Butternut Squash & Almond Soup

This is now the second (edible) soup I've made with almonds. The other one (African nut butter stew) is pretty filling, as vegetarian soups go. This one is much lighter, and is good for a small snack or as a precursor to a glorious almost-in-a-food-coma-while-still-eating dinner (i.e. Thanksgiving). This comes from a friend, LG.

Pictured with Cedar Circle Farm's Trukenbrod whole spelt bread, which is amazing and delicious and you should try it if you live around VT/NH.

Ingredients
1 butternut squash
4-6 cups broth
1 cup almonds
curry powder, to taste
black pepper, to taste

Procedure
Boil about 3 cups of broth. Peel the squash (this is really not too bad if you just use a sharp vegetable peeler -- takes a minute and you don't lose much of the flesh). Cut it into cubes, and put it in the boiling broth. Add as much broth as you need to completely cover the squash. For one medium squash, I used about 5 cups of broth (not including the 1/2 cup that comes later; see below) and got a thin soup, which was delicious and not as heavy as squash soup usually feels. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, until the squash is completely cooked through -- about 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, blanch the almonds (i.e. pour boiling water over them and let sit for a minute). Rinse with cold water until they're cool, and peel the skins off. They should pop off pretty easily at this point. Put the peeled almonds with about 1/2 cup of broth into a food processor, and process until the nuts are as finely processed as you'd like to have in your soup.

When the squash is cooked, remove it from the broth (don't toss the broth!) and process it with the almonds. When it's all pureed (or to whatever chunkiness level you prefer), add the almond and squash puree back into the broth and mix everything together thoroughly. You may want to use a hand mixer or immersion blender if you have one, but a whisk would do the trick as well.

Serve hot. Keeps for a while in the fridge, though the puree may start to separate a little when it sits.

Two kinds of dog treats

The Obscenely Healthy Dog Treats

We're out of dog treats and we're going on vacation next week so we have to use up a bunch of stuff... hence, healthy dog treats. They look kinda gross, but they're healthy and (at least our) dogs go nuts for them. One of our dogs stole two treats before I even got them in the oven, though he also steals whole bags of hot dog buns, so that rave review is kind of irrelevant. We tried them ourselves and they're actually human-tasty, too. They're also pretty easy to make, given that you have a bunch of veggies and some meat lying around. You can replace the ingredients with anything dog-friendly (the ASPCA has a list of foods to avoid, and you can find others online/ask your vet) that has roughly the same texture. Here's what we did.

Ingredients
(Makes about 50 small treats)

• 1 cup ground meat (we used leftover kotleti, which is very roughly something like this, but that's neither here nor there; any meat will do, including uncooked ground meat)
• 2 medium carrots, shredded
• 2 stalks celery, finely diced
• 1/2 cup spinach, steamed and drained
• 1-2 tsp. dried parsley (or 1-2 Tbsp fresh parsley, minced)
• 2 tsp. turmeric
• 1 egg
• ~1 cup flour (add as necessary) -- gluten free flour can easily be subsituted if your dog has a wheat intolerance

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray (or otherwise grease it up). 

Mix all ingredients together except for flour. Add flour and keep mixing to see how much you need. Mixture shouldn't be so sticky that it's hard to work with, but it shouldn't be nearly as dry as a cookie dough, either. 

If things aren't forming into balls (or whatever cookie shape you desire) then you may want to add a second egg. Once that's all sorted out, shape the mush into whatever shape you like. I made little flattened balls, something like a stack of 3-4 half-dollars in size. 

Place the treats onto the baking sheet and bake for about 15-20 minutes. Let cool completely before feeding to pooches. 

The Far Less Obscenely Healthy Dog Treats

OK, these are pretty good too. I swear I'm not eating my dogs' treats.

Ingredients

(Makes 130-140 small cookies)

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup chicken broth

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with foil.

Mix the first three ingredients together in a bowl. Add as much broth as it takes to get to dough-like consistency. Knead the dough on a floured surface until it's thoroughly mixed. Roll it out to the desired thickness (I made cookies roughly 2 coins thick) and use a cookie cutter that's to your liking. I used the top of a pill case because I wanted small biscuits that could be used for training without having to be broken in half. 

With that size of cookie, bake for about 20 minutes -- adjust time according to size. Let cool completely. 

More fall stuff: Pumpkin Bread

Continuing on about fall... we got a couple of pie pumpkins at this weekend's farmers market. Using insights from perfecting the banana bread recipe for the last few years, we decided to make pumpkin bread.

Warning you right now though. It's ridiculously hard to stop eating this stuff. I was feeling pretty awesome about myself until three of us sat down and polished off almost an entire loaf in a single sitting. It was delicious but even beyond that, there's just something pretty much addictive about it that makes you shovel it into your mouth.

Whatever, I warned you. But if you want pumpkin bread, which you should, then read on!

