MC format. I love it for scaling servings up and down, which I'm always doing for parties. Lots of other personal chefs use it for grocery lists, although I don't like that function particularly. The nutritional information does take some tweaking for unusual ingredients, but then is very accurate. I did the recipes for a heart-healthy cookbook last year, and the registered dietician who checked my work pronounced the nutritional stuff to be excellent. Mastercook also has a great search function that lets you include or exclude ingredients, so that you can search for all recipes including chocolate, or all recipes excluding liver, and so on.

No sour cream for vegans! Make this muhammara and leave out the yogurt - it won't make any perceptible difference. Whirl together in the food processor: 2 large red bell peppers, roasted 1 clove garlic, minced 1 small onion, finely chopped 2 T hot pepper paste (or finely chopped chili, or 1/4 tsp cayenne) 3/4 C toasted breadcrumbs 3/4 C walnuts, toasted and ground 3 T lemon juice 2 tsp pomegranate molasses 1 T yogurt 1 tsp ground cumin seed (1 to 2) salt to taste 1/4 C olive oil

Last night I made the Chicken with Red Onion Sauce, and the Tuscan-style baked polenta. Now that was a lovely meal! Here's the mise: I wanted to show how it's really a lot of onions (sitting next to a beautiful Smart Chicken, for you SC afficionados), but then I got carried away with the idea of scale, and couldn't resist putting the world's largest bunch of Red Russian kale next to it all. I didn't actually cook the kale last night, but here it is anyway. The polenta baked up painlessly to a thick, creamy mush. I did deviate a bit from the recipe by using my favorite polenta taragna, which has buckwheat mixed in with the corn. This might be the one application where I'd prefer something other than duck fat - I found that I missed the flavors of the more usual olive oil or butter, but the texture was absolutely perfect. THe chicken as it came out of the final broiling step (looking not nearly as wonderful as it tastes and smells) and plated up with the polenta and a salad with fig balsamic vinegar. This is definitely one to make again - it's quite luscious. There's a lot of fat, what with the duck fat, the prosciutto, and the chicken skin, so make it when you need something really soul-warming and unctuous.

No problem, Chris! Just tell us, how many ovens, and how much fridge and freezer space you will have available. And you're not working on actual Thanksgiving, are you? There's tons of prep that you could do then.

I need to do a carrot cake for 50 (20 of whom are kids), and thought I'd use the Frog Commissary cake, which I haven't tried but so many of you really like. They want raisins and pineapple, but no nuts. I see that Patrick did this variation, so I know it'll work. I'm thinking 2 half sheets (oven size limitation), no filling, lots of frosting at their request. Does that sound like 4x the recipe as written? Any suggestions about how much pineapple the cake can take withough getting soggy? And since the filling seems to be runny, would it make a good plate-squiggle, or would I be better off with a little caramel sauce?

Holland's Best has changed their website since I last ordered, but at that time it did say that the kroketten kruiden could be used for saucijzenbroodjes, and so I did. Oops? They were yummy, in any case, and there were a couple of NL-born folks at the party who loved them. I wanted to comment on that celeriac too, because we never see it with the leaves still on. Can you use them as an aromatic in soup?

I've been a frequent Amtrak traveler of late, and they do a "wine tasting" every afternoon. Usually it's pure plonk, more "free wine" than "wine tasting." But this trip, damned if they didn't serve something that got my attention, because it was truly unusual and entertaining to drink. That's the Ironstone Symphony Obsession, which I saw later at Trader Joe's for....$5.99! Would I ever even have tried a bottle at that price, with that name? No way. But would I actually go out and buy some now - you bet. It'd be perfect to sip outdoors at a Ladies' Luncheon on a Spring day, so flowery and aromatic, with a mysterious fruit. It's some new cultivar, cross of Muscat and a Grenache Gris, and it's actually not like any other wine I've tasted. It's a lightweight, but fun, and a great conversation-starter, of the "what the heck is this?" variety.

Thanks for the interesting suggestion, Mary. I seldom think of tomatoes and wines with a good acidity as going together, but I see right away how the roasting, olive oil, and cheese could mellow it out to Pinot level.

