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Simple Squash Soup Recipe

I`m a fan of having simple recipes that you can kind-of follow in the winter.  Squash soup is a fantastic example of this – we kind of make it up as we go along.

Our recent installment of our CSA program saw an influx of squash into our house.

We started by chopping it and roasting the cleaned pieces at about 400 degrees until it was soft.  It took about 40 minutes – smaller pieces were pulled out before larger ones.

We filled a pot with the roasted flesh and added salt, pepper, a dehydrated hot pepper, nutmeg, dehydrated celeriac (purely optional), leeks and grated a few potatoes in to it.  We added a little stock(chicken or vegetable works best)  and a little water – enough to just make the mixture liquid and brought the entire thing to a light simmer from medium high.  You can use 100% stock if you`d like though the roasting of the veggies usually develops the flavors well enough that you can cut the mixture with water.

Simmer until the potatoes are cooked – you`ll need to add more liquid to keep it from turning into mashed vegetables so don`t be too conservative with your liquid.  Once the potatoes are cooked through, let the contents cool for a bit (turn the heat off and stir) and add to a blender.  Puree until smooth, return to pot and heat again – a final touch of liquid may be needed to get your soup to your desired thickness.

Serve in a bowl, top with coarse salt and a drizzle of olive (or other) oil.

Any other tips out there?

Tomato Soup – the Essence of Summer in the Middle of Winter

We are entering the heart of the winter.  The days are short (though getting longer), it’s brutally cold outside and people are covered in many padded layers.  And there’s plenty of food that just doesn’t taste like it could in the middle of summer.

That’s when we turn to our jars and something like this:

We have essentially stopped eating ‘fresh’ tomatoes in the winter.  Winter tomatoes are part of a growing list of things we generally don’t eat through the winter months (of course if we are served them we won’t throw them out – we simply avoid prepping with them ourselves).  The list is long and varied and isn’t something that we consciously render, it just happens.

We are also spoiled to pull many of the ingredients from our pantry – pressure canned asparagus, beans, peas, tomatoes, dehydrated berries and more (I mean, who could forget the Rumtopf?).

The soup above is  a simple tomato soup topped with dehydrated  wild leek roots.  They are sort of cross (in flavor) of onion and garlic.  Of course you can have the soup without them but they add texture and flavor and use a part of the plant that many unfortunately discard.

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Polenta with Chevre and Red Pepper Puree (Recipe)

It`s been a long time since we`ve posted a recipe – especially one focussed on an economical meal.  A good friend (the lovely Jesse) recently pointed our that she`d love to see a return of our Cheap Tuesday Gourmet series. Back then we shared about 25 recipe ideas that were considerably less than $5 a portion and had an emphasis on flavor as well as often showing that season and local could be fused into the same theme.  The series also often included some of our preserving efforts as ingredients.

Life is a little busy these days to commit to a weekly posting like that but we thought we’d share the odd idea and recipe from our kitchen that’s in the same spirit.  Today’s recipe can be followed loosely if you don’t have all of the ingredients – the cost was about $2 a plate:

Thick slices of polenta are seared in an oven, rested on a bed of red pepper puree, topped with goat cheese which is dusted with beet powder and thinly sliced leeks:

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Red Pepper Puree – The Minimalist Moves On.

Mark Bitman grows on me every day.  The New York Times writer is also the author of two cookbooks I refer more to than all others in my kitchen combined (for the record, they are How To Cook Everything and How To Cook Everything Vegetarian).  He also introduced our house (and hundreds of thousands of others) to No-Knead Bread.   He has written a column named The Minimalist for the New York Times for 13 years.

He describes the Minimalist most eloquently below:

`A year later, the column was at least adolescent, and I described its typical recipes as I do today: nearly all of them use minimal technique, minimal time or minimal ingredients; many recipes meet two of those standards, and quite a few all three.`

Mr. Bitman announced the end of his column last week – and announced he would be moving to the Editorial section where he would continue to share recipes, simple food and his messages around food advocacy.  He chose to share 25 of his all-time favorite recipes on the Times blog this week.

