Tag Archives: cooking

Butternut Squash Bisque and Bonus! Pepitas (roasted winter squash seeds)

27 Nov

In theory, starting a meal with soup will tend to make you eat less during the rest of the meal.

Well, maybe it’s true for some people, some of the time, but not so at Thanksgiving, where no matter how much I snack or soup ahead of the Big Feast I still eat ridiculous amounts of food during the main course.

Incredible Restoration Farm squash - LOOK at that color

However, hope springs eternal and therefore in this house we start the Thanksgiving Eat-a-thon with this creamy winter squash bisque. It is not just for Thanksgiving though; this bisque is lovely for any fall meal, and you can use any of the hard-rind winter squash available in autumn and throughout the cold season.

Bonus recipe? What I call pepitas – roasted winter squash seeds that you can use to garnish your soup, or to snack on while you are making the meal or to give to your kid who is feeling a bit neglected by all this focus on food prep.

 

Pepitas!

Butternut Squash Bisque

(makes four to six cups)

2 Tbs unsalted butter

3 cloves garlic, chopped fine

2 ribs celery, diced (about 1 Cup)

1 onion diced (about 1 Cup)

2 leeks, carefully cleaned and diced (white part only)

2 lbs squash flesh (about 5 Cups)

2 quarts chicken or vegetable broth

2 Tbs dry white wine

1 Tbs grated ginger

Salt, to taste

½ tsp ground nutmeg (optional)

1/2 cup plain yogurt (or sour cream or crème fraiche)

Heat the butter in a soup pot over medium heat. When any bubbling subsides, add the garlic, celery, onion, and leek. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent (8-10 minutes). Add the squash and broth. Bring to a boil and immediately reduce heat to a simmer. Cook until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat wine to a simmer in a small saucepan. Immediately remove from heat, add ginger and cover. Steep 10 minutes, then strain the wine and discard the ginger.

Strain the solids from the soup, reserving liquid. Using a food processor or immersion blender, puree the solids, adding enough of the reserved liquid to get a good consistency.

Add the wine to soup and season with salt and optional nutmeg. Grate additional ginger into the soup, if desired, using a fine grater. Serve, garnishing each bowl with a dollop of yogurt. You may also garnish with 

Roasted Winter Squash Seeds (pepitas)

Handful winter squash seeds (however many you get from prepping the squash), rinsed, cleaned and dried

Enough extra virgin olive oil to lightly coat your amount of seeds (start with about a tsp poured into your palm)

Salt to taste

Heat oven to 275°F. Line a baking pan with foil or parchment paper. Rub seeds with olive oil, lay in a single layer on baking pan, sprinkle with salt and bake for 15 minutes until seeds start to pop. Cool in a bowl and serve.

 

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Festive Turkey Salad (With sweetness AND crunch!)

25 Nov

Happy Thanksgiving all! Regular readers will recognize this post from LAST Thanksgiving!!! See you soon; I am off to make broth…

My favorite quick dress-up for food that takes me from workaday-dull to bright and shiny: dried cranberries and walnuts.

My take-to-work breakfast? Plain nonfat yogurt, swirled up with some honey, a handful of cranberries and another handful of walnuts (bought in big bags at Costco – they last and last). Crunchy, creamy and sweet – oh yeah.

At home, I add them to spike up instant oatmeal. I also substitute half the raisins in oatmeal raisin cookies with cranberries for a brighter flavor and add walnuts for crunch and depth.

Boring salad? Add handfuls of cranberries and walnuts and make it fancy-schmancy (especially good with orange/clementine segments, red onion and feta – separately or in combination).

Today I incorporated them into my leftover turkey salad. Zippy!

Leftover Turkey Salad

leftover turkey, removed from bone, gristly bits removed, and chopped into small squares (2-3 cups)

handful dried cranberries

handful chopped walnuts

one celery stalk, chopped fine (mostly because I don’t really like celery)

half a red onion, finely chopped

4 -5 Tbs mayo and nonfat plain yogurt in whatever ratio you prefer

1 Tbs brown or yellow mustard

Mix all together in a bowl and serve in sandwiches or over salad.

