Roasted Butternut Squash Ginger Soup

Tweeted: December 19, 2009

Origin: Allrecipes.com with personal alterations

Roasted Butternut Squash and Ginger Soup

Serves: 2-4 depending on squash and serving bowl size

1 lg butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into small chunks

1 cup Onion, chopped

1 stalk celery, small dice

4 slices of fresh ginger, peeled

6 Tbsp butter, divided

2-3 cups of veg 

2 cups apple cider

grated ginger, salt and pepper to taste

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2.  In a bowl mix squash chunks, 2 Tbsp melted butter, a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper.  Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes +or -.

3.  Once squash is fork tender, remove from oven.  Melt remaining butter in large saucepan.  Add onions, celery, and ginger.  Sweat until onions and ginger has begun to soften.  (if you would like to add garlic to this recipe, now would be a good time, sweat until garlic has softened).

4.  Add squash and broth to onions and bring to a boil, simmer, covered 15-20 minutes until squash is completely cooked and beginning to get mushy. 
5.  Puree with wand blender or in a food processor.

6.  Add cider and adjust seasoning and thickness with ginger, salt, pepper, cider and broth.

This recipe can easily be doubled to serve more or to have leftovers. 
Garnish suggestions: Sour cream, nutmeg, fresh bread rolls, mascapone. 
Enjoy!

Pretzels

Tweeted: December 5th

Recipe Origin: King Arthur Flour - The Bakers Companion, pg. 229

Hot Buttered Pretzels
8 pretzels

Dough

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

2 1/4 tsp instant yeast

7/8 - 1cup warm water

Topping

1/2  cup warm water

1 tsp sugar

course, kosher, or pretzel salt

3 tbsp salted butter, melted

Place all the dough ingredients in a abowl and beat until well combined.  Knead the dough, by hand or mixer, for about 5 minutes, until it's soft, smooth, and quite slack.  Dust with flour and place in a plastic bag.  Close the bag, leaving room for the dough to expand, and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Grease two baking sheets or line with parchment paper.

Transfer the dough to a lightly greased work surface and divide it into eight equal pieces (about 2 1/4 ounces each).  Let the pieces rest, uncovered, for 5 min.

Roll each piece of dough into a long thin rope and twist each rope into a pretzel (illustration to come at a later date). Dip the pretzels in the warm water mixed with 1 tsp sugar, and place them on the baking sheets.  Springle them lightly with the salt.  Let them rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes.

Bake the pretzels for 8-9 minutes, until they're golden brown, reversing the baking sheets halfway through.

Remove the pretzels from the oven and brush with the melted butter until the butter is gone. Seems like a lot but it's yummy.  Eat warm or reheat just before serving.

Serve with plain yellow mustard or spice it up with some horseradish, other spices or find some of the many many recipes online for pretzel dips like beer and cheese dips.  MMM.

Enjoy!

Spicy Fall Stew Baked in a Pumpkin

Tweeted: December 3rd, 4:30

Recipe Origin:  Still trying to remember....

Spicy Fall Stew

Serves 6

1 md onion diced (1 cup)

2Tbsp. olive oil, divided
1 red pepper, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced (2 tsp)

1tsp chili powder

1tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2# tomatillos, husked and quartered (1,1/2 cup)

1 15-oz can hominy, rinsed and drained

3/4tsp salt

1 3-4# pumpkin

2oz cheddar, grated (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1. heat 1Tbsp oil in pot over med heat. Add onion, bell pepper, and garlic.  Saute 7 minutes until soft.  Stir in chili powder, cumin, oregano, cook 3 minutes until spices darken.

2. Add tomatillos, hominy, 1/2 cup water and salt. Cover, and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer.  Partially covered, 10-12 minutes or until tomatillos are softened.  Uncover and cook 5 minutes to thicken.

3. Cut top off pumpkin scoop out seeds.  Rub inside of pumpkin with 1 Tbsp oil.  Sprinkle generously with salt, spring with cheese in bottom.

4.  Fill pumpkin with stew, top with lid and place on a parchment covered baking sheet.  Bake 1 1/2-2 hours or until the pumpkin flesh is fork tender.  Let stand 5 minutes after removing from oven. 
5. Cut pumpkin and serve slice of pumpkin with filling.

6. Enjoy!!

Tasty leftover too!

Twitter Recipes

So I have recently become a twitter fiend and base most of my 'tweets' on what I may happen to be working on in the kitchen.  I'm still trying to get used to the 140 character limit and have been thinking how nice it would be to be able to post the recipes that correspond to that meals 'tweet'.  It just dawned on me that in this absolutely possible since the world is my oyster in this age of the internet.  I can post the recipe on my oh so useful blog here and post a link side by side with the dish in which I'm sharing with all of you world wide web friendly peeps.  So here is the precursor to my future of baking and cooking.  If the item I am posting doesn't have a direct link within the realms of the web, I will write it up and post it here.  Enjoy!

