Cabin Cooking on True North Island

Stephanie Hansen, author of the True North Cabin Cookbook, returns to her Minnesota roots to prepare a rustic cabin dinner for her family.

Cooking at True North Island, Hansen’s menu features dishes from her popular True North Cabin Cookbook series. The dinner includes classic chicken and biscuits, a light and fresh arugula salad, and a homemade blueberry galette.

Experience the flavors of the Northwoods with these simple and delicious recipes, perfect for your own cabin getaway.

Chicken and Biscuits
Ingredients for the stew
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 carrots, peeled and diced into rounds
2 cups sweet potato or butternut squash, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch squares
1 large onion, chopped in 1/2-inch dice
2 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp Better than Bouillon chicken seasoning or a dried bouillon cube
3 cups warm chicken broth
3 cups rotisserie chicken, pulled off the bone or poached chicken breasts
1 Tbsp fresh chopped rosemary
1 Tbsp fresh thyme
Fresh ground salt and pepper to taste

Ingredients for the biscuit dough
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
8 Tbsp melted butter, cooled to room temperature
1 cup buttermilk, chilled

Grab the recipe here: https://www.stephaniesdish.com/chicken-and-biscuits/

Arugula Parmesan Salad
Ingredients
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
3 Tbsp olive oil, best quality
1/2 tsp kosher salt
4 grinds freshly ground black pepper – about ½ tsp to taste
5 oz clamshell arugula, about 4 cups
1/4 cup fresh shaved parmesan cheese

Grab the recipe here: https://www.stephaniesdish.com/arugula-parmesean-salad/

Blueberry Galette with Whipped Cream
Ingredients for the crust
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 sticks very cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
3 Tbsp of ice water
1 Tbsp vodka
Ingredients for the blueberry filling
3 cups fresh blueberries
1/4 cup sugar, plus 1 tsp reserved
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp lemon zest
2 tsp lemon juice
1 egg
Ingredients for the whipped cream
2 cups cold heavy whipping cream
4 Tbsp confectioners’ sugar
2 tsp pure vanilla extract (optional)

