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As the Christmas meal often stems around a bone in, spiral ham (which I love), I decided to surprise the family with something new. I wanted them to experience a whole new dish, and something that is elegant in its own right. The porchetta.  Days prior to the holiday feast, I began preparing the porchetta. A bit labor intensive, and time consuming, the end result is nothing but spectacular.

Lets get started.

Ingredients: [Print this Recipe]

• 11 lb pork belly, thick skin in tact
• 6 sprigs of fresh rosemary, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of sage, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of fresh thyme, chopped
• 2 tbsp toasted fennel, ground
• 3 tbsp salt
• 2 tbsp cracked black pepper
• 2 heads of garlic, minced
• olive oil
• 15 slices of pancetta, thinly sliced
• 4 lb pork shoulder, butter flied
• Additional Salt, pepper, chopped rosemary, thyme, sage
• 3 large carrots
• 3 celery ribs
• 3 cups of chicken stock
• butcher’s twine

Begin by cutting the meat side of the pork belly into crisscross incisions being careful not to cut through the skin. Do this for the whole pork belly.

Add the minced garlic, and herbs to a bowl. Drizzle enough olive oil until it just becomes wet. Set aside.

Generously season the pork belly with salt and pepper. Take the garlic and herb mixture and begin massaging it into the pork belly, making sure you get into all of the scoring of the meat. Roll, and securely wrap it in plastic wrap. Place this in the refrigerator for 3 days.

To the pork shoulder, season with some salt, pepper, and the additional herbs, just enough to lightly coat. Lay down the pancetta on a flat surface, making it a blanket for your pork shoulder. Add the shoulder to the pancetta, and carefully roll into place. Place in a large plastic bag, seal, and refrigerate for 3 days.

When you are ready to prepare the porchetta, take the shoulder and belly from the refrigerator and let them come to room temperature. Unroll the pork belly. To the top of the pork belly, add the pork shoulder, making sure everything is nice and snug. Roll the porchetta, lengthwise, into a roll. Take your kitchen twine and begin securing the porchetta.

Now what you end up with is a pretty darn long pork roll. My guess is that it will be too long for your roasting pan, so what I did is simply cut the porchetta in half and roasting them in two separate roasting pans. With that said, to the bottom of your roasting pan, add the carrots and the celery stalks, laying the porchetta, skin side up, on top of the vegetables. Drizzle a bit of olive oil onto the skin and massage it all over the skin. Season with a bit more salt.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Lay your roasting pan in the preheated oven, and cook for roughly 45 minutes. Take in the smell, it’s amazing. After this time, begin basting the top of the skin with the pan juices every 30-40 minutes.

Your total cook time for the porchetta will be roughly 4 hours.  After this time, remove the porchetta from the oven and onto your cutting board. Let this rest for about 20 minutes so that all of the juices distribute throughout the porchetta.

Remove the butcher’s twine and discard. With a serrated knife, or better yet if you have an electric knife, begin slicing through the crisp pork skin, then through the succulent pork. Cut into rounds if you can. Plate on a large serving dish for your guests.

A layer of crisp pork fat, then a wonderful blend of herbs and pancetta, followed by succulent pork shoulder, every bite is succulent and extremely delicious. This porchetta was the perfect meal to serve lots of people, inexpensive compared to most other holiday meals, and I had plenty of leftovers for some really killer sandwiches.

Probably not the best name for this open-faced sandwich, but when you make it,  you will understand when it comes out from the broiler, hot and bubbly. The sandwich has been around since the 1920′s and was invented in Louisville, Kentucky at the Brown Hotel, a hotel which still exists to this day, as does the sandwich.

I have been wanting to make this sandwich for some time now, and with the passing Thanksgiving holiday, I figured this would be the prime opportunity to make the sandwich. Boy, am I ever glad that I did!

The sandwich is simple, yet divine. It is a sandwich unlike most other sandwiches, not just because it resides on thick Texas toast, or possibly the fact that it is smothered in a mornay sauce, but it also had the wonderful thick sliced tomatoes, and oh yeah, topped with smokey bacon!

Enough said. Let’s get started.