Notes: Cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon), blueberries and Concord grapes, are the only commercially-grown native North American fruits! They are loaded with vitamin C and dietary fiber and manganese and other good things and may very well help prevent some urinary tract infections in women, but the jury is still out on that.

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Party Snacks: Endives, Smoked Salmon, and Capers (Endivias con Salmón)

22 Nov

My parents usher in every holiday season with a Tapas & Tertulia evening for some of their closest, most worldly-wise, food-loving friends from a number of Spanish-speaking countries. Tapas are the little dishes that the Spanish nosh on while drinking small glasses of beer or wine. A tertulia is a convivial gathering – of intellect or music or literature or other sociable human tricks.This evening is one I always look forward to; the conversation is wide-ranging and stimulating, the laughter hearty and the appreciation of food is foremost.

I helped my folks by making some of the mainstays of the tapas/buffet table – tortilla española, tortilla Torcal (with chorizo and ham), yuca en escabeche.

While searching for something new for the cold course, I found this in Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain, by Penelope Casas, a hero of Spanish cuisine in America and a longtime inspiration around here. The endive makes a handy tray for the salmon, while salmon is made mild by the lemon dressing. One of my adaptations was to add capers, a natural for this combination, both as flavor and visual punctuation. Very pretty, very fresh, very handy, very, very fast and easy!

Please look at the photo and know that endive can mean any of several members of the Compositae family of chicories: escarole, chicory itself and radicchio, for example. Belgian endive (Chicorium intybus) is the one you want here. It looks like a tightly closed tulip; you cut off the bottom and take off the scoop-shaped petals, one by one.

Smoked Salmon and Endive Scoops (Endívias con salmón)

4 oz smoked salmon, sliced into strips

12 Belgian endive leaves, clean and unblemished

3 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1.5-2 Tbs fresh lemon juice

Salt

Freshly ground pepper (white, if you’ve got)

Approximately 50 small capers, drained

Lay a piece of salmon on each of the endive leaves. In a small bowl, whisk the oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper and pour over the filled endive leaves. Scatter capers over each scoop (3-4 per scoop). Serve immediately or keep chilled (for no more than an hour as they can start to dry out).

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Walnut Toffee Triangles (freezeable, portable holiday deliciousness)

20 Nov

When Marianne called me the other day to start some holiday baking I thought “What!?! Already!?! It’s too early!” But Marianne is a woman who knows what she’s about in the kitchen; she will have a full house on Thanksgiving and has no time to mess around. 

Even though it seemed like madness, I knew there had to be a method behind it.

And of course there was. Like I said, Marianne doesn’t mess about.

These Walnut Toffee Triangles were pretty easy to make (we did two batches in the oven at the same time; one tray for me and one for her), have a taste and texture reminiscent of baklava without the gooiness or Spanish turrón without the jaw-breaking stickiness. One batch gives you 4 dozen pretty and sophisticated little cookies AND they freeze beautifully, so if you pack them right, you can just pull a few out of the freezer anytime you need a rich dessert. And they are rich, just one or two will satisfy that need for a little something naughty with your coffee (or in my case, tea)!

So, if you are a busy, busy person (and who isn’t these days?), these triangles give you a lot of return for the time investment. And when you bake with friends, well, it’s that much better, isn’t it? Bring on the holidays!!!!

Walnut Toffee Triangles

(you need an electric mixer for this one)

Crust

½ Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

½ Cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg yolk

1.5 Cups unsifted all-purpose flour

Topping

1 Cup packed light brown sugar

½ Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

¼ Cup honey

½ Cup light cream

4 cups chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Line bottom and sides of a 13x9x2 baking pan with aluminum foil, extending the ends of the foil beyond the two short pan sides.

