Despite what many people envisage when they hear what my job is (which I don’t really like telling people about as it pretty much always makes the conversation a bit awkward), it is primarily anticipating big food occasions and eating reheated leftovers for days on end. Sometimes I cook so many festive dishes ahead of time that when the actual occasion comes around and everyone is tingling with anticipation, it feels a bit like groundhog day to me.
The US is celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow and even though we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here, I do love the flavours and the challenge of creating Thanksgiving-appropriate dishes, plus so many of them double up as Xmas dishes anyway so it’s killing two birds with one stone (so to speak) although I realise how incongruous that sounds. I am also truly overjoyed seeing how many people are moving away from traditional Thanksgiving dishes towards kinder (and healthier) plant-based ones and knowing that my blog is playing a part in this social change is something I really treasure. It motivates me to keep on pushing myself to make my recipes even better each year. Today’s recipe is a simple yet delicious Thanksgiving and Xmas staple – stuffing – except that we won’t be stuffing it into a dead bird for a change, but we will be stuffing our faces with it as it’s really delicious, delightfully meaty (without meat), full of umami and texture. As I’ve always been a massive mushroom fan, I’ve decided to rope a selection of mushrooms into my stuffing to deepen the flavours, introduce an array of textures and produce perfectly moist (without being soggy) stuffing. I love how the mushrooms work together with shallots, tons of garlic (I loooove garlic), white wine and a bunch of hardy winter herbs: sage, thyme and rosemary. All these flavours sing in unison and truly make this dish special. They transform it from a boring side dish into more of a main event. I hope you’ll agree and will want to include this dish on your festive table every year from now on.
My dish is inspired by this recipe and that recipe.
