Roasted Butternut Squash Bisque

It is freezing today, and nothing's better on a cold day than a warm bowl of soup! Enter roasted butternut squash bisque:

Ingredients:
*1 small butternut squash, peeled and cubed
*Half an onion, peeled and sliced
*Handful of carrots, washed
*3 T oil (I used avocado oil)
*1 t garam masala
*1 t cayenne pepper
*1/2 t salt
*1/2 t cinnamon
*2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
*2 C chicken stock
*3/4 C heavy cream
*Red pepper flakes and chopped bacon for garnish (optional)

Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Place squash, onion, carrots and garlic in a pyrex dish
3. Sprinkle with spices and salt, drizzle with oil
4. Toss together to coat
5. Bake 45-60 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes until beginning to brown
6. Remove from oven, place in pot with remaining ingredients
7. Blend with a stick blender until smooth (hand beaters may work for this, too, but it will probably take longer)
8. Heat on stove top until warm enough to serve
9. (Optional) Pour into bowls and garnish with bacon and pepper flakes
10. Enjoy!

I served the soup with warm, cheesy biscuits adapted from here. I used butter instead of coconut oil, and added 1/2 t garlic powder plus an extra 1/2 C cheddar cheese to Laura's recipe. Yum :)

Pizza Two Ways

 One: Lazy Man's Pizza
1. Scoop the stems out of button mushrooms
2. Fill with sauce and toppings of choice
3. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes
4. Broil until cheese is warm and bubbly

Two: Coconut Flour Crust

1. Blend 2 T coconut flour, 2 T ground flaxseed, 1/4 t baking powder, 2 eggs and spices of choice

2. Stir in 1 C shredded mozzarella and 1 C shredded parmesan

3. Spread thinly on a very well greased baking sheet

4. Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees flipping halfway through

5. Top with sauce and toppings of choice

6. Broil until cheese is warm and bubbly

A Not-So-Primal (But Totally Delicious) Dinner

I do in fact realize that rice is a grain, and we don't usually keep it in the house, but it's a pretty benign grain, in my opinion. Also, we love sushi, so we'll make the exception for this meal since it doesn't include any rancid oils or gluten. Besides, fish and seaweed are healthy and delicious :)

Sushi making is so much easier than I would have expected. I've had more difficulty making broccoli cheddar soup!
First, prepare the sushi rice. This involves mixing 2 cups water and 2 cups sushi rice (don't substitute any other variety of rice- sushi rice can be found at an Asian market or in the ethnic aisle at Giant Eagle), bringing to a boil, removing from heat, and letting sit, covered, until the water is completely absorbed by the rice (about 15-20 minutes). While rice is sitting, blend 1/4 cup honey, 1/4 cup rice vinegar and 1 tablespoon salt. Once rice has cooked, stir in mixture and let come to room temperature.

Fillings for the sushi can be pretty much anything. We like julienned carrots, peppers and cucumber, scallions, cream cheese, avocado, fish and spicy mayo (1 cup homemade mayo+1 drop extra stevia+1 splash extra lemon juice+1 T spicy garlic chili sauce). We do all different combinations, all are very good. Last night, we tried cooked fish for the first time (mahi) and it was just as delicious as our raw ahi tuna.

I won't list instructions for rolling sushi, because they're ubiquitous on the web. Here's a straightforward tutorial I like: http://sushiday.com/archives/2006/10/26/how-to-roll-maki-sushi/

 Dip in gluten free tamari and wasabi. Yummy!

Roasted sweet potato "fries" and homemade spicy ranch

This recipe is a family favorite and very simple, too! Without further ado, I give you sweet potato "fries":

Ingredients for "fries":

*3 lb sweet potatoes

*6 T oil (I use olive oil but melted coconut oil would work well, too)

*1/2 t salt

*1/2 t garlic powder

*1/2 t paprika 

*1/2 t pepper

Directions for fries:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2. Slice sweet potatoes into rounds about 1/2 inch thick, then slice rounds in half. If they are large sweet potatoes, you may have to slice the rounds in thirds. 