As a send-off, we made his red pepper puree this weekend (this was one of the 25):

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My Secret Gravy Weapon – Vegetarian or Not…

I was so excited to ask about gravy yesterday that I forgot to share my own secret advice.  It’s a wicked secret and while I don’t use it every time it will pull any gravy out from the grasp of defeat and turn it towards something that is wonderous.  It’s a little trick that also works with pasta sauce, soup and stock.  It’s the kind of thing you do when no one is looking.

I have a magic jar filled with white powder.  It’s a medium-sized mason jar which sits unlabeled and unknown to most.  You could easily mistake it for rough flour but that would be a bad mistake to make.  Adding this powder to any liquid will add density and wonderful flavor – and it’s virtually foolproof (you can’t use too much).

What is this wonderful substance?  Shiitake mushrooms.

I will eventually dehydrate my own but I started with a bag of the commercial product.  Hard and lifeless mushrooms that looked like they were spared from the tomb of King Tut.  I was fairly certain that the powder would work out well but wanted to be certain and I`m shocked to find that an entire bag has lasted me almost a year in it`s powdered form.  The powder adds thickness to any sauce – as well as plenty of flavor.  I generally find people can`t figure out I`ve added mushrooms and there is no visible trace of them whatsoever – but the depth of flavor is clearly pronounced in anything these are added to.

Mushrooms are 90% water.  Preparation is the same as cooking them – don`t wash in water, choose fresh ones (you shouldn`t be able to see the gills under the mushroom itself), wipe clear with a brush.  You can slice them or dehydrate them whole – I prefer the labor savings of doing whole vegetables though it adds time to the process.

Start mushrooms at 85 degrees farenheit (about 30 celsius) for 2.5-3 hours before raising the temp to 120 (about 50 degrees) until they are dry.  They should be brittle when complete.  Do note that they can be very smelly as they dry and, much like hot peppers, that can bother some people.

I use a coffee grinder to grind my powder.  Resist doing the entire batch at once.  A powder will lose it`s flavor faster than the whole vegetable as the amount of surface area that is exposed to air increases exponentially.  Be cautious when opening the grinder not to breathe in the fine powder (avoid this by waiting a few extra seconds before carefully opening the lid of the grinder).

If you find your mushrooms aren`t grinding fine-enough for your standards, throw them in the freezer for about 10 minutes (not much longer) and you`ll find different results follow.

Would love to hear if anyone does anything similar – or tries the same (we also do this with celeriac, onions and carrots amongst other powders and can flavor a tonne of things with them).

Acadian Dumplings (Recipe)

My Mother is from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.  If you can ever make it out that way, you simply must.

I was fortunate to spend parts of many (perhaps the better term would be `most`) of my Summer Vacations there as a child.  I have many memories and – me being me – many of them are food related.

Ewwwy goooey dumplings cooked in a stew (called a Fricot – procnounce FreeKo) was a staple of fall and winter months.  It was often made with chicken or the much more economical rabbit if you were a hunter or had a snare line.  Much of the regional cuisine is very economical, using local bounty and low refrigeration (such as salted cod and pickled herring).

The first step is to make a Fricot.  While purists will argue that our recent dinner wasn`t truly a Fricot, we had a grass-fed rump roast that needed slow cooking.  A quick stir fry of some aromatics (onion, garlic) was introduced to our 2 pound roast and many more vegetables (including some grated potato to add some starch and a bit of thickness).  I poured in leftover wine and barely covered the roast with water and herbs before cooking at a low simmer for a few hours.

The very soupy concoction was left over night in the fridge and the next day I made the dumplings, shredded the beef and cooked the dumplings in the broth (this is why you want a very soupy Fricot).  As the dumplings cook they swell and consume a lot of the broth – adding flavor and love to them at the same time.

Our dumplings look like the large flour balls below (resembling white meatballs):

Some variations made pea-sized dumplings – I grew up in a house that supersized them.

