11 December 2012

Apricot, cranberry, and walnut stuffing for poultry

I'm still busy most days digitizing our collection of music CDs. I'm using iTunes for Windows, and it's going well. It has taken me some time to figure out how it all works, and the task is complicated because I want to have copies of the whole collection on two different computers — mostly as backups of each other, in case I mess up and delete something, or have a hard disk failure. I don't want to have to start over.

So far I have nearly 5,000 songs in the database, which takes up nearly 25 GB of disk space on each computer. I'm about two-thirds of the way through, I think.

Meanwhile, here's the recipe for that bread stuffing with dried fruit and walnuts that I made on Sunday. It's good, and Christmas is coming.

Apricot, Cranberry, and Walnut Stuffing
1 lb. (450 g) cubed white bread
1 cup dried apricots, chopped
½ cup dried cranberries
1½ cups walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
1 tsp. dried thyme
2 tsp. orange zest
1½ sticks melted butter (6 oz. or 180 g)
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 onions, chopped
6 oz. (180 g) cubed smoked pork or ham
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups (500 ml) chicken or vegetable broth
Salt and pepper

Spread the bread cubes on a baking sheet and cook them in a 350ºF (180ºC) oven until lightly browned. Transfer bread cubes to a large bowl, combined with the dried fruit, orange zest, toasted walnuts, and thyme.

Heat 4 Tbsp. butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the celery, onions, and pork or ham. Cook, stirring, until lightly browned. Stir in the rest of the butter and let it melt.

Mix the celery, onion, and ham mixture and melted butter with into the bowl with the bread and fruit. Mix well. Stir in the beaten eggs and moisten the mixture with the broth. Season with salt and pepper and stir it all up well.

Transfer the stuffing to a baking dish. Cover with foil and bake at 350ºF (180ºC) for 40 minutes. Uncover, increase heat to 400°F (200ºC) and bake until browned, 8–10 minutes longer.

You could use other kinds of dried fruit (raisins, apples, prunes) or nuts. A U.S. cup, for those who aren't American, is 8 fluid ounces or 250 ml, by the way. This stuffing would be good with roast pork as well, but you might want to leave out the ham. The picture above shows the stuffing before it's baked. Yesterday I posted a picture of it all cooked and being served at the table.

9 comments:

  1. Thanks for this delicious looking recipe Ken. I will be trying it out the next time I make stuffing.

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  2. We're having roast pork for Christmas day dinner, I think. We're going to make a batch of stuffing to go with it. Ours had cornbread, dried cranberries, chopped apples, onions, and celery, with the broth, butter, salt, and pepper of yours. We wondered about adding nuts-- do you think it adds a little something special? (Oh, yeah, sage sausage was in there, too.)

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  3. Judy, can you find chestnuts in
    St. Louis? They only appear every
    few years here in our Texas market.
    Bet they'd be good with pork, but
    then, I think they're good with
    just about anything.

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  4. Are the dried fruits you buy in France dried without sulphur?

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  5. It looks really good! Ken, do you and Walt have an iPod (iTouch)?

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  6. That stuffing looks delicious!

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  7. judy, put pecans in it if you can.

    carolyn, i do not know about the sulphur.

    nadege, no ipod or anything like that except my archos internet radio/tablet, which i am using to type this.

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  8. starman, it is delicious. it needs a good quantity of broth to make it moist and tender.

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  9. I hope you've got a backup plan for all that data, Ken! You wouldn't want to lose it after all that work.

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