MADE: Stuffed Chicken with Wine Sauce

This recipe begins (as all good recipes do) with a simple instruction: cook a pound of bacon.

Okay, okay fine. Maybe that's not what you do on Friday afternoon. You and I are different people.

Ingredients
2-3 strips bacon
1/2 large yellow onion, diced
2 oz Cremini mushrooms, coarsely chopped
2 tsp salt
2 tsp brown sugar
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup red wine
2 chicken breasts
2 oz soft goat cheese

Place bacon in a large frying pan and cook over medium-high heat until just crisp. Remove and set aside on a paper towel, to siphon off the grease. Keep two tablespoons (or so) of the bacon grease in the frying pan. Turn the heat down to medium and add the onion and mushrooms to the pan. Add the salt, sugar, and a dash of pepper, and stir to fully coat. Then smooth out the onion-mushroom mixture evenly in the pan, and leave to caramelize. Don't stir the vegetables often, but when you notice them beginning to brown in the pan--just before they're starting to stick and burn--toss in a few tablespoons of water and stir vigorously for a few seconds, before spreading the mixture out evenly again. Do this a few times to deglaze the mixture and speed up the caramelizing process. The whole deal should take about 15 minutes or so, or until the onions have gone from white, to clear, to a caramel-y brown. While the vegetables are caramelizing, chop the strips of bacon into small, 1/4" sized pieces.

Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees F.

As the caramelization process comes to a close, melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When butter is melted, whisk in flour, until a thin paste forms. Continue whisking for about two minutes, then stir in the chicken broth (I used a bouillon cube dissolved in warm water) and wine. Keep stirring until mixture thickens--about five minutes. Give the mixture a dash of pepper if you're into pepper. (I am.) Once the sauce has begun to thicken, stir in the mushroom and onion mixture. (It might be beneficial to switch from a whisk to a wooden spoon as your implement-of-attack, here.) Stir for another minute or so, then remove from heat.

Butterfly (i.e. slice slightly open to create a bigger, flatter surface) two chicken breasts. To one side of each butterfly seam, pipe a line/glob of goat cheese, then sprinkle each with half of the diced bacon. Then, roll the edges of the chicken breast around this filling and place, seam-down, into an appropriately-sized baking dish. Pour the sauce over the chicken breasts and place in the oven, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Then, (if at any point in the cooking process you've tasted the sauce, this will not need saying, but,) DEVOUR.

MADE: Chocolate Chocolate Mousse Cups

I think that the process of making these delightful little dessert cups was a bit like the process of giving birth.

Bear with me here.

I've heard that the process of childbirth is so traumatic that a woman's brain and body actually repress it, because otherwise women would just warn their daughters away from the shrieking horror of having babies and the species would die out.

Similarly, these little chocolate cups were SO DARN CUTE and SO FREAKING DELICIOUS in the light of day that it almost blocked out the traumatic, frustrating, painful hours of splattering chocolate and uncooperative latex.

Almost.

Despite that frustration, though, I'm putting the pictures and recipes up on the blog because I'd like to make them again. They were adorable and delicious, as stated, with a definite 'wow' factor that upped my little event to at least a capital-B Brunch. 

Yep. I'm a sucker.

Chocolate Cups

Ingredients

10-12 oz Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chunks

1 package small balloons

Patience

Line a baking sheet (or two, depending on how many cups you're making) with wax paper, parchment paper, or aluminum foil.

In a double boiler (or a fake double boiler setup, with a small saucepan nestled into a larger water-filled one over medium-high heat), melt chocolate until smooth. Then remove from heat.

Blow up the number of balloons you'll need, so that the bottoms are the size that you'd like your cups to be, and then tie them off. I made two dozen balloon-cups, all relatively small (about 2.5" in diameter and 2" in height). I also used water balloons, because I thought they'd be more resilient. (Also, Walgreens only had water balloons. First world problems--I got 'em.) The use of water balloons necessitated filling the balloons up with water to stretch them out, then emptying out the water and blowing them up with air. In the process I got drenched and lightheaded. And every single one of my roommates made fun of me. Fair warning.

Now you've got balloons and melted chocolate. Simple instructions: Dip the non-tied bottoms of the balloons into the chocolate, rolling the balloon slightly to get a smooth covering all the way around, reaching a little way up the side of the balloon.

THIS SOUNDS DECEPTIVELY EASY. DON'T BE FOOLED. Temperature is the tricky part. The chocolate needs to be warm enough to form smooth layers, but cool enough so that it doesn't pop the balloon when you dip it in or roll it around. (This is where the spattering chocolate comes in. And boy, is it fun.) It might take a bit of trial and error, and you might have to go through a few re-warming/re-cooling stages.

