Butternut squash soup

This could by your kid's favorite soup. I thought, "Did you put that pineapple in there?"  No. I did not, but with this combination of things it tastes like I did. 

* butter

* brown sugar

* ginger

* cinnamon

* salt/pepper

* lemon

Butternut squash cookies

Used an online recipe for peanut butter cookies substituting roasted butternut squash for the peanut butter, uncertain how that would work considering peanut butter has oil lacking in butternut squash, and conversely, butternut squash has water lacking in peanut butter. That ought to throw off the chemistry significantly, don'tcha think?

My mixture seemed way too fluffy, but it tasted great. I filled the coffee grinder with oat meal and processed to dust. Added the oatmeal dust to the mixture. Still too fluffy. Filled the coffee grinder again with oatmeal and processed to dust. Added. Still fluffy. That amounted to a little over a cup of oatmeal powder on top of the dry ingredients the recipe called for, so I'm wandering way off the reservation. Still, the mixture tasted wonderful.

Chilled the mixture.

I imagined the cookies would flatten as they baked liked those other cookies did, so for the first batch I dropped a teaspoon full without smashing them. They hardly flattened at all. The second batch I flattened with a fork in crosshatch pattern as done with peanut butter cookies. The fork kept sticking no matter how much I dipped it in flour or sugar or both. So the third batch I rolled into balls and dropped in the sugar, coated entirely with raw sugar then flattened with my fingers. That worked best with this heavily oatmealenated but still fluffy cookie mixture.

I'm beginning to believe there's something to this whole measuring thing. Seems to me a small amount of change can result in a giant difference in outcome. Take eggs for example. The original recipe calls for one egg but makes no mention of size. I use jumbo eggs because I think they're cool. But doubling the recipe doubles the jumbo eggs. That's a lot of eggs. Better to know the weight of egg the recipe is looking for then go by that. The whole thing would be so much more certain. Maybe that'll be my next thing: measuring stuff, keeping records, sticking with the program. I don't know. It sounds so not like me.

Whatev. The cookies are delicious.

2.5 Cups flour (I used low-protein cake flour because I was out of A/P flour
1 tsp. salt (I used 1/5 teaspoons kosher salt flakes)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 Cup shortening (I used Crisco)
1 Cup roasted butternut squash (mine was frozen then thawed)
1 Cup sugar (I used raw sugar)
1 Cup brown sugar (See? this is a lot of sugar. I backed off a little from both kinds
1 tsp vanilla (Pffffft. This is ridiculous, I never use less than one tablespoon. It's against my religion. It's right there in the Bible where God tells Lot to tell Edith to spareth not the vanilla. *looks up * Wut? )

Bake @ 375℉ for 10 minutes (mine were on second to top rack and baked 8 minutes)

Butternut squash cheesecake

This is a 6.5" spring form pan because I don't want excess sweets around for longer than a few days. This is a good size pan even for a party because people usually act all, "oh-just-a-little-piece-for-me" about dessert anyway, then I end up with half a gigantic cheesecake, or even a regular cake for that matter I really don't want it around no matter how good it is because then I must take it around and beg it off on people then go around again to retrieve my plates or feel compelled to eat it and I don't want that. How else do you imagine I maintain my slender boyish figure?

I intended to halve a successful recipe based on chocolate and apply that halved recipe to butternut squash. That didn't work out as I first visualized. I could tell I needed more than half the amount of cream cheese and it wasn't possible to halve three eggs. Well it is possible, but I didn't want to. So it's possible this mixture turns out a little bit eggy. Maybe not.

The mixture is made more interesting with sour cream, 1/2 cup in the original recipe, a few tablespoons for this one. The original has a chocolate ganache topping, this one has a topping of sour cream (+ sugar +vanilla).

I didn't want spices to discolor the mixture so I left them out, although I did like the ginger and orange from the previous pie so I put those things in -- grated fresh ginger and grated orange peel, so-called zest because it's definitely zesty. Pinch of salt. I started out with 1/4 cup sugar, tasted, deemed insufficiently sweet, then increased by a few tablespoons. Vanilla in the mixture, because everything's better with vanilla. Woot!

