If my memory serves me correctly, my first encounter with stuffed mushrooms occurred in 1992. My college travel pal Cheryl and I were wandering the streets of Versailles when we both stopped abruptly, attracted by the heavenly scent of something earthy combined with grassy olive oil, garlic and melted cheese.
The door nearest to the aroma source was open. We brazenly poked our heads inside to find two college-aged guys sitting down to a platter of stuffed mushroom caps.
We hadn’t realized we’d traipsed into an apartment and apologized profusely for the unsolicited entry. Instead, they gestured for us to come in and share the fancy feast. We left royally stuffed. I felt like the Queen of Gourmet.
Nearly 30 years later, when I look to impress dinner guests, stuffed dishes still rank highly. They make the menu because they deliver a double dose of pleasure: visual and gustatory.
As we shift into cooler weather and the onset of the holiday season, stuffed appetizers, entrees, sides and sweets offer hearty bites with celebratory looks. Their elegance belies how easily they are accomplished (turducken, aside) and the minimal — often versatile — ingredients needed to whip them up.
Stuffed acorn squash is a fall classic. Fill the cavity with a mix of sausage, mushrooms, apples and herbs — perhaps crown it with breadcrumbs and Parm — and you’ve got a crowd-pleasing, albeit conventional, combination.
Credit: Courtesy of America's Test Kitchen
Credit: Courtesy of America's Test Kitchen
Leave it to the team at America’s Test Kitchen to shake up the stuffed squash ingredients lineup and streamline the process with Bulgur-Stuffed Acorn Squash with Ras el Hanout, a recipe that appears in their recently published “Five Ingredient Dinners: 100+ Fast, Flavorful Meals” ($29.99).
To shave time, the squash first gets zapped in the microwave instead of being roasted in the oven. Fine-ground bulgur made the cut because it doesn’t take long for it to soak prior to cooking. “The goal of this book project was time-saving,” said Dan Zuccarello, ATK’s executive food editor for cookbooks, during a recent phone interview. “If you use a more coarse-ground bulgur, it would take at least 30 minutes.”
Zuccarello noted that this acorn squash recipe can be tweaked to suit the contents of your cupboard. Instead of bulgur, use a different quick-cooking grain such as couscous. Lean on lentils. Or combine the two. Canned lentils — any canned bean, really — promises protein plus flavor in a jiffy, Zuccarello remarked.
“In this book, we relied heavily on rotisserie chicken. You could do shredded cooked chicken, definitely cooked ground beef, lamb or turkey. Plant-based meats, if someone is trying to keep this in the meatless realm — that’s another great option,” Zuccarello said. “Fresh herbs, scallions, cilantro, parsley or mint would go really well here.”
Credit: Samantha Lewis
Credit: Samantha Lewis
Leave stuffed poultry for Turkey Day. In the meantime, don’t overlook the possibilities of stuffed fish. Chef and now cookbook author Chris McDade has a stunner in his newly released “The Magic of Tinned Fish” (Artisan Books, $24.95). Ham-Stuffed Trout with Salsa Verde is a surf-and-turf combo that gets an umami boost from anchovies. “It’s a chef’s secret weapon,” said the Atlanta native, who cooked in Kevin Rathbun’s restaurants, among other local kitchens, before settling for good in New York, where he is chef-partner at Popina in Brooklyn.
“There are definitely (different) ways to stuff fish or use tinned fish to stuff things,” said the king of tinned fish in a phone interview. In the cookbook, McDade provides recipes for deviled eggs with sardines, and bell peppers stuffed with calamari and farro. Off the top of his head, he deemed a smoked oyster and cornbread stuffing ripe for Thanksgiving. For something more adventurous, he suggested an Italian dish with a kitchen hack: make a ravioli filling from tinned crab or lobster.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
For years, Pati Jinich has brought the flavors of Mexico to home cooks in the U.S. with her PBS series “Pati’s Mexican Table.” Her new cookbook, “Treasures of the Mexican Table: Classic Recipes, Local Secrets” (Mariner Books, $35), to be released Nov. 23, features plenty of singular stuffed dishes — pickled chiles rellenos filled with canned tuna, sweet potato tamales stuffed with black beans, chile-masa quesadillas, and beef and potato chimichangas. Each recipe is explained with its sense of place, but the coyotas, caramel-filled pastries, is the one that will melt your heart.