Serves 2

Ingredients for the Mornay Sauce:

• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp all purpose flour
• 1/8 tsp grated nutmeg
• 2 cups of heavy cream
• salt
• pepper
• 1/4 cup of Pecorino Romano cheese, grated

Begin by melting the butter in a sauce pan. Once melted and it begins to bubble, add in the flour. Stir to mix all of the ingredients, and continue to stir for a few minutes, until you have a nice golden brown. Just be careful not to burn it. Slowly add in the cream, and begin whisking at a slow pace. Continue to whisk until the sauce begins to thicken and the flour mixture is nice and smooth.

Remove it from the heat, add in the cheese, the nutmeg, and season with salt and pepper, to taste.  Set this aside.

Ingredients for the Hot Brown Sandwich:

• 4 slices of Texas toast bread, crusts trimmed
• 1 cup of roasted turkey
• 1 large tomato, cut into 1 inch slices
• 4 slices of cooked bacon
• Reserved bacon fat, optional
• Pecorino Romano Cheese, grated
• Flat leaf parsley, chopped, optional

Preheat your broiler to 450 degrees.

To an oven proof serving plate, add the slices of bread, and lightly brush with some of the bacon fat on both sides. Place into the broiler oven for a few minutes to lightly toast, then remove the plate from the oven.

Stack two slices of the bread onto individual, oven safe plates. I used a cast iron, fajita-style plate for this sandwich. To each sandwich, top with the roasted turkey, then two slices of tomato, then coat the sandwich with the mornay sauce. Sprinkle with some pecorino romano cheese. Place back into the broiler oven for about 5-7 minutes, or until the cheese is really bubbly and begins to turn brown in some areas.

Remove from the oven, top each sandwich with two slices of bacon, and shower the sandwich with chopped parsley.

Cutting into this open faced sandwich is something beyond words. A bit rich from the cheese sauce, sure. But the combination of the bread that soaks up the mornay sauce, along with the subtle sweetness and acidity from the tomato, and then there is the warmed turkey with the bacon, and when all said and done, it is nothing but pure heaven in a bite.  So if you never get to Kentucky, at least you can make one of these Hot Brown sandwiches! Hope you enjoy.

My wife, on the other hand, would frequent there to buy a bag of pumpkin ‘muffies’ for the kids. That was her treat to them, and did they ever love them. They were called ‘muffies’ because they were only the tops of the muffins. As the restaurant is no longer the Atlanta Bread Company, but a restaurant known as Portabellas, the ‘muffie’ tops no longer exist. With the abundance of pumpkin pie filling around the grocery stores this past Halloween season, I thought I would at least make my attempt on making them a full blow pumpkin muffin, and one that would hopefully bring back their memories of the muffin top. I think I accomplished just that.

Ingredients: [Print this Recipe]

• 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/3 cup of vegetable oil
• 2 whole eggs, room temperature
• 15 oz canned pumpkin
• 1 1/4 cups of sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• Additional sugar for topping
• Muffin pan liners
• Powdered sugar

Begin by preheating your oven to 350 degrees.

In the meantime, add the canned pumpkin, eggs, oil, sugar, baking soda and salt to a large bowl. Whisk the mixture until it is nice and smooth.

Mix the cinnamon, and about a tablespoon of additional sugar to a small bowl.

To another bowl, mix the flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix your dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until you have formed a nice, smooth batter.

Line your muffin tray with the muffin tins, and begin to ladle or pour in the muffin mixture, only about 3/4 of the way full. Sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar mixture on top. Place the muffin pan into the oven and cook for about 30 minutes. Test for doneness by inserting a knife into the middle of a muffin, and if the knife pulls away clean, with no mixture on it, your muffins are done.

Remove the muffin pan from the oven, an remove the muffins from the pan, letting them cool on a rack, or plate for about 5-10 minutes before serving.

To serve, add a muffin to a plate and shower with powdered sugar.

The end result is nothing but an awesome, and quick pumpkin muffin. Watching the kids eat these, I could tell that they had the same excitement as the day my wife would bring home a bag of muffin tops.

Reflecting on why the business is doing so bad now, my recommendation would be to possibly refocus, do some better marketing, and maybe bring back those muffin tops. But, hey, why bother I suppose, when you can get the same experience by making them at home. Hope you enjoy.