The crust is standard graham cracker crust except with ginger snaps comprising 50% of the biscuits used. Melted butter added to the crumbs and pressed into the pan to form a new cookie-type crust, just like normal, mindful that the ginger snaps had a little too much butter to begin with. Baked in a water bath on low heat (325℉) for 45 minutes. Allowed to cool down inside the oven with the oven door open, then chilled to set.

Butternut squash, sweet potato pie

This is a small pie, tiny actually, because I don't want it around for a week. It's made of one small butternut squash and 1/2 a sweet potato and there is about 50% surplus filling. The pie crust was started with 1 cup flour and 3/4 stick butter with another tablespoon added because a portion of the flour looked insufficiently butterfied. No lard this time, no Crisco. The dough was rolled thickly.

I cannot describe how brilliantly delicious this filling is. I taste-tested at each step and enjoyed it all along the way and it got better and better as I went along. The whole process was rather impulsive. The roasted butternut is already sweet as it is and would probably be fine left alone, I hesitated adding sweet potato, but that did add depth, although already sweet and hoping to avoid the mixture becoming saccharine, I added sugar anyway and that made it even better. The sugar was creamed with egg which would be the thing that firmed the filling into a sliceable pie, (2 jumbo eggs) and a few tablespoons butter. Then vanilla, because vanilla makes everything better, then grated ginger, BANG! Nobody ever expects ginger, Then grated orange peel, which I must say was masterstroke. Melody and I ate the filling just like that, raw egg and all.

I Tasted the crust separately and I like that all by itself too. It would go great with coffee in the form of little cookies. Together, crust and filling, they're stupendous.

Butternut squash halved, oiled and roasted (1 hour @ 325℉) along with whole yams oiled. White and brown sugar, butter, and egg whipped in mixer. Rasped ginger and orange peel added along with vanilla.

Roasted butternut squash and sweet potato approximately 70%/30% scooped from roasted shell and added hot by spoonful into mixer while rotating to temper the egg/sugar mixture before adding in bulk. I just kept adding squash until I got the desired thickness.

Tasted, I keep doing that to see where I'm at, plus I didn't have breakfast. I did not add condensed milk or Eagle brand as usual for this sort of thing, nor milk or cream, nor spices because I didn't want the color to darken. I liked the way the uncooked mixture (raw egg) tasted but I did want trace spices to finish so I added them in a single layer internally. Filled the pie 1/2 way, sprinkled moderately with cinnamon and allspice, then continued filling and sprinkled moderately again on the surface. That's the only spice added, save for the ginger and the orange peel within the mixture. Clever, eh?

The crust is made the farm-lady way. I should put a couple water balloons under my shirt to really get into the whole method-acting feel of it. Cubed cold butter smashed directly into flour seasoned with sugar, salt, and a little cinnamon. Continue smashing until the flour is fully butterated and the butter is fully floured. That's the best way I have to describe it. There should be small chunks of butter but not large chunks, and all the flour should have some fat connected to it. The flour should be fairly fatty, whether you use butter, lard, or Crisco, or any combination of those three. Then add water sparingly in increments while mixing and moving with the aim of using as little water as possible. I keep the tap running on cold and let it drip off my fingertips of one hand while the other hand is stirring. Just enough to barely hold the mass together. BARELY! It's fun, like Play Doh.

Press together in a wad, wrap and chill. This gives time for the water to disperse itself molecularly evenly throughout the ball via the miracle of osmosis, or summat. . Bakers call it "relaxing the dough" but I call it "allowing the water to evenly disperse". Chilling keeps the fat particles hard. You don't want the fat to liquify or to become homogenized throughout the flour because the slight irregularity of the fat is how you achieve flakes, the best you could get otherwise is crumbly crust which isn't at all bad but it's not as fantastic as flakiness is. It's why I chose not to process dough in pulses like experts recommend and it's why my crust is better than theirs, even better than Martha Stewart's. That right, I said it, my pie crust is better than Martha Stewart's. Press it out by hand, then roll it flat. It should be slightly crumbly while rolling and somewhat difficult to handle. If it's too cooperative, you've probably added too much water. You can either correct it with flour or proceed, it's your gamble. I like to roll it thickly for a stacked flake-flake-flake effect. As I already said, this dough makes excellent little cookies.

