Hot Stuff

Thanksgiving came and went in Singapore last week without so much as a whimper, and if not for the blow-by-blow reports of extreme eating from the usual suspects back in the States, I would have been none the wiser. It is not a holiday we celebrate here, but it is a tradition I have come to appreciate having experienced it several times over the last couple of years. The practice of giving thanks, in particular, is one we all could use a little more of. I know it is not every family that is deliberate about this, but I do think that at the pace we live in these days - it is sometimes difficult remembering to express our gratitude for the small mercies that get us through the day.

Besides, it is not every day that we are permitted, even encouraged, to eat and drink to excess. I spent Thanksgiving at the Salgado household twice and both times the amount of food laid out before us was staggering. Both years we struggled manfully to even make a dent in the spread, and each time we swore never to touch turkey again. Of course, we ate nothing but turkey the next couple of days, and obviously we did it all over again the next year.

I’m not sure if I am expressing a controversial opinion here but I do believe that my favourite traditional Thanksgiving food is the stuffing. I can’t get enough of it, especially the stuffing that has been cooked in the turkey. If done right it is moist and flavoured with the juices of the turkey, yet the faint crunch of the pre-toasted bread is still present, and the aroma of the herbs fills the air. Eating turkey with stuffing elevates it to a different level, because the flavours used in stuffing – typically intense, usually herb-based – are a perfect foil for the lightness of the turkey meat.

The one year that I made stuffing for Thanksgiving, I asked Morgan’s mother to send me her recipe – for Morgan had made it for us once before and I remembered it to be delightful. She duly obliged, with the caveat that she “sounded like a mother” in the recipes. I was later very thankful for this fact, because what sounded like a mother’s words to her was in fact invaluable practical advice that is so often missing in traditional recipes.

There is an art to writing a good recipe that I believe is often overlooked. I don’t use a lot of recipes, but when I do – I don’t particularly care for the amounts and the quantities of the ingredients, or sometimes even the ingredients themselves. I add however much I want to taste, or switch out the ingredients if I want to work with something else. I don’t particularly care for the steps laid out in the recipe either, because most of it is common sense. What I am looking out for in a recipe is information on how the ingredients are going to react to being manipulated, and what to do about it. I want to know what is going to happen when I subject something to heat, with any number of heating methods; or what is going to happen when I leave something out in the open for a period of time. I want to know what to look out for to tell when something is done. In essence, when I look at a recipe I want to understand not how to create the final product, but rather how to work with the ingredients involved to get the best out of them.

I can think of a particular example. When I first started cooking I attempted to work with eggplant one night – and must have read several different recipes I found online, hoping to extract the best out of all of them. I thought I had made a decent fist of the recipes, but the eventual dish was bitter beyond belief, and had an unforgiving texture. I later found out that you were supposed to salt eggplant heavily before even working with them – drawing out their moisture and degorging them of the bitter liquid that is found within their seeds. It made me positively mad that none of the recipes I read had even mentioned this. To me, this is exactly the kind of information that you should include in a recipe.

And so it was that I was thankful for clear, concise and common-sense instructions within Morgan’s family recipe for stuffing. Understanding the recipe not as a series of steps or chronological events, but rather as a field guide to ingredients and the nature of the activities required to transform them – gives any reader a whole hell of a lot more useful information. It gave me the license and confidence to adapt the recipe and fashion it in a direction more aligned with what I wanted to make and eat.

So here it is, my adapted version of Thanksgiving stuffing. Apart from some minor tweaks to the ingredients I have also added a couple more. I put shitake mushrooms in the stuffing because firstly I like the taste, and secondly mushrooms release a lot of water when cooked, and this helps to keep the stuffing from drying out. Also, I include dried cranberries because I think they add an additional texture, and the dried fruit complements the veal very well if you are eating the stuffing by itself as a casserole.

Thanksgiving Veal Stuffing with Cranberries (inspired by Janet Lindgren)

About 10 cups of crusty, country-style white bread, cut into 1/3-inch cubes. [This will make more than you can put in the turkey. Make less or bake the rest in a casserole]
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Tablespoon olive oil
¾ cup finely diced onions
¾ cup finely diced leeks
¾ cup finely diced carrots
¾ cup finely diced celery
1 cup diced shitake mushrooms
3 Tablespoons chopped fresh sage
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
½ cup dry white wine (or stock)
1 pound ground veal
2 slices country bacon, chopped coarsely into bits

½ cup (packed) chopped fresh parsley
1 cup dried cranberries
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup (about) canned chicken broth

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread bread on 2 large rimmed baking sheets. Bake until golden brown, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes.

In a roasting pan, combine onions, leeks, carrots and celery and drizzle with olive oil. Bake in the oven with the bread cubes for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally – until top layer has a golden tinge but is not yet browned.

Melt butter with oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Brown veal and cook through, breaking up with the back of a fork. Remove and set aside. Add bacon and fry until fat is rendered. Add onions, leeks, carrots and celery and sauté about 2 minutes. Add mushrooms and sauté for further 4 minutes. Add sage; sauté 1 minute. Add wine. Boil until wine evaporates, about 1 minute. Add veal back in and cook further for about 2-3 minutes. Cool slightly.

(Bread and veal mixture can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover separately. Store bread at room temperature; refrigerate veal mixture.)

(Some recipes for stuffing call for the bread cubes to be further broken up into crumbs with the use of a food processor. Personally, I like the cubes better.)

Stir veal mixture, parsley and cranberries into bread cubes. Whisk eggs, salt, nutmeg and pepper in medium bowl. Mix into stuffing. If seems too dry add more broth. Will get moister in the bird. Will get drier in a casserole.

(When stuffing the turkey, do not pack it in tightly. Leave about 1/4 of the cavity unfilled; the stuffing will expand as the bird roasts.)