Sunday, November 26, 2006

successful dressing

Thanks to my helpful contributors Newscoma and Genderist (recipes here in the comments) I managed to make the best cornbread dressing of my life. And I've just come back from a lovely Thanksgiving meal at my friend's house. It may have been in London and on a Sunday, but one thing was certainly traditional. I'm feeling uncomfortably full. Like really uncomfortable.

Using Nana's recipe list (that's what I already had) - plus Newscoma's mother's use of many, many eggs - I managed to get a dressing the way I liked it. Unlike the Newscoma recipe, mine was an all cornbread affair - but I may try to half cornbread/ half biscuit thing next time round.

But being me I couldn't follow a recipe straight up. Here were my alterations:

I added herbes de Provence - I know it sounds French (and I guess it is) but it's parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme and bay leaf. I also used leek - a very popular vegetable here in the UK as well as onion.

I still don't know what a fluted mushroom is - so I didn't use any of those. I was a bit doubtful about the sliced almonds, but that worked out really well.


veggies for dressing
sauteeing veggies: celery, leek, onion and mushrooms - plus those herbes de Provence

finished dressing
et voila - the finished product

I also made some pies (pumpkin and pecan) - and they were really tasty - but weren't quite as pretty. There was an incident - a slight mishap - in the making of the pumpkin pie. Something akin to this holiday disaster and cover up. I'm not really ready to reveal exactly what I did, but you know, no one noticed, and I ate it myself.

6 comments:

Newscoma said...

Yeah for the Vol Abroad.
Actually, Leeks sound great in this.
I'm going to try this next time.
Happy Belated Thanksgiving.

Casey Galatos said...

It certainly seems that you had a great time on Thanksgiving....and now with tyhe holidays coming up we've got more food and fun coming our way...well for some interesting resources and a couple of holiday recipes do check out my Holiday Blog sometime and enjoy all that's there!!!

genderist said...

Nana will be so proud!

(and I have no idea what fluted mushrooms are, either... I always use regular plain-jane mushrooms instead...)

Anonymous said...

That looks fantastic!

Anonymous said...

"Fluted mushroom is a garnish using a fluting knife cutting circular strokes into a raw cremini mushroom and then blanching the mushroom in butter, white wine and lemon juice. "
"These mushrooms make any meal look fancy."
http://www.bhg.com/bhg/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/bhg/story/data/wok_mushroomgarnish_06262002.xml

By the way, in the US, you made #5 on the google list for "fluted mushrooms'. Congratulations.

Vol Abroad said...

What's a fluting knife?