Pie shell pre-baked. It was not chilled first, nor was it protected with weight as experts do, so it collapsed a little and shrank slightly but not enough to ruin it. The top was decorated with extra trimmings and placed to disguise the collapsed deformity, but unevenly, zen-like, as if leaves fell randomly, which is completely irrelevant here because it will hardly last long enough for anyone to notice.

Yellow split pea and butternut squash soup

Two *click* two *click* two soups in one. Enhanced unapologetically with Madras curry and cayenne pepper got off to an insanely aromatic start in hot butter, yellow split pea and butternut squash soups combined. Crostini from down there ↓ which was pretty much the point of the whole thing, a magnitude of order beyond Club crackers and so worth the effort.

Color If I were to serve this for a dinner party or lunch, and that's likely, I would leave out any green vegetable at least to the very end to preserve the color of the legume or the gourd. That bright yellow of the split peas and the orange of the butternut squash is attractive initially, all obscured and muddled by the green vegetables. I would watch it with spices too, careful to pick only those with color that agree, or consider sprinkling them on top of the finished dish, or maybe leave it for guests to sprinkle themselves.

Butternut squash, mustard greens

That's odd, I forgot to drizzle my vegetables with aged balsamic. No matter. I deglazed the pan with white wine and that totally made up for the oversight, sort of. Besides, I still have some left that I can enhance.

* butternut squash cubed
* green beans trimmed
* mustard greens trimmed and cut
* red onion
* butter / olive oil
* S/P
* white wine
* house chicken broth

I was going to scrape some nutmeg but I forgot that too, and the whole time I was eating it I was sitting there thinking, "THIS WOULD BE ALRIGHT IF IT JUST HAD SOME NUTMEG ON IT !!! 1111 ¡¡ eleven million one hundred eleven thousand one hundred and eleven 1sX π !!!!!"

Top round used in a previous post down there ↓ for the tacos reheated, marinated in

* soy sauce
* mirin
* water
* grated garlic
* grated ginger

Sauteéd to brown and pressure cooked to tenderness, and now I'm a little bit sad because this marks the end of it.

Spaghetti pasta with butternut squash

This is seriously easy. The thing is, Mr. and Mrs. America, to impress your Italian or your well-traveled friend, remove the pasta from its water when it's approximately 92.78 % done and dump it dripping with its water into the pan containing the simmering extraneous material, in this case butternut squash with fresh garlic. This slightly starchy water along with the starch on the surface of the pasta will form a thin sauce with the oil already in the pan. Add a little extra pasta water if you deem it insufficiently wet. Allow the pasta to continue cooking in the pan until approximately 95% done. I realize this runs short of what you might have already accepted, but it's the way of the world and you'll learn to prefer it. Of course, this cannot be done with fresh pasta. Add the cheese and herbs off the heat. Twirl the pasta onto a large fork and lift it across and tenderly place it onto a plate sliding out the fork for a spectacular slightly elevated presentation.

If children complain about the al dente pasta straining their tiny undeveloped toofies, and they will, then bend down so that your lips are level with their faces and speaking directly into their little ear say crisply and authoritatively, "SHUT UP YOU LITTLE TWERP AND EAT IT! Or possibly microwave it for the little darlings.

Tempura catfish and butternut squash

The deep-fried flavors of tempura are enhanced with dipping sauce. Prepare that first and get it out of the way before proceeding.

The typical sauce, like this one, is made from a standard dashi base. 50% of the liquid is this most common of all fish soup bases made from kombu, a large flat dried kelp, that can make it's own standalone seafood broth, sort of like kelp tea, in combination with bonito flakes, which are a dried type of skipjack tuna that has been sliced super thinly, shaved actually, with a razor sharp mandolin tool, into nearly transparent flakes that virtually melt within the kombu broth. Handfuls of these airy dried fish flakes are dumped into the kombu tea-broth, soaked for about 10 minutes then strained out. Sometimes, the exhausted flakes are left in. They don't hurt anything. However, you don't have to mess with kombu or with bonito for your kombu bonito dashi. Bonito dashi is marketed in various ways, as you can imagine, much like Lipton's soup in individual packages. This dashi here was made the copout way using one of those packages. I had 1/2 package sitting in there with the regular kombu and bonito flakes and thought, "Eh, why not?" It turned out stronger than what I was aiming for so I diluted the finished soup.

For the tempura sauce, add 25% soy sauce and 25% mirin, which is a sweet rice wine. Test it. If you don't care for the flavor, adjust with more mirin or consider adding a little sugar, say, 1/8 teaspoon, or maybe honey. I suppose you could also substitute fish sauce for the dashi, which is basically an anchovy concoction. There you go, anchovies and water, if nothing else.

But you don't have to settle for just one dipping sauce. Here's where you can really impress a date. Make two or three different sauces with various flavor profiles. Just throw them together in small amounts and set aside in an arrangement of bowls. Powdered mustard in one, fish sauce in another, wasabi in another, water down a Hoisin sauce then adjust the flavor, with grated ginger, Sriracha, garlic, those sorts of things. Pretend you know what you're doing. Allow your date to taste and to suggest adjustments, drag her into it, allow them to feel useful and creative while learning something.

Kombu = kelp
Bonito = katsuobushi = skipjack tuna
dashi = soup
Sriracha = popular Asian red chile sauce

The purpose of this tempura was to feature butternut squash. It's very good in tempura form, as is sweet potato, but they must be cooked first otherwise they will not have enough time in the oil to finish. A few minutes in the microwave with a little water was sufficient to soften them for tempura. I also steamed the green beans while I was at it. The rest of the ingredients were just things I had on hand, onion, mushrooms, catfish works particularly well, and shrimp.

The batter can be prepared any number of ways, but it must be cold. Today I decided to use beer because I was in the mood to finish the bottle. This ale worked especially well. If I hadn't used beer, then lighten the batter by including a trace amount of baking powder along with whatever combination of flours you use. I like to use a combination of milled flours; rice flour, corn starch, regular wheat flour, all three at once. Any one can be used alone, results vary. The tempura ingredients are coated first with dry flour before being dipped into the batter made with the same flour mixture. This helps the batter adhere. So, you can mix together the dry ingredients in one bowl, then divide that between two bowls and add a whipped egg and additional cold liquid to one of the bowls to form a thin batter. Thin batter is better. Glumpy thick batter is uncool for tempura. I like to flick off most of the batter before dipping it into the hot oil.

* egg whipped

* beer, soda/tonic water, cold tap water

* rice flour
* corn starch
* wheat flour
* salt
* baking powder in tiny amount if not using beer or soda/tonic water
* any dry flavoring that strikes your fancy, or not.

If you ever watch a Japanese cook prepare tempura, you'll notice they don't actually deep fry them, rather, they shallow fry tempura in a wide low cast-iron pan. After adding the battered ingredients the cook stands there and drips more batter directly into the oil onto the edges of the frying ingredients which are floating creating artistically bizarre elaborated leg-like designs of extra fried batter onto the original coated piece that looks like splatters. I do not do that. Tempura is messy enough without all that extra glopping batter added to the disaster already occurring in the kitchen. I'm too much a klutz as it is, and this makes an even greater mess of the oil, and so the oil must be continuously skimmed and raked between batches. But I tell you what, do this with a friend for fun in the kitchen and you'll change their lives permanently with a whole new understanding of how these apparently magical culinary exploits are pulled off, and it will affect their understanding of all fried foods thereafter.

Oil at 350℉. I use a instant-read thermometer to keep it dead on, but that's probably not necessary. You can test with drops of batter. I also turn the handle of the pot inward because I'm just too clumsy to have handles sticking out from pots with hot oil. I also never fill the pot more than 1/2 full of oil. See? This is one idiot that manages to learn from mistakes.