“This is a really traditional dessert from Sonora,” Jinich said in an interview, describing how one neighborhood in the city of Hermosillo has upward of 30 bakeries that specialize in coyotas, which are typically made in wood or brick ovens. “They will ship them as far as Japan. People go crazy for these.”
The origins of the name, which means “female coyote,” are disputed. “There are different legends,” Jinich said. “One I heard: Little kids in the region were called ‘coyotas’ because they would sneak around.”
After making these pastries, which one taste-tester described as akin to a brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart without the frosting, you will want to quietly sneak one before they are gobbled up.
The dough is simple: water, flour, salt, butter. Not all Sonoran bakeries use yeast, but Jinich recommends it. The fat doesn’t have to be butter. Vegetable shortening or lard would be traditional. However, she opts for butter for the flavor and texture. The dough can be mixed with a mixer or your own muscles, and shaped using a rolling pin, tortilla press, or by hand.
The filling calls for piloncillo, a type of raw form of pure cane sugar commonly used in Mexican baking. “It has the unprocessed flavor of Sugar in the Raw that almost tastes lemony,” Jinich described. Dark brown sugar won’t be the same, but it will suffice. You can experiment with other fillings, such as dulce de leche or even Nutella or jam — flecked with nuts or seeds.
However you fill the coyotas, they, like those stuffed mushroom caps I ate back in the early 1990s, will leave you feeling like the Queen (or King) of Gourmet.
Author appearance: From 1-2:30 p.m. Nov. 27, chef Chris McDade will demo recipes from his newly released cookbook, “The Magic of Tinned Fish,” at Eagle Eye Book Shop. Free admission. Signed books available for purchase. 2076 N. Decatur Road, Decatur; 404-486-0307, eagleeyebooks.com.
RECIPES
These stuffed dishes offer filling bites with fancy looks. Each is highly versatile to match the contents of your cupboard.
Credit: Kevin White
Credit: Kevin White
Bulgur-Stuffed Acorn Squash with Ras el Hanout
“Stuffed acorn squash is a great way to get a complete meal in one tidy package and this version doesn’t skimp on flavor with the addition of super savory ras el hanout and bright pomegranate molasses,” writes America’s Test Kitchen deputy food editor Stephanie Pixley in the recipe headnote. “Add to that some browned butter and pine nuts and you’ve got a deeply flavorful Mediterranean-inspired dinner.” Ras el hanout is a Moroccan spice blend. If it’s not in your cabinet, harissa seasoning works fabulously with the squash. But anything that has warm spice tones will suffice. For an added pop of color, flavor and crunch, garnish the broiled squash with pomegranate seeds.
Excerpted from “Five Ingredient Dinners: 100+ Fast, Flavorful Meals” by America’s Test Kitchen. Copyright @ 2021. Reproduced with permission.
Credit: Dana Gallagher
Credit: Dana Gallagher
Ham-Stuffed Trout with Salsa Verde
For extra-flavorful fish, swipe some of the tangy, bright salsa verde on the flesh before stuffing it with the ham slice. Leftover sauce can be paired with roasted chicken or spooned over scrambled eggs.
Excerpted from “The Magic of Tinned Fish” by Chris McDade (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2021.
Credit: Angie Mosier
Credit: Angie Mosier
Caramel-Filled Pastries / Coyotas
“With their light, crispy crust and sweet brown sugar filling, these round pastries, called coyotas, are one of the most loved desserts in the state of Sonora,” writes Pati Jinich in her new cookbook, “Treasures of the Mexican Table.” “The most traditional filling is grated piloncillo (unrefined whole cane sugar) mixed with some flour, which melts into a deep dark caramel as the coyotas bake.” Piloncillo is sold at Mexican and International grocery stories. If the piloncillo is very hard, use a knife to chisel bits off instead of grating it.
For the dough, you can use half vegetable shortening and half butter, or even all shortening. The dough can also be mixed by hand instead of in a mixer.
Excerpted from “Pati Jinich Treasures of the Mexican Table: Classic Recipes, Local Secrets,” copyright © 2021 by Pati Jinich. Photography copyright © 2021 by Angie Mosier. Reproduced by permission of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
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