Butternut Squash Soup

This one was damn easy and really tasty.

Just the solid top part of a medium butternut squash (for convenience)

Four medium red potatoes

One half of one medium yellow onion

Two vegetable bouillon cubes

Four cups cold water

One roasted red pepper

One half cup heavy cream

Slowly caramelize onions (small dice) while you are cubing squash and peeled potatoes. When onions are brown and sweet, add squash and potato and bouillon and water. While this comes to a boil, roast red pepper (if not already roasted). Simmer soup until veggies are soft (I did 20 mins - which is part of why red potatoes are good here). While soup is simmering, red pepper should be in paper bag or under bowl so steam can work magic. When soup is done simmering, turn off heat and allow to cool slightly. This is a good time to skin, seed, and dice the red pepper. Add diced red pepper to pot and blend with immersion blender until smoothish. I like there to be some bigger bits of red pepper floating around still for texture. Now, add one half cup cream and serve. Toasty rustic baguette is a perfect companion. Maybe an arugula salad...

Improvised Minestrone

I had one chicken back and one chicken leg in the freezer, plus a fortunate assortment of aromatics, so I decided to make a freestyle minestrone.

I have my mom's recipe in a previous post, but I only had a select array of ingredients. Here's what I used:

1 chicken back, 1 chicken leg, both cut in largish pieces
1 yellow onion, large dice
2 carrots, large dice
2 ribs celery, large dice

1/2 cup red wine
1/2 cup pearl barley
1 can (15 oz) kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can (28 oz) tomatoes
about 1 cup chicken stock

squeeze of lemon
1 large clove garlic, minced fine
1 handful of parsley, minced

I defrosted the chicken in the microwave, cut it up with my poultry shears, and seasoned with salt and pepper. In the bottom of my pressure cooker, I browned the chicken pieces in olive oil. When they were done, I removed them to a plate and poured off a little of the oil before browning the onions, etc.

I sweated the onions, carrots, and celery for a few minutes, then deglazed with the wine. Now, I added everything back in (chicken, kidney beans, tomatoes, barley). I added all the tomato juice, and then topped off with the stock, making sure to only add liquid to the point I'd want the final product to come out to - the pressure cooker would cook everything in much less time, losing much less liquid. I put on the top, brought up to pressure, and then simmered for about 18 minutes.

I released the pressure and let the soup cool a bit before serving. Right before ladling it out, I added a squeeze of lemon, the parsley, and the garlic. Note I added the garlic raw at the end, rather than with the onions. I wanted it to be spicy and hot, to help add freshness/brightness to the final dish. First time I'd tried that. Worked great.

Pignola Herb Chicken

My Thai peanut chicken recipe is so good, I've been thinking of other ways to get pulverized nut-meats onto the outside of grilled chicken. Pine nuts (pignolas) are an obvious choice. I decided one day to do a rosemary brine and basically a pine nut pesto coating for the grill. It came out super good. I have toyed now with excluding the rosemary brine and just doing a parsley/garlic/pignola pesto coating and that was almost equally as good. Next time I think I'll be trying a more intense rosemary application, like maybe blanching it and including it directly in the pesto. In any event, here's the basic formula:

Season chicken pieces in prep for grilling. This could mean an herb brine, or at minimum, salt and sit.

Put 1/2 to 1 cup pine nuts into the food processor, along with a handful of parsley or other herb and about four cloves garlic. Add salt and process, adding olive oill until the correct consistency is achieved. There should still be a few almost whole pignolas hucking around in there.

A half hour or fifteen minutes or so before grilling, toss chicken pieces with a liberal amount of pesto to coat. Let sit and then grill normally. Using a nutty oily coating makes it even more critical that one grills at the right temperature, that is, not too high. You want to avoid flare-ups and burning the nut coating. Not tasty. Do it right and you'll have speckles of black dominated mainly by golden brown nutty pasty goodness. Hit it with some lemon juice just before devouring for an extra-bright crazy experience.

Lasagna Notes

The first lasagna that I felt was wholly presentable. Nard status: rocked.

A couple days in advance, I made some vegi red sauce - using my normal method with zucchini, squash and eggplant. There was enough left over that I thought, "I can make a lasagna with this and the leftover eggplant when Mom visits." Good thinking.

I started by sautéing eggplant slices about a quarter inch thick in olive oil. Damn, those things suck it right up! I salted them in the process. If I salted beforehand, dried, and then sautéd, I'd probaby get better results with less oil absorbtion. Interestingly, about 3/4 through the frying process, they gave up a lot of the oil they had previously absorbed...

Next, I sautéd half a red onion in the same pan, continuing to build the fond. After they had browned nicely, I added about 3/4 cup of red wine to deglaze. To this I added about half of a small can of tomato paste to thicken. After the paste was well-integrated, and I judged that most of the alcohol had evaporated, I added the leftover suace, increasing its volume. One this all had heated through, I proceeded to build the lasagna.

