OOPS!

I had an insane night of running around like a crazy person yesterday. After work I hauled my ass to Whole Foods in Chelsea in search of Turkey Stock for my Cornbread Stuffing, which, of course, they don’t carry. So, I settled for three boxes of Chicken Stock that can be described in two ways: not cheap and not light. I know becuase I PAID for them and because I had to shlep them with me to the salon while I got my last minute, “I-haven’t-had-my-hair-cut-since-March-and-I-want-to-look-nice-for-my-boyfriend’s-family” Thanksgiving haircut. Small note to all the ladies out there: I know that the idea of bangs is a romantic one, but try and resist. They’re a pain in the ass. I was reminded of this fact this morning, aka: why my new bangs are clipped up on the top of my head right now. Anway…

After my haircut I ran to the subway in the cold, stopping alone the way at Rainbow Falafel, a delicious little take out hut that I happened upon on my, like, 3rd day in New York last fall and JUST found again yesterday, to get a chicken hummus sandwich (half of which I ate on the train like a heathen) and, once I got home, I took 15 minutes to chop up my new bangs into some kind of something before tackling steps 2 and 3 of my cornbread stuffing!!

Needless to say, at this point, I was frazzled enough that I forgot to take pictures of my cooking. Lets just say that, after I chopped two large onions and 4 cups of celery, cooked them in butter, crumbled up my cornbread, 14 dried up pieces of white bread and two sleeves of saltines, added all that together, took a sip of diet coke, added 10 cups of chicken stock, mixed, added sage, salt and poutry seasoning, beat 8 eggs, added those eggs to my stuffing, baked it all in a greased up casserole dish, watched some Fringe, and took the stuffing out of the oven, it basically looked like this:

Except, you know, less beautiful and perfect-y. BUT IT TASTED GREAT!!! I’m so happy with all the work and how it came out. If you’re lucky enough to be coming to my apartment on Friday, you’ll get a chance to partake, and then you can comment and tell everyone how it was. If not, have a GREAT Thanksgiving and we’ll be in touch RE: Top Chef next week.

LOVE, Allie

My First Attempt!

Tonight is my first attempt at making anything at all Thanksgivingy. Tonight I’m taking the first step towards making traditional Southern Cornbread Stuffing. YUM!

I say “first step” because all I’m making tonight is the cornbread. Why? Well, the stuffing tastes best when the cornbread has a chance to get a bit stale before it combines with all the liquidy goodness of the stuffing. So, tonight cornbread, tomorrow, the world!

TO BEGIN: the ingredients. Now, who can tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

If you said “all the labels are backwards,” then you get 10 points for noticing the oddities of Photobooth. That is not, however, the correct answer.

The correct answer is:

That box contains CORN STARCH not CORN MEAL and THANKFULLY I caught that before making beginning my recipe because, turns out, they aren’t the same thing (I know, I googled). Good thing I had my thinking cap on!

So: here is the actual sum of my cornbread ingredients

Great! Now, to give credit where credit is due (for ethical and legal reasons): I’m mixing recipes from two Food Network chefs, Emeril Lagasse and, one of my favorite ladies in the whole world, Paula Dean. Paula’s recipe calls for the following:

2 cups cornmeal
1 cup flour
1 1/2 cup buttermilk
4 eggs
4 TBSP veggie oil

Emeril’s recipe gave me two great additions to this recipe:

1 – Emeril suggests heating coating a cast iron skillet (I used a frying pan) with the 4 TBSP of oil and popping it in the oven while the oven pre-heats to 350. Emeril also adds 1/4 tsp of Cayenne pepper to his recipe, but I added 1/2 tsp because I’m a Texas girl and I like it spicy!

So, we combine all the dry ingredients (the cornmeal, flour and Cayenne) and stir. Then we add the buttermilk and the eggs so the pictures looks like a less blurry version of the following:

k, great. Now mix it all together, then get your oiled up pan out of the oven (its hot!) and pour the batter in. Then just let it cook for 20 minutes!

When it comes out, it should look like this:

beautiful! See how the bread looks like its just floating in the middle of the pan? That’s because of that oil we heated up! It acted like a border between the pan and the bread and it also gave the cornbread a beautiful crust. See!?

nyum nyum

This cornbread could not have been easier to make! The hardest part will be waiting until tomorrow to make the rest of the stuffing.

Til then!

-Allie