Sausage, Apple, and Fennel Corn Bread Dressing

A major factor in how we select recipes for any holiday is how much maintenance they require. (We suspect the same is true for many of you!) After all, when you're already planning to spend several hours in the kitchen, why commit yourself to more?

This year, though, we wondered whether we'd been unfairly limiting ourselves all this time. Maybe, by taking the term "labor of love" a little more literally, we could reap greater culinary rewards.

Enter Sausage, Apple, and Fennel Corn Bread Dressing (Cooking Light, 2006). This recipe has a record-setting 22 ingredients, a 4-star reader rating, and a Test Kitchen Guarantee. Surely it had to be worth the extra effort, right? With gusto, we accepted the challenge.

Step 1 was a reasonably simple undertaking: make corn bread. No frills, very simple cornbread. This step took about 5 minutes to assemble, 16 minutes to bake, and 5 minutes worth of cooling time. You could save yourself that time by buying pre-made corn bread from your local bakery; however, if you're looking for ways to make the holidays healthier, doing so leaves you with less control over fat and calories.

While baking the cornbread, it's possible to get a jump-start on preparing the sausage mixture. You'll notice from our ingredient line-up that we'd chopped all of our produce up the night before. It's not necessary to do so, especially since you'll want something to do while that cornbread is cooling, but we can vouch for the fact that all of the pre-chopped ingredients withstood 16 hours in the fridge.

Next, in stages, our produce was added to a non-stick pan and sauteed in olive oil. This process took about 20 minutes and our persistence paid off in the form of pleasant aromas in our kitchen! Once the sautee was completed, the mixture was cooled to room temperature before moving on.

While we waited for our sausage mixture to cool, we went ahead and crumbled the cornbread into a large bowl. It was similar to playing with one of those squeezable stress balls that were popular years ago - a nice little stress reliever for holiday season! Then we incorporated the sausage mixture, the broth, and eggs, and spread everything out into a 9x13 baking dish. The dish went into our preheated oven for 50 minutes - time we used to whip up some mashed potatoes and carve up our turkey!

Because we needed to farm out our baking dish for another tasty treat, we piled our finished dressing into another serving bowl, shown at left. To keep it warm, we covered the bowl with aluminum foil and stashed it in the microwave. Seriously, if you ever find yourself taking direction from a recipe to "keep [something] warm", look no further than that small, insulated space in your kitchen - it is perfect!

Now for the verdict: This stuffing is...good. Not great, nowhere close to what mom used to make, but a good, solid alternative. Maybe we'd gotten ourselves amped up for the fruits of our long and distinguished labors, but we were mostly underwhelmed. With strong ingredients like fennel involved, we expected to produce a symphony of flavors and ended up tapping out "Chopsticks" instead.

One reviewer on Cooking Light's website added dried cranberries, which we think might have broken up the beige blandness. Some almonds or walnuts might also provide another layer of texture and flavor. Something was just missing - so let us know if you find it!

Oatmeal Pecan Pie

Now that we've all arisen from our respective turkey comas, it's time to take a look at what the Yuppie household whipped up for Thanksgiving Dinner. We'll start with our favorite course: dessert!

Most homes make pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving, but Mr. Yuppie prefers pecan. We took things a step further this year and went for Oatmeal Pecan Pie (Cooking Light, Nov 2006) instead.

This recipe required us to buy only 2 items that are off our "keep around" list: pecans and pre-prepared pie crusts. The pecans themselves are conspicuously absent from our ingredient line-up, which is a theme from this year's Thanksgiving cooking. There was so much going on at any given time that we got ourselves flustered and either didn't take pictures, or forgot to pull the most essential items when prepping. So we'll do our best to fill in the blanks for you guys as we compile our Thanksgiving retrospective.

The first step is to place the pre-prepared pie crust in your buttered pie dish and flute the edges. These pre-prepared crusts, while not the healthiest option, are a busy cook's blessing. They brown up nicely and are nice and flaky when cooked. Sure, a hand-made pie crust is divine, but when you're pressed for time, one of these will do the trick.