A thin layer of sauce
A layer of...
no-boil noodles
dressed-up ricotta
eggplant
noodles
sauce
noodles
sauce
eggplant
noodles
sauce
ricotta dollops
(i think)

Baked for 30-40 minutes, covered. Then 10-20 minutes uncovered to brown top. Oven at 375ºF. Could have baked less covered and browned more.

Too thin. Could have gone up to double the layers if I had the raw materials.

Ideas to Attempt

• Indian fried chicken
• Matzoh balls using other unleavened cracker bread
• Melonade
• Kidney bean or sweet pea hummus
• to be continued...
  

Sour Cream Chocolate Custard

A variation on the more basic chocolate custard described below.

1 cup Sour Cream

2 cups Milk

4 Eggs, plus 2 Yolks

8 oz Dark Chocolate (quality chips are fine)

0.33 cup Sugar

salt

vanilla

Preheat oven to 325ºF.

Melt chocolate in double-boiler, adding part of the milk and all of the sugar once melted. Integrate fully with wire whisk until smooth and fully re-warmed. Now add the rest of the dairy and vanilla, integrating similarly.

In another bowl, beat eggs with several pinches of salt. Once chocolate mixture is cool enough, add eggs and mix well.

Weigh total mass of custard and divide into ramekins (approx. 4 oz servings). Using water from double-boiler, and also new boiling water from kettle, create water bath and put ramekins in. Place in oven for about 50 minutes. Cool custards in fridge before serving. Cover with paper towel to retain moisture.

Bread Pudding

2 cups good stale bread cut into approx. 1/2" cubes (I used a walnut wheat levain)

4/3 cups half and half

1/2 cup w. sugar

3 Tb butter (melted)

1 egg and two egg yolks

1/2 cup dried fruit of choice, diced (I used turkish apricots)

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

hefty pinch salt

Cut the bread up a couple days ahead of time. If it is not quite stale yet, it will be easier (and safer) to cut. Then, leave the bread chunks out in a colander so they will dry out substantially.

Break the eggs into a bowl and beat with hefty pinch salt. Add all other ingredients except half and half and butter. Melt butter in microwave and heat half and half to slightly warm. Mix HnH into egg mixture then add butter. Mix well. Put dried bread chunks into this and toss well. Allow an hour or two for the bread to absorb as much fluid as possible.

Pour batter into 8"x6" tin baking dish. Arrange bread and apricots evenly and top off with any remaining liquid. Place baking dish in water bath and bake for approx. 50 mins at 350ºF.

Salt and Pepper Chicken Stir-fry

4 chicken thighs, boned and skinned
half an onion
2 green onions
3 to 4 cloves garlic
4 to 5 baby bok choy
1.5 cups broccoli cut up small

salt
pepper
soy sauce
rice vinegar

Cut up chicken into bite-size pieces. Salt and pepper generously. Sauté (in batches) in hot sesame oil. In a separate pan, sauté chopped onions. Once browned, add garlic and sauté a couple minutes more. Add chopped bok choy and sprinkle with 1-2 Tb. soy sauce. Microwave broccoli briefly, then brown in chicken oil and fond. Optionally, deglaze with rice vinegar. Serve over brown rice.

Cashew Butter Cookies

0.5 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
0.5 tsp Salt

1 cup Cashew Butter
0.5 cup Butter
0.5 cup W. Sugar
0.5 cup B. Sugar
1 Egg
0.5 tsp Vanilla

Sift dry ingredients together. Cream butter and white sugar. Mix in brown sugar, cashew butter, egg, and vanilla. Drop 1/8 cup dollops onto parchment covered baking sheet - cook at 375ºF for 12 to 20 minutes.

Black Sesame Seeds

Black sesame seeds, you make me look GOOD!

Beef Stout Stew

0.5 lb beef stew meat
1.0 lb oxtail
0.25 c pearl barley

1 med yellow onion
2 carrots
2 med waxy potatoes (yukon gold)
3 cloves garlic

1.0 c oatmeal stout
2 c stock of choice

2 Tb flour
salt
pepper
3 bay leaves

Oil and salt stew meat, then sear in bottom of pressure cooker. Set aside stew meat and oxtail separately. Sauté diced onion in rendered beef fat, adding garlic toward end. Add flour to create roux. When roux is complete, add stout and scrub fond off bottom of pot. Re-introduce seared oxtails, add barley and stock. Bring to a simmer and lock pressure cooker. Simmer at pressure for 25 minutes. After releasing pressure, remove lid and add carrots and potatoes to pot. They should be cut in spoon-friendly sizes. Salt and pepper to taste, then simmer for 15 minutes. Finally, re-introduce seared stew meat and simmer for a further 10 minutes. Once done, remove bay leaves, remove bones from oxtails and shred associated meat. Serve with crusty warm bread and plenty of chopped parsley on top.