It's Coming....dun dun duuunnnn

It's 9:15am and I'm looking out my window right now to see everything I am used to, trees, grass, fallen leaves but it all has seemed to have lost it's color throughout the night.  It's all a similar shade of grey.  My car will need to warm up a few minutes before I'm able to go anywhere and I feel, at this point in the day that I need my down.  But I look at the forecast and it mocks my attempts to get settled into the coming winter.  It's suppose to be in the mid 50's today and as much as I'd love to only live through 4 months of winter instead of 6, 7 sometimes even 8, It's about time to decide already.  Is it winter or not?  Low 20's last night but high 50's and rainy on Sunday?  It's confusing and hard to buckle down and start sucking it up.

Time change creates time warp

Sitting here at my computer all afternoon catching up on emails, Relay for Life NordicStyle items, pulling up directions to my destinations for the next couple days, copying down recipes and making a check list for what I need to do and pack all before tomorrow.  I'm taking a road trip down to Waltham, MA to visit my best, newly engaged, friend.  We've only gotten to see each other a few times in the last few years and always in the company of others.  So this is a much needed trip of down time and celebration of her new relationship status.  A couple bottles of champagne should do the trick!

    Friday I will travel just down the road to Braintree for the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life Summit.  As the new Event Co-Chair of the NordicStyle event here in Stowe, I think this will be a great opportunity to meet other Relay-ers and learn about the Relay world and this years theme, MORE BIRTHDAYS!!  I'll be there until Saturday and will hopefully have someone to ride back up with me so I don't have to drive all the way home by myself.

    As for other things that I'm trying to do tonight?  Procrastinate finally posting an entry on this here blog, pack so I can leave right after work tomorrow, cook dinner.  My friend Melissa has a pretty cool blog that she inspires me to actually try to keep up on mine.  Her latest entry has a link to a really cool bread recipe that you can keep the raw dough for long periods and bake it off as needed.  My printer is out of ink so I've had to write everything down so I've copied down this bread recipe and would like to try it tonight.  Though I keep thinking I have no time because of the awful time change.  The light keeps telling me it's 6 or 7 but no, only 3:45.....(I went to bed at 9 last night because it felt so late). 

Well I feel successful in not going too long without posting so there it is for today.  Also successful in killing another 20 minutes.

Links:

Relay For Life NordicStyle 2010 Blog

Relay For Life NordicStyle

Relay For Life

American Cancer Society

Melissa's Blog

Bread Recipe

Tis the season for sauce - Part 1

It was 35 degrees this morning when I went to work. While last week there was a flame of leaves here and there and we chalked it up to the sick trees turning earlier than all the others, yesterday as I was driving up the mountain road, I had to force myself to notice that it was only every 4th tree that was green rather than the other way around. The sun shining bright is no longer an indication of the temperature and last night there was a threat of the first hard frost. Tuesday was the Autumnal equinox and it was dark at 7:30. Winter is approaching and after barely a month of definable summer, I am not ready to see it go. I'm cold.

With that said, things I look forward to are warm sweaters, the need to cuddle up under a heap of blankets, carving pumpkins, my birthday of course, the gorgeous leaves (even if it means the world will no longer be lush, as they slowly drop to coat the ground), Oktoberfest (which is this weekend I might add), Apple picking and Apple Sauce!

As the seasons start to show signs of change, I begin to take natures cue to start preparing for the cold winter months ahead. My usual and as of yet, only, contribution to the winter store cupboard is applesauce. It is a yearly ritual at this point, going into our fourth year, to spend a day taking a trip to Shelburne Orchards to scavenge for our yearly supply. I prefer Macintosh and Cortland so we usually go mid to late September. We pick, I use the word loosely, drops. All those apples that fall off the trees before anyone can get to them. We crouch in the cave of the fruit heavy trees sifting through the tall grass and or fresh cut hay, picking up each apple, checking it for bruises and bug holes. We decided this year that I have a half bag attention span. I fill half a bag before I start loosening my guidelines on apple quality. I start thinking "good enough" or "I can cut that out" or I start coming up with bruise to apple size proportional ratios before I have to put my mind back to focusing on properly choosing worthy fruit. It's not about a quick and easy novelty trip it's about taking our time and making each apple count and most certainly making our work worth the half dozen cider donuts we treat ourselves to after a hard day of picking and they in fact rarely even make it to the road. Mmm. Did I mention that was one of the pros of fall?