Recipe: Butternut Squash Soup

On today’s menu: Butternut squash soup.
It’s been chopped, drizzled with oil, and salted; then roasted for an hour at 400.

Seeds, cleaned of pulp. Oil & salt & pepper: 10 minutes, 400. Keep an eye on those, lest they burn.

Onion, celery, garlic.

Onion and celery, low heat. Begin to sweat.

Add curry powder, pinch of salt. Cook until soft.

Add garlic. Cook for another 2 minutes.

Deglaze. I still haven’t gotten any wine, so I used a bit of stock.

Get all the good stuff off the bottom!

Add the (peeled) roasted squash.

Stock to cover, and some Nam Pla (Ye godz, I love this stuff).

Simmer for 20-30 minutes (read a book, or something), and then get your blender stick…

Grind that motherfucker!

Add some milk (or cream, depending on your arteries).

A little bit of cider vinegar for some acidic bite.

Now, bust out the china cap (chinoise). Trust me, it’s worth it.

Pour the soup into the cap…

And mash it through.

Holy shit! Look how smooth that is!

Bring back to a simmer, season to taste, then toss some butter in there, and use the stick one last time.

Serve with some fancy olive oil drizzled on top, and some of the roasted seeds.

Recipe: Spicy Kale Soup

Let’s see, kale soup… what first? Ah. Onions, Garlic, Habenero. It's true, I use lots of garlic.

We’ll also need to cube some potato.

Don’t forget to wash that kale in a salt water bath. Might as well tear out the stalk while you’re at it.

The missus requested it to be slightly healthier, so we’re sautéing some Italian chicken sausage, which explains the color:

After it’s browned, remove. Check out all the bits stuck to the bottom. That’s the fond.

Turn the heat down and add the onions, habenero, and a couple of bay leaves.

When they get nice and soft, add the garlic. Stir it around, srsly.

Here comes the deglaze: Turn the heat up and slowly pour in some white wine (shit, looks like I need to get more).

Scrape the fond up, let the liquid evaporate.

Others might say differently, but in this recipe, I let the wine evaporate almost completely.

Add the kale. It’ll break down soon enough.

…And return the sausage.

Add enough stock to reach the desired liquid/solid ratio. What? You don’t make your own stock?

This is the stuff, right here. Trust me.

Ok, it’s back up to a boil. Add the potato, turn the heat down, and simmer for 30, or until the potato reaches the texture you like. Season to taste (though the habanero and nam pla adds plenty of both heat and salt).

A little parmesan finishes it off.

And there you have it.

Recipe: Roast Chicken with Beets

Cooking at home: Yay, iPhone.

It appears that my cameraphone uploads to photobucket.
Tonight, it's roast chicken with garlic beets.
Oven at 500.
Salt and pepper bird.
Wrap beets in foil.
Bird in roasting pan, beets on baking sheet.
Into oven
Wait 45 minutes.
Remove beets. There they are!

Peel beets (you might want to let them cool).

Chop beets into large chunks. Oooh, pretty.

Smash and rough chop some garlic (wine cork included in picture for perspective).

Ok, it's been about 15 minutes. Get that bird out.

What's that, you say? You want gravy?
Remove bird from roasting pan. That's flavor country, right there.

Take out the chicken fat until about 2 Tb remain. Then add 2Tb flour, with the burner on low heat.

Stir, dammit!

Ok, keep your eye on that, and add some olive oil to the skillet, low heat.

Add the garlic. Hey, that smells good.

It's been a few minutes, looks like the roux has browned up nicely. Add some stock slowly. Keep stirring. Get the bits of fond worked in there.

Looks like the garlic has just begun to sizzle. Throw in the beets to warm through. Salt/pepper to taste. Add a pat of butter.

Wow, look how that gravy has thickened up. We're just about ready.

Looks like we're ready to go! Carve it, serve it!