Really Simple Allergy Friendly Apple Stuffing

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I caved. I know that I said I wasn’t making stuffing this year, but I love it too much to forgo it even though it is a lot of work. Instead of giving up the stuffing, I simplified my recipe a bit and did not make the cornbread this year, making it with only two types of bread that I already had in my freezer.

Ingredients:

5 cups of cubed bread*

1 green apple, diced

1 red apple, diced

2 tablespoons of olive oil

8 tablespoons of olive oil or butter

½ cup cooked sausage, diced or crumbled*

1 to 4 cups quality chicken or turkey broth*

Salt and pepper to taste*

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Arrange bread cubes on a large baking sheet. Place bread and oven and bake for 5 minutes. Then turn down the temperature to 200 degrees and prop the oven door open. Dry the bread this way for about 30 minutes or until no longer moist.
2.  Meanwhile, sauté the apple in 2 tablespoons of olive oil until the apples are slightly soft. Add the sausage and cook until warm. Turn down the heat to low and add the remaining olive oil or butter. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Mix the apple mixture and the bread cubes together in a large bowl until the bread cubes are oily.  Add one to two cups of the broth and allow the mixture to rest in the refrigerator for at least one hour. After one hour, add 1/3 cup more broth if the mixture isn’t soft yet. Stir and allow the mixture to rest in the refrigerator for another hour. Continue adding broth 1/3 cup at a time and waiting an hour until the bread cubes are no longer hard. My most recent batch took 2 2/3 cups broth, but each batch will be different based on the kind of bread used and how dry the bread was before adding the liquid.
4. Once the stuffing has reached the desired moisture level. Oil or butter a baking pan and press the stuffing into the baking pan. If you have an olive oil sprayer, spraying the top of the stuffing will cause it to brown prettily, but if you don’t have a sprayer, it’s okay to skip this step. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to warm through and brown the top. Alternative, you can press the stuffing into muffin tins to make individual portions and bake for only 20 minutes.  This recipe should serve 8, but let's be honest, it will probably serve 5.

Note about Bread: You can use nearly any type of good quality bread—gluten free, white, whole wheat, or corn. I recommend homemade or deli bread, not the cheap mass-produced stuff. The recipe works best if you use at least two types of bread. I recommend a quick bread like biscuits or soda bread and yeast bread. Cornbread is also good to throw into the mix. I keep chunks of homemade bread in the freezer for recipes such as this one. If you don’t have food allergies, you can also buy toasted bread cubes at many grocery stores.

Note about Sausage: I used my homemade chicken sausage recipe that I have provided in an earlier post. You could use a vegetarian sausage as a replacement or any store-bought sausage if allergies and intolerances are not challenges for you and your guests.

Note about Broth: I cooked an organic chicken the week before. Then I simmered the left over bones, meat, and skin in my slow cooker with a quart of water for 2 days. You could substitute vegetable broth.

Note about Seasonings: This recipe would be even better with freshly chopped sage, oregano, parsley, chives, and the leafy parts of celery. I am not sure of my allergies and tolerances for these seasonings, so I have left them out for now. Feel free to add a tablespoon or any or all of these to enhance the flavor.

Roasted Pumpkin Centerpiece with Thanksgiving Fried Rice Pilaf

I’ve been looking for an alternative to holiday stuffing. Don’t get me wrong I love the toasted bread concoction that some people shove into their holiday birds and call “dressing.” But making stuffing from absolute scratch—baking bread, cubing bread, toasting bread, making homemade sausage and turkey stock, dicing and sautéing fruit and veggies--due to food allergies and intolerances constitutes hours of work and a huge mess in my kitchen.

So when I saw an orzo dish in an advertisement in through Savor magazine last week, I was inspired to try something similar with rice. I put the rice in a pumpkin because it’s pretty and adds a bit of squash flavor that really speaks of fall. The oven turns the pumpkin a deep burnt orange that will be the perfect centerpiece for your holiday table. This recipe makes a small portion for a two-pound pie pumpkin. You will need to experiment with cooking times for a larger pumpkin if you need more.

Although this recipe if fairly labor intensive (it took 2 hours to make), it is less bothersome than making stuffing. As a bonus this whole dish or parts of the dish can be cooked ahead of time. If you do make it ahead of time, I suggest reheating the rice mixture separate from the pumpkin and then putting them together already hot because they will reheat much faster that way. The pumpkin and wild rice and brown rice, and nuts (if you’re using them) can also be cooked days ahead, so you have a lot of flexibility in how you want to stage the steps in the recipe if available time and space in your oven become challenging around the holidays. The recipe instructions assume that you are making the whole dish at once.

