Post by maggiethecat on Nov 16, 2006 20:33:02 GMT -5
Since it’s that time of the year again, mlm88 and I decided to revive the Holiday Recipes thread.
I’ll start, with her request for my grandmother’s wonderful Cornbread Dressing (dressing in the South, stuffing in the rest of the country – don’t ask me why). It’s somewhat labor intensive, but the trick is to make the cornbread the night before Thanksgiving (and try not to eat it all, slathered with butter when it’s hot out of the oven), and also dice the celery and scallions the night before. Then, in the morning, it’s merely a matter of assembly. The cornbread recipe is from a long-forgotten cookbook called Fascinating Foods from the Deep South by Alline Van Duzor. She was the hostess at the University of Alabama Faculty Club, and a friend of my grandmother’s.
Cornbread
Yield: Approx. 18 muffins with some left over. You can halve the recipe easily, or make the whole thing and freeze what you don't use.
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Oil or grease (bacon drippings are best) muffin pans and place in oven just long enough to heat and melt whatever shortening you're using.
3. Add batter quickly, which is:
2 cups corn meal (white, not yellow, and Quaker is fine)
½ cup white flour
1 tsp. salt
3 tsps. baking powder
2 Tbsps. melted butter
4 lightly beaten eggs
2 cups whole milk
Sift all dry ingredients together; add the remaining. Beat only long enough to mix together. (If you can put the batter in a large measuring cup or pitcher so you can pour it into the muffin cups, so much the better.)
Bake approx. 35 minutes – they don’t rise all that much, by the way. Turn out onto racks to cool.
Cornbread Dressing/Stuffing
You will need:
1. A very large bowl!
2. Eight cornbread muffins (it has to be muffins, by the way, rather than a pan of cornbread – the browned edges are important), crumbled.
3. Eight slices white bread: one slice per cornbread muffin, so you have equal amounts, and cut in cubes or ripped up smallish (cutting is easier).
4. 4 - 5 large ribs of celery, finely diced
5. One large bunch scallions, finely sliced, including the green parts for color
6. Two eggs, beaten
7. Chicken broth (Swanson’s canned or boxed is fine unless you want to be fancy and make your own).
8. One stick of butter, melted. Call me Paula Dean, honey – I can’t cook without butter.
9. Salt to taste
10. A fairly large amount of finely ground black pepper
11. Secret ingredient: add one generous tsp. baking powder and mix well through. We left it out once and it was like lead. That's the whole point of this stuff -- it's light as a feather, which means you can just pour on the gravy.
As you may guess, the quantities of the ingredients listed above depend on touch, feel, your individual taste, the size of the bird, phases of the moon, whatever. The liquid is absorbed quickly, so put in the broth last and just enough to make the whole mixture moist but not wet. This will be enough for a 12-14 lb. turkey and a pan to bake in the oven as a side dish, or enough to stuff one rather large bird!
It sounds complicated but it really isn’t. If you do the prep work the night before, it’s a cinch.
Enjoy!
I’ll start, with her request for my grandmother’s wonderful Cornbread Dressing (dressing in the South, stuffing in the rest of the country – don’t ask me why). It’s somewhat labor intensive, but the trick is to make the cornbread the night before Thanksgiving (and try not to eat it all, slathered with butter when it’s hot out of the oven), and also dice the celery and scallions the night before. Then, in the morning, it’s merely a matter of assembly. The cornbread recipe is from a long-forgotten cookbook called Fascinating Foods from the Deep South by Alline Van Duzor. She was the hostess at the University of Alabama Faculty Club, and a friend of my grandmother’s.
Cornbread
Yield: Approx. 18 muffins with some left over. You can halve the recipe easily, or make the whole thing and freeze what you don't use.
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Oil or grease (bacon drippings are best) muffin pans and place in oven just long enough to heat and melt whatever shortening you're using.
3. Add batter quickly, which is:
2 cups corn meal (white, not yellow, and Quaker is fine)
½ cup white flour
1 tsp. salt
3 tsps. baking powder
2 Tbsps. melted butter
4 lightly beaten eggs
2 cups whole milk
Sift all dry ingredients together; add the remaining. Beat only long enough to mix together. (If you can put the batter in a large measuring cup or pitcher so you can pour it into the muffin cups, so much the better.)
Bake approx. 35 minutes – they don’t rise all that much, by the way. Turn out onto racks to cool.
Cornbread Dressing/Stuffing
You will need:
1. A very large bowl!
2. Eight cornbread muffins (it has to be muffins, by the way, rather than a pan of cornbread – the browned edges are important), crumbled.
3. Eight slices white bread: one slice per cornbread muffin, so you have equal amounts, and cut in cubes or ripped up smallish (cutting is easier).
4. 4 - 5 large ribs of celery, finely diced
5. One large bunch scallions, finely sliced, including the green parts for color
6. Two eggs, beaten
7. Chicken broth (Swanson’s canned or boxed is fine unless you want to be fancy and make your own).
8. One stick of butter, melted. Call me Paula Dean, honey – I can’t cook without butter.
9. Salt to taste
10. A fairly large amount of finely ground black pepper
11. Secret ingredient: add one generous tsp. baking powder and mix well through. We left it out once and it was like lead. That's the whole point of this stuff -- it's light as a feather, which means you can just pour on the gravy.
As you may guess, the quantities of the ingredients listed above depend on touch, feel, your individual taste, the size of the bird, phases of the moon, whatever. The liquid is absorbed quickly, so put in the broth last and just enough to make the whole mixture moist but not wet. This will be enough for a 12-14 lb. turkey and a pan to bake in the oven as a side dish, or enough to stuff one rather large bird!
It sounds complicated but it really isn’t. If you do the prep work the night before, it’s a cinch.
Enjoy!
