Good Eating - joie la vie!

[jebatty]

This forum must have a "few" of us who do our own cooking, especially with our garden fare. From watching TV and talking to friends, however, home cooking seems to have been "elevated" to the skillful opening of a colorful box. Wife and I went to a restaurant Sat night, and one course was squash soup. We complimented the chef, and he gave us the recipe - extremely simple and low calorie, for a restaurant item. I made the soup on Monday from an acorn squash harvested last October, and it was as good as the restaurant soup.

Might be fun to add some spice to our humdrum lives by sharing simple recipes, using every day ingredients, for food from the garden cooking. Needing to use exotic ingredients is a real pain, especially for those of us in rural areas where table salt and dried spices are about as exotic as we can find.

For the squash soup: being exact on the ingredients is not very important, but I don't think I would overdo the allspice.

Any variety of winter squash, diced into chunks (the variety will determined the color of the soup)
Onion, diced, and lightly sauteed with butter (1-2 T) in the soup pot, then add the squash
Barely cover with chicken stock (I used chicken base from a bottle + water)
Add a little salt, 1 T of brown sugar, 2 T honey, 1 tsp of allspice, pinch of cinnamon
Add 2 pinches of cayenne pepper, some lemon juice (from the bottle is OK)
Simmer until tender, puree
Let rest for 10 minutes with a bay leaf, some thyme and some pepper corns
Serve and enjoy (strain if you want)
Or add a little (whipped) cream in each bowl when served if you want to impress someone

 

[colebrookman]

This forum must have a "few" of us who do our own cooking, especially with our garden fare. From watching TV and talking to friends, however, home cooking seems to have been "elevated" to the skillful opening of a colorful box. Wife and I went to a restaurant Sat night, and one course was squash soup. We complimented the chef, and he gave us the recipe - extremely simple and low calorie, for a restaurant item. I made the soup on Monday from an acorn squash harvested last October, and it was as good as the restaurant soup.

Might be fun to add some spice to our humdrum lives by sharing simple recipes, using every day ingredients, for food from the garden cooking. Needing to use exotic ingredients is a real pain, especially for those of us in rural areas where table salt and dried spices are about as exotic as we can find.

For the squash soup: being exact on the ingredients is not very important, but I don't think I would overdo the allspice.

Any variety of winter squash, diced into chunks (the variety will determined the color of the soup)
Onion, diced, and lightly sauteed with butter (1-2 T) in the soup pot, then add the squash
Barely cover with chicken stock (I used chicken base from a bottle + water)
Add a little salt, 1 T of brown sugar, 2 T honey, 1 tsp of allspice, pinch of cinnamon
Add 2 pinches of cayenne pepper, some lemon juice (from the bottle is OK)
Simmer until tender, puree
Let rest for 10 minutes with a bay leaf, some thyme and some pepper corns
Serve and enjoy (strain if you want)
Or add a little (whipped) cream in each bowl when served if you want to impress someone

Man that sounds good Jim, I'll be right over. My wife and I both cook from scratch. I'll go over our favorite recipes and find something good. Be safe.
Ed

 

[Jags]

That sounds pretty tasty Jim. I am officially a food whore. I am also the camp cook at home. Matter of fact, in about 2.5 hours, I will be cranking up 2 grills to feed the troops here at work. Brats and shrimp for the lunch menu today.

Very unfortunately the rest of my house hold are food simpletons. One thinks that catsup is hot, and the other adult thinks that its gotta come out of a box if she is gonna cook.

I will be watching this thread. I love new ideas.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

We do a lot of cooking and have watched a lot of Food Network lately. Iron Chef kills me. I'll have to post a couple...

 

[drewmo]

Drewmo's Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Simmer a whole chicken or parts of chicken with carrots, celery, onion, bay leaf & peppercorns until the chicken cooked through, preferably with the meat falling off the bone.

Remove chicken from stock, cool & pull the meat off the bone. Strain & reserve the stock. (The simmered veggies and chicken skin make a good meal for the dog.)