Ingredients
(makes 1 loaf)

• 1 medium pie pumpkin
• 1 and 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour (regular flour is fine too)
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
• 1/4 tsp allspice (optional)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)

Procedure
Preheat oven to 385F. Cut pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds  and save them for roasting -- roasted pumpkin seeds make a tasty snack. (Note: If you're only making a single loaf, you only need one of the halves. I'm not sure how well a cut pumpkin will last, but it'll probably be fine in the fridge with some plastic wrap on it. We just doubled the recipe to accommodate all the pumpkin puree we ended up with.)

Rub the cut sides with butter and sprinkle on a bit of salt. Place pumpkin halves cut side up onto a baking sheet and bake for 45-60 minutes, or until the flesh is pretty mushy.

When the pumpkin is done, scoop out the flesh and put it in a mixing bowl (alternatively, just peel off the... peel; this should be really easy by now). If it's mushy enough, just mush it with a fork. If not, use an immersion blender (we baked our pumpkin for about 50 minutes and it wasn't quite fork-ready, but an immersion blender worked great; we left it a bit chunky but you can make it as creamy as you like). Set aside.

In another bowl, combine the sugar, eggs, butter, and vanilla (and allspice and cinnamon if using) and whisk together thoroughly. Add in dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder) and mix together slightly -- just enough to get it mixed together. Don't over-mix, or you'll have a kind of dense/tough bread with big air holes in it. Add in the pureed pumpkin. You don't want the batter to get too wet or else it'll taste kind of under-cooked (but if you're okay with that taste, it's not hurting anyone!), so add in a bit at a time until it reaches a nice consistency. It shouldn't be somewhat viscous if you try to pour it.

Grease a loaf pan, and pour the batter in until it's about 3/4 full. Bake for about 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Do the toothpick test (or fork test if you're too lazy to find a toothpick), but keep in mind that if you put in a ton of pumpkin, the toothpick may not come out totally clean even though the bread is cooked through.

Enjoy with tea! Keeps for a few days covered in foil and kept out of dogs' reach. 

Personal Peach Cobbler (and other fall stuff)

It's definitely fall. Where in central Vermont that once meant amazing foliage and crunchy fallen leaves to step on, it's now more about cloudy and rainy days with cold nights that justify the five days we spent hauling and stacking our three cords of firewood. (Whatever. I'll take it!) It also means pretty fall veggies, fruits, and... whatever this thing is.

(It's actually cauliflower. It's quite a hit with some stoners I know, though I haven't yet tasted it or heard any reviews from someone who has. It does have some cool mathematical properties, but I'm not sure how that impacts its taste.)

It's been a pretty good season of getting stuff from our CSA and picking our own whatever. A side note on that, by the way. We had "pick your own pumpkins" on the last day of our summer CSA. I was pretty excited about picking a nice fat pumpkin and hacking its stem off with a machete. So I was kind of confused when they didn't give us a machete when they pointed out the pumpkin patch. We went out there and all the pumpkins were already cut and just laying around on the ground.

Isn't that "pick-your-own" in the same sense that any produce aisle at a grocery store is pick-your-own? 

In any case, the point is that we have a bunch of pretty stuff that's all local and organic. (Except that melon with the sticker on it. That's from New Jersey.)

What I'm really trying to say is it's time to bake a bunch of fall stuff. Let's get this ADD party under control and get a recipe out there. There are really two: peach cobbler and pumpkin bread. To make it easier to find navigate later, I'll post pumpkin bread in a separate entry, though.

Ingredients 
(enough topping for about 3-4 one-person ramekins)

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
• pinch baking soda
• pinch baking powder
• peaches, sliced

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350F. Fill little baking cups/ramekins almost to the top with sliced peaches. Add a tablespoon of water into each ramekin. [Note: I use peaches that I froze, so there is probably marginally more water content there than if you're using fresh ones, especially if the fresh ones you're using aren't that ripe. So you may want to edit that amount accordingly.] If you really have a sweet tooth, you can add a tablespoon or less for brown sugar here, but I just like the filling to be as is. 

Mix all the other ingredients in a bowl. It's easiest to just mush it up with your hands. There shouldn't be any really dry parts when you're done.

Crumble over the top of each ramekin. To get the peaches really bubbling, try to create a seal over the top of the fruit.  Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. The topping should be a nice golden brown by then.

Wait a few minutes for it to cool slightly (and so you don't look like a total glutton because you grab food out of the oven and shove it down your throat -- again, maybe that's just me), and then EAT, man. With a cup of black tea. It'll survive waiting overnight and being reheated, but you're not doing anyone any favors by waiting more than a few minutes.

Variations

• You can use a glass baking dish if you want to just make one normal-sized cobbler; bake for about 45-60 minutes in that case, and add a few tablespoons of water. 

