recipe time
Mar. 18th, 2009 12:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7By request from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
besina_sartor, I am going to post the recipe for the soup we made tonight. This soup is the reason I'm going to try to grow butternut squash this year. :) I'm also going to post the bread recipe, which made the best loaf of bread I've ever made-- fluffy, but heavy, with nice big holes like an English muffin, and a really crispy crust. Mmmm. I wish I had a sense of taste right now. I would eat the hell out of that. ... I guess it's just as well, since I want to save some of it for sandwiches...
I snagged this recipe from a local newspaper-- it's from the restaurant Brodo on Elmwood Ave in Buffalo, which specializes in soups. Pretty basic, quite tasty. You could *probably* use onions instead of the leeks, but I'm not sure how that would be; this is very delicate-tasting and almost sweet, but hearty and substantial. I use it as a main dish.
Start off by roasting 2 butternut squash via your preferred method. My mom cuts the squash in half, puts them face down in about 1/2" of water in a baking pan, and lets them go 45 minutes or so in a 350-400 degree oven. I saw someone peeling a squash with a vegetable peeler on a cooking show once (I was standing in line at the coffee shop, of all places; no idea what TV show it was), and thought I'd try it. That worked great-- peeled it, chopped it, put it in water in a baking pan, cooked 45 minutes. Voila! I then used the squash water to reconstitute my chicken buillion, because I am not posh and don't use gourmet broth.
2 large leeks, chopped fine (white/pale green parts only)
3 Tbs butter (you could use olive oil, maybe, but why?)
Saute the leeks in the butter (about 5 min.) on med/low heat until they are soft and translucent/colorless.
Add:
3-4 cups chicken stock
some sprigs of fresh thyme or maybe 1/2 tsp dried thyme
some ground pepper, or white pepper if you're fancy (i've never had any so don't know how that would go)
the 2 large butternut squashes you roasted
Bring it all to a boil. Let it simmer for 15 minutes or so. (If your squash wasn't quite-quite done, still a little crispy in the middle, this'll sort that out.) If the squash is in big chunks, you can mash it with a potato masher while it boils. (Do be careful.)
Once it's done boiling, let it cool a little, then process it in a blender in small batches. Be really careful, as the steam can blow the top off and scald you. If you have an immersion blender this is the time to whip that sucker out and show off. (I poured all the soup into a giant Pyrex bowl to cool it slightly, and then poured the finished batches back into the original saucepan.)
Bring the squash soup puree back up to almost a boil. Then add 1 cup heavy cream or buttermilk. Never tried the buttermilk; sometimes I use half-and-half or I cut the cream with whole milk. But you really do need some milkfat in there or it'll just be pathetic. C'mon, this dish is like all vegetable fiber otherwise. Live a little.
Stir well, and serve immediately. Garnish with thyme if you're super excited about the fact that you have a thyme plant, or if you had to buy a huge handful of fresh thyme at the grocery because three sprigs costs the same as half a pound. (I shake my fist at thee, Wegman's, and your false economies of scale.)
It's really tasty. It may need some salt. I don't know-- I couldn't taste mine!! But it has a lovely creamy texture and loads of nutrients. (I don't know what kind, I didn't look it up-- I'm happier in ignorance.)
But the Bread of Awesome! I must share this with you.
English Muffin loaf - this makes a nice, lofty, fragrant little loaf that's the easiest of my white-bread recipes. Great for toast, sandwiches, etc.
1 1/4 t yeast
2 1/4 c bread flour
1/2 T sugar
3/4 t salt
1 T butter, at room temp
3/4 c to 1 c milk or buttermilk, warm
1. Dissolve yeast in just a bit of the milk. Mix together flour, sugar and salt and add them to the bowl. Stir in butter and 3/4 c of milk until ingredients form a ball. Add more milk if needed to get all the flour from the bottom of the bowl to adhere in the ball. The dough should be soft and pliable, not stiff.
2. Knead on a lightly floured surface for about 10 minutes, adding flour as needed to make a tacky, not sticky dough - add only as much flour as you need, a little bit at a time. When the dough is ready, it should pass the windowpane test (meaning that if you stretch a small piece of it out into a rectangle between your hands , it should stretch to the point that you can see light through it, not just tear. you can find pictures and a more satisfactory explanation online - one is here, along with a nice explanation of how to make bread - the windowpane explanation is about halfway down the page.) Form dough into a loose ball. Lightly oil a bowl and put the dough in it, rolling the dough to coat with oil. Cover bowl with a damp towel or plastic wrap.