Next, we assemble what might be the easiest pie filling ever. All of the filling ingredients are combined in a large bowl, then poured into the crust.

Now, the recipe calls for the egg whites and yolks to be lightly beaten separately, then incorporated into the other ingredients. After having done this, we're not sure why it's necessary; it seems as though you could've reversed the order of incorporation, putting the whites and yolks into the bowl, lightly beating them, then adding the other ingredients. That switcheroo would've saved you from cleaning 2 prep bowls, which at holiday time is a real blessing.

Next, the pie goes in the oven at 325 for 50 minutes. See? Easiest pie ever. About halfway through, we placed a pie crust shield like this one around the edges to keep the exposed crust from becoming burnt. Other than that, we set it and forget it!

Fifty minutes later, we removed our pie from the oven and cooled it on a wire rack. The top was set up nicely, and the pie shield did its job keeping the crust evenly cooked. Underneath that hard shell lies a gooey, oatey filling that should be enjoyed in moderation (anything more might give you a cavity!).

Our sole complaint about this pie was how difficult it was to slice and serve. Our slices looked less like pretty wedges and more like tasty piles than we would've preferred. We didn't care, because it was all going to the same place anyway, but if you're looking to wow a crowd, this might not be the pie for you. If you're just looking to pig out with friends and family this holiday season, then go grab yourselves some pie crusts from the refrigerator aisle and get to work!

Slow-Roasted Pork Carnitas

After our 8-hour debacle last week with pulled pork sandwiches, we were craving some porcine redemption. Then we stumbled upon a recipe by celebrity chef Rick Bayless.

Bayless is the proprietor of a number of Mexican- and Southwestern-inspired restaurants, including Frontera in Chicago. You may also have seen him on Iron Chef and Top Chef Masters. We went poking around on his website, which boasts an impressive collection of recipes, and found ourselves an incredibly simple recipe for Slow-Roasted Pork Carnitas. Could it really be so easy? Trusting in the pro, we turned on our oven.

We were shocked to realize that this recipe requires only 2 ingredients: pork shoulder and salt. So shocked, in fact, that we went ahead and threw on a Southwestern chili blend from Urban Accents for good measure. (It turns out this was wholly unnecessary!)

You begin by cutting the pork shoulder into 1.5- to 2-inch thick slabs. The slabs are arranged in a 9x13 baking dish - Rick says these should fit comfortably with no overlap, but we had a different experience. Fortunately, after some time in the oven, they shrunk up, giving us no cause for concern.

Then 1/3 cup of water is poured over the pork and the meat is covered tightly with aluminum foil. Rick describes this as the moist cooking phase, and it takes 1 hour of completely unsupervised cooking. (We used the time to fit in a quick P90X session.)

After an hour, the foil is removed and the dry cooking phase begins. The first 30 minutes are also unsupervised; after that time, 20 more minutes are spent turning the meat occasionally. Once the meat is removed from the oven, it's so tender that it can easily be shredded and served with tortillas as soft tacos.

Compared with our pulled pork sandwich tribulations, this recipe was a breeze to pull together - totally low-maintenance and delightfully low-cost. Plus, we can think of so many ways to serve it. (Next time, we're adding barbecue sauce to the final mixture and making sandwiches!) For its versatility and ease of preparation, Slow-Roasted Pork Carnitas have been inducted into the YTK Hall of Fame!

Spinach Calzones with Blue Cheese

The title of today's dish is admittedly a misnomer. This meal was originally supposed to be entered into the November edition of Female Foodie Fun, a friendly, Iron Chef-like competition between girlfriends that we'll explain some other time. While planning the dish, we decided that, in the interest of appealing to the greatest number of participants (who are also the judges), the strong flavor of blue cheese would be better replaced by a milder, more accessible Italian cheese blend. So we set off to make our Spinach Calzones with Blue Cheese (Cooking Light, 1999) sans the blue cheese.