To make them:

  1. Mix 1.75 cups of flour with 3 tablespoons of baking powder and .5 teaspoon of salt
  2. Beat an egg and add in .5 cup of milk to it.  Stir into dry ingredients
  3. Mix 1 tablespoon of butter into dough

You will have something that is a little crumbly – I add a bit more liquid (milk and/or water) to help bring the rest together if needed.  You should be able to make small snowballs without much effort – if you find yourself needing to force them together it is likely that they will be dense and chewy compared to light and fluffy.

loosely arrange the dumplings in your stew (you will likely fear that they are going to fall apart during cooking which they generally won’t and wouldn’t be a worry if it did).  I covered my dumplings with my freshly shredded meat.

Boil the mixture until they are cooked through (you can check with a toothpick or cut one in half).  You should have moist and fluffy dough balls (I had some dense ones mixed in last night which were still edible).  Do note: the longer you cook them, the more broth they will absord.  We started with a soup and are left with a very thick stew.

Making thick gravy from stout (and braising beef)

I find close up photos of gravy are rarely a good idea.  It`s amazing how an entire food group (gravy) can photograph so poorly yet look so fabulous in real life.

We braised a beautiful piece of meat in stout this week.  It`s a straightforward process:

  1. Fry bacon pieces
  2. Remove pieces (leave liquid fat) and place in a slow cooker or oven-ready pot with lid
  3. Fry onions in same pan till brown, throw in garlic for last 30 seconds.  Remove to same pot.
  4. Fry chunks of beef that you have seasoned with salt and pepper and dredged in flour.  Remove chunks when brown to same pot (doing a few at a time will help keep things brown).  There will likely be a considerable mess accumulating on the bottom of your pan and sticking – this is a good thing.
  5. Deglaze pan with stout – we used Guinness.  Add a little bit of stout and stir before adding a bit more and so forth.  Pn should still be over heat.  All the `gunk`will raise off the bottom – add this to your pot.
  6. Pour remaining Guinness (we used 2 cans for a 2 pound roast) and add any herbs you wish.  Oregano and thyme were lovely.
  7. Set in preheated over at low temp (i.e. 250) for 2-.5 hours until beef is tender and falling apart.  Keep in mind that water starts to boil at 212 so this is basically a low boil.  Cook covered.
  8. You will want to check from time to time.  Add water if needed (our roast started covered in Guinness and 20% was exposed at the end and chose not to add water though we did rotate the roast from time to time).

You could have added peas, beans, carrots or potatoes as well.  We served this over mashed potatoes.

What you`re left with is beautiful tasting beef but the remaining Guinness is stout thin.  Some prefer it that way and you`re welcome to eat it this way – but if you want to have a super thick gravy with little work, here`s a few tricks:

  1. After cooking, remove all the stout you can and place in a separate pot.  Boil until you`ve reduced the liquid by about half.  If you`re a purist, this may be enough for you.
  2. Although you could create a roux (flour and butter combo), I want simple here.  Corn starch in a coffee cup (I used about half to three-quarters of a tablespoon) should be mixed with a bit of hot tap water and then some of the stout (adding the hot stout to the cup is important to avoid clumping and brining the starch to temperature a bit at a time) before adding a bit more of the stout to the cup and then a bit more…before adding your heated mixture back to the rest of the stout in the pan.
  3. Stews often taste better – and are thicker – the day after you`ve made them.  Make this the day before and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours for best results.

If you follow all three steps, you`ll get a gravy that`s as thick as you want it while still maintaining the flavors you`ve worked so hard to develop in the slow cooking process.

Now I just need a way to photograph it!

How To Make Better Tomato Sauce

There is a `secret`to tomato sauce that many home gardeners miss when it comes to preparing tomato sauce.  Before we spill our beans, let`s share a hint:

The majority of aroma of the actual fruit of a tomato comes from the skin and the outer fruit wall.  As sauce typically discards the skin, we lost a major olfactory component.  Cooking the fruit further lowers the rich tomato smell as the flesh of the tomato transforms with eat and produces a slight sulfur compound.  It`s not bad for you, it just isn`t all the freshness that a tomato can be.

If you`ve ever touched a tomato leaf, you`ll know that the majority of smell of a tomato is from it`s leaves.  We have several 4-foot high plants in the backyard right now that you can smell from many feet away.