• Most other fruits are bound to work well -- combinations of them, too. I've successfully used apples, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. 
• If you're using apples, increase the amount of water to about 1/4 cup if filling an 8x8 baking dish, and probably add some sugar -- I put in 1/3 cup for a full 8x8 dish. For the berries, no extra sugar is necessary in the filling, and very little water, if any.
• If using strawberries, 3 teaspoons of brown sugar and 2 teaspoons of flour is all you need to add to the filling. No water.
• If using blueberries, definitely don't add water. About 3 teaspoons each of white sugar and flour works pretty well.

Baked Apples

We went to Moore's Orchard in Pomfret, VT for their last day of apple-picking. The lady there told me that they're closing their orchards to the public even though there are plenty of apples left on the trees for two primary reasons: (1) they'll use the rest of the apples for cider, and (2) the bears can't find wild apples this year and they want to leave enough for them; she said, "they've been hanging out in the orchards every night this season and throwing parties." Living in VT is awesome.

This recipe is really simple. It's roughly what my dad used to make for us when I was a kid as an after-dinner treat. Not gonna lie, though. Today I ate it for breakfast.

Ingredients
(makes 4 baked apples)
4 apples
3-4 Tbsp raisins
2-3 tsp honey
4 tsp scotch/brandy/whiskey/cognac

Procedure
Preheat the oven to 350F. Core the apples, but don't poke through all the way to the bottom, so that you're left with a kind of cup.

Save the tops that you cut off, too, because you're going to put them back on when you bake the apples. Place the apples in a baking dish (a lot of juice might come out, especially if you've accidentally poked a hole in the bottom, so you definitely don't want to do this without one).

Fill apples with whatever sounds good! I love the taste of raisins stewed in apple juice so I put in about a tablespoon of raisins into each apple (maybe less depending on the size of the apple and how large of a hole you cut), and then poured on another 1/2 teaspoon of honey and a bit more than a tablespoon of scotch. Replace the tops and put it on the top rack for about 30 minutes (more if you want them really mushy and falling apart -- after 30 minutes they're well-baked but still maintain some firmness).

They'll come out [not pictured] looking a bit like an old lady who's been in a tub too long [also not pictured], but far more appetizing. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream or just on its own. Probably best when still hot, but I still love it even when it's gotten pretty cool.

Variants
Make it more autumny/wintry by adding spices: heat some cinnamon sticks and cloves (rolled into a cheesecloth or in a spice bag or something so you don't have bits in your teeth later) in a bit of cider. Add honey/liquor/raisins/etc as before, and pour it all in.

Chicken of the Woods!

OK, so it's been a while. Let's (re)start off with a bang. Or at least with an extremely orange mushroom that tastes like chicken. What! Yeah. We finally found the supposedly plentiful "chicken of the woods" mushroom (a.k.a. Laetiporus sulphureus blah blah whatever look it up). It looks like this:

Some cool things about this mushroom: 

• dude, would you just look at it?

• if you find some, you probably find about 20 pounds of it
• it is impossible to mistake for something inedible
• it is delicious, keeps for a few days before cooking if necessary (and for a while in the freezer once cooked)
• it tastes like chicken!
• you can serve it with shrimp and make some "chicken of the woods/chicken of the sea" joke, probably

Let's get to it, then. First, the prep: it's pretty easy. If the inner part (the part closer to the stalk) is kind of corky/woody, you may want to cut it out and just get rid of it. Don't wash it, since it'll get super soggy (or so they say on the internet). Scrubbing off the dirt is good enough, though. Now, the recipe.

Ingredients

• 3-4 Tbsp butter
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 5 cups CHICKEN OF THE WOODS, WOOOO!, chopped into bite-sized pieces
• salt, to taste
• 2-4 Tbsp sour cream
• 1-3 Tbsp chicken stock

Procedure

In a large (non-stick? I dunno, worked well for me) pan, heat up the butter. Throw in the garlic and mushrooms and saute until the mushrooms get a bit reddish/brown -- about 10-15 minutes. When it's ready it'll have the consistency of a tender but not particularly juicy chicken breast; add salt to taste.

The sauteeing may take longer or shorter depending on how old/thick the specimen is, how water-logged it is, whether you actually got L. sulphureus or L. cincinnatus (closely related but a little different), etc. Just use your judgment. I've also heard that if you cook it for 15 minutes and the consistency is far from where you want it to be, just give up. Specimens vary greatly and you've probably got a crappy one. 

At this point, I found the mushrooms to be a little dry, so I mixed in a couple of tablespoons of sour cream with a little bit of chicken stock. You can skip this step if you like the juiciness level as is. 

Can be served as is or if you're looking for a bit more flavor, add in some shrimps (I cooked them the same way as the mushrooms and mixed them all in together).

Definitely going back tomorrow to pick the rest of the mushrooms we found. Will report back eventually on whether our guests get poisoned.

Edit: It's been a day and everyone's still alive. Success! We went back and picked everything off that log: