Holiday Side Dish: Butternut squash with pear, pecans & blue cheese

Here's Kirsten's delicious side dish!

For the side dish, I slightly adapted a recipe I found on Pinterest by adding pear. It just seemed like it needed a little something extra! This recipe comes together really quickly, especially if you prep the squash in advance. Enjoy & happy holidays!

Butternut squash with pear, pecans & blue cheese

(adapted from Nigella Express)

serves 6-8

4 1/2 cups butternut squash

4 pears

2 tablespoons olive oil

6 stalks fresh thyme

1 cup pecans

1 cup blue cheese

1. Preheat oven 425° F

2. Peel the squash, cut it half and scoop out the seeds. Cut the squash into 1-inch pieces. Cut the pears into 1-inch pieces.

3. Put the squash and pears into a roasting pan with oil and strip about 4 stalks of thyme of their leaves and sprinkle over. Roast for about 30-45 minutes or until tender.

4. Once out of the oven, remove to a bowl and scatter the pecans and crumble the cheese over top, tossing everything together gently.

5. Check the seasonings and add the last couple stalks of thyme, torn into small sprigs to decorate.

So yummy and festive! 

Holiday Appetizers: Apricots with basil-goat cheese and almonds & Pomegranate Avocado Salsa

The Beauties definitely know how to set a weekend agenda. Santa, please bring me another weekend filled with delicious food & drinks, and a full day at the spa, with a little dancing at the Brick thrown in for good measure.

I arrived late for the Christmas dinner feast, so I was glad my cooking responsibilities were limited to appetizers and a side dish, especially since I was mostly looking forward to catching up with the Beauties and enjoying Megan’s cocktails. I can vouch that these recipes didn’t require me to set down my drink for very long.  Thank goodness.

I discovered this recipe for an apricot appetizer in Sunset magazine and it has become one of my staples. The combo of savory/sweet + cheese is hard to turn down.

And what is there to say about the avocado salsa except it has avocado, so of course it’s decadent and amazing. Plus the addition of pomegranate makes it just about as festive as your favorite holiday sweater.

Apricots with basil-goat cheese and almonds (from Sunset magazine)

Makes 40 appetizers

4 ounces fresh goat cheese such as Laura Chenel, at room temperature

About 2 tsp. milk

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil

40 dried apricots

40 salted almonds, preferably Marcona

2 teaspoons honey

1. Mix together cheese, 2 tsp. milk, and basil with a wooden spoon until spreadable. Thin with more milk if necessary.

2. Spread a heaping 1/4 tsp. cheese on each apricot and top each with an almond.

3. Drizzle with honey.

Pomegranate Avocado Salsa

makes about 2 cups

1 small shallot, chopped

1 large avocado, diced

juice of one lime

1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

1/2 cup pomegranate seeds

salt and pepper to taste

*If you like spicy foods, you could add a diced jalapeno to the mix!

Place chopped shallot, avocado, lime, and cilantro in a small bowl and stir to combine. Add pomegranate seeds and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Slow-Cooker Chicken Cacciatore {Guest Post}

This is from my friend Christie who is (lucky for me) part of our frozen dinner club. She delivered this and it landed on my list of top 10 favorite frozen dinners. And since it was a slow-cooker dinner, I asked her to guest post! 

Christie writes:

I adapted this recipe from one in a William’s Sonoma cookbook.  A good friend of mine brought it to us after I had our second son, and we loved it.  It was especially nice to have something a little different than the standard “new baby” meals (lasagna or enchiladas anyone?)   I asked for the recipe and found out it was cooked in the crock pot and I loved it even more!  The original recipe calls for using one whole, cut up chicken, but I use a mix of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and thighs.  They are so tender by the time they are done cooking you can shred them and then you have wonderful, hearty sauce to server over your favorite starch (pasta, rice, mashed potatoes, etc) or you can serve it as a stew with crusty bread to dip in it. 

The one drawback is that there is a lot of prep work for a crock pot recipe.  However I’ve found that the prepped ingredients freeze beautifully, so you can do all of the prep work, freeze in a gallon ziplock bag and then just pop into the crock pot the day of for a delicious meal that evening.  The added advantage of this method is that you can make 2-3 meals worth at once and then you have several easy meals all ready to go in your freezer or to share with friends who are in need of an easy, home cooked meal. 