Once you've got your balloon dipped in chocolate and successfully non-popped, set it onto the covered baking sheet. Fill up the baking sheet with chocolate-dipped balloons--they don't need a lot of space, just make sure they're not touching--and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.

Once the chocolate is sufficiently cool and hardened, cut off the knots of the balloons and pull them out. Taa-daa! You've got beautiful chocolate dessert cups! Fill them with chocolate mousse, whipped cream, or ice cream, and serve to your delighted guests! Just make sure that your guests know that the bowls are edible! Otherwise they'll wind up almost trying to wash them, by mistake. (I'm not kidding. This actually happened at the party.)

Oh, and DEVOUR, for good measure.

N.B.: The chocolate cups will get pretty melty pretty quickly, so I'd freeze them if you're not using them right away. Also, don't try to fill them with anything hot. I'm getting stressed just imagining what that would turn into...

MADE: Chorizo Gratin

Sometimes you accidentally wind up at a speakeasy with your good friend Sambert. What's that you say? You've never wound up at a speakeasy with Sambert? Let me tell you--you're missing out, my friend. Specifically, you're missing out on this food.
While the whole "accidental speakeasy" night was pretty awesome overall, this chorizo gratin was a highlight. Such a highlight, in fact, that Sam and I couldn't help but make it for ourselves--in a more generous portion, of course. With a little help from the Seattle Cheese festival, we whipped this up and DEFINITELY DID NOT eat the whole thing.

Pictorial representation of "help from the Seattle Cheese Festival"

Chorizo Gratin*

Ingredients
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 lb chorizo sausage
2/3 cup diced onion
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 red pepper, diced
1/4 cup sun dried tomatoes
1 lb gruyere, coarsely shredded
1 loaf crusty bread, sliced and toasted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Chop chorizo into small chunks and cook until browned and delicious-smelling. Remove from pan to a medium-sized casserole dish. Put onion, salt, and sugar into the skillet with the chorizo dregs, and keep over medium heat, stirring occasionally. When the onions begin to brown and stick to the pan, add a splash of water (about a tablespoon or two) and stir vigorously. Repeat this process three or four times until onions are deep brown and sweet-smelling.

The onions, they are a'caramelizin'

Add diced peppers and tomatoes to the skillet, stirring occasionally for about five minutes, or until you get too impatient.

Dump the caramelized vegetable concoction into the casserole dish with the chorizo and stir together until evenly mixed. Cover--and I do mean COVER--the whole thing with handfuls of shredded cheese. Pop the casserole in the oven for twenty minutes, so that everything gets melty and bubbly. Serve atop your toasted crusty bread and DEVOUR.

*Yes, we are aware that this recipe doesn't actually have a starch base, which possibly negates its claim to being a gratin. That's what the speakeasy called it, however, and so that's what we're calling it. SO THERE.

MADE: Buckeyes!

A boyfriend says, "Hey, Valentine's Day is coming up. Is it all right if I don't do anything special, or buy you anything?"
The girlfriend responds, "Absolutely! Valentine's Day isn't about stuff. It's about love!"

This would have worked out fine if A) Boyfriend's line hadn't meant "I'm actually going to TOTALLY FORGET Valentine's Day, like only a character in a sitcom could." and if B) Girlfriend's line hadn't meant "You're so cute, pretending that you're not doing anything for me for Valentine's Day. Such a clever cover for the ACTUALLY TOTALLY ROMANTIC THING that you're going to surprise me with!"

So the moral of the story is twofold: Listen rationally to your significant other when he or she talks about his or her expectations, and make yourself candy on Valentine's Day. Because your boyfriend's sure not going to. Nope, he's going to spend all day in the math library cozying up to the Kummer theorem and topological cohomologies.

Ahem.

Buckeyes!

When I think "making candy," I am immediately intimidated and visions of complicated alchemies involving thermometers and double boilers dance through my head. No such drama with buckeyes. They're spectacularly easy to make and also tons of fun. If dipping things in chocolate constitutes "fun" for you. If it doesn't, you should probably stop reading now and reevaluate your life. Just saying.

Buckeyes
Adapted slightly from Smitten Kitchen's delightful recipe

1/4 cup (2 tbsp) cream cheese
1 1/2 cups peanut butter--I used about 1 cup smooth and 1/2 cup crunchy, to give them a bit of texture
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
10 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
12 oz dark or bittersweet chocolate (I used Ghirardelli 60% cacao chunks. It was a good life choice.)