Thanksgiving is one of those holidays where I love to cook. I love whatever stresses attempt to come my way, and more importantly I love coming up with new recipe ideas that will get some family members questioning. Questions like is this homemade green bean casserole? Is that sweet potatoes in the mashed potatoes? With those questions aside, I think the most I like about Thanksgiving, is the day after. The day where we wake up and think about those mashed potatoes for breakfast, along with little nibbles of turkey, that, and everything in between. But this is also the day where I begin to come up with new ideas, such as Thanksgiving Day Eggrolls.

So, here are a few ideas to get you started, either in planning a dish to bring to the Thanskgiving Day table, or the days following the big holiday. Everyone have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Day Eggrolls

Cranberry Sauce

Prosciutto and Cedar Wrapped Asparagus Bundles

Mini Pot Pies

Turkey Tetrazzini

Cheesy Potatoes

Brussel Sprouts with a Balsamic Reduction

Enjoy everyone!

When I came home, she still had that same excitement. I also grew with excitement. Not due to the fact that I had to do much of the work, but due to the fact that I would soon have pumpkin seeds to roast. As soon as I carved off the top of the pumpkin, my daughter got right in there, extracting all of the flesh, and separating the seeds. She is one who does not mind the slimy interior of the pumpkin. As she was doing this, my boys interest grew in carving their pumpkins, and we got started on them as well. The funny thing is they wanted nothing to do with putting their hands into the slimy interior, and shortly bailed on the project. But my daughter kept at it, gutting all three pumpkins.

As I normally make savory pumpkin seeds, I decided this time around to go with a movie theater style pumpkin seed, and wow, am I glad I took this approach.

Let’s get started.

Ingredients: [Print this Recipe]

• 2 cups of pumpkin seeds, cleaned
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• 1 1/2 tsp salt

That’s it. Three simple ingredients.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Get started by laying the cleaned seeds onto a large roasting pan, spreading them out. You can let these sit overnight to dry, or you can pat them dry with some toweling. Once dry, add them to a large bowl.  Add in the melted butter, and salt and mix really well.

Add the seeds back to the roasting pan, spreading them out once again and place in the preheated oven. Roast for 30 minutes, stirring about 15 minutes in. Remove them from the oven and serve.

These seeds were so addicting that they had my entire family coming back to them like every few minutes. I am not kidding. They were that awesome.

Sure, I made the turkey pot pie. I’m not shamed by that. My wife, and other relatives, simply love the comfort of a great turkey pot pie, and who should blame them? The turkey pot pie is a classic, and depending on how you make it, it can be super yummy. But…

I wanted to do something a bit different this time around, and I almost felt guilty as my wife had already made her plate of leftovers the morning after. This is a tradition for most of us, and there is truly something special about the day after Thanksgiving. To us, it is not waking up early to perform the “Black Friday” madness, but instead sleeping in, and dreaming of a small plate of Thanksgiving day leftovers. This year, it was thinking of making a Thanksgiving egg roll, and holy moly, I am so glad I made an attempt at this one.

Ingredients:

• Your favorite egg roll wrappers, I like Spring Home spring roll wrappers
• Mashed potatoes, warmed
• Thanksgiving turkey, diced into pieces
• Turkey gravy
• 2 cups of canola oil
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tsp water

Begin by adding the oil to a medium pot, and warming on medium-high heat. During this time, take a few of the spring roll wrappers, and separate them. Beat the egg with the water.

Spread about 3 tablespoons of the mashed potato along the back edge of the spring roll wrapper. Add about 2 tbsp of the diced turkey, and begin to roll. Roll until you have 2 inches of the wrapper remaining. Brush with egg wash, fold over the sides, and continue to roll, sealing the egg roll. Repeat with however many egg rolls you want to make.

Add the egg rolls into the hot oil, making sure they are tightly sealed. Cook for about 3 minutes, then using tongs, spin them a bit, making sure you cook the other side. Remove them from the oil, and let the drain on a lined strainer with paper towel. Repeat with any remaining egg rolls.

As they drain any access oil, warm up your gravy in a pot on the stove top, or in a microwave, until it is nice and hot. Stir well.

Slice the egg roll on a diagonal, and serve with the gravy.

