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.

TO MAKE: Cauliflower Bacon Gratin

I love playing with the crumbly texture of boiled cauliflower, and I obviously love bacon, so this recipe (from Dori Greenspan, the instigator of the pumpkin stuffed with everything good) got my salivatory instincts going.

I'll put up the recipe once I tweak it a little bit, but I can't wait to try it!

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...