Marilyn Monroe's stuffing recipe included liver and hard-boiled eggs. I tried the unique take on a holiday classic and was pleasantly surprised.
There's an old icebreaker question: If you could have dinner with three people, living or dead, who would you choose? But what if you had to ask those dinner guests to bring a covered dish with them? Many people would choose Marilyn Monroe as one of their guests from a conversational standpoint, but it turns out her stuffing recipe may make her an impressive choice for a potluck holiday dinner party as well.
Behind the visage of a Hollywood starlet, Monroe was an avid home cook who collected cookbooks and stuffed them with hand-written recipes and shopping lists. Her well-worn cookbooks are such a charming look into Monroe's personal life that two of them were predicted to fetch up to $75,000 at auction this year through Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries in New York, N.Y.
Luckily, you don't have to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to get your hands on some of Monroe's personal recipes. The book Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, published in 2010, includes a hand-written recipe for Monroe's stuffing which I recreated just in time for Christmas this year. On top of being Monroe's personal stuffing recipe, it's interesting due to its inclusion of liver, ground beef, hard-boiled eggs, raisins and parmesan cheese.
Like many hand-written recipes, there's quite a bit left open to interpretation in this recipe, so here's how I chose to recreate it.
After noting "no garlic” at the top of the recipe (which is a little odd), Monroe notes sourdough or French bread should be used. Sourdough would have been appropriate in San Francisco, Calif., where Monroe was likely living at the time she wrote this recipe out — indicated by the insurance company letterhead that the recipe is written on, but it looks like she might have used French bread when making this stuffing for chicken. I went with the sourdough since it was what I had on hand.
Next, she specifies "giblets," with "liver-heart" written underneath. Giblets is a catch-all term for the edible muscles and organs inside the bird, which includes the heart, liver and gizzards. You'll find them in the little bag that's usually in the cavity of your grocery store bird. You can also buy giblets, hearts and livers separately in many stores.
I asked Hugue Dufour, chef and owner of M. Wells restaurant in Queens, N.Y. why someone might choose liver over heart, and it boils down to a matter of texture. "The heart's [muscular], so it's going to be more like the meat you're chopping it with," says Dufour. On the other hand, the liver is an organ known for being more tender with a creamy mouthfeel.
There's no wrong choice here, but I chose to go with liver exclusively, as not to compete with the meatiness of the ground beef and to add a creamier element to the stuffing, since it doesn't include butter or milk.
Dufour also says you generally want to use the innards of the animal that a stuffing is being stuffed into (in our case, chicken livers with a chicken), although if you can't lay your hands on turkey liver, it's fine to use chicken instead.
It's unclear how much liver to use, so I used about ?-pound. If you're especially fond of chicken liver, it's completely acceptable to add more, as it's relatively inexpensive and often sold in packages of one pound or larger.
The recipe calls for the liver to be boiled in water for 5 to 10 minutes. I split the difference and boiled the livers in salted water for about 8 minutes. If you’d prefer to sear them, that can also be done quickly. “You pat [the liver] dry, quickly sear it on each side, and it’s done in no time,” says Dufour.
"Spices" are listed, which are a blend of herbs and seasoning. The recipe says to "put in rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, oregano…" without indicating fresh or dried herbs. I opted for fresh, adding about two tablespoons of each, finely chopped. This section of the recipe also calls for poultry seasoning, which is traditionally a blend of dried herbs that can include sage, thyme and marjoram. If you can't find poultry seasoning, it's fine to go with any chicken seasoning that appeals to you.
Further down, the recipe calls for one cup of chopped nuts, listing "walnuts, chestnuts and pine nuts," but giving no specific measurements for each. I chose to add one cup of chopped walnuts and ? of a cup of pine nuts. The recipe also calls for "1 ? cups or more" of raisins, which may put some people off. Rest assured that they'll make a great addition to your stuffing, but feel free to substitute the raisins with any dried fruit you like, including apricots, prunes, dates, cranberries or cherries.
Finally, the recipe calls for "1 or 2 hard boiled eggs, chopped," which is a bit of a departure from traditional stuffing recipes that call for eggs to act as a binder while baking.
This recipe is about 85% chopping and prep, 5% mixing and 10% baking. Use the biggest bowl you've got, as this recipe makes enough stuffing to generously fill a standard baking dish. I baked about three-quarters of the stuffing in a dish and stuffed the rest into a 4.5-pound chicken to see how it would taste each way. While the recipe is substantially different from any stuffing my family typically brings to the table, it smelled absolutely heavenly coming out of the oven and tasted great for dinner, topped with a little bit of gravy to bring it all together.
Marilyn Monroe's Stuffing
Adapted from Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe
Ingredients:
Sourdough, about 1 pound
? pound chicken livers
? pound ground beef (85% lean)
1 onion, medium white or yellow, finely chopped
4 stalks of celery, chopped
1 ? cups flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of each: fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, fresh oregano
1 bay leaf, fresh or dry, finely chopped
1 tablespoon salt, plus more to taste
1 tablespoon pepper
2 tablespoons poultry seasoning
1 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1 ? cups of raisins or assorted dried fruit, chopped
1 ? cups of mixed walnuts, chestnuts and pine nuts
2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
Instructions:
Cut sourdough in half and soak in cold water for 10 minutes. Remove from water, wring out and shred bread in a large mixing bowl.
Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil. Add chicken livers and boil for 8 minutes, skimming any impurities that rise to the top. Drain and cool. While the liver boils and cools, brown the ground beef with a pinch of salt and pepper in a skillet with no additional oil. Chop the cooled liver into small pieces the size of the cooked ground beef pieces. Add the browned beef and chopped liver to the large bowl with the torn sourdough.
Add all the rest of the prepared ingredients to the bowl and toss to mix thoroughly. If baking separately, lightly butter or grease a 9 x 13-inch baking dish and bake at 350 F for about 45 minutes, until the top is lightly browned, visible onion pieces are tender and any bread pieces on the surface are dry and crisp. If stuffing into a chicken or turkey, prepare your bird as desired and cook based on the bird's weight — keeping in mind that the stuffing temperature needs to come to 165 F along with the bird.
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