When I bit into these, I was blow away. Dipping them into the gravy was on a whole other level, and this made for probably one of the best Thanksgiving leftover dishes I have ever made. Other ideas is to toss in some dressing, or stuffing to pick it up another level. My attempt at trying one with the cranberry sauce, failed, as the wrapper did not want to hold the sauce itself. Regardless, you can get as creative as you want. The intent is to enjoy, and turn on the family the next day. This one is sure to please.

My wife surprised me a few years back with a bowl of cranberry sauce. She asked me to go to the store and pick up cans of cranberry sauce (yes, cans), mandarin oranges, and walnuts. She presented the dish at the table, and it was very good. That day, I never understood what she loved about cranberry sauce, especially from a can, but this is the day where you really start to understand what your family members enjoy, right? My father-in-law still loves the classic green bean casserole, my grandma-in-law was extremely aggressive about getting the turkey wing, and my mother-in-law simply loves a great salad.

So understanding that my wife loves the cranberry sauce, I figured I would twist it up a bit, and show her how you can rid of the canned cranberry sauce, and do it yourself. This super simple cranberry sauce is packed with fresh ingredients, making it something wonderful for the Thanksgiving table.

Ingredients:

• 12 oz bag of fresh cranberries
• 1/4 cup of fresh blueberries
• 1/4 cup of fresh raspberries
• 1 cup of water
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 lime, zest only

Begin by picking over your cranberries, removing any wilted or damaged ones. Rinse them to clean them off, along with the berries, and place in a sauce pan, with one cup of water and sugar. Bring to a simmer, then with a potato masher, lightly mash. You want some texture with the sauce, so don’t even consider mashing them like your creamy mashed potatoes.

Remove from the heat and let the mixture cool to room temperature. Add your lemon zest, mix, and place in the refrigerator, allowing for the sauce to thicken.

Packed with a great mixture of tartness and sweetness from the berries, this one will not only surprise your guests, but it will surprise you as well. Great the day of, but even better the following day (my favorite as well) for leftovers.

You might have seen my scalloped potatoes recipe before, and obviously this recipe is similar to that, but packed with a few extra goodies. This takes a bit of prep work, but well worth it, and is a perfect side dish to a holiday dinner.

Ingredients:

• 5 whole yukon gold potatoes, cleaned, and sliced very thin
• 10 slices of good bacon, cooked and crumbled, bacon grease reserved
• 3 large onions, thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• splash of worcestershire sauce
• 3 scallions, thinly sliced
• 1/2 tsp salt, pinches for each layer
• 1/2 tsp black pepper, pinches for each layer
• 1/2 cup of roasted red bell peppers
• 1/2 cup of half and half
• 1 cup of Monterey jack cheese
• 1/2 shaved parmesan cheese
• 4 sandwich size slices of colby jack
• pinch of red chili flakes
• cooking spray

Begin preparing all of your ingredients. Slowly cook the bacon. Once the bacon is cooked, remove from the pan, let them drain on some paper towel, then crumble. Next, toss your onions into a bacon skillet with the butter and continue to cook on medium heat, cooking for nearly 35-40 minutes. Be careful not to burn the onions, so stir every 5 minutes or so. Towards the end, toss in the garlic, and the worcestershire sauce. Mix well.

During this time, slice your potatoes really thin. Spray a bit of cooking spray on your baking dish, or gratin pan if you have something of that sort. Get your cheeses ready as well.

Once the onions are caramelized, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Now is the time to begin layering your gratin. Add a layer of potatoes to the bottom of the pan, season with a bit of salt and pepper, then top with some of the crumbled bacon, the monterey jack and parmesan cheeses, some of the caramelized onions, as well as some of the roasted bell pepper. Repeat this process two more times. Pour the half and half around the perimeter of the dish, shower the top with the green onions, then top with the colby jack cheese, and sprinkle a pinch of red pepper flakes on top. Cover with aluminum foil, and bake in the oven for 40 minutes.

After the 40 minutes, remove the foil, and cook for another 40 minutes, uncovered. This will help get things nice and golden and melt the cheeses in all of the right places, building up another layer of flavor.

Remove, and let cool for about 10 minutes before slicing into it.

This caramelized onion and bacon gratin knocks it out of the park. Really rich, and really comforting, this is a great side for any meal. Hope you enjoy.

