Caramelized Onion, Apple, and Cheddar Sourdough Galette

At the end of the summer I made a DELICIOUS savory sourdough crust tomato, cheddar, and caramelized onion galette for dinner. While eating it I fast-forwarded in my mind to when local apples would be in season because if you swap out those tomatoes for apples, all of the rest of the flavors still go together really well.

With Thanksgiving upon us, I’m thinking a galette makes more sense than a traditional pie this year. It especially makes more sense if you want the taste of a pie but don’t want to make a whole pie just for two or three people. With a galette, you can have a sloppy crust and make a smaller size, a win-win for someone like me who is not particularly good at making a decorative crust and who is having Thanksgiving at home for just the two of us. The galette in this post was meant to be savory, but you can take this idea and fill it with traditional sweet apple pie, cherry pie, etc.

Just like with my tomato “pie” I followed the recipe for the crust and baking instructions from The Perfect Loaf.

First I caramelized some onions in butter. I had an unrolled ball of crust in my freezer from my previous galette that I pulled out and put in my fridge the night before. While the onions caramelized, I brought the dough up to temp and then rolled it out on parchment paper and put it back in the fridge to chill again. I can’t recall which apples I used, but they were local to Colorado. I sliced them really thinly because my intention was not to make a syrupy sweet cinnamon-sugar pie filling that requires cooking down the apples and chilling them before filling your pie. For this dish I wanted the apples to just cook through while the galette cooked.

When it was about time to make dinner, I pulled the crust from the fridge and smeared the caramelized onions in a circle in the center, leaving about 4 inch edges from when you fold that on top. I layered apples and cheddar cheese with a little salt, pepper, and thyme from the garden. Bacon would actually go really well with this I’m just thinking now as I’m typing. Fold the edges up and press them a little to form one solid crust. The Perfect Loaf suggests an egg wash which I did as well as sprinkle a little salt since it was savory.

I served my apple onion cheddar galette with arugula from the garden.

I’m not sure if I’ll make a savory “pie” like this that will taste divine with my caramelized onion gravy that I’ve been making for more than a decade now, or a sweet version for Thanksgiving this year. In one form or another though a galette will be on our small menu.

Fall Succotash, a Unique Thanksgiving Side Dish

There are so many delicious side dishes at Thanksgiving. They really make the meal, in my opinion. As I write this I’m craving cranberry sauce, stuffing, and my caramelized onion gravy smothered all over everything. But, it’s fun to try new dishes and steer away from “traditional” flavors. One new side we’ll be serving this year is a fall succotash.

Succotash is traditionally served with fresh corn and lima beans. Our twist on this classic dish features hominy and edamame.

Hominy, according to Wikipedia,  is produced from dried maize (corn) kernels that have been treated with an alkali, in a process called nixtamalization (nextamalli is the Nahuatl word for “hominy”). It’s essentially big pillowy chewy “corn” with more bite than traditional kernels. You can find it in one of the canned food aisles in most grocery stores.

This dish is very easy to prepare.

Ingredients:

• 1 Butternut Squash, peeled and medium diced
• 1 Yellow Onion, small dice
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 can of Hominy, rinsed and drained
• 1 bag frozen shelled Edamame
• a sprig of Thyme
• 1.5 Cup White Wine
• Lemon
• Olive Oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Paprika

Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan and add the squash, stirring frequently so it doesn’t brown (or burn!).

Add in the onions, garlic, edamame, and thyme and reduce heat to low. Stir occasionally and cook until the squash is tender. Add wine to deglaze the pan and to prevent that squash from burning or browning. We want a vibrant orange in this dish.

Add in the hominy, season with salt, pepper, a little lemon juice, and remove from heat.

Top the dish with a little paprika for pizzazz!