Crust: In a medium bowl, with electric mixer on medium speed, beat butter until smooth and creamy. Beat in sugar and egg yolk until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. With mixer on low speed, beat in flour until mixture is smooth. (We didn’t find much difference between a worked dough and a less worked dough, so it’s up to you). Press mixture evenly into bottom of prepared baking pan. Bake 12-15 minutes.

Topping: While crust is baking, in medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine sugar, butter and honey; heat until butter is melted. Bring to boil; let boil three minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in light cream and walnuts. Pour mixture evenly over prepared crust. Return to oven. Continue to bake for 19-21 minutes or until top is bubbling.

Cool completely in pan over wire rack. Lift foil by short sides and transfer bar to cutting board. Invert onto wire rack; carefully remove foil. Reinvert bar onto cutting board. Cut crosswise into ten equal strips. Cut each strip crosswise diagonally into five equal triangles (4 dozen cookies).

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Mango Tango Salsa!

16 Nov

It was almost too late for that poor mango, bought in a frenzy of nostalgia for the tree my grandmother planted in her backyard in Mayagüez, a Puerto Rican town celebrated for its delicious, juicy, juicy, sweet, meaty, fiber-free mangos. In June, those suckers drop out of the sky and plop heavily onto the ground where you have to get them before the other critters do. They fall in such quantities that I spent many mornings cutting, slicing, peeling and freezing – you can’t possibly eat them all as they ripen. Friends in San Juan used to love to see me arrive with freezer bags full of Mayagüez mangos; they’d have the blender, booze and ice ready for action before I could even lock my car and get to the front door.

No such welcoming committee for this mango, even after its long journey from Brazil or Mexico or somesuch warm place, after its boring days in a chilly supermarket produce aisle next to a basket of equally foreign avocados, after too many days in the pale fall light of my southern exposure window, defended from attackers by its only company: several very busy spiders and a valiant Venus Flytrap. No, this poor mango was in dire need of attention and accessorizing, as its best days were behind it.

So, Mango Salsa it was, quick and dirty. Good excuse to eat blue corn tortilla chips, which are a weakness of mine (Waterloo to any attempt to get bikini ready) and to further prove that the Spanish love for fruit and cheese is grounded in pure genius and has infinite possibilities. The salsa sweet-tartness and the tortilla crunch just beg to be completed with some salty squeaky cheese – Queso Blanco (the firm kind of Latin white cheese) and Monterey Jack are my choices, but salted mozzarella would likely work also.

So here it is – a one bowl operation, served up in a margarita glass, a neglected mango finally loved up the way it should be.

Mango Tango Salsa

1 cup mango, chopped into small chunks*

1 cup cucumber, peeled, seeded (or not) and chopped into small chunks

3 Tbs red onion, minced

1 Tbs mango-orange juice (or mango or orange)

2 tsp chipotle in adobo paste (spoon it off the chipotles, but don’t include the peppers themselves)

3 tsp freshly squeezed lime juice

1 pinch salt

Put all ingredients into a small bowl. Mix thoroughly, add seasonings to taste, cover and refrigerate until chilled. Serve with sliced Caribbean white cheese, salted mozzarella or Monterey Jack and tortilla chips.

* To cut up a mango, hold it on its side lengthwise on a cutting board and choose a spot about a third of the way in. You want to slice down on either side of the seed so you have two bowls.  Score the flesh of each bowl like a checkerboard and turn it inside out (we call this a porcupine). Slice off the chunks and dice as needed. Yo can also cut flesh off the seed (or just eat the flesh off the seed yourself- you are the cook after all and deserve the treat!)

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Ahead of the Holidays: Simple Clean and Green Kitchen Tips (from ewg.org)

15 Nov

I sometimes avoid reading suggestions on greening my kitchen — or indeed, my life — because they make it seem like everything I touch, clean or consume is bad for me and my family. The cumulative terror, frustration and exasperation (as well as the time, energy and money suck) is just overwhelming and often results in paralysis rather than action.

Having said that, the Environmental Working Group does have some good suggestions, backed up by research, and spooned out in easily-digested, non-toxic (haha) portions that are not so bad going down.