Conclusion: Butternut squash is superb as a tempura ingredient. I should have used more.

Butternut squash French fries

French fries prepared the traditional way, deep fried in two sessions, first at a lower temperature to cook the potato, here the gourd, and second, after allowing to cool, deep-fried again at higher temperature to dehydrate and crisp.

First at 225℉ - 250℉, and second at 350℉ or thereabout.

Conclusion: These are the best fries I have ever tasted. They were not crisp as I had hoped. I believe the temperature was too low for the second deep-frying session. I'm not giving up, though, there's still hope for a crispy butternut fry. If not, then oh well, soft fries will just have to do. This is were a tempura type coating might come to the rescue but that has its own problems, namely, the crispiness doesn't last for long, or perhaps a cornmeal type coating and then baked.

They cooked faster than I had imagined. Faster than potatoes do. They appear to release a sugary liquid while cooling, I was counting on that to crisp and also afraid it would splatter but neither of those two things happened, and so I'm left confounded as to why. I think I might try giving them a start by roasting on low temperature and cut them into fry shapes before they're entirely done, then finish roasting at high temperature with the help of a little spray, or possibly brushed with oil.

They're tricky to cut and there's a bit of waste because of the shape of the gourd and the hollowed out area were the seeds are cleared but they are totally worth the trouble.

Risotto with butternut squash and mustard greens

Risotto, as you know, is rice that is not steamed in the usual way but rather gently boiled in shallow broth which is kept hot in another pot and added continuously in small amounts as it's being absorbed. The idea is to get the rice to release its starch and to form a silky smooth consistency.

The rice is started by searing it in hot butter first, then started off boiling usually with a cup of white wine before getting on with the broth. I forgot to do that here and it was no catastrophe. Instead of butter, this version used the fat that remained from rendering bacon into bits to be included later, along with onion and diced butternut squash. After that had a good start chopped mustard greens were added mostly for drama!, and just to be different, and because I had them.

After the rice is cooked, Parmigiano cheese is added in generous quantity along with pancetta or bacon, (which I actually forgot, after all of that -- went back and sprinkled it on top)

I used my own broth from the roasted chicken down there ↓ in a previous post, even though I have several cartons of commercial broth. It's always a tough decision for me as to when to use my special home-made super duper broth and when to use cop out no class commercial broth, but I have to use it sometime, so might as well be now. I'm glad I did.

I went a little bit too heavy on the Parmigiano here. ← I can't believe I just said that, but it's true. I forgot I was making a half batch and got carried away. Actually, I knocked off a nick from a large wedge and grated that. Whatever the amount came out to be measurement-wise, that was that. I'm careless that way.

Conclusion: This is so delicious I can't stand it. I do believe it would appeal to anybody, even picky children.

I used short-grain Japanese rice of the sort I'm used to cooking. I've noticed this has changed since I was a kid. In the bad ol' days, this type of rice used to have a lot more surface starch. A LOT more. It would be rinsed ritualistically seven times before steaming, which is a bummer for a kid cook. But now, a quick rinse under the faucet in a strainer does the trick, which is sort of nice, but this bodes ill for risotto which relies on that starch for success. I almost didn't use it for that reason. Best to stick with Arboreal rice, which is recommended, or proper risotto rice. But I was too lazy to bother and I don't care to have six different types of rice on hand for specific purposes. Maybe I'll make an exception. I would hold suspect any package that was marketed as being specifically for risotto, wary of a ploy, and instead search out a specific named species. This rice was OK, but it wouldn't win any risotto contest. An Italian who knew their risotto would find objection. My version clumsily disguised that flaw with an excess of Parmigiano, which an expert would also probably object. See rice varieties. (It might be helpful to use CNTL/F or Command/F then search "risotto" to take you to the spots on the page that address this interest and lead you directly to the useful varieties and skip all that other nonsense varieties, unless you enjoy scanning the wonderful universe of strange rice varieties.