Then Mrs. Yuppie caught a miserable cold and couldn't participate in the competition, and all bets were off. You see, Mr. Yuppie abhors mushrooms, which is why you'll probably never see another mushroom-related recipe on this blog. But mushrooms were the secret ingredient for this particular F Cubed match-up, and therefore unavoidable, and also it was never planned for Mr. Yuppie (as a non-female) to enjoy the dish. So when we made it a day later, after we decided to experiment with the basic formula a little more.

A look at the ingredient line-up reveals that this is a VERY basic recipe. Fortunately, this also translates to a quick recipe, primarily because you're using pre-made pizza dough. You'll also see that we got creative and added in some delicious pre-sliced pepperoni - more on that later.

The first step is to grease up a cookie sheet with cooking spray. Next, the pizza dough is rolled out onto your cookie sheet and cut into 4 equal portions. We recommend you do your best to make each portion as close to square as possible; it'll only help you fight physics later on!

Once your calzone bases are ready to go, it's time to add toppings. Garlic goes first, then spinach, followed by onions...and that's where we got creative. To make sure Mr. Yuppie was able to enjoy these, too, we added pepperoni to the left-hand calzones and mushrooms to the right.

Finally, we added the cheese (about 3 tablespoons each), pinched up the corners of the dough and gave 'em a twist so they didn't fall apart. One lesson we learned from our first attempt is to work on one calzone at a time. This will allow you to stuff each calzone as full as possible with the good stuff without it tumbling down the heap and all over the baking sheet. Also, we recommend that you not just pull the corners of the dough up - this can cause breakage - but rather, try to prepare it like you would wrap up a bindle, working the dough up from the bottom to make a pouch.

These little bundles of joy go in the oven for just 12 minutes and come out golden brown and delectably cheesy. Imagine these with cooked sausage or a veggie version with squash or artichoke hearts or olives...it's the older cousin of the make your own pizza party. The possibilities are endless, and we intend to try them all!

For their ease of preparation and their fun, choose-your-own adventure potential, we hereby crown Spinach Calzones with Blue Cheese a YTK favorite! Let us know your favorite combinations in the comments!

Slow-Cooker Beef Short Ribs

This recipe started a little less deliberately than most: we were walking through the aisles of our grocery and noticed a sale on boneless short ribs. We snapped up a package and went on our merry way, confident that we could easily find a recipe somewhere that called for them.

Boy were we wrong. Most short rib recipes we found online, it turns out, call for bone-in ribs. This might not make much of a difference in the long run, but since our con ops for this blog is to follow recipes as closely as possible, we wanted to be sure we were specific.

After a largely fruitless search on the Internet, we eventually stumbled on a recipe with a 4 and 1/2-star rating on Food.com: Slow-Cooker Beef Short Ribs. We scaled the serving size to match the 1.5 lbs of ribs we had and then set to work gathering ingredients.

Fortunately, the ingredient list didn't require anything we didn't already have. In the interest of making things a little lighter, we omitted the 1/4 cup of butter in favor of cooking spray. The substitution worked just fine, although you could also reduce it to 1 tbsp if you still want some buttery flavor in the dish.

Even more fortunately, it only took 15 minutes to prepare everything for the slow-cooker. The first step is to dredge the ribs in flour, salt, and pepper, after which they're browned in butter (or cooking spray). Then they're moved to the slow-cooker and the pan is used to combine all the remaining ingredients for the sauce.

In our experience, the recipe provided too little sauce, which left us with a charred black mess at the bottom of our slow-cooker. It's likely that we should have amended our cooking time to account for a smaller quantity of meat, but it also couldn't hurt to make double the recommended amount and let those ribs stew in twice their own juices.

We were pleased by how these ribs turned out. The finished product was delightfully tender and proved a nice accompaniment for some egg noodles and broccoli. Furthermore, this was a no-fuss dish that allowed us to come home to a wonderfully fragrant home - which is always a plus!

Springfield Chili

Well, it's finally started to cool off here in Texas, and the fall weather brings with it a hankering for comfort food. Yesterday, we opted for Springfield Chili (Cooking Light, Sept 2008).