In honor of the impending holidays (and, apparently, in honor of a new fund-raising deal they have with amazon – brace yourself for some product placement) Environmental Working Group has posted tips for a safer, more environmentally friendly kitchen. It is short, sweet and fairly easily incorporated into your life.

Hope you find them useful!

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Crispy Oven-Fried Sweet Potatoes (new and improved)

12 Nov

If I couldn’t oven-fry sweet potatoes, I probably wouldn’t eat them at all. I find them too sweet, too mushy, too cloying and too dense to fall in love with when they are roasted or baked or steamed or boiled. Argue with me all you want (better yet, send recipes!) but that’s really how I felt about them, until oven fries changed my whole perspective.

Let’s face it, fried foods taste good, no matter what. I mean, how could clams EVER be a kid’s menu item if they weren’t breaded and fried? Leandro won’t even look at them raw, but coat them in crumbs and plunge them in a deep fryer and watch them disappear! Don’t even get me started with French fries…crispy outside, creamy inside, the perfect vehicle for ketchup…Lord have mercy. Fried foods, if not fundamentally good, are fundamentally delicious. Continue reading →

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Long Island Turkey (and egg) Source: Makinajian Poultry Farm

10 Nov

This one is for my homies: my readers here on Long Island. All the rest, rest assured that once I fix the weird photo upload problem that is cramping my blogging style, I will have a bunch of new recipes to share!

Local, Fresh and (pretty much) Organic: We’ve been getting our eggs and Thanksgiving (and sometimes Christmas) birds from Makinajian Poultry Farm in Huntington for a number of years now. We didn’t discover them by ourselves; once we joined C.S.A. – first at Sophia Garden and now at Restoration Farm – eggs and Thanksgiving turkeys were optional shares. It’s a good thing, as a drive to their farm in Huntington is kind of a hike for us to do on a regular basis – 30-40 minutes from our house. It’s a nice place to go though – farm animals in the front yard, coops out the back and a sweet country-style store…Worth a visit!

The eggs and poultry, while not certified organic, are organically raised – no hormones, no antibiotics, cage free, and I believe they also get organic feed. Importantly, it’s all fresh – the organic eggs you buy in the supermarket can be weeks old (the USDA says eggs are fresh 45 days after being laid), while these are farm to table.

If you want a turkey for Thanksgiving, you should order it now! Click the link or here’s the number: 631-368-9320. And don’t forget to bring your order number when you pick up; it’s troublesome for them to find your order when the line to pick up is out the door…

I usually order extra turkey necks for the gravy and often pick up one of their homemade pies (still warm!) while I’m there. They also have organic produce…pretty much anything you might have forgotten to pick up for the Big Eat. Note: I do brine the bird overnight for extra tenderness and flavor and will probably do it again this year. I’ll let you know all about it!

 

 

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Halloween Party Snacks for Kids (adaptable to any holiday)

3 Nov

My friends greeted the news with gasps. With disbelief. With wide-eyed incredulity.

Yes, it was true. I actually bought a loaf of sliced white bread last week, smeared it with variations of cream cheese, jelly and butter and served it to my son. I also bought cupcake mix from a box AND, horror of all horrors, two tubs of pre-made icing with all manner of indecipherable ingredients written on the side by the (seriously?) “nutrition” information. I had my reasons. And I have no regrets.

Halloween is Leandro’s favorite, number one, most-anticipated holiday, so we invited a few of his beastie besties for a Halloween get-together on the Sunday afternoon before Halloween. Between goody bag decorating, scavenger hunts, and cupcake decorating, I felt like I had the activities covered, but it was a challenge to make good-looking seasonal stuff that would impress the moms, be attractive to the kids and still fit with my food values.

In the end, I kind of compromised my values, but two out of three…well you know the song…and, thanks to bat, pumpkin and ghost cookie cutters, I felt pretty cool in the end.