William's Sonoma

Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup flour
• 1 Tbs. salt, plus more, to taste
• 1 1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper, plus more, to taste
• 1 chicken, 3 1/2 to 4 lb., cut into 8 serving pieces
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 red or yellow bell peppers, sliced
• 1 yellow onion, halved and sliced
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 3/4 cup dry red wine
• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 1 can (28 oz.) crushed plum tomatoes
• 1 Tbs. dried oregano
• 6 oz. button or cremini mushrooms, sliced

Directions:

Brown the chicken
On a large plate, stir together the flour, the 1 Tbs. salt and the 1 1/2 tsp. pepper. Coat the chicken evenly with the flour mixture, shaking off the excess. In a large fry pan over medium-high heat, warm the oil. Add the chicken pieces, in batches if necessary and cook until golden brown on both sides. Transfer the chicken pieces to the slow cooker or to your ziplock bag(s) if you are freezing for later.

Cook the chicken and vegetables
Return the fry pan to medium-high heat. Add the bell peppers, onion and garlic and sauté until they start to soften, about 3 minutes. Pour in the wine and broth, and deglaze the pan, stirring to scrape up the browned bits on the pan bottom. Stir in the tomatoes and oregano and bring to a simmer. Pour the mixture over the chicken.

If cooking immediately, cover and cook on the high-heat setting for 4 hours or the low-heat setting for 8 hours.

If freezing, seal & freeze for up to 3 months.  Thaw in the refrigerator the night before and then finish cooking as directed above in the slow cooker. 

Add the mushrooms
About 10 minutes before the dish is ready, stir in the mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and serve.  

{Guest Post} Beachy Peach Pie with Rosemary Sugar

Kirsten, our favorite cocktail queen, shares her first pie making experience:

First of all, I admit I had never made a pie before this month. Give me a crumble, a crisp, a cobbler, no problem. But pie has always intimidated me, even though I will take a fruit pie over cake any day. (See Exhibit A: the pie bar instead of cake at our wedding).

Recently my husband and I went to the Oregon coast to join my parents for a long weekend. After spotting these gorgeous, organic peaches it seemed like they were meant to become a star ingredient in a pie. It also didn’t hurt that my mom was around to help, so I decided to brave it and attempt a peach pie, working from a Martha Stewart recipe my mom recommended.

I tweaked the recipe slightly (sorry Marth!) to incorporate an herbal element. I love the combo of fruit and herbs in cocktails, so I figured why not try it in a pie? And I can't resist a good crumble topping—with this recipe you get the best of both worlds, pie crust plus an amazing buttery and brown sugar topping. 

Rosemary sugar with a bit of lemon zest

We enjoyed our pie out on the deck followed by some prosecco, but this cocktail would also be delish (and use up any leftover ingredients!).

Beachy Peach Pie with Rosemary Sugar (adapted from Martha Stewart’s Fruit Pie with Crumble Topping recipe)

 

Pie Crust

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for rolling dough
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 2 tablespoons ice water, plus 2 more, if needed

Crumble Topping

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup light-brown sugar
• 5 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
• 6 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Pie Filling

• 5 cups peach slices (about 4-5 large peaches)
• ½ cup granulated sugar (I used less than Martha’s recipe, adjust as needed based on tartness of fruit)
• 3 teaspoons finely chopped rosemary
• Zest of one lemon
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions:

1. In a food processor, pulse flour, salt, and sugar several times to combine. Add butter. Pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal, with just a few pea-size pieces remaining. (We didn’t have a food processor at the cabin, so we used a fork and it worked just fine).
2. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons ice water. Pulse until dough is crumbly but holds together when squeezed with fingers (if needed, add up to 2 tablespoons more ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time).
3. Turn dough out onto a work surface; form dough into a 3/4-inch-thick disk. Wrap tightly in plastic, and refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour.
4. Before baking, unwrap dough; place on a large piece of floured waxed paper. Roll dough to a 14-inch round. Using paper, lift and wrap dough around rolling pin (discarding paper); carefully unroll over a 9-inch pie plate. Gently fit into bottom and up sides of plate.

   

   
   

   My mom “helping.” I swear I did some of the work.

5. Trim overhang to 1 inch; fold overhang under itself. Pinch between thumb and forefinger to make a uniform edge around the rim. Crimp edge; refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour.
6. For crumb topping: mix all dry ingredients. Cut chilled butter into pieces. With your hands, work in butter pieces, until large clumps form.
7. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine sugar with lemon zest, rosemary and salt and add to fruit. Add to fruit mixture 3 tablespoons flour, 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Pour into pie shell; sprinkle with Crumb Topping.
8. Place on foil-lined baking sheet in lower third of oven; reduce heat to 350 degrees. Bake until fruit bubbles and crust browns, 1 1/2 hours. If topping begins to brown too quickly, tent with foil.