We were in a hurry, so we missed our usual "ingredient line-up" shot. Rest assumed that it will be back in full effect next time! If we had taken one, you'd notice a pretty extensive list of ingredients, including 2 ground meats (turkey and sirloin), several cans of beans and tomatoes, and a few condiments and spices. Oh, and our favorite: 1 can of Modelo Especial.

The recipe first calls for you to fry up one strip of bacon. The grease from the bacon is then used to sautee onions and garlic. There was only one problem - our bacon was in the freezer. Since we were too hungry to wait on bacon, we splashed some olive oil in our Dutch oven and away we sauteed. (Besides, the holidays are coming up, and there will be plenty more opportunities for bacon!)

Next, the meat is browned, and then it's party time - in goes the beer. The recipe calls for light beer, but we used Modelo because it was all we had hanging around.

When the beer has reduced to about 1/3 cup, we incorporate the rest of the ingredients, save for the beans and cheese, and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. It might help to stir every once in a while, but that's not at all necessary. The beans are then added and simmered in for another 10 minutes, and voila -it's chow time!

This recipe was easy to prepare because it was mostly, except for the onions, a measure-and-add process. (And if you're as lazy as we are and have chopped onions and bottled minced garlic on hand at all times, then it's 100% measure-and-add!)

Here's Mr. Yuppie's plate all fixed up - that's some mac and cheese he added for extra comfort! Our only reservation about this dish was that it lacked the kick we prefer in a chili. If you've got a spicy tooth and want some more voltage, you could add in some ground chipotle, cayenne, or even Tabasco. But that's an easy fix for something this low-maintenance, so we'll be keeping this one in the rotation.

Slow-Roasted Pulled Pork

First of all, apologies for our absence! We've been traveling this weekend and as a result have been relying too heavily on fast food and restaurants. Today, we're back to the grind with a recipe we tried last Sunday: Slow-Roasted Pulled Pork (Cooking Light, December 2009).

Thankfully we started this dish around 11am on a day where we had nothing to do, because it took. For. EVER. This recipe requires 1 hour of standing time for the rub, followed by 1 hour of baking, then 3 hours of more baking with periodic basting, followed by an additional 3 and 3/4 hours MORE BAKING.

Blame it on ADD or just poor reading comprehension, but we missed that last 3 and 3/4 hour instruction and what we'd planned for as a late lunch turned into an even later dinner! Let this be a lesson to us all - read your recipes once and check them twice, scanning for and highlighting resting and cooking times.

After 9 hours worth of salivating, we were ready to dig in, but not so fast - the next step, pulling the pork, took another 30 minutes! Even though the meat had roasted for almost a whole day, it still wasn't tender and required a serious upper body workout to achieve "pulled pork" status.

Apart from doing some simple math, we might also have benefited from checking the comments section online. An astute commenter mentioned that she's made this recipe in her crockpot with excellent results. The next day, the enterprising Mr. Yuppie threw the leftover meat into a crockpot with a bit of water and cooked it down some more. Wouldn't you know, it was 5 times more juicy and delicious than the original finished product?

The sauce is easy but delicious, and we'd recommend making a double or triple batch if you like your pulled pork saucy. Overall, this dish was seriously underwhelming, and we most likely will try another pulled pork recipe before coming back to this one.

Can your mad cooking skills put ours to shame? Let us know if you've had success with this recipe in the comments section!

Ham and Egg Fried Rice

In a world filled with uncertainty, one fact remains constant: Chinese food is delicious! Seriously, it's one of our favorites, and nothing livens up a ho-hum dinner repertoire like a dash of Eastern flare. That's why we're proud to show you a recipe we've already made several times over: Ham and Egg Fried Rice (Cooking Light, Sept 2008).

One of the things we love about this dish is how quickly it comes together. The prep time is minimal and can be done well ahead of time. For example, this Sunday we chopped up all of the vegetables and meat while watching football. Having everything ready would have allowed us to hop right into the kitchen after a Monday evening trip to the gym and whip together a healthy, balanced dinner in just 15 minutes.