The little white bread sandwiches looked very cute once Leandro and I used the cookie cutters on them. And Pam had given me a recipe that became the recipe below: apple party dip with baked tortilla chips — also given the cookie cutter treatment (you can call it overkill, but we had fun and Leandro was totally engaged in the prep).

Pam’s cool serving idea for a spooky “Witch’s Brew”

Pam also made a “witch’s brew” of hot apple cider, cranberry juice and cinnamon – hope to get that recipe soon — and other folks brought even more cupcakes and brownies…Thanks everyone! And I made some devilled eggs (how could you not?) with olive slices and capers for eyeball effect….It was a lot of fun! (P.S. Thanks to my dad, Pedro, for rescuing the pictures from a wormhole in the alternate universe that is my computer)

Apple Pie Party Dip and Tortilla Chips

(this tastes quite like apple pie…without the fuss of crust or lengthy baking)

Dip

2 Cups apples, peeled, cored and diced

1.5 tsp lemon juice

2 heaping tsp light brown sugar

¼ tsp cinnamon

2 generous tsp lingonberry preserves (can be substituted with apricot, blueberry, etc)

Combine all dip ingredients in a bowl, cover and refrigerate until chilled (may be made several hours ahead).

Chips:

5-6 large (8”) burrito-style flour tortillas (fajita-style are too hard for cookie cutters and little hands)

2 Tbs butter, melted

½ tsp ground cinnamon

1 Tbs light brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350°F. Using cookie cutters, cut tortillas into desired shapes, or simply cut into pizza-style slices. Arrange on a lightly greased baking sheet, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon and bake until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Cool before serving.

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Flex-Mex Shredded Chicken (one step, one pot) and easy red beans

29 Oct

I had about two pounds of boneless chicken breast defrosted and one of Leandro’s besties and his mom coming over for a congenial play date and dinner. I have the habit of fussing in the kitchen when they come over, as Amanda is an appreciative eater who likes to try new stuff. For the kids I usually make macaroni and cheese (from a box that — try not to roll your eyes — purports to be organic. Is this the foodie equivalent of ordering a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a diet Coke?)

This time, I wanted to be able to do more sitting and talking than mucking about with pots and pans. I don’t want my guests to be speaking to my back as I stir something on the stove and I just didn’t feel like making a second meal for the kids. I hate doing that, actually, but end up there more than I like to admit.

So this recipe — which I adapted from others I have done or read — was perfect. Just bung everything into a pot and a half hour later you have tasty, crowd-pleasing goodness that you can pile onto other Mexican-infused ingredients. On this occasion I made quick quesadillas with red beans (another one pot dish, see below) and Cheddar and Dominican white cheese which Leandro, Amanda and I ate, accompanied with avocado, cilantro and red onion. The revelation was Lucas, a bit more of a picky eater, who tasted the quesadilla (both the all-cheese just-in-case one and a chicken one) which by itself would’ve been cool, but who ended up loving the chicken on its own and eating several servings!

And yes, I sat – we all sat down to dinner together, in fact — and I didn’t fuss! Hurray!

Mexican-Style Shredded Chicken

2 lbs boneless chicken breasts

½ Cup onion, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 stock cube and four cups of water OR four cups of your favorite chicken stock

1 chipotle pepper in adobo, minced, seeds removed (1 pepper was not very spicy; play with this proportion according to your taste)

Place all ingredients in a large pot. Bring to a boil. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer for at least 20 minutes until chicken is thoroughly cooked. If you have time, you can cook it longer for more tenderness. Remove from heat and remove chicken from any remaining liquid. Allow to cool, shred, and serve – hot or cold — in your favorite Mexican-style recipes (quesadillas, tacos, with rice, on salads). Flavor affinities include avocado, lime, cilantro, kidney beans.

Easy Red Kidney Beans

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbs minced onion

1 half stock cube

1 tsp oregano

1/4-1/2 cup low-sodium vegetable juice (less water for drier beans)

1 15 oz can kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 tsp chopped cilantro

Saute onion in olive oil until tender. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for 15 minutes until flavors are incorporated.

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