Grab the recipe: https://www.stephaniesdish.com/blueberry-galette/

[Music] Hi friends, I’m Stephanie Hansen. Let’s go. I’ve been cooking, eating, and talking about it for years. This is amazingly good. Now I’m inviting you along for the ride. Stanley, it’s the bomb. Something you cannot live without. Meet the chefs, home cooks, restaurant tours, and bakers honing their craft. Everything is going to blow your taste buds up. And try new recipes with me in my kitchen. It’s simple. It’s easy. That looks amazing. There’s always something delicious to share. These buds got a taste. Taste buds got a taste. Let’s go. This is Taste Buds. Hey, Taste Buds. Everybody has that special place in their heart that when they’re there reminds them of home. and I’m gonna invite you into my cabin home in Elely, Minnesota on an island on Burnside Lake called True North. It is where I wrote two cookbooks, True North Cabin Cookbook Volume 1 and two, because I loved all of the flavors in the Midwest and I love home cooking. I’m going to take you on this journey. I’m going to introduce you to where I come from and we’re going to cook together on this episode of Taste Buds. I’m bringing you home. Come along with me. [Music] Okay, taste buds. I’m at the hometown grocery store, Zups. I’m here to pick up groceries for all the things we’re going to make on the island. We are making chicken and biscuits, an arugula salad with greens from my hilltop garden, and I decided to make a blueberry gallette because I picked four cups of blueberries yesterday and it is going to be delicious. All right, I’m just here to pick up a few things. This is going to be for the chicken and biscuits. We could use regular potatoes, but we’re going to use sweet potatoes because I think it makes it just a little bit more delicious. Just so you know, the grocery store is like my favorite place. All right, grabbing my chicken stock. Also, better than bullion. It’s great for making gravies. And we’re going to be making the chicken and biscuit gravy. [Music] I got some Parmesan cheese for my arugula parmesan salad. Coming through. Make way. When I’m at the grocery store, I like to point out weird things. Pickle loaf. Have you ever seen that? I mean, I’ve seen olive loaf, but pickle loaf. Those chicken patties look good, don’t they? Yeah, they do. Gonna grab some chicken that we’re going to poach for the chicken and biscuits. And the last thing is to find pine nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, peacons, macadamia nuts. I mean, if you have macadamia nuts, you probably have pine nuts. I’m sorry. I was just thinking, okay, pine nuts. Here they are. You see, they’re these little just kind of oily little nuts that are really great to toast. Dog toys. Do I need to get a toy for Stanley at the grocery store? And the gummy bears are for my mother-in-law, Dolores, who’s putting up with us while we’re taking over the cabin. All right, we’re done. I was g haven’t done a cartwheel in a very long time, friends. How you guys doing today? Good, thank. How are you? I’m good. I’m going to make some chicken and biscuits. And I picked four cups of blueberries yesterday. Oo, I’m going to make a blueberry gallette. Thank you, Laura. Okay, you too. Let’s go cook up some food. So, we’re heading back to historic Burnside Lodge, which is where we have a boat slip, and park our boat, and we’ll take you out to the true North Island. Curt’s going to pick me up in the boat. I got my groceries. I am ready to go. Hey, Kurt. Hey. Thank you for picking me up. Sure. What have you been doing? I went fishing. I caught some walleye for dinner. You did not. No, you’re right. I didn’t. We’re heading out to the True North Island on Burnside Lake. It is an actual island. It’s 4 and 1/2 acres. It’s where we have a real rustic cabin. You’ll see it in a minute. It’s our family place that we’ve been coming to for over 35 years. Hello, Stanley. All right, taste buds. We are here. Now, we got to go cook some delicious items. We got to cook some delicious things. Go on, Stan. Let’s go. We are back from town. We’ve got our groceries unloaded and we are going to make dinner for our family. So, we are going to make a blueberry gallette. We’re also going to make a chicken and biscuits that’s going to be in a nice skillet. And then we’re going to make an arugula salad with pine nuts. I invited Kurt to make the dough for the gallette because he’s kind of the dough maker in our house. I can do it, but it’s never as good as his. So, let’s start with the gallette. Okay, we start with the butter. And this is a frozen stick. So, you want a frozen stick of butter to start because what you want are these hard peas pieces of butter that melt and form layers in the crust. So, we’re just going to cut it up. I like to use a quez an art, too, and so does Kurt, just because it makes making pastry easy, right? And we use the cutting blade because we want to cut it, not really mix it. I’m going to add the flour. We’ve got 1 and 1/4 cup of allpurpose flour. Yeah. Um, some salt. About a teaspoon. And I like kosher salt. Okay. And now we’re just going to chop it up and get a little p-sized um butter going. So we pulse it. We do not want to over mix this because that butter will start to melt. So I’m going to go with the water. You want it to still look kind of dry. So we’re just going to add it real slowly and pulse it like that. And then Stephanie also likes to use a little bit of vodka. Vodka is the secret ingredient. And the idea is the vodka is going to evaporate when you cook it and make it just a little bit crispier. Yeah. It gives it a little more moisture when you’re making the dough, but not so much moisture that it’s sticky and you can’t taste it cuz it cooks out. Okay. So, it still looks kind of dry, but it’s not. So, I’m going to dump this in the bowl. It comes together now in a nice ball. Again, the trick is not to over work it. And you can see there’s chunks of butter in there. And that’s really what you want. Now, we’re going to put it in the refrigerator so that when we work it again into the crust, the butter still stays cold. All right. While Kurt’s chilling his dough, I’m going to make the filling. I did pick fresh blueberries uh from the Ele. Forest. Yes, I picked them in the forest. I got a tick in everything. That sometimes happens when you’re out foraging. But I have about four cups. The