3. Toss potatoes in oil, salt, garlic powder, paprika and pepper. 

4. Spread onto baking pan, trying to overlap the sweet potatoes as little as possible. I used 2 pans for this recipe

5. Bake 30-40 minutes, until soft and starting to caramelize, stirring every 10-15 minutes

6. Serve with spicy ranch for dipping (recipe below)

Ingredients for spicy ranch:

*2 egg yolks

*1/2 t mustard

*1/2 t salt

*1/4 C light olive oil (must be light, or use almond/avocado oil)

*2 drops liquid stevia

*Splash lemon juice

*1/2 C sour cream

*1/2 t garlic powder

*1 t dill

*1 t parsley

*1 1/2 t fresh chives, diced

*1 1/2 t cayenne pepper

*additional salt to taste

Directions for spicy ranch:

(For this recipe, I use hand beaters and a glass jar with just enough height and width to fit one beater inside touching the bottom, I've found this is easiest)

1. Beat egg yolks, mustard and salt until egg is frothy

2. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while beating the mixture. You are trying to get the mixture to emulsify, so you must drizzle the oil very slowly and make sure each drop is getting fully incorporated. I've found using an olive oil cruet (for salad dressing) makes drizzling the oil at a steady pace easiest.

3. At this point, you should have essentially mayonnaise. If it is not the thickness of mayonnaise, add more oil (I know it's counter-intuitive, but it works, trust me!)

4. Add 2 drops liquid stevia (try subbing 1 t honey if you don't have liquid stevia) and a splash of lemon juice. You can taste at this point if you like, it should taste like mayonnaise.

5. Add remaining ingredients, blend well. Taste and add additional cayenne or salt to taste if desired. 

6. Enjoy :)

Coconut Flour Pumpkin Pancakes

Nothing's better than pumpkin baked goods on a cool fall morning. 

Ingredients:

*2 eggs

*2 T heavy cream

*1 t vanilla extract

*Dash cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg

*1/2 t baking soda

*2 T pumpkin puree

*1 t honey

*4 T coconut flour

*2 T soda water

*Butter to grease pan

Steps:

1. Blend eggs, cream, vanilla, spices, baking soda, pumpkin puree and honey with hand beaters

2. Slowly add coconut flour while blending. Blend until smooth.

3. Gently stir in soda water by hand.

4. Scoop mixture by the tablespoon onto buttered, preheated pan

 5. Cook on low (very important to keep it on low as coconut flour tends to burn easily) until the bottoms are browned, then flip. Continue cooking until cooked through.

6. Serve topped with a dollop of butter, whipped cream and/or maple syrup.

7. Enjoy!!

Butternut squash lasagna

Since we finally got our much coveted mandolin, we decided to tackle butternut squash lasagna! It's a multi-step recipe, but it was well worth the effort.

Ingredients:
*1 small butternut squash
*1 jar pasta sauce (preferably without HCFS or nasty oils, I look for one with olive oil) or make your own (we used a 28 oz jar of crushed tomatoes, plus an 8 oz jar of diced tomatoes and added olive oil, fresh garlic, oregano, basil, dry italian seasoning, onions, salt, pepper and chili flakes)
*8 oz of mozzarella cheese, shredded
*1 cup ricotta cheese
*1 pound ground meat or sausage

Steps:
1. Peel squash (easiest with a vegetable peeler) and slice into strips approximately 1/4 inch wide (easiest with a mandolin :) )
2. Brown ground meat or sausage in pan in a small amount of olive oil
3. Spread 1/4 of the sauce on the bottom of a 9'x13' baking pan
4. Cover the sauce with a single layer of butternut squash slices
5. Spread the next 1/4 of the sauce over the squash
6. Dollop ricotta over sauce and spread with a spatula
7. Repeat steps 4 & 5
8. Spread ground meat over the sauce

9. Repeat steps 4&5
10. Top with shredded mozzarella, and optionally parmesan cheese and pepper flakes

11. Bake at 400 degrees, 45 minutes covered with foil
12. Remove foil and bake an additional 15 minutes
13. If top is not properly browned, broil until the cheese is bubbly

WANT.

This is so fantastic. Want want want want.

Indulge Your Desire for Precision With the OCD Cutting Board

 Adrian Covert — Like perfectly-sized portions? Want to cut your sandwich at a perfect 45 degree angle? Need to know how to julienne? Allumette? Dice? Slice? The OCD cutting board provides a highly-scientific way to break your food apart. [The Awesomer viaCrunchGear] 

Spinach Cheese based thing.

So, in much the same vein as other posts of mine have been exceedingly slow in coming, this one has been a long time in the making as well. In fact, its probably been nearly a month since I made it, but better late than never, said the late man.

Leah gets the credit for making this, but I had a go at replicating it, sans food processor over here in the boonies of Edinburgh.

