Apple Cornbread Mushroom Stuffing with Bacon

This year I attended a potluck Thanksgiving. When asked what I wanted to bring, I knew it had to have apples in it. The friends with whom I was staying during my transition back to Berkeley, have a very abundant apple tree in their back yard. We had pots full of recently picked apples. I decided to make an apple cornbread dressing. with ingredients like grains, nuts, meat, vegetables, fruit and herbs, stuffing can be a whole meal by itself.

I went to the internet to get a general idea of ingredients, proportions and steps in stuffing recipes. I noticed a quite a few called for eggs. I guess they help hold the ingredients all together like a soufflé, but that wasn’t the consistency I was looking for.

I decided to use boxed cornbread to cut down on time and because I’ve never been that happy with my homemade cornbread as it always tends to be too dry and somewhat flavorless. I’ve always liked Jiffy box cornbread for the end product and its simplicity, but when I looked at the ingredients this time, I was discouraged. Lots of chemical ingredients I couldn’t pronounce (breaking 2 of Michael Pollen’s food rules) and it has lard in it. I wonder how many vegetarians know that. I was making a portion of the batch for vegetarians so that wouldn’t work out. I decided to give Trader Joe’s cornbread mix a try – it still had unrecognizable ingredients, but not as many, and it is vegetarian. However it turned out way too moist and sweet for a savory, stuffing dish. I ended up drying out the cubes in the oven. Next time I will make my own, dry cornbread!

Cornbread tends to be pretty crumbly, so in order to have some shape in the dish, I included French bread that I got from nearby Acme bakery.

For more inspiration I went to one of the local produce markets, Monterey Market. After being in Philadelphia for four years, I was blown away at how much locally grown produce is available this time of year and how cheap it was. 3 bunches of celery for $1 and organic, spinach for $.69/lb! I like how the market labels every product with its origin, including the state. I was lured by all the varieties of mushrooms and decided to include wild chantrelles from Oregon in my dish.

Here’s a recipe based on what I made (not totally exact as I didn’t take measurements). It serves about 12 – 16 as a side dish

1 box of baked cornbread for an 8x8 pan – cut into cubes and dried out

1 baguette – cut into cubes and dried out.

1.5 onions diced

3 –4 stalks of celery diced

olive oil or butter (or both)

1/2 lb to 3/4 bacon – chopped

1 lb of mushrooms, roughly chopped

white wine to taste

3 to 4 apples – peeled, cored and chopped

1/2 c toasted, slivered almonds

vegetable broth (about 2 cups, but use your discretion, depending on how moist you want your stuffing)

chopped herbs – sage, thyme, parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375. Fry the bacon until cooked. Drain on paper towels and save some of the lard for use later. In a separate pan, sauté the onions in some butter or olive oil until soft, add the celery and apples until soft. Then add the mushrooms, which cook quickly, some white wine floor flavoring, the sage and thyme, and more butter or oil if needed. Cook down until the mushrooms are starting to get soft and tender. In a big pot, put in some of the lard (optional for more flavor) and heat until liquefied. Then add the rest of the cooked ingredients and bacon. Stir in all the bread cubes and mix. Add vegetable broth to moisten the mixture – should be moist but not liquidy. Then add the toasted almonds and chopped parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a glass or ceramic baking dish and bake until crispy – about 30 minutes.

The bacon and lard can be omitted if you want to make a vegetarian option.

The next morning we scrambled some of the leftover stuffing into eggs for breakfast. I guess that’s like adding the eggs I saw in some of the recipes online that I initially was dubious about!