Cream together cream cheese and peanut butter. Choosy bloggers choose Jif.

Add graham cracker crumbs and salt mix until combined. Then alternate additions of sugar and butter, stirring until thoroughly mixed after each addition. Mix some more, for good measure. When everything is combined, the mixture should basically be sturdy peanut butter dough. Try not to eat it all on its own.

Now for the chocolate coating.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, or in the microwave. I used the microwave, and heated it in 15 second bursts, stirring after each one. When chocolate is smooth and thoroughly melted, you're ready for dipping!

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and roll the peanut butter dough into balls. I made mine about a teaspoon each, and wound up with a delightfully large number (see picture below for about 2/3 of the batch.)

With a skewer or fork or chopstick--something pointy--dip the peanut butter balls into the melted chocolate. As Smitten Kitchen says, it may take a few tries before you've mastered your own personal technique. She recommends tilting the container of melted chocolate and spinning the dough balls in it, but I found that method prone to breaking the little buggers in half. Instead, I just skewered them and submerged them at an angle, until most of the peanut butter was covered in chocolate, leaving only a little of the doughy goodness showing through. Somehow, SK got hers to come out without the skewer-holes being visible. She's a wizard of some sort. I, being mortal, just embraced the holes as necessary imperfections that in no way inhibited deliciousness.

After you've chocolate-dipped all of your peanut butter dough balls, put the baking sheet in the refrigerator to cool for at least a half hour. It may be difficult to wait that long, knowing that those little balls of peanut-butter-chocolatey goodness are just sitting in there, but be patient.

Then, DEVOUR. Because it's Valentine's Day, and you deserve it.*

*In place of this reasoning, feel free to use any other rationale that occurs to you.

EPIC CROWD PLEASER: Marianne's Sticky Toffee Cupcakes

WARNING: THESE CUPCAKES ARE RIDICULOUS IN A VARIETY OF WAYS. YOU WILL WANT TO EAT THE WHOLE BATCH. DON'T EAT THE WHOLE BATCH.

There. Got that off my chest.

The goddess Marianne once--for no terribly good reason, if I remember correctly--gave me an entire box of these. I ate almost the entire box. Sure, I offered them to my family, but I offered them at different times, so that for each family member who ate a cupcake, I also ate a cupcake. I don't know if you guys know how many family members I have, but let's just say that it came out to me eating a ton of cupcakes.

Then Marianne gave me the recipe. And I saw the amount of butter involved. And I added up the amount of cupcakes I'd eaten in the past 12 hours. One of the worst/best days of my life. Best for my taste buds, worst for my heart (the physical one, that doesn't get along with butter so swell...).

This is why I urge again: Don't make these if you don't have a very specific distribution plan. Otherwise, you will pull the pans out of the oven and then wake up three days later from your sugar coma, face and hands sticky with toffee. And then you'll die of a heart attack. But a happy heart attack.

Marianne-is-a-Wicked-Woman Sticky Toffee Cupcakes


Cupcakes
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature (wrapper saved to grease tins)
2 cups all purpose flour, plus more for tins
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup brandy
8 oz plump, moist dates, halved and pitted
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature

Toffee Glaze* 
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup brandy
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Grease the tins of a muffin pan with the butter wrapper (and additional butter, if necessary). Flour greased tins and dump out excess.

Bring water, brandy and dates to a boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium low; cover and cook until dates are very soft--about five minutes. Transfer mixture to a blender and puree until smooth. Let cool fifteen minutes.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. With an electric mixer on medium high speed, cream butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is thoroughly mixed in. Reduce mixer speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of date-brandy puree, and beating until just combined after each addition.

Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups. Bake, rotating the muffin pans halfway through the baking process, until a cake tester in the middle comes out clean--should be about 20 to 25 minutes.

Toward the end of the baking time, make the Toffee Glaze. In a medium saucepan, bring cream, brown sugar, and butter to a boil over medium high heat, stirring occasionally. (I love that direction.) Cook for three minutes. Stir in brandy and salt, and cook one more minute.

As soon as the cupcakes are removed from the oven, use a toothpick to lift one side of each cupcake so that they are all standing on edge, raised slightly out of the tins. Using your fingertips to lift each cupcake a bit more, spoon two tablespoons of glaze into each cup, then nudge the cupcake back into place. Let cool 10 minutes.

To finish, invert the cupcakes onto a wire rack set over a baking sheet (or just onto a baking sheet, if you don't have a wire rack handy) and spoon two more tablespoons of glaze over each one. Let set for about five minutes (if you can wait that long) and then DEVOUR. But Please--SHARE!

