My favorite holiday! But there's a challenging twist to celebrating here in Switzerland. Mostly that there is no such holiday, and trying to make a feast after you get home from a long day of work is tough. Even so, I was really pleased with the results of a very quick version of a Thanksgiving meal this year!
... with no meat on hand at first, I started off doing two dishes I ritually MUST do for T-day-- cranberry-marshmellow dessert salad, and green bean cascerole--so for the latter I steamed the beans, sauteed some onions and mushrooms, added it to some mushroom soup made 2x as thick (soups come here in powdered packages), so you cook it up with about half as much water as it calls for to make the equivalent of a canned mushroom soup. And they have something similar to the traditional fried onion topping for it, to top that off.
Then I made some mushrooms stuffed with chopped onion, bell pepper, and some sauteed diced chicken sausage, and seasoned with oregano, s&p, and Worcestershire sauce.
I had some things to make a stuffing, which then worked out well when I brought home the bacon... I mean, some chicken breasts. So then I had some bird to work with for the dinner. So I diced some olive bread into cubes, sauteed some onions and celery together with some more of the diced chicken sausage until they were medium-cooked, and mixed those with grated celery root, chopped red bell pepper, one diced tomato, and the remainder of the mushroom soup I didn't use for the green bean cascerole. Then I cut the chicken breasts into long flat filets, quickly seared them in a pan on one side to get a nice color:
then took them out, and put some olive oil in the bottom, added the cubed bread, then the stuffing mixture over that, and then the chicken filets on top of that golden side up, then baked it in the pan the rest of the way, for another 30 min or so at 200 C, which I think worked out really well to stil get the chicken drippings down into the stuffing and merry the flavors nicely.
So overall I was pleased with having a 4-dish T-day :) (the cranberry dessert was still in the freezer then, and another favorite treat I got at the grocery is on the table-- "Quark Stollen" which is a dessert bread, lightly sweet with a sweetened quark swirl running through some soft bread.
Mmm.... I will definitely make the chicken and stuffing in this way again-- I was really glad that turned out okay!
Oh! And then also the cranberry dessert salad. I made that quickly by grating (in my food processor) 3 tart apples, and a package of fresh cranberries, then put those in a bowl, add some lemon juice and a good helping of sugar. Then, either use mini-marshmellows, or I had large ones, so I diced them even smaller than the mini ones, and you mix those in. Then beat some whipping cream until fluffy and stiff, and fold that into the whole mix. Then it's really best if it stays in the refrigerator for the whole day before eating, and teh marshmellows soak up the fruit juices and the whole thing turns a lovely creamy pink. Actually, I usually also freeze it, and then let it de-frost for many hours in the fridge or outside for an hour or two before eating it.. Something about having it pretty cold, like a soft cranberry-marshmellow ice cream, pleases me, though I remember the rest of my family liked it without any remaining essence of being frozen.
Only magic ingredient is a nice seasoning salt. I make this one, which has been a family favorite seasoning salt for decades:
I recently found in the classic awesome book "The Joy of Cooking" that they actually have a recipe for making Spätzli, which I tried out twice. The basic recipe for Spätzli is just:
then took them out, and put some olive oil in the bottom, added the cubed bread, then the stuffing mixture over that, and then the chicken filets on top of that golden side up, then baked it in the pan the rest of the way, for another 30 min or so at 200 C, which I think worked out really well to stil get the chicken drippings down into the stuffing and merry the flavors nicely.
This ended up being a pretty tasty fish-marinade: Lime juice, soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, garlic, ginger, and some spicy satay seasoning. I let it all soak in for the day, and that evening made some unusual-style fish tacos with them, including a garlic-aioli sauce, cabbage, and a mango-pineapple pico de gallo.
I didn't have any tortillas, so I quickly made some thin whole wheat pitabread to use instead... but fresh tortillas would have been a lot better... I should try to make my own tortilla sometime and see how that goes! Better than buying the one brand of odd-tasting ones offered in the grocery store! There's definitely room in the market here for some *good* Mexican food and ingredients!
Result--- pretty pleased overall! BUT there was one serious set-back to this particular rendition of the dish. In my original on-the-train conception, I was planning to use a large kohlrabi as the steamed-vegetable to serve as teh risotto bowl, cause I love the gentle water-rich flavor of kohlrabi. .. unfortunately the organic kohlrabi in the grocery were 4 bucks per piece, while the turnips were 1 buck.... so I spared the ingredient! But that turned out to be an issue, because the steamed turnips retained a lot of bitter flavor, even when peeled, so it wasn't so pleasant to have the edible bowl afterall. Lesson learned-- the kohlrabi is still worth it! ... or I would need to cook the turnips in a different way which perhaps would improve their flavor and remove that bitterness.
This was the first one of them I made, in which I spread some herb & garlic cream cheese, and also used a dried cured turkey meat also on the inside, but I found that the flavor of that was too strong against the more subtle flavor of the fish, so I would need to use a less potent meat to pair to it in the future. But the broccoli-stuffed potato skins (on the right) topped with turkey bacon bits and gruyere were awesome! :)