"Would have" is the operative phrase, of course. You'll notice from the little red light on that rice cooker in our ingredient line-up that we didn't make the rice ahead of time. We absolutely could and should have, but then Walking Dead came on and we were too distracted by zombies to remember! (Does anyone out there watch that show? You should - it's wonderfully creepy!)

Nonetheless, with the help of our trusty rice cooker, the rice was ready in minutes. We popped it in the freezer and let it sit there for 10 minutes

while we washed up, and then it was show time.

Make no mistake, this is a recipe that keeps moving. Every one to two minutes there's something to do, but with everything measured and ready, your only charge is to stir and watch the clock. Veggies and meat go first on high heat, followed by rice and wet ingredients on medium to medium high (the exact setting may vary based on your range).

Once the liquids are incorporated, it's time to scramble your eggs. If your wok is non-stick, check your heat to make sure it's low enough that the eggs will set without sticking. Remember, you can always cook them longer if the heat's a bit low, but you'll be stuck scouring your pan after dinner if it's too high. With the eggs set, they and the green onions are gently stirred in and voila - dinner is served!

This recipe is a "YTK favorite" for a few reasons. The first is the rapidity with which you can feed the hungry masses. Fifteen minutes for dinner is, after all, practically unheard of! The second reason we love it is for its slump-busting potential - this is a mighty, meaty, low-fuss dish that brings lots of unique flavor to the table.

Lastly, although we followed the recipe to a tee this time, there's so much room for improvisation. If you've got spare, sturdy vegetables like bell peppers on hand, get to choppin'! Frozen peas? Why the heck not!? Had enough protein for the day? Tell those eggs to scram!

Take this basic stir-fry technique and make it yours - and remember, sharing is caring. Tell us about your favorite fried-rice combo in the comments!

Our Recipe Sources

You may have noticed that we tend to go to two wells when selecting recipes for our blog.

The first is Williams-Sonoma because, well, we like the challenge. Williams-Sonoma's recipes, we find, often teach us new skills and techniques. They also give us the opportunity to learn about new ingredients, and that, in turn, allows us to be snobby foodies! (Just kidding - but it is cool to know the insider secrets sometimes.)

The other source we use is Cooking Light Magazine. Cooking Light's repository on MyRecipes.com has years of tried and true recipes, ripe for the picking. We like that they include nutrition information, which allows us to make healthy, but still delicious choices for our diet.

Another factor that's becoming more important as we blog is whether the recipes are available online. Because we want to share our experiences with other aspiring cooks - but also ensure that we respect all copyright and IP laws! - it's helpful to be able to point readers to a link that gives all the nitty-gritty details of a particular recipe.

Of course, we're always looking for new sources, which is why we wanted to ask - where do you go for your meal ideas?

Baked Penne with Corn, Zucchini, and Basil

The temperatures are dropping, which means we're slowly adding more Italian food to our weekly repertoire. While searching for a not-so-heavy baked dish, we happened upon a recipe for Baked Penne with Corn, Zucchini, and Basil in Williams-Sonoma's online recipes. We have yet to meet a vegetable we didn't like, so we decided to prepare it for an impromptu dinner for 5.

The ingredient line-up is a little more extensive than usual, with 4 veggies plus a punch of garlic and basil. The recipe also calls for fresh oregano, but our grocer was sadly out of stock! We opted instead to use 1/2 teaspoon of the dried variety to maintain the Mediterranean flavor.

The prep time for this recipe is extensive, gang. Each of those vegetables requires chopping, and the basil and garlic must be sliced. Then, you'll spend 25 minutes or so on sauteeing the three rounds of vegetable/spice combinations. It's not the kind of task you have to pay attention to, which allowed us to catch up with our guests as we worked.

We opted to use a large casserole dish to bake the finished product, rather than putting the pan directly into the oven as the recipe instructs. This also saved us some clean-up, because we were able to transfer every saute product from the pan into the casserole without dirtying any intermediate bowls.