Dice up some carrot, celery, onion, zucchini & any other veggies you'd like in your soup. Sautee diced veggies in some butter for a couple of minutes to release the flavor, then add the chicken stock and simmer until veggies are tender. Add noodles of choice & simmer until those are soft. Add the chicken meat & voila!, you have a homemade chicken soup.

I prefer to salt my own food after cooking, but you can add some salt while sauteeing the diced veggies. Also, I add a some red pepper flakes after the veggies are sauteed to give it a little kick.

 

[BucksCoBernie]

"some lemon juice (from the bottle is OK)" ITS NEVER OK TO USE BOTTLED LEMON JUICE! haha When I mix up cocktails everthing is fresh....i even make my own cranberry puree that I freeze to make nice ice shavings to use instead of cranberry juice. compliments of Alton Brown.

Thanks for the squash soup recipe...Ive been wondering what to do with the butternut squash I have left. Looks like they are about to become soup for me and the wife.

 

[Jags]

Drewmo - that sounds darn near how I do it. If available in your area, try some Mrs. Reemes (sp?) noodles in there. They come from the frozen section of your mega mart and are good enough that I won't make homemade noodles anymore.

Not to hi-jack this thread but - don't feed your dog onions or garlic. That have a toxicity to dogs that can and will build up with time and can harm their liver.

Alton Brown RULES.

Note: lunch was AWESOME!

 

[daveswoodhauler]

I brew beer from time to time, and my wife makes a good bread using the spents grains from the wort...here is a similar recipe....nothing like home made bread from beer you made. (I hate store bought bread, and this stuff is tasty and heavy)

3 cups of spent grain (wet)
1.5 cups warm (~100 F) water
1 package (1 tablespoon) dry BAKERS yeast
1/3 cup sugar (I prefer brown)
3-5 cups flour
Dash of salt (optional)

Proof yeast in mixture of water and sugar (make a starter). You should see krausen in less than an hour.
Put spent grain in large mixer bowl. Mix in starter, and start adding flour. Keep adding flour until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky. Place dough in a large bowl, cover with a clean towel, and let rise until doubled. Punch down dough, and either:
A) Split into two loaves and place in greased bread pans
B) Form into a round loaf and place on cookie sheet with a thin layer of corn meal under the loaf.
Allow loaf(ves) to double in size, bake in 375 F oven 30 to 40 minutes until browned and a long pin, such as a turkey pin, comes out clean after being inserted into the center of the loaf.

 

[BucksCoBernie]

well I just finished making some butternut squash soup using the OP recipe...taste good. Mine was a little too thin so I added some corn starch to thicken it up. Im letting it rest now and will enjoy a nice bowl of soup in front of the fire on a snowy day.

Thanks again for posting the recipe. I wasnt sure what I was going to do with some of the squash i grew over the summer.

 

[DBoon]

I'm lucky to have married a great cook (a rarity nowadays) so good home cooking is the norm for me.

Last year we had about a 150 pound harvest of hubbard squash. After giving half away, there was still plenty for soup, roasting, and baking. Hubbard squash makes a great pumpkin pie. Chop it into cubes, coat it with a little olive oil and whatever spices you wish, and roast it. For variety, mix it with rutabaga, turnips and carrots (also things we had good harvests of last year). At thanksgiving, we commonly bake a half a hubbard squash (other half is used for pie) with the cavity filled with raspberries and maple syrup. Need I say that nearly everything used that I mentioned comes from our own garden? That makes it twice as good.

Tonight we are having some squash soup we froze from a few weeks ago, along with some other homemade goodies.

 

[jebatty]

"some lemon juice (from the bottle is OK)” ITS NEVER OK TO USE BOTTLED LEMON JUICE!

I would agree with you completely if it wasn't a one hour round trip to the nearest grocery store and normally to find the saddest looking lemons you might ever see. Around here, our lemons are lemons. Go for fresh or skip the lemon juice and have a stiff shot of Bookers before eating the soup and you won't miss the lemon.

 

[Fi-Q]

I am married to an awesome woman / cook..... she first won my hearth... but through the year she definettly won my stomach......

