Chanterelle Mushroom Cornbread Stuffing with Fennel and Parsnip

Chanterelle Mushroom Cornbread Stuffing with Fennel and Parsnip

Dressing is another one of things that everyone A) does differently and B) feels very strongly about when the holidays roll around. It’s a vehicle for ethnicity, for tradition, or for some, simply for gravy. For me, Thanksgiving / Christmas is about the turkey, and the dressing should serve to complement it by including all of the veggies and carbs you should need to round out the rest of the food groups as well as all of the flavors of the season that you can’t cram into a bird. While I’d love to regale you with tales of a grandmother’s secret recipe or something I stumbled upon on a vacation to some fantastic foreign land or domestic hole in the wall, I really just put together a bunch of flavors I like and borrowed the technique from a few different recipes.

I start with a great chicken stock – Ina Garten’s, to be exact. As you may have heard from advanced food snobs – the ones that sneer at the term ‘foodie’ and look down their nose at the Food Network – the Barefoot Contessa is probably the best purely cooking show on the ‘Network. She employs classic techniques and gives helpful shortcuts in plain language – someone you can actually learn from and be entertained by at the same time. However, as you can tell by her elaborately equipped kitchen and pricey ingredients, you sometimes have to make slight adjustments to make things affordable. Rather than whole chickens, I like to use chicken backs to make stock. Talk to a butcher / meat counter attendant and they’ll gladly give you a huge amount of them for very little money. I like to get them from the chicken purveyor at my local farmer’s market – the chickens are naturally raised and end up costing something like $20 for a pretty small bird. But, once the breasts and legs and other meaty parts are hacked away, the backs are left – and can be yours for $3 or so per pound. I make a huge pot full at a time – they’re called stock pots for a reason – and then freeze the end product. Big holiday meals are all about make-ahead shortcuts, and this is no exception. The basic flavors in this chicken stock are some of the foundational elements of French cooking. Onions, celery, and carrots comprise the French holy trinity – the mirepoix. Even if you don’t like one of those three vegetables, if you try chicken soup without one of them, you’ll feel like something is missing. The herbs in Ina’s stock are also classic – thyme, parsley, dill, bay leaf, and sage. Having made a batch of stock to use, I also use the same veggies and herbs in the stuffing.

Chanterelle mushrooms are one of my favorite fancy schmancy mushrooms. They’re the ones at Whole Foods that are yellowish in color right under the staggering $29.99 / lb price sticker. But, fear not – they’re pretty lightweight, so they’re not actually that expensive, especially relative to the ridiculous amount of flavor that they contain. You can roast them dry or sautee them in butter or olive oil, and the aroma that fills your kitchen will convince you of it. They’re in season in the Fall, generally between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Sticking with seasonality for this dressing, parsnip adds a bit more earthy sweetness and fennel adds an oniony licorice flavor that really brings it all together

Ingredients

• 2 medium onions, diced
• 2 ribs of celery, diced
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 1 parsnip, peeled and diced
• 1 fennel bulb, diced
• 1/2 lb of chanterelle mushrooms, cleaned and diced
• 1 1/2 lbs cornbread, cubed and dried (I buy a bag full at the grocery store as a shortcut)
• 1 quart chicken stock (I make it in advance as a shortcut)
• 1 stick of butter
• 1 tablespoon of minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons of fresh sage
• 1 tablespoon of fresh thyme
• 1 tablespoon of fresh parsley
• 1 tablespoon of fresh dill
• 1 bay leaf
• 5 eggs

Method

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. If you’re making this at the same time as you’re roasting a turkey, just keep it at the temperature that you need the oven at for the turkey
• Sautee the onions in a big frying pan or wok using a tablespoon or so of butter and a half cup of chicken stock. Once the onions are translucent, add in the celery and another tablespoon of butter and half cup of stock. Repeat with the fennel, celery, carrots, parsnip, fennel, and mushrooms.  Once everything is in the pan, add the garlic and herbs, reduce heat to low and let simmer while you prepare the pan
• Line a large baking pan with foil – it’ll make cleanup a lot easier. Spray the foil with cooking spray – this will keep the bottom from sticking and burning. Add in the cornbread cubes – they should almost fill the pan, leaving ½ inch or so of space at the top
• Remove the bay leaf from the simmering veggie/mushroom/butter/stock mixture and pour the mixture over the cornbread cubes. Use a wooden spoon to stir and mix it all together. You’ll probably need to add in more stock or water at this point – you want all of the bread to be moist. So, add in a cup of stock and a cup of water and repeat until it’s covered. Use your wooden spoon to press down on the mixture to help with this. Once you’re at this point, cover the pan with foil and stick it in the oven.
• After almost an hour has passed, beat the 5 eggs. You can add in a little milk if that’s how you like your scrambled eggs, which I certainly do. Take the pan of dressing out of the oven and remove the foil. Pour the eggs over the dressing and use a wooden spoon to quickly fold it into the mixture – if you go too slowly, the eggs will cook before having a chance to mix in with the dressing. (I like my dressing to be moist, but if you like yours on the drier side you can add the eggs in when you’re putting everything together before going into the oven.) Put the dressing back into the oven, uncovered, and crank the heat up to 400 degrees. If you’re making this at the same time as the turkey, time it such that you’re taking the turkey out to rest at this point. After half an hour, take the dressing out of the oven and you’re done. The smell alone will make everyone in your house go weak in the knees. It should be perfectly moist and flavorful – make sure everyone tries it WITHOUT gravy first – most of them will probably never let any gravy touch it after that