For 2: Christmas Dinner

This is what the FH and I had for Christmas dinner the night we celebrated together: Cornish hens, cornbread dressing, scalloped potatoes, and sautéed spinach. I love Cornish hens for an intimate dinner because you get both white and dark meat without cooking a whole chicken, each person gets their own little bird, and they are just so freaking tasty. Yes, we had some leftovers but I didn’t want to cut any dishes out because we love them all and it’s Christmas; indulge yourself (we did). Hopefully we burned off many of the calories we ate by staying up until almost 4am and playing the Wii that I got him. The Cornish hen and sautéed spinach recipes are below, for the scalloped potatoes I used this recipe from Tyler Florence, and click here for the cornbread dressing recipe posted last week. I hope you all had great Christmas dinners. What did you eat?
Sincerely Loving Food,
Lainey

Cornish Game Hens
2 hens
4 slices of bacon
½ C Flour
1 tbl Poultry Seasoning
½ C Chicken Stock
½ C Wine (dry white or red)

Heat a Dutch oven over medium heat and cook the bacon until crispy. Mean while season flour with a healthy dose of salt and pepper and the poultry seasoning then dredge the hens in the mixture. Once the bacon is cooked remove it and set aside, turn the heat up to medium-high reserving the fat that has rendered in the pan and brown the hens on all sides in the bacon fat. Add the wine and stock to the pot (it should come about half way up the birds), bring to a boil, cover reduce heat to low and simmer about 20 minutes. Remove the hens from the pan and set aside, covering with aluminum foil. Crank the heat up to high and reduce the liquid in the pan for 5-7 minutes, making gravy. Place the hens on a shallow edged serving dish, crumble the bacon on top of them and pour the gravy around. YUM!

Sautéed Spinach
2 C fresh baby spinach
1 small onion, sliced
½ pint button or cremini mushrooms, halved
2 tbl Olive oil
2 tbl Balsamic Vinegar

Heat olive oil in a deep side skillet over medium-high, then add onions and mushrooms. Cook for about 5 minutes until the onions start to become tender. Add the spinach, give it a good stir and cook until just wilted about 2 minutes. Pour the balsamic vinegar over the spinach, season with salt and pepper and remove from the heat. Serve immediately. I promse it tastes delicious, this picture just looks wierd....

 
 
Tyler's Potatoes (plus an extra clove of garlic in the cream)
You have to try these they are so, so good!

 
 
Cornbread Dressing, MY FAVORITE!!!