A last-minute addition of a few fresh tomato leaves to your sauce (use like a bay leaf) will significantly increase the aroma.  You want to add these towards the end of cooking as they will lose their potency with too much processing.  We also plan to dehydrate some of our leaves for this use through the winter.

There were rumours, for years, that the leaves were possibly toxic.  Harlod McGee and other food scientists have concluded that while the leaves do contain an alkaloid called tomatine, it actually grabs onto molecules of cholesterol in  our digestive system which prevents our body from absorbing either compound.  This does in fact suggest that there are additional health benefits of lowering cholesterol via tomato leaves (of which significance I have no idea).  I do love food science though.

Of course many Italian Grandmothers have been doing this for years – I really encourage others to give it a try!

Make your own mustard

Over the last few months I`ve been looking into `making` mustard.  Reading a bit here and there, talking to those with experience and that sort of thing.

I think I wasted most of my time.

The term `making mustard` isn`t a fair description of how you concoct said condiment – after all, the main ingredient you use is mustard (seed).  The sun, farmer and retailer likely do more work in the entire process than is demanded of the home mustard mixer and describing the process almost seems unnecessary – then again, I had to idea how simple it is until recently:

  1. Grind mustard seed into powder (while you could start with powder, powder will lose it`s flavor faster as it`s surface area has a greater exposure to air).  I will toast my seeds in the future to get more of their flavor out of them.
  2. Add a liquid.  Beer will make a spicy mustard, white wine will lead you towards a dijon kind of flavor.  More complicated mustards may incorporate combinations of liquids (such as vinegar and water).
  3. Add accent flavors to taste (totally optional).  We added a bit of dried hot pepper and brown sugar to our recent experience in making a spicy beer-based `tard.

An obvious feature of this simplicity is that you can make teeenie batches until you end up with varieties you truly adore or you can serve up several varieties for a single meal.

The one thing that is for certain is I simply waited too long to try.

Cheap Tuesday Gourmet – Morroccan Chickpea Stew

We`ve had a lot of meaty Cheap Tuesday`s lately.  This weeks recipe is easily vegetarian (though we used a touch of chicken broth because we had leftover chicken bones from last nights dinner and made a 2-cup stock by simmering them in water and reducing; replace with vegetable stock to make this vegetarian).

I`ve been thinking about cooking something like this for a week and after eating two bowls of it I actually wish I`d cooked more.

2 tablespoons of olive oil, an onion, minced garlic (as much as you`d like), a teaspoon of ground cumin, 2 cups of chick peas, 2 cups of tomatoes, 1 teaspoon of dried thyme, a teaspoon of honey, a teaspoon of lemon juice, 2 cups of chicken broth, salt pepper and fresh parsley.

We use dour home-canned stewed tomatoes ($0.75), chicken broth (don`t know how to price this – bone-in chicken is cheaper by the pound than boneless so we actually saved money to buy this ingredient; let`s call it $0.50), $3 of chick peas and less than $2.50 for the rest equal a total of $6.75 for 4 dishes (less than $1.75 per).

The price should have been far more affordable – dried chickpeas could have been brought back to life in water (that would have cut the cost by at least $1) and rice or couscous could be served with this – a $1 addition that could double the portions.  This would make 6-8 portions for the same total cost but lower the portion cost to $1 or less per.

Cooking this is easy:

  1. Heat the oil (about 2 tablespoons) over a moderate-high heat.
  2. Add onions.  Cook till soft.  About 10 minutes.
  3. Add the garlic.  Cook for about 2 minutes.
  4. Add the cumin and stir for about 2 minutes – this will mellow it`s flavor
  5. Add the rest of the ingredients (except for the parsley).  Bring to a boil on high heat before reducing to a simmer and leaving for 20 minutes (ar longer as desired).  If foam appears during boiling, skim and discard.

Top with fresh parsley when you serve.

The flavors are fresh, filling and fantastic.  I know that`s a lot of f`s but it was really that good.  Would love any other ideas for chick peas – they`re a favourite here.

We started this series of posts in response to many things – an undeniable motivator (as previously shared) was the focus on poverty and eating well and a particular scene in Food, Inc which spoke to the cost of good food vs. `filler`.  The entire series of affordable approaches to good food is here.