Basil Caesar Dressing with Spatchcocked Chicken, Speckled Trout, Lentil Sausage Stew, Loaded Potatoes & Apple Blackberry Crisp

We’re kind of in a potato era lately and three out of four of these dinners feature potatoes! I wish we could more easily grow and store Irish potatoes here or that I liked sweet potatoes, which are easier to grow and store here, as much as I like Irish potatoes!

I have a mostly failed fall crop of potatoes in my garden, but I will be ready for January planting for a spring crop for sure!

Our recent eats are also more fall-influenced overall, with the exception of prolific late summer basil that’s still hanging on in my garden!

Basil Caeser Dressing with Spatchcocked Chicken & Smashed Potatoes

The idea for this started as chicken caesar lettuce wraps and I was even going to let myself pull some chicken breasts or tenders from inventory. But then as it often happens, I couldn’t bring myself to actually do that and went with the better overall value of a whole bird!

So then I pivoted to spatchcocking the chicken by cutting the spine out (and saving that for a batch of bone broth).

The great thing about a spatchcocked chicken is that it cooks much faster than a whole bird left in tact and the skin browns more evenly, too. For the seasonings, I did a sea salt, garlic and onion powders, black pepper and Credo Farm’s Kelp seasoning (which has a bunch of dried herbs) and a little mayonnaise to help with browning.

While that was roasting, I made a basil caesar dressing with mayonnaise, Italian and lemon basil, anchovy paste, dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, fresh garlic, parmesan cheese, black pepper and lemon juice. It came out so delicious and was perfect on River Queen’s crunchy little gem lettuce (and drizzled on the chicken and smashed potatoes, too!).

For the potatoes, I cut some Yukon Golds into thick slices and par boiled to make sure they were soft, then dried them out. Then I drizzled with olive oil, sea salt, garlic salt and black pepper and smashed them onto a parchment lined baking sheet. I roasted those as the chicken finished and they came out crispy on the outside and fluffy and almost creamy on the inside. Altogether it was a simple but really delicious combination!

Speckled Trout with Basil Caesar, Roasted Delicata, Lion’s Mane Mushrooms & Salad

We had plenty of basil caesar dressing left that went well on salads, but I also decided to use it to bake on some speckled trout. We recently traded a friend for a bunch of fish, so we have lots of speckled trout filets in our freezer, lucky us.

There’s a Bang Bang Salmon recipe I like that uses a spicy mayo sauce to coat fish before baking it, so I thought the caesar would work well here and it did! I just dried off the filets, coated with the dressing and topped with parmesan, too, then baked for a few minutes and finished under the broiler.

To go with it, we had some roasted delicata that I coated with sea salt, coriander, smoked paprika, garlic powder and a little cornstarch to see it that would help get them crispier on the outsides and it did!

I also had some lion’s mane mushrooms on hand to use up, so I did a quick saute of those in some butter with Smokey Shiitake & Black Garlic seasoning and we also had a lovely salad with apples, cucumbers, kohlrabi, sharp cheddar cheese, pistachios, crispy jalapeños and a balsamic dressing.

Lentil & Potato Stew with Italian Sausage and Greens

Three weeks in a row, I’ve made a big batch of soup or stew, whether or not it actually felt like fall yet! It makes such good reheatable leftovers!

For this round, I started with a batch of bone broth, using cooked chicken bones from the freezer, plus the bones from the spatchcocked chicken, the spine from that chicken and some smoked pork hocks. I recommend not salting broth before cooking when using hocks since there’s plenty of sodium in those — you can always adjust afterwards.

I did the broth in the Instant Pot, a big enough batch to freeze two quarts and a pint beyond what I needed for the stew.

For the stew, I started with yellow onions and Swiss chard stems and then minced garlic, sautéing all that in the fat from the top of the broth.

Once those had caramelized a little, I seasoned with smoked paprika and Italian seasonings and added in the soaked and rinsed lentils and some kombu seaweed. Cubed red, Russet and gold potatoes went in next and then some sliced sun dried tomatoes.

I had some Italian sausage links and cooked those in the toaster oven first so that they wouldn’t completely fall apart as I wanted them in half moons in the stew. I let them cool enough to sliced, then browned them in a cast iron pan.

I also pulled off the smoked meat from the hocks and added that in, then the torn Swiss chard leaves, then the cooked Italian sausage. It came out really tasty — the lentils and potatoes fell apart a little to make it a little creamy, without any dairy.

We had it with a salad and topped with parmesan and more cracked pepper.

Loaded Jacket Potatoes with Pulled Pork & Crispy Greens

On one of his recent trips, Grant had a loaded baked potato at an airport restaurant and thought about how delicious and filling it was and wanted to start making some (with even higher quality topping ingredients, of course) at home.

So for the first round, I relied on some pulled pork that had been in the freezer, but we’ll be doing other variations with ground beef, bacon and maybe shredded chicken and more in the future!

For the potatoes, I made some slices at the top and steamed in the Instant Pot first to make sure they got really fluffy before finishing in the oven.

I did them at high pressure for 21 minutes since they were fairly large and then let the pressure naturally release for 15 minutes before opening the valve and taking them out. I then coated with olive oil and a little more sea salt and baked for another 15 or so minutes, however long the greens were finishing up!

Meanwhile I chopped some Dino kale and mustard greens and massaged with olive oil, sea salt, garlic powder and black pepper and roasted that in the oven at 400 degrees to get it crispy.

I also made a simple cheese sauce with butter, flour, milk and cheddar and parmesan cheeses and it all came together with the fluffy potatoes, cheese sauce, pulled pork, little more sharp cheddar and the crispy greens. And since we didn’t do a salad or anything, homemade dill pickles on the side felt right for some extra pizzazz and punch.

Apple Blackberry Crisp with Oats & Pecans

I got in a quick trip to Wisconsin for my niece’s birthday last weekend. She had my mom’s cookie dough cheesecake for her birthday dinner, chocolate and vanilla cupcakes for her birthday party with her friends the next afternoon, but then by Sunday dinner, we needed another dessert and I threw together this apple blackberry crisp!

My parents have a bunch of blackberry bushes in their yard, so they had plenty in the freezer from this summer. I do love baked apple desserts, but sometimes they can be a little one note and the sour contrast and the color from the blackberries went really well with the apples!

I used fresh honey crisp apples with the frozen blackberries and let that cook a little in the oven while I mixed up the topping, which was melted butter, pecan butter, flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and pecans.

While it was baking, I was in the living room with my niece and her American Girl dolls, so I did let it get a little browner on top than I would have liked, but it was still very delicious!