The online store is Holland's Best, and what I used was the Verstegen Kroketten Kruiden. It came in a little bag, so I couldn't see the ingredients. They have tons of cool stuff there, but the service was a bit eccentric. Your pea soup looks fabulous! That's a lot more meat that we put in pea soup here, and it looks so good, and so eGullet-y with all that pork!

My book finally came, and tonight I made the Potatoes Roasted in Sea Salt. They were perfect, in a perfectly low-key way. I was expecting them to be salty, at least a bit, and they weren't. What they were was creamy and smooth, in a mysterious way, since the skin remains tender and soft, but entirely intact. It's hard to figure out how they were cooked, if you don't know. All that said, it's not a potato epiphany, just a good and very simple way to do potatoes. The recipe has you put a layer of kosher salt, topped by a layer of good sea salt. I used a Portuguese Flor de Sal on top, and thought it was wasted. As far as I can tell, plain kosher salt would work exactly as well, and be much cheaper. If anyone else makes these, please let us know whether you think the sea salt is actually adding flavor. I couldn't discern it, and I have a pretty good palate. But served with some roasted Columbia River sturgeon with a little sauce of butter and verjus, and some Savoy cabbage sauteed in a bit of duck fat, it was a delicious autumn supper.

Wow, thanks for doing this, Chufi! The weather is getting chilly here, and these dishes look wonderful. I want to ask you - I've made some delicious saucijzen broodjes, but I used a spice mix that I bought from a Dutch place online. I've seen a few recipes with just mace, nutmeg, salt and pepper, but this mix was quite lively, spicy, and utterly delicious. Do you have any recipe that might approximate the seasoning, so I can make it from scratch?

Would someone post Sherry Yard's sauce, or a link to it? A great caramel sauce is hard to find.

In years past I've made a lot of vinegars and jams with local berries. This year I decided to do my friends a favor and made liqueurs with those berries - I have raspberry and blueberry liqueurs and blackberry brandy ready to go (if I don't drink them up first!) I also made vin de noix, with green walnuts. I think everyone will be a lot happier to see me coming this year!

Since we're on a California Pinot topic, I was down in Santa Barbara this week and given a bottle of Sanford Santa Rita Hills Pinot 2002. Any food ideas about this one?

Thanks for the link, Anita! Now to get some bergamots and try out those yummy-looking recipes.

I love bergamot in Earl Grey, and have never seen them fresh. When will they be in season?

I can't believe that I have to be away from any computer for the next 6 days, right in the middle of what is shaping up to be the most, er, unusual food blog I've ever read. The blogging and the blogger seem (relatively) normal, but the food is...way out there from anything I know about. I'll be reading up on every shake and supplement the moment I get back. And I'll be looking for photos, preferably of the Speedo variety!

Thanks for the wine recommendations, folks. I didn't see a red, just from reading the recipe, so that's very helpful. I'm not doing this dish until Nov. 20, but I'll be sure to show how it looks then.

Elie - how much does that rabbit rillette make? Would you say it's enough to fill 6 pyramid molds (the kind used for little cakes)? And what would you like to drink with it? It looks like Lillet, or maybe a Sauternes, would be really nice. Yours looks so good, even though you complained about the presentation, I want some!

As a person who's spent her entire life trying to unpack the pounds, I'm utterly fascinated by the need to eat 7-9 times a day. I mean, I want to eat 7-9 times a day, but I sure as heck don't need to. What's up with that? Do you have some amazing metabolism? Can I have one too?

Thanks, Steven! I had missed that thread, and will now try that version. The crumb in her picture looks a bit dry, but she was experimenting with variations and I'm not sure which one of the crumbs is shown. But I swear, if that one's not it, I'm giving up. I don't even like yellow cake. And with so many gorgeous things to make in the Bible, there's no time to waste on less-than-stellar cake baking.

Wow, such a hard-working blogger you are! Kudos to you! I'm wowed by that bread with the wine bottle included - anything else you can say about that?

Thanks, Patrick - you've saved me from putting yet another yellow cake down the disposal! Do you have any idea what scratch cake can duplicate that Duncan Hines crumb?