Bombshell Cooking: Adapting Marilyn Monroe's Stuffing Recipe (PHOTOS)

Marilyn Monroe’s Stuffing Recipe Take 2!

BOMBSHELL COOKING: Translating & Updating Marilyn Monroe’s Stuffing Recipe

Passionista Principle: “If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere.”

~Marilyn Monroe

Public domain photo of Marilyn Monroe with the troops.

A couple of months ago I posted Marilyn Monroe’s Stuffing Recipe. My intention was to try cooking it for the holidays but between flying back and forth between NYC and Atlanta, family, plus my 37 jobs that never happened. Not on Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year’s!!

All good. I decided to finally try cooking it today but being that it’s a stuffing recipe, or dressing recipe as y’all say down south, I needed to alter it. After all, I am not cooking a turkey or Cornish hens on a single chick’s casual weekend or even a date night that would need stuffing.

So, with apologies to Marilyn Monroe I knew that I would be altering and adapting the recipe. But what would I make it into? Burgers maybe? Hmmm. The ingredients included “ground round” and Parmesan cheese so why not? (Confession: I had to ask my mom what the heck “ground round” meant. I’m not really a beef eater.) Marilyn’s original stuffing recipe was found scrawled in her handwriting on an insurance contract among her things and was printed in a memoir-style book called Fragments. Here’s my version…

My Ingredients.

Here’s how I translated MM’s ingredients into Abiola style food:

(Marilyn’s original 1950’s French-style stuffing ingredients are on the left. Mine are on the right in purple.)

Guyanese Bakes, usually eaten with codfish.

1) MM says no garlic. —-> AA says, I love garlic but I stuck with this rule.

2) MM says sour dough french bread. —-> AA says, I used a Guyanese sour bread called Bakes that my Aunt Wendy made for me. I forgot to soak in water as in the original recipe.

3) MM says Giblet (liver heart). —-> AA says, Um, no thanks. I went with a chopped green apple instead.

4) MM says onions. —-> AA says, I was out of onions so I used onion powder.

I added spinach and a chopped apple instead of parsley.

5) MM says parsley, 4 stalks of celery; Chop together. —-> AA says, I went with fresh spinach and celery.

6) MM says, put in rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, oregano, poultry seasoning, salt, pepper. —-> AA says, I added Adobo, back pepper and saltless salt

7) MM says a handful of grated Parmesan cheese. —-> AA says I had some Parm left from a recent pizza order. I used that and added mozzarella cheese.

Chopped apple and celery.

8) MM says, one half pound of ground round, put in frying pan, brown, no oil, and mix. —-> AA says, I used ground turkey instead.

Walnuts & cranberries.

9) MM says raisins plus walnuts, chestnuts, pine nuts, chopped nuts. —-> AA says, I replaced raisins with dried cranberries for extra kick and then added walnuts only.

Cranberries, chopped nuts, sourdough bakes, Parmesan cheese & mozzarella.

10) MM says 1 or 2 hard boiled eggs, chopped. —–> AA says, I went with only one egg.

11) Mix together & cook. [Full original recipe here.] I cooked it all in a frying pan on a stove top.

Recipe Experiment Conclusion:

I figured that if I did an experimental Spaghetti Recipe it would be Josephine Baker’s but that’s up next. I mixed and cooked all of the ingredients in a frying pan with browned turkey. When it was complete, as stuffing, the concoction was indeed delicious. But what would I do with it? Turn it into spaghetti sauce. That’s what. I added tomato sauce and voila! Dinner is served. Compliments and apologies to Marilyn. It was delicious. Yum!