Our final, assembled product took just 20 minutes to bake, and the result was a light, cheesy bowl of delicious. It also drew a lot of compliments from our guests, and really, what better reward for 60 minutes of low-intensity work?

To make this dish a little less impactful on the waistline, next time we'll sautee the vegetables with cooking spray, or at least halve the recommended 3 tablespoons of oil. Other alternatives include using less or low-fat cheese and using water or vegetable broth in place of white wine.

Ginger-Soy Chicken Thighs with Scallion Rice

It's time for another quickie entree! This time, we're tapping Cooking Light's immense library, where we found Ginger-Soy Chicken Thighs with Scallion Rice (Cooking Light, Nov 2010).

You'll notice that our ingredient line-up is sparse, with a solid pantry-staple-to-fresh ingredient ratio. Although this dish wasn't advertised as a budget meal in the November issue, it certainly can be pulled together with very little cash. Combined with the relative quickness with which this dish can be assembled, we've got some serious recipe virtues tonight.

Call us snobs, but we've decided we're not big boil-in-bag rice people. We've tried it a few times now, and we tend to find it a little mushy. For the sake of authenticity, we used it per the directions; if we make this again, we'll probably go back to our standard basmati.

After getting the rice going, it's time to cook the chicken. If you're using a pan that lacks non-stick properties, be sure to take your chicken out of the refrigerator ten minutes before you're ready to cook it. Allowing it to come closer to room temperature will generally prevent it from sticking to your pan.

Next, the chicken is removed from the pan and the remaining ingredients (ginger preserves, soy sauce, and garlic) are added to the pan and boiled for 2 minutes until thickened to form a sweet, tasty sauce. The chicken is dunked back into the sauce to coat, and then it's chow-time!

We enjoyed this dish for what it was: quick and easy to prepare. It's not winning you any awards, and it's probably not the kind of dish you make for company, but it is good and a good change of pace from your normal routine.

Also exciting was the opportunity to discover a new ingredient tonight: ginger preserves. The preserves, which we found in the "jams and jellies" section of our grocer, lent a subtle sweetness to the dish, and we're excited to find other recipes that use them. Three cheers for learning!

Italian Sausage with Arrabbiata Sauce and Polenta

We're reaching back into the treasure trove of Williams-Sonoma tonight with an entrée: Italian Sausage with Arrabbiata Sauce and Polenta.

The recipe has two distinct phases: making the polenta and making everything else. The focus on grains is for good reason, because, as it turns out, real, Italian-style polenta is hard to make! The preparation requires 35 to 40 minutes and constant stirring. Unless you want to check "make honest-to-goodness polenta" off your bucket list or are looking for a good arm workout, we suggest substituting the 5-minute variety. Doing so will cut your cooking time by more than half and, if our experience is any indication, you won't miss a thing!

The next step is browning the sausage, which is a simple task. To avoid crowding our sausage links, we browned 4 at a time for 10 minutes (for a total of 8 links, or 20 minutes cooking time). This left a brown, spotty coating on the bottom of our pan, but not to worry if this happens to you - the next step will take care of the clean-up.

After moving the browned sausages to a plate, it's time to sautee the veggies! This recipe employs some of the more ubiquitous (and, thus, lower cost) vegetables in your produce section: onions and green bell peppers. The sautee is performed at a medium heat for 10 minutes, and the release of water from the vegetables makes short work of deglazing the pan.

In goes the arrabbiata sauce and the sausage, and together they simmer for another 10 minutes. (You'll notice from our ingredient line-up that we opted to use our own favorite bottled sauce, rather than make an extra trip to W-S.) Once the flavors have melded, remove the pan from the heat and serve on a bed of whichever polenta you decide to concoct.

This recipe was phenomenal, and a great departure from everyday Italian pasta dishes. Furthermore, there's a lot of room to make this dish healthier by 86-ing the cheese or the butter from the polenta or using chicken sausage.

Have you tried this dish? Tell us what you think in the comments!