Ingredients:
Some* spinach, chopped up as fine as y ou can with a dull knife.
Some* cheese, preferably mozzerella, but shredded white cheddar will do in a pinch.
1 Egg

Shred the spinach and mix thoroughly with the egg and cheese, put onto a greased baking tray, or onto a pizza stone. I don't have a pizza stone, but it might make this recipe "crisp up" a bit better on the bottom.
Cooked on about 200 C.

*I know there are 1 cup measurements for these things, but A) I hate measuring things that have the capacity to be compressed and potentially fill more than their volumetric measurements suggest, and B) I don't have a measuring cup to begin with.

So we press on!

The point of this was making a bread substitute type thing, sort of akin to a pizza crust, but without all of the flour. It was...interesting. Mine always seems to eggy or too spinach-y. It probably helps to measure it out in terms of mass, or even volume, but perhaps I'll have another go sooner or later. This attempt was more or less successful, and I used it as a foundation for eating guacamole topped with more cheese. Yeah guacamole!

An update on yogurt making

We've had a few successes with yogurt making, but I was getting tired of constantly "babysitting" my yogurt while it was incubating. I decided to try (again) with the crock pot.

I followed all the same steps, except that, instead of letting it sit in a pre-heated oven, I let it sit in a warm water bath in my crock pot set to low. I did not put the lid on my crock pot, as this seemed to keep the temperature around 120 degrees (too high). With the lid off, the temp stayed a constant 110 degrees. No need to babysit! I let it incubate for 24 hours. The little guy is eating it up right now.

Paleo crackers were a success! Next: pate!

I'm pretty excited to try making pate, but I figured that I should master a grain free cracker recipe, first. Since the little one seems to react to tree nuts and dairy, I decided to try for tree nut free and dairy free crackers. This recipe is seriously the easiest cracker recipe ever, and B ate the whole batch in one sitting (well, I might have snuck one or two)!
I ground up hulled sunflower seeds in my coffee grinder to make a flour. I might try mixing some sesame seeds and flax seeds next time, too.
I mixed a cup of my "flour" in with one egg. I added a few dashes of paprika, but the flavor of the seeds really overpowered the paprika, so I think I'll just skip it next time. My seeds were already salted, but I would probably have added salt if they weren't.
I lined a baking sheet with foil and spooned the batter onto the foil. I then topped the batter with a sheet of wax paper. I rolled the batter as thin as possible with a rolling pin. Then, I removed the wax paper and cut the crackers into squares with a knife.

I then baked at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. At this point, the edges were browning but the crackers were still slightly soft. So, I turned the oven down to 200 degrees and baked for another 5 minutes. They were perfect!

Not beautiful, but tasty.

I think he liked them, too :)

Ok here goes.

Guacamole is the perfect food group, if you didn't already know. It also the most wonderful representation of Southwest cuisine that can be prepared given the availability of ingredients in the UK.With that in mind, I elected to use it as my representative at the Mountaineering Club Ceilidh.

Now, we need to get something straight between my cooking practices and the normal stuff you find on the internets. I still employ my moms process of 'a handful of this' or 'a dash of that'. Whilst I am perfectly capable and amenable to using actual metric or imperial measurements, I also tend to make stuff up, so if what I try turns out, I may not always be able to exactly replicate it.

So, without further ado: Guac!

18 (yes 18! There were boatloads of people there) avocados

6 7 tomatoes

6 4 small onions

6 limes

6 cloves garlic

Sea salt to taste

Black Pepper to taste

Cilantro (A.K.A. coriander in the Eastern Hemisphere) (not pictured) (about half of a 'bunch' that you'd purchase in your local grocery store)

That's a lot of bleedin avocados! Now let me note that straight away, I feel like 6 limes was too much taste wise. You get super strong on the citrus and it overpowers the creamyness of the avocado. Also, I stopped adding onion when it seemed appropriate, which occurred for me at about 4 small onions. Any more, and I fear it would be overdoing it. And I added an extra tomato to the mix, just for fun.

It turned out to be a pretty colorful mix, and it tasted pretty good, but there are several changes that could have made it even better. As stated before, less lime. probably about half the amount of lime would do, and about twice the amount of garlic. Additionally, Chili powder would absolutely rock the world of this recipe. Weirdly, I forgot to photograph the finished product. Ah well, I made a video of the delightfully visceral sounds that it makes when you mash it all up with the end of a rolling pin. Enjoy!