Cranberry Poundcake Bread Pudding

One of my favorite desserts that Sean makes is pound cake. It’s a simple cake that tastes just like childhood to me as I ate Entenmann’s pound cake by the pound whenever my parents bought it. This twist on bread pudding using home made pound cake as the “bread,” though really labor intensive, is a winner. Especially for holiday parties.

There are three main steps:

1- make a pound cake

2- make a cranberry compote

3- make the poundcake bread pudding

I’ll walk you through these three steps.

Pound Cake

Ingredients-

• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 tsp salt

Directions-

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a six cup loaf pan.

In a KitchenAid stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together on a high speed. Add eggs one at a time, vanilla, and salt and mix until well combined. Turn the mixer to low and slowly add the flour until it’s all combined.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for an hour or so until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes before removing it from the pan to cool on a wire rack.

Cranberry Compote

The next step is to make a cranberry compote. Sean added a couple bags of frozen cranberries to a pan on medium heat like you’d start to make a cranberry sauce. He then added a little water, approximately 1/2 cup of sugar,  a handful of frozen strawberries, a handful of frozen blueberries, and some frozen raspberries. This will turn into a sauce if you let it simmer for 30-40 minutes. He added some orange zest at the end.

This part of the recipe can be adjusted to your likes. The addition of sweeter berries allows for a little less sugar and still makes the cranberry sauce really sweet.

The final step is to assemble the bread pudding.

Cut the poundcake up into cubes and let it sit out at room temperature over night to get a little dry.

Cranberry Poundcake Bread Pudding

Ingredients:

• 1 loaf poundcake cut into cubes
• 2 TB melted butter
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• tsp vanilla extract
• 1.5 cups cranberry compote

Preheat oven to 350.

Put the pound cake cubes in a square pyrex baking dish and drizzle melted butter over the top.

In your KitchenAid stand mixer, combine the eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and cranberry compote and mix until well combined. Pour over the pound cake and lightly push down on it with a fork to be sure the bread is covered and soaking it all up. Let this sit on the counter for 45 minutes or so to be sure it has soaked up the mixture before baking for 45 minutes and has cooked through.

Chef Sean served food to Opera on Tap Colorado at Upslope Brewing Company, and he served this dessert paired with their Christmas Ale. Smear a little extra compote on the plate and a dollop on top and shove a fork in it!

Enjoy!

Chipotle Roasted Fall Vegetables

So summer is over, but that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t amazing local produce to cook up. A few things I love doing this time of year, especially when the temperature drops down, is roasting what I can still get from the farmers market. One of my favorites is combining root vegetables with the slightly spicy chipotle pepper. There is something about the earthiness of root vegetables and the smoked flavor that chipotles bring that are a match made in heaven. Turnips and rutabagas work best for this but a few other choice fall veggies help to round out the side dish. This dish compliments most proteins, especially turkey which of course is going to be on everyone’s plate in a few weeks!

ROASTED FALL VEGTABLES WITH CHIPOTLE

1 Medium Turnip

1 Medium Rutabaga

1 Large Parsnip

2 Large Carrots

1 Large Yellow Onion

1 Can of Chipotle in Adobo Sauce

Set oven to 375. Peel and dice the root vegetables. I like to leave them a little chunky but as long as they’re uniformly cut they should roast up just fine. Next, toss the vegetables in a high heat cooking oil. You want enough oil to coat them but not to much where they get soggy. Then, and this is where the recipe can be changed depending on your affinity for spicy foods, toss the vegetables with at least 2 chipotle peppers and about a tablespoon of the adobo sauce. Don’t worry if you think you’ve added to much, once the natural starches in the veggies convert to sugars while roasting in the oven it will taste delicious. And if you like things with some heat, add in a couple more peppers and sauce. Give a quick toss with some salt and spread out on a baking sheet. Bake until fork tender, about 30 minutes, mixing occasionally.

I also roasted a Kabocha Squash seasoned with Black Dust Coffee & Spice Rub from Savory Spice Shop.

These two together make for a unique Thanksgiving side dish.