As foor Food Tv, I'm not sure if you guys can have it in hte US, but my favorite chef is Marti Picard

http://www.foodnetwork.ca/video/index.html?categoryid=1378580335

 

[mikepinto65]

I am married to an awesome woman / cook..... she first won my hearth... but through the year she definettly won my stomach......

As foor Food Tv, I'm not sure if you guys can have it in hte US, but my favorite chef is Marti Picard

http://www.foodnetwork.ca/video/index.html?categoryid=1378580335

We dont have Marti on FN US, but I wish we did! That seems like a really cool show. I'll be sure to get cought up with him online.

My wife and I do a lot of cooking. We are pretty anal about eating healthy. 90% of our grocery's are organic. We've almost done away with buying any meat/dairy at supermarkets as well. We buy 100% grass fed free range beef from a local farm 10 minutes away, 100% organic free range chicken from another farm about 10 mins away (chickens spend most of the day out in fields next to the barn) (we also get eggs here), and we belong to a coop getting RAW (unpasteurized) organic milk from 100% grass fed free range Jersey cows and have access to unpasteurized cheeses and yogurt (we can also get organic pork from this farm raised on a diet of the RAW milk).
This year will be my first year with my own garden so Im hoping to produce a bountiful supply of organic produce...if sucesfull this will help cut my grocery bill down by very close to half.

Oh ya, this is a thread about cooking....sorry for getting sidetracked! With all that aside one of my favorite tv chefs is, with out a doubt, Jamie Oliver.

 

[jharkin]

Wife and I are turning into foodies. We both cook - I cook a lot of Italian, pasta, etc (much learned from my mom who is a caterer) - my wife likes to make soups and anything involving baking or roasting (cookies, roast chicken, beef roasts, pot pies, etc). We try to cook almost everything homemade and lately have pretty much stopped buying any bottled sauce or canned soup - we make up huge batches homemade and freeze it in the basement chest freezer.

My wife has a big herb garden that gives us all the fresh basil, oregano, time, parsley, etc we can use (there was still some living under the snow in Dec, crazy). Her attempts at vegetables didn't work out last year but she is planning to try again this.. On cooking shows - we have been watching a lot of Americas Test Kitchen on PBS lately.



For a recipe here is my version of good old fashioned red sauce w sausage and meatballs. Its a variation of a recipe passed down in my family and some ideas from Test kitchen.


What you need:
- Meatballs (1-2 lb) - we make ours simple: ground beef, Italian breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese and an egg
- 1/2 - 1 lb each sweet and hot Italian sausage
- 4 or 5 strips of bacon, diced
- one onion, diced
- 6-8 cloves fresh garlic, minced
- 1 cup red wine (something not too dry)
- 1 can tomato paste
- 5-8 big (28oz) cans crushed tomatoes
- olive oil
- salt, fresh ground pepper, basil, oregano

Good quality ingredients make a big difference - fresh grated real imported parm reggiano, good olive oil, fresh ground pepper, fresh herbs if you can get them.


First we make up the meatballs. My wife usually makes them in the oven and we throw them in the sauce only for the last hour (so they wont disintegrate).

Then we start on the sauce. Everything is done in one big pot and dont ever drain out the drippings. The meat dripping give it the flavor.
1 First I brown the sausage in the bottom of the sauce pot.
2 Take out the sausage and heat up a splash of olive oil in the same pot.
3 Add bacon and onion and saute, season with salt and pepper
4 Once the onion is cooked add the garlic and saute 2-3 minutes more
5 Dont burn the garlic! Once its cooked add the wine and simmer fora couple minutes deglazing the pot
6 now add the can of tomato paste and stir
7 once its all combined add the cans of crushed tomatoes. Use however much to fill your pot and leave room for the meat. I use about 6
8 Now add the sausage back to the pot and season to taste with lots of basil and a pinch of oregano

Simmer all afternoon (3 hr or more) then enjoy

-Jeremy

 

[Later]

While we are all thinking of food, I have to report that Oscar's Smokehouse in Warrensburg, NY is re-opening later this month. A file in September totally leveled the original buildings. The owner paid his entire staff out of his own pocket for the last 4 1/2 months.

http://www.oscarssmokedmeats.com/