3. Ferment until doubled, an hour to 1 1/2 hours.
4. Shape dough into a loaf. This makes a one-pound loaf, whereas your standard loaf pan holds a 1 1/2-pound loaf, so i'm not sure what to say to that - i have little loaf pans at work that i use, so maybe you can get your hands on one of those (ask Dave's mom or something), or you can just form it into a ball and bake as a round. That is always an option for pretty much any kind of bread, if all you've got is a sheet pan.*
5. Proof for one hour (that means, let it rise in a warm-ish spot)
6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Bake for about 1/2 hour. My standard is to rotate the bread once, halfway through baking, to compensate for any irregularities in heat in the oven.
* Editor's note: I admit, i just used my too-big loaf pan. I rolled the bread pretty tightly into a cylinder, not a cigar shape (so, not fat in the middle), and chucked it into the loaf pan, centered and not touching the sides, and proofed it for an hour down under the grow-lights where my seedlings are (there's a space heater too, it's like 90 down there for my peppers to germinate) and it filled the whole dang pan.
Another note: I really did knead it for all ten minutes, and I really did use bread flour. It made a big difference.
Oh, and probably the most important note: Another of the recipes she sent me said to put boiling water into the oven so the loaf was in a steam bath as it began baking, so I did this. Two methods that have worked: 1) boil water in a cast-iron frying pan as the oven preheats, and put the frying pan, boiling water and all, into the oven as you put the loaf in. 2) Get a spray bottle and just spritz the hell out of the oven when you put the loaf in. Either one works. 1) has a rather severe risk of burning yourself if you're not careful later, though-- cast iron is heavy! Duh. But watch out-- it's really scalding steam as it comes out.
Edited to add: OH NO THIS IS THE IMPORTANT EDITOR'S NOTE!!! Sister did not mention this, but I learned the hard way: GREASE AND FLOUR THE BAKING PAN or it will require an act of God to get the loaf out!!! I bought a thing of Baker's Joy, which I'd never heard of before, and boy howdy did it work a treat! But do something to keep it from sticking or you will be a sad, sad panda when it ought to be time for delicious bread and instead it's time for poking poking with a knife until the bottom comes off and you have this mess. Delicious mess, but you can't make a very good sandwich with a delicious mess.
I'm in a chatty mood! I should get in the shower and get to bed-- gotta get up to move my car so Fi can leave for L.A. in um four hours. I'm just icing my knee before I shower-- it behaved wonderfully tonight, and even let me scrimmage full-contact. It just barks a bit if I do fall-down-get-up drills, or if I, um, shake my ass at the bar. Um. Curse you, TI!
Right. Shower. Bed.
besina_sartor, I am going to post the recipe for the soup we made tonight. This soup is the reason I'm going to try to grow butternut squash this year. :) I'm also going to post the bread recipe, which made the best loaf of bread I've ever made-- fluffy, but heavy, with nice big holes like an English muffin, and a really crispy crust. Mmmm. I wish I had a sense of taste right now. I would eat the hell out of that. ... I guess it's just as well, since I want to save some of it for sandwiches...I snagged this recipe from a local newspaper-- it's from the restaurant Brodo on Elmwood Ave in Buffalo, which specializes in soups. Pretty basic, quite tasty. You could *probably* use onions instead of the leeks, but I'm not sure how that would be; this is very delicate-tasting and almost sweet, but hearty and substantial. I use it as a main dish.
Start off by roasting 2 butternut squash via your preferred method. My mom cuts the squash in half, puts them face down in about 1/2" of water in a baking pan, and lets them go 45 minutes or so in a 350-400 degree oven. I saw someone peeling a squash with a vegetable peeler on a cooking show once (I was standing in line at the coffee shop, of all places; no idea what TV show it was), and thought I'd try it. That worked great-- peeled it, chopped it, put it in water in a baking pan, cooked 45 minutes. Voila! I then used the squash water to reconstitute my chicken buillion, because I am not posh and don't use gourmet broth.
2 large leeks, chopped fine (white/pale green parts only)
3 Tbs butter (you could use olive oil, maybe, but why?)
Saute the leeks in the butter (about 5 min.) on med/low heat until they are soft and translucent/colorless.
Add:
3-4 cups chicken stock
some sprigs of fresh thyme or maybe 1/2 tsp dried thyme
some ground pepper, or white pepper if you're fancy (i've never had any so don't know how that would go)
the 2 large butternut squashes you roasted
Bring it all to a boil. Let it simmer for 15 minutes or so. (If your squash wasn't quite-quite done, still a little crispy in the middle, this'll sort that out.) If the squash is in big chunks, you can mash it with a potato masher while it boils. (Do be careful.)
Once it's done boiling, let it cool a little, then process it in a blender in small batches. Be really careful, as the steam can blow the top off and scald you. If you have an immersion blender this is the time to whip that sucker out and show off. (I poured all the soup into a giant Pyrex bowl to cool it slightly, and then poured the finished batches back into the original saucepan.)