Choucroute: my tribute to Alsace

Ok, so I don't actually know if I like sauerkraut, but that doesn't mean I can't learn to make it! I figure I am pretty much obligated to acquire the taste, since choucroute garnie is a specialty of my favorite region in France.
So, as I'm on a fermenting kick, I decided to try my hand at making sauerkraut myself.

 My experiment resulted from a combination of several "how to" tutorials I found on-line. So we'll see how it turns out.

• First, I washed my cabbage in purified water.
• Then, I shredded in the food processor
• I put in a bowl and added 1 tablespoon of sea salt (no iodine added) and 1/4 cup of whey (found a use for it!)

• I pounded the cabbage down with a mallet for about 15 seconds, and let it sit for 15 minutes to let the salt draw out the liquid

• Finally, I put it in a mason jar, pushing the cabbage down so that all the cabbage was covered with water. Then, screwed on the lid tightly

.

 

Now, I just have to wait 3 weeks. I'll update in April! Can't wait to try choucroute garnie!!

Oh, by the way, I may be a little obsessed with fermenting these days...I may need to find a new hobby:

Finally, I did successfully refill my printer ink, so I can cross that off the list. No pictures, because, hey, it's not a very picturesque process.

Baconnaise!

Attempt one to make Syris approved, paleo friendly mayonnaise :)

Here we have a room temperature egg yolk, half a tablespoon of mustard, and a cruet full (1/2-3/4 cup) of warm bacon drippings (yum).
The actual emulsifying process is not as difficult as it seems, just beat the yolk/mustard constantly (I used the beater pictured, but I've heard food processors/blenders work too) while very slowly adding your fat of choice. I like the cruet because it keeps the pouring steady but slow. I kept my bowl on a damp towel to keep it from sliding all over the place.

Eventually, it ends up looking something like this. It seems counter-intuitive, but the more oil that is added, the thicker the mayonnaise.
At this point, I added a splash of apple cidar vinegar. This lightens the mayonnaise and adds flavor. Salt and pepper can be added to taste.

Finally, I added a teaspoon of whey and left the mayonnaise to sit, covered, on the counter for a few hours. This lacto-ferments the mayonnaise, making it slightly thicker and last longer in the refrigerator.
We'll call this experience a semi-success, as the mayonnaise did turn out and worked great in my broiled tilapia recipe. However, I didn't love the flavor or thickness (darn saturated fats) in my deviled eggs. I think next time I might try half bacon drippings with another, less saturated fat (maybe light olive oil?).

I got cultured: success with homemade yogurt (finally!)

Previously, I have not had success with projects dealing with fermentation (moldy fruit scrap vinegar, a dead sourdough starter, you get the point). But, finally, I accomplished homemade yogurt, and it was really easy. I'm excited because I now know that my lil guy is getting grass fed, minimally processed yogurt (and I don't mind the savings, either ;) ).

Steps:

• Fill pint size mason jar about 1 inch from the top with milk (preferably whole)
• Heat milk to 180 degrees in a boiling water bath
• Screw lid on jar and cool milk in a cold water bath to around 100 degrees (specifically in the 90-120 degree range)
• While milk cools, allow yogurt starter (just plain, store bought yogurt) to come to room temperature on the counter
• Also, preheat oven to 150 degrees
•  When milk has reached desired temperature, turn off the oven, wrap the mason jar in a towel and place the mason jar in the OFF oven. Latch the door (if applicable) to prevent heat from escaping
• After 4-24 hrs (I waited 4.5), the yogurt is finished! It's best to check the oven every few hours to make sure it is still warm

I strained mine in a coffee filter lined colander in the fridge for about 2 hours. You can see my yogurt (yay!) on the right, and the whey on the left. I think I may let it culture a bit longer next time to see if I get more yogurt and less whey that way. I'm not really sure why it made so much. Still, it's real, edible yogurt. So we'll call it a success!

 (Toddler approved!)

Ok, the first [real] post.

It's an interesting idea to try out cooking everything from scratch, and there's not much more 'from scratch' than growing your own vegetables. So Leah's having a go at growing some of the basics. We'll see how it goes, as she's a bit nervous about keeping anything in the apartment alive that's green. Also, I'm ghostwriting for her as may be apparent. We'll throw some updates on as the plants grow and progress. Check it out!

I am not a foodie.

I eat food. But foodie? No. So to engineer a blog that consists of food and home-economics style updates is a bit of a foray into the new. But hey, I'll have a go.