berries are very sweet. So, we’re just using a little bit of sugar, about 1/4 cup. We’re going to use some lemon zest. It just brings out that real blueberry flavor. I think lemon is a beautiful accent to blueberries. I’m also going to add the juice just to give a little extra tart to the sweet. Then we are going to add about 3 tablespoon of flour. In my recipe, you use corn starch, but Kurt likes to use flour and I don’t have cornstarch. So, one of the things about cooking on the island is that you really kind of have to make do with what you have. Okay, we’ve prepared the blueberries. We’re going to do just a quick egg wash. We’re just going to use this to brush on the outside of the pastry so that it stays glossy and pretty. You ready for your pastry? You can still see the nice hunks of butter in there. Good job, Kurt. Okay, I am going to start rolling this out. It’s nice and cold, but you see it. It kind of crumbles a little bit. So, what we’re going to do is um roll it out a little bit and then we’re going to fold it. You know, the thing about a a gallette is it’s free form and so we’re not going to take anything too seriously. And the last gallette I made, everything flowed out the side. So, we’re going to do it Curt’s way this time. Yeah, you can see the little pieces of butter in there smooshing out and that’ll make layers of crust when it cooks. We’re going to throw it in here. All right, let’s put that filling down in the middle. Do you care how I do it? Just do it um uh slowly just so it doesn’t jump off the edges of the gallette. No jumping berries. No jumping berries. So, making kind of a big mound. Make sure we have a lot of overhang. And then we’re just going to take the edges and start pushing it up like that. Do you seal them? You kind of crimp them a little bit. Okay. But you don’t really need to seal them too much. They should kind of seal themselves. Okay. I’m going to do the egg wash on the edges. And then we’re going to sprinkle some sugar on there. Boom. There is a blueberry gallette. I love it. All right. So, we’re going to start this in the oven hot 400°. It’s going to sear the crust. Then, after 30 minutes, we’re going to turn it down and we’re going to cook it at 375 for another 30 minutes just to get those berries all burst open so we get all that delicious juice. And there it goes. I’m going to set a timer for 30 minutes. All right, it’s time to check on the gallette. Oh boy, does that look good. We have a little bit of spillage, but not too much. Look at that bubbling. I can smell the lemon. That is beautiful. We’re going to go ahead and set it aside cuz it needs some time for the juices to firm up and to cool down. And we will start working on our chicken and biscuits. And the best chicken and biscuits, I think, use roasted vegetables because you really get the caramelization on the vegetables. So, we’ve got sweet potato here. You could use regular potato if you want, but I like sweet potato. Two cups of onions and chopped carrots in about a/4 in dice. What I’m going to do is take about two tablespoons of oil. I’m going to spread couple teaspoons of salt and get them all mixed up on my sheetpan here and roast them in a 400°ree oven for 25 minutes. And that is going to be our vegetable base. And I’m going to go ahead and start our gravy. I’m using my cast iron. And I’m starting with a couple tablespoons of butter. And I’m going to make what’s called a rue. And a r is basically a mixture of oil or butter, some kind of a fat with flour. And you make kind of like a doughy paste in your pan. And you let that cook off a little bit until you get rid of that flowery look and that pasty that kind of cooks out the flowery taste. I’ve got about 3 tablespoons of flour and I’m going to add it about a tablespoon at a time just to make sure that I get it all incorporated. And again, I’m just looking to make a paste that’s not lumpy cuz we don’t want lumpy gravy. And the way you get lumpy gravy is by going too fast. You just want to take your time. All right. So, it’s getting nice and glossy, a little doughy looking. That’s exactly what we want. From here, we’re going to add our flavoring, which is the better than bullion. And we’re going to start adding our stock. I’ve got three cups of chicken stock. And I’m just going to add it a little bit at a time while I’m whisking. I’m going to turn up the heat just a little bit. So, I’ve started with about a cup of my broth, and I’m just going to keep stirring and whisking until it starts to thicken. And I’m going to add a little bit more. The way you can tell your gravy is done is to put your spoon in the gravy and see if it coats the back of the spoon. Our gravy is done. It’s plenty salty, so I’m just going to put a little pepper in. You kind of taste it and see what you like. I’ve got my herbs. I’ve got thyme and then rosemary, but I didn’t have a lot of it and I grow it on the island. So, again, when you’re out here, you kind of got to make do with what you have. So, in this instance, I’m adding some sage. And I had some leftover chicken from a chicken dinner that we had on the grill. I also poached one chicken breast so that I had three cups of chicken. Our veg is ready to come out. Okay. A little roasty, a little toasty. I also started a stick of butter melting. That’s going to be the beginnings of the buttermilk. Getting my veg mixed in with my gravy and my chicken. Look at this deliciousness. I mean, all we need to do now is just plop a few buttery biscuits on there and bake this. Woo! I’ve got my Kemp’s buttermilk. So, I’ve got one cup of that that I’m going to mix in this bowl with the stick of butter. And then I’m going to add my two cups of flour. These are all baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt. I’m going to make just like a shaggy dough here with my flour, my buttermilk, my butter. Hello, little shaggy dough. And then we’re going to plop it just right on top of our biscuit mixture. I’ve got a/4 cup measure here. So, here we go. Remember that commercial? Plop, plop, fizz, fizz. Oh, what a relief it is. It’s not exactly like that, but close. And you just kind of want to get them on top of your vessel that you’re cooking in. Bloop. How delicious does this look? It’s almost like we’re making a savory cobbler. Yum. Okay, final final biscuit. Look at that. All right, so we’re popping this into the oven for about 