Bring the squash soup puree back up to almost a boil. Then add 1 cup heavy cream or buttermilk. Never tried the buttermilk; sometimes I use half-and-half or I cut the cream with whole milk. But you really do need some milkfat in there or it'll just be pathetic. C'mon, this dish is like all vegetable fiber otherwise. Live a little.
Stir well, and serve immediately. Garnish with thyme if you're super excited about the fact that you have a thyme plant, or if you had to buy a huge handful of fresh thyme at the grocery because three sprigs costs the same as half a pound. (I shake my fist at thee, Wegman's, and your false economies of scale.)
It's really tasty. It may need some salt. I don't know-- I couldn't taste mine!! But it has a lovely creamy texture and loads of nutrients. (I don't know what kind, I didn't look it up-- I'm happier in ignorance.)
But the Bread of Awesome! I must share this with you.
English Muffin loaf - this makes a nice, lofty, fragrant little loaf that's the easiest of my white-bread recipes. Great for toast, sandwiches, etc.
1 1/4 t yeast
2 1/4 c bread flour
1/2 T sugar
3/4 t salt
1 T butter, at room temp
3/4 c to 1 c milk or buttermilk, warm
1. Dissolve yeast in just a bit of the milk. Mix together flour, sugar and salt and add them to the bowl. Stir in butter and 3/4 c of milk until ingredients form a ball. Add more milk if needed to get all the flour from the bottom of the bowl to adhere in the ball. The dough should be soft and pliable, not stiff.
2. Knead on a lightly floured surface for about 10 minutes, adding flour as needed to make a tacky, not sticky dough - add only as much flour as you need, a little bit at a time. When the dough is ready, it should pass the windowpane test (meaning that if you stretch a small piece of it out into a rectangle between your hands , it should stretch to the point that you can see light through it, not just tear. you can find pictures and a more satisfactory explanation online - one is here, along with a nice explanation of how to make bread - the windowpane explanation is about halfway down the page.) Form dough into a loose ball. Lightly oil a bowl and put the dough in it, rolling the dough to coat with oil. Cover bowl with a damp towel or plastic wrap.
3. Ferment until doubled, an hour to 1 1/2 hours.
4. Shape dough into a loaf. This makes a one-pound loaf, whereas your standard loaf pan holds a 1 1/2-pound loaf, so i'm not sure what to say to that - i have little loaf pans at work that i use, so maybe you can get your hands on one of those (ask Dave's mom or something), or you can just form it into a ball and bake as a round. That is always an option for pretty much any kind of bread, if all you've got is a sheet pan.*
5. Proof for one hour (that means, let it rise in a warm-ish spot)
6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Bake for about 1/2 hour. My standard is to rotate the bread once, halfway through baking, to compensate for any irregularities in heat in the oven.
* Editor's note: I admit, i just used my too-big loaf pan. I rolled the bread pretty tightly into a cylinder, not a cigar shape (so, not fat in the middle), and chucked it into the loaf pan, centered and not touching the sides, and proofed it for an hour down under the grow-lights where my seedlings are (there's a space heater too, it's like 90 down there for my peppers to germinate) and it filled the whole dang pan.
Another note: I really did knead it for all ten minutes, and I really did use bread flour. It made a big difference.
Oh, and probably the most important note: Another of the recipes she sent me said to put boiling water into the oven so the loaf was in a steam bath as it began baking, so I did this. Two methods that have worked: 1) boil water in a cast-iron frying pan as the oven preheats, and put the frying pan, boiling water and all, into the oven as you put the loaf in. 2) Get a spray bottle and just spritz the hell out of the oven when you put the loaf in. Either one works. 1) has a rather severe risk of burning yourself if you're not careful later, though-- cast iron is heavy! Duh. But watch out-- it's really scalding steam as it comes out.
Edited to add: OH NO THIS IS THE IMPORTANT EDITOR'S NOTE!!! Sister did not mention this, but I learned the hard way: GREASE AND FLOUR THE BAKING PAN or it will require an act of God to get the loaf out!!! I bought a thing of Baker's Joy, which I'd never heard of before, and boy howdy did it work a treat! But do something to keep it from sticking or you will be a sad, sad panda when it ought to be time for delicious bread and instead it's time for poking poking with a knife until the bottom comes off and you have this mess. Delicious mess, but you can't make a very good sandwich with a delicious mess.
I'm in a chatty mood! I should get in the shower and get to bed-- gotta get up to move my car so Fi can leave for L.A. in um four hours. I'm just icing my knee before I shower-- it behaved wonderfully tonight, and even let me scrimmage full-contact. It just barks a bit if I do fall-down-get-up drills, or if I, um, shake my ass at the bar. Um. Curse you, TI!
Right. Shower. Bed.