So I went home feeling excited, not just about the proscuitto, but about all of the other fresh items I had purchased, and as I looked at all of the stuff, I grew hungry and wanted to make something with the prosciutto.  At first I thought of some sort of pannini, but then I noticed some cedar wraps that I had purchased on Woot.  A perfect, and fresh idea I had was to make cedar wrapped asparagus bundles, then wrap them with the thinly sliced prosciutto. These things were not only super easy to make, but they were delicious to boot. Let’s get started.

Ingredients:

• 6 asparagus shoots, per bundle, cleaned and trimmed
• 1 thinly sliced piece of prosciutto, per bundle
• 1 cedar wrap, soaked in water, per bundle
• olive oil, drizzle
• salt
• cracked black pepper

Begin by soaking your cedar wraps in water, for at least 20 minutes. During this time, clean and trim your asparagus. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. On a baking sheet, add a cedar wrap, place six pieces of asparagus onto the wrap, season with a bit of salt and pepper, and drizzle with a bit of olive oil. Fold over the wrap, making sure the fold is on the bottom. You could also secure the wrap if you wanted to with some cooking string. Repeat if you are making more asparagus bundles.

Cook in the oven for about 12 minutes or until the asparagus is just becoming tender. Carefully unwrap. Lay a piece of prosciutto onto a serving plate, lay the asparagus on top of the prosciutto, fold over, and drizzle with a bit more olive oil. Now dig in. Not only does this make a wonderful presentation, but you get a bit of the smokiness from the cedar wrap, and a wonderful aroma and flavor from the prosciutto. Hope you enjoy.

The real deal came down to how I was going to cook this turkey breast. Smoked or oven roast? I decided to go with oven roasting the turkey, and using it for lunches throughout the week. This only lasted a couple of days in lunches, so I knew what was bound to happen if I did not do something with the turkey, and that my wife would probably just let it sit in the deli drawer in the refrigerator, and it would go bad. So, this is where I came into action and decided to do some turkey pot pies, however, make them much smaller, and much more presentable.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups of cooked turkey breast, cut into cubes
• 2 sheets of pie crust
• 4 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 2 celery stalks, cleaned, and thinly diced
• 2 carrots, cleaned, skinned, and thinly diced
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 cup of chicken stock
• 1 tsp of dried thyme
• 1/4 cup dry sherry
• 1/2 cup frozen green peas
• 1 tbsp fresh flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 egg, beaten, for brushing on top of the pie crust
• Ramekins

Now don’t get me wrong here, but I typically like to make my own pie crust, however I was in a rush, and needed to provide something quick for dinner for the family, and hence why I resorted to store bought pie crust.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Gently roll out the pie crust and lightly flour them. Take a ramekin, and press into the dough, gently cutting into it. Repeat this process with both sheets of dough until you have 12 dough circles for your 6 ramekins. Lightly butter the inside of each ramekin, and take a dough circle, and place inside of each ramekin, pressing inside to form the shape of the ramekin.Reserve the remaining 6 dough circles.

Place the ramekins on a baking sheet, and place in the oven for 8 minutes. Remove them after the eight minutes.  Let them cool.

Now for the filling. To a large pot, add the butter, and slowly melt. Next, add in your onions, celery, and carrot and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring on occasion. Add in your flour, and stir, cooking for another couple of minutes. Whisk in your milk and continue to whisk until smooth. Stir in the chicken stock, and sherry. Bring the heat to low, and cook down for another 10 minutes. You will notice the sauce begin to thicken. This is what you are going after. Next, stir in the thyme, parsley, peas, turkey, and season with salt and pepper. You will want to taste this a couple of times, getting your salt and pepper right on point before adding the mixture into the ramekins.

Fill each ramekin to the top with the mixture. Top each ramekin with a dough circle, making sure it is just a bit longer than the top of each ramekin. Seal the top of each ramekin by gently pinching around the edges. Brush the beaten egg onto the top of each ramekin, and sprinkle with kosher salt.

Place these back in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until they are a nice golden brown.

Plate and serve. These are such a better way to present turkey pot pie. The end result is still super comforting, and you don’t feel as guilty having another serving. Enjoy.