*The Toffee Glaze is AMAZING even on its own--probably has something to do with the fact that it's nothing but brandy, cream, and sugar. Oh, and butter. Any leftover glaze CANNOT be thrown out. Instead, put it on ice cream, toast, scones, a spoon, or anything else that needs a bit more deliciousness.

EPIC CROWD PLEASER: Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Delicious

A little while after this NPR story happened, EVERYONE IN THE WORLD started telling me about it. "Did you hear about the stuffed pumpkin?" they'd ask? Or perhaps "Hey, I know you're really into fall cooking--there was this great story about stuffed pumpkins on NPR a few days ago." My dad e-mailed the story and a request that we recreate it at Thanksgiving. It got to the point that I started to cut people off at "I heard this great recipe on NPR..." with "Stuffed Pumpkin. Yes. I know. I'VE ALREADY PLANNED A POTLUCK AROUND IT. Chill."

And I had. For I, too, caught the story, and that story caught my imagination. I saw it all, in a warm, hazy glow of domesticity: a potluck, flooded with warmth and cheer and more food than anyone could possibly consume. In the center of this gustatory bliss--the pumpkin, stuffed with EVERYTHING GOOD.

Thus, my (annual?) Let Them Eat Squash Potluck was born, with the spectacular much-hyped pumpkin at its center. (If you'd like to hear the colorful story of how I procured this pivotal pumpkin, please do ask. It's a doozie!)

One great thing about the recipe is that it's quite customizable. My dear friend at KitchenWishes made one of her own with gouda and parmesan, and had a bunch of other great ideas for other possible pumpkins. For mine, I of course threw in token amounts of the three B's, as well as some vegetables. But not too many vegetables--let's not be crazy.

1 pumpkin (The original recipe recommended 3 pounds, but I think that mine was larger)

Salt and pepper

3 cups stale bread, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

4 cups cheese, grated and/or cut into chunks (I used a mixture of gruyere, swiss, and mozzarella, with a little parmesan)

3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

6 strips bacon, cooked, drained and chopped (drippings reserved)

1 medium onion, diced

Pinch brown sugar

1 medium red bell pepper, chopped into 1/2 inch chunks

1 tsp ground sage

1 tsp ground oregano

About 1/3 cup heavy cream

About 1/4 cup milk

Pinch ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Clean the pumpkin as you would a jack-o-lantern. Cut off a cap at the top, and scoop out seeds and pulp thoroughly. Once the pumpkin is cleaned of its inner gunk, season the inside liberally with salt and pepper. Place on a baking sheet (if you're bold and trust your pumpkin not to collapse while baking) or in a Dutch oven, sized to be a little larger than your pumpkin in diameter (if you don't trust the integrity of that sassy squash).

Sauté onions in leftover bacon grease with salt, pepper, and brown sugar. When onions are slightly tender, add red pepper and continue to sauté, about five minutes. In a large separate bowl, toss together bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, and herbs, seasoning with pepper to taste. Add onions and peppers from skillet, tossing all together. Transfer the entire mixture into the pumpkin.

Stir together cream, milk, and nutmeg, as well as some salt and pepper to taste. Pour into the pumpkin and stir mixture slightly. The ingredients should be well-moistened by the cream mixture, but not swimming (may require more or less cream), and the pumpkin should be well filled--neither too full nor too empty.

Put the pumpkin's cap in place and bake for 2 hours--checking in at about the 90-minute mark. With about 20 minutes left, remove the pumpkin cap and give the excess liquid a chance to bake away. When done, the pumpkin contents should be bubbling and the pumpkin flesh should be tender and easily pierced with the tip of a knife.

To Serve:

Carefully remove the pumpkin from the oven. This seems like an obvious suggestion, but since you are now handling a large, fragile squash full of molten delicious goo, it's good to be cautious.

The NPR article suggests cutting the pumpkin into slices, but that seems ridiculously messy to me, not to mention destructive to my potluck's beautiful centerpiece. Instead, I'd opt for keeping it intact and ladling it out. Encourage guests to scrape out the pumpkin meat as well as the stuffing--although they may not require much encouraging!

NB: The stuffed pumpkin goes delightfully with pumpkin ale or other seasonal beer, a discovery made by the incomparable Josh. Well done, Josh.

As I mentioned before, this has been requested for Thanksgiving dinner as well, so I might update with my findings on that adventure. The original story mentions stuffing the pumpkin with rice instead of bread crumbs, which is certainly an intriguing idea...