25 minutes at 400°. All right, it is time to get our chicken and biscuits out of the oven. They look so good. So roasty and toasty and cabin cozy. So, we are ready to make the salad. But first, we’re going to go to my Elely Hilltop garden and pick fresh arugula. This is my garden that I tend all summer long. The arugula is here. I planted it about a month ago. It takes about a month. The bugs really love it this time of year, so I’m going to have to wash it really well. I love arugula. It’s very peppery, and I really like to serve it with uh rich grilled meats like a ribeye, a beautiful piece of chicken thigh. Oh, I got a giant zucchini, which will make delicious zucchini fritters. Oh, she looks delightful. Yellow squash. And I think I have a pepper in here, too. Oh, I do. Cute. I love gardening up here, but it’s hard cuz I really only have a 60-day growing season. Let’s get back to the house and finish our meal. All right, I’ve got my arugula. I’ve spun the salad. Got it all washed and dried. Looks beautious. And I’m going to go ahead and get my pine nuts going. And what I want to do with these is I just want to toast them. And it goes fast. And I just kind of keep doing this so that they get a little bit brown. And then before they get too cooked, I’ll quickly throw them on top of our salad. So, let’s get the cheese started. I just like these big kind of long ribbons. They’re roughly like about the same size as the leaf of lettuce, so I think it looks pretty. Keep your eyes on the nuts cuz as soon as you don’t watch them, they’ll get burned. Keep your eye on the nuts. Okay, multitasking. You know what happens when home cooks multitask. Okay, our cheese is done. Our nuts are getting toasty. M toasty. Give it just another minute. Okay, I’m going to take them off the heat and I’m going to finish up my dressing. two tablespoons of olive oil. And we’re going to squeeze some fresh lemon. Hit it with a little bit of salt. Again, I like kosher salt just cuz I like big flakes. Little pepper and our nuts. And that’s it. Super simple, super delicious. Going to really pair nicely with the richness of the gravy and the chicken and biscuits. And let us not forget, we still have that delightful blueberry gallette. I’m gonna make some Kemp’s whipped cream to really bring it all home and then we’re gonna get our family together and sit out on the island and have a delicious dinner. So, the last thing that we have to make to complete our cabin meal is some whipped cream for our delicious gallette. Now, there are some tricks for whipping cream. Number one, you want to make sure that your whipping cream is super cold and you want to make sure that your bowl is cold. mosquito. Okay. So, you want to start on a lower speed. So, you want to start on a lower speed and slowly incorporate air in here. When you feel like you’re about halfway, meaning you can see bubbles in your whipped cream and it’s feeling a little bit thicker and a little bit more viscous, then you want to add your flavorings. I like to use powdered sugar because powdered sugar allows the whipped cream to hold longer so I can put it in the refrigerator or I can set it out on a counter if I’m having a dinner party like tonight and that whipped cream is going to hold its soft peaks. And I’m going to add 1/4 cup. So this is a Sunbeam Mixmaster Junior mixer that my mom had when I was a little kid. It’s really old and kind of yellowing, but it’s very special to me. So, I’m going to go ahead and turn up the gas here and really start giving it a little bit more oomph. Whipping cream takes you about 5 to 10 minutes depending on how fast you go. All right, you can see the soft peaks forming and that is when it’s done. All right, it’s time to eat. Let’s go. Should I introduce everybody? Okay, we’re just normal. We’re just normal. Just normal. Normal family. Hi. Normal family. Okay. All right, taste buds. I am here with my family. My mother-in-law Dolores, my daughter, Ellie, and my husband Kurt, who you met earlier. And you guys, we have three recipes from the True North Cabin cookbook. We have chicken and biscuits. I know. Doesn’t that look good? We have the arugula salad from our garden, Kurt. And we have the gallette that Kurt made with us. The blueberry gallette. Look how beautiful his crust turned out. He makes the best crust, doesn’t he, Dolores? Yes, he does. All right. I’m going to serve you first. We have chicken and biscuits, and it has sweet potatoes, onions, carrots. Do you want another one? No. Okay. All right. And you’re good. And Ellie, why don’t you pass some salad if anybody wants it? All right, Dolores, what do you think of my chicken and biscuits? Delicious. The biscuits are particularly fluffy and it’s not too heavy cuz sometimes like um chicken and biscuits can be really gravy forward and dense with a light biscuit and good protein. Love it. That’s kind of why I like the arugula salad too cuz it’s a good palette cleanser. Nice, spicy and bright. Yes. Kurt, how did you feel about your gallette? Oh, it’s beautiful and it turned out wonderfully. Do you always make galletes that turn out delightful? Yes. I’ve never made a bad one in my life. It’s true. Despite the name, gallettes are easy. Did you throw a little bit of vodka in this? Yeah, a tablespoon. Oh. It helps you gather the dough together and creates the moisture so you can knead it and roll it, but then it evaporates out. It’s a good trick. Dolores, how long have you been coming to True North Island? Since 1971, I would estimate. It was important to me because it was an anchor in our family. And we’ll all move around, but hopefully this will still be our home. Kurt, you didn’t say this, but Kurt and I got engaged here. I look and he’s down on one knee and he’s got the ring in the box and he asked me to marry him. And instead of saying yes, the first thing I said was, are you sure you want to? And he was like, I think so. Is there a reason I don’t want to? In any event, I just get to be part of the family hopefully forever. Dolores, at every meal, you usually give us a toast. So, why don’t you do us the honors tonight? I want to say how fortunate I am to have all of you here. And I’m happy that this is going to be somehow in an archive about living in the North Woods. Cheers, everyone. Cheers to the island. Enjoy. We’ll see you back in my kitchen next week, taste buds. Thanks for watching.