Calling on Mom

I asked my Mom about her Minestrone recipe. One of my favorites and a frequent dinner at our house as a kid. Here's her response:

When I first started making that we lived on Palm St. in San Luis Obispo and there were a bunch of boys who lived next door (Dad and they built a massive deck between our two houses) and they did a LOT of barbqueing whole cut up chicken. So I started having them give me the chicken backs, and I made stock---yes I did.

The chicken backs make awesome stock. (I made it the day before and refrigerated it to peel off the fat.) Then i would saute onions and carrots. You have the rest of the typical ingredients right....I consider a clove of chopped garlic to be absolutely necessary, and zucchini is a must, and finally the SECRET de riguer ingredient is at the last ten minutes, add a cup or two of sliced cabbage. The only herb I use is dried basil. I add all the tomatoe liquid when I add the large can of tomatoes. Use the good ones (sliced style.)

Ideally I would use at least two chicken backs for my soup pot size. Four would be better. I don't put anything else in there, but you could.

Don't forget parmesean on top (silly me of course you won't)
Love,
Mom

Chocolate Custard

I suppose I might as well change the name of this blog to "Custardnumbers." What can I say? Dairy, eggs, and flavoring. So simple. So much variety. So good.

1 c. heavy cream
0.5 c. milk
2 eggs + 1 yolk
1/3 c. sugar
1/3 c. cocoa powder
pinch salt
1/2 t. vanilla

Heat oven to 325ºF

I warmed the milk and cream together in a pan to a sub-boiling level, then added the sugar and cocoa. I whisked the mixture until the cocoa and sugar had completely integrated. Turning off the heat, I added the vanilla and salt to the mix.

In a large glass bowl, I whisked the eggs lightly. Didn't want to incorporate too much air because that would tend to make unsightly bubbles on the surface of the custard. Adding the still warmish chocolate cream little by little to the eggs and mixing well completes the process.

I buttered six ramekins and placed them in a big Pyrex baking dish. Boiled water in my teakettle in preparation for the baking process. The custard mix was enough to fill each ramekin up to 5/8" or so. I filled the baking dish up about 1/2" with boiling water and put it in the oven for an hour. After the hour, I let the ramekins rack-cool, then popped them in the fridge with saran wrap covering to limit moisture loss and skin formation.

In the end, the custards we're a little overthick and had a slightly desiccated layer on the surface. Cooked too long I expect. Next time I'll trust my bump testing and not blindly cook for any given time. Also, I think the dairy:egg ratio could be increased slightly. Finally, it would be better, I think, to have the custards be a bit deeper. Maybe not. I'll increase the milk and that will address the thickness and also add volume. Also may consider straining the milk to remove stray chunks of cocoa and crystalized sugar. The buttering did not appear to be neccesary.

Damn they were good though, as imperfect as they were.

Banana Custard Pie

Freestyled a banana custard pie tonight. Basic homemade graham cracker crust (2), then:

Mash four very ripe bananas (approx. 2 cups) with a fork and put in blender or food processor. Add 1 and 2/3 cups half n half. Blend till smooth. In a bowl, break three eggs and add two egg yolks. Add 1 cup white sugar. This was WAY too much sugar. I was basing this on my squash/pumpkin pie recipe, which obviously needs the extra sugar. Didn't think of that. I'd reduce it to between 1/2 and 1/3 cups next time. Maybe none.

Anyway, whisk the eggs and sugar together. Add about a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Whisking vigorously incorporates air, which might not be so great. Can create sort of a foamy pie surface. Mix the blended banana/cream mixture into the egg/sugar mixture. Pour into cooled graham crusts. Should be enough for two pies. Bake at 350º F for about 30 minutes.

Cool, then refrigerate before serving. Good with whipped cream and toasted walnuts.

Squash Custard

3/4 c. Cooked Squash, Mashed (acorn is good, but could be pumpkin or butternut, or anything)
1/3 c. B. Sugar
1/3 t. Cinnamon
1/3 t. Ginger
1 Egg + 1 Yolk
1/2 c. Cream/Half-n-half

Preaheat oven to 325ºF. Boil teakettle full of water.

Roast or steam squash, cool and peel skins. Mash or cuisinart to desired consistency. Beat eggs with sugar, then add all other ingredients, mixing well. Grease 3 or 4 rammekins and distribute mix equally among them. Place in glass baking dish and pour in pre-heated water bath. Put in oven for 30 to 50 minutes, or until set. Remove and cool before serving. Whipped cream.