Friday, November 25, 2011

Dressing of Mythic Proportions


My grandmothers were great cooks. Meema was the grand dame of all things sweet, notably her pecan pie and fudge were all-time family favorites. She made notations on the recipes she'd based her recipes from. Another one of her special talents was writing things down.
Nana, on the other hand did not.  However, she made superb Saturday dinners, replete with china, gold silverware and dried flower arrangements. I remember she made the best vegetable soup I ever tasted, the best chocolate cake, the best dumplings, and the best dressing. However, Nana didn't write down her recipes. And by the time I was old enough to care about cooking or even recording family history, Nana was very, very old and simply couldn't remember. Ever since, we've been going off memory. I've found a cake recipe that I think is very similar to hers. We're still working on the dumplings. Meema, again to her credit, managed to get a bit of Nana's dressing recipe written down.

I decided to give it my best shot this Thanksgiving and recreate her dressing based on Meema's notes.


Here's what I came up with:

Ingredients:
5 chicken backs
1/4 lb ground pork
1/4 lb ground beef

2 cups onion
2 cups celery
1/2 cup chopped fresh sage
One loaf white bread cubed and toasted
Approximately 3 TBLSP bacon grease or grease from frying 6 strips of bacon
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Brown chicken backs. Reserve fat in skillet then put chicken backs in a large pot, cover with water, bring to boil. Saute onions and celery in bacon grease and reserved chicken back fat. 

Add ground meats, sage, salt and pepper. Cook til done.

Remove chicken backs from water and reserve the stock you've just made. Remove as much meat as you can from the chicken backs and add to your onion/meat mixture.  

Put this mixture into a large bowl and add your bread cubes.
Measure out 4 cups of the reserved water (stock) and add to mixture. Stir well and put in 13x9 pan. 


Bake at 375 degrees until browned and crunchy on top.

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