To get cooked cranberries, I run water over my cranberry sauce in a strainer, but you could buy cooked, dried cranberries to use instead. If you want to use my method, the cranberry sauce recipe was posted previously.

Instead of the chicken sausage, you could use a cooked and diced chicken breast or vegetarian sausage or you can leave it out altogether.

I used walnuts in this recipe. However, the nuts in this recipe are completely optional because they are a last-minute garnish. I would not use them if someone at the table had a nut allergy. Alternately, the nuts could be replaced with seeds, such as pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, and prepared the same way. Seasonings such as chives, celery salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, or ginger can be added if you and your guests can tolerate them.

In the photo, I have used the cornels from a last-of-the-season ear of sweet corn and left out the greens. This pictured version has a diced chicken breast instead of chicken sausage.

Ingredients:

½ cup wild rice

1 cup brown rice (I used basmati)

1 small pie pumpkin (about 2 pounds)

olive oil

salt and pepper

1 apple, diced

¼ cup cooked chicken sausage or other sausage (optional) (see recipe below)

¼ cup nuts or seeds (optional)

1 teaspoon honey

1 tablespoon cooked cranberries

¼ cup shredded greens such as spinach, radicchio, or baby swiss chard

Directions:

1.     Bring 5 cups of water to a boil. Add ¼ wild rice. Reduce heat to simmer and simmer for 20 minutes. Add 1 cup of brown rice and increase the heat until it boils. Then reduce the heat to maintain the simmer. Simmer the rice until that are tender, about 35 minutes longer. Strain the rice through a fine sieve.

2.     Meanwhile, begin roasting the pumpkin. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Cut the top off of your pumpkin and scoop out the stringy flesh and seeds just as if you are making a jack-o-lantern. The stringy goo doesn’t taste good, but you can reserve the seeds for another use if you are so inclined. Oil the inside of the pumpkin and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Replace the lid and put the pumpkin into a casserole dish in the oven. Bake uncovered for about 40 minutes or until the inside flesh is tender.

3.     Next we will “fry” the rice. Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil on medium high heat in a large skillet. Then add the diced apple and stir occasionally until it is tender. This will take only a couple of minutes. Next add the sausage to reheat it. Last add the drained rice. Stir until it is thoroughly mixed and the rice is slightly oily and toasted, about 5 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. If you are not going to serve this dish the same day you are making it, this is a good place to stop.

4.     Putting the finishing touches on the rice is the next step. If you are using the nuts or seeds, mix them with honey on a baking sheet and sprinkle them with salt. Roast them in the 375 degree oven for just a couple of minutes until they sizzle just a little. If your pumpkin is still cooking, you can cook the nuts or seeds as it finishes. Mix in the shredded greens and cranberries while the rice is still warm and garnish with the nuts or seeds if you are using them.

5.     Put the pumpkin on a platter and put the rice mixture in and around the pumpkin and then serve. People will scoop out some of the pumpkin flesh when they spoon out their rice. This recipe serves 4 generous portions.

Simple Chicken Sausage

Grind a skinless, boneless chicken breast in a food processor or chopper. Stir in one tablespoon good quality honey, one teaspoon salt, and one teaspoon black pepper. You can add a pinch of red pepper flakes if you want it extra spicy. Shape the sausage into links or patties or cook as loose sausage. This sausage is very lean and will typically need to be cooked with a little oil in the pan.

Christina's Doughnuts

Over the years, I’ve gotten very good at adapting recipes for people who have special food concerns. Among my accomplishments are a preservative-free pineapple up-side-down cake and dairy-and-soy-free ice cream, but I am most proud of making doughnuts for my friend Christina who has many food allergies, including soy, dairy, and egg. While my friend—who doesn’t cook at all—watched with amusement, I combined flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in my largest mixing bowl. Then, in a separate bowl, I mixed olive oil, apple sauce and apple juice. While the vegetable oil was getting hot in an iron skillet on the stove, I kneaded the batter until it was firm and then rolled it out on my large wood cutting board dusted with flour. After that, I cut the batter into doughnut shapes by using a fancy glass for the round and a bottle cap for the hole. Christina leaned forward with interest as the dough started to sizzle when I placed it into the hot oil and looked on with delight as I turning each one to achieve a golden brown on each side. Finally, I lifted the doughnuts from the oil, dried them on paper towels, and dusted them with powdered sugar. Tentatively, she selected a doughnut and took a cautious bite. I was very gratified when I saw the look of joy on my friend’s face when she savored a doughnut for the first time.