butternut harvest soup

ummm, hi. hello. sorry i'm late. do you know i've posted 11 times in 2010? yup, blogger FAIL. my bad.

it's not that i haven't cooked... well, i didn't more or less all summer because my darling husband can (and WILL) grill an. y. thing. (nom.) when we moved, we got a new grill to go with our new patio-- a full-height camping grill. beats the one that sits six inches off the ground. and it gets a full-sized propane tank. HOORAY. he also got a cuisinart griddler for our anniversary. so much grilling.

um, yeah, anyway.

lately i don't want to blog without pictures, i guess, so i just don't blog. but while my parents were in paris, france, europe the past couple weeks, we got their csa and i've been cooking some interesting stuff. like butternut harvest soup.

ingredients:

• 1 butternut squash, peeled, gutted and cubed
• 1 granny smith apple, peeled, cored and cubed
• 2-3 carrots, peeled and chopped
  
• 2 leeks (white and light parts only) cleaned and chopped
• 2 tbs butter
• 6ish cups chicken broth
• salt, pepper, nutmeg
  
• greek yogurt

prep:

• peel, gut, core, chop, cube

actual cooking:

• saute leeks and carrots in butter until tender
• add broth and bring to a boil
• add apple & squash and simmer until squash is easily pierced with a fork
• remove from heat and blend in a food processor or with an immersion blender
  
• season with salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg if you like
• stir a heaping tablespoon of greek yogurt into each bowl
  

so, this was the first of 4 soups i made over the course of two weeks. i also have a massive fail (with pictures) to blog and a pretty awesome seat-of-my-pants dinner. i will try very hard to blog them.

we've moved!

nope, not the blog, the us.

amidst the madness of grad school, bill, audrey, gus, penny, the library and i relocated to a sweet first-floor unit in a triplex three towns over.

you guys, it has a separate dining room.

also: a tiny kitchen.

one of my courageous space-saving efforts is a no-nukes experiment. we're hanging on to our microwave, but trying to see if we can avoid using it for a month. after that? who knows.

as children of the eighties, we've lived our whole lives with the convenience of zapping radiation into our leftover and then eating them. YUM-O! but so far this week, the option has been unavailable.

the result? so far, so good. i've warmed up (french pressed) coffee in my kettle, and mu shu veg, curry chicken and angel hair on the stove top. soon, i'm sure i'll venture to use the oven.

also soon, i'll be back. i'm planning cooking & baking projects on my study days, and the switch from electric to gas should be... a gas.

mother-in-law salad

i'm sure lots of people would love to make a salad of their mother-in-law, but i happen to be blessed with TWO mothers-in-law who are both positively delightful. this is a salad my husband's mother threw together when we arrived at her home in tampa two weeks ago. i recreated it at home when i realized i could over-pay for a small quantity of queso fresco at trader joe's.

ingredients:

• 1-2 heads of lettuce
• 1 diced avocado
• 3 seeded, diced plum tomatoes
• 1 diced cucumber
• 8 ounces diced queso fresco, basket cheese or, if you must, fresh mozzarella
• 1/4 red onion, jullienned
• grilled chicken (about 3 ounces per diner)
• sliced olives
• olive oil
• the juice & zest of one lemon

prep:

• grill, dice juice, zest & tear as needed

actual cooking:

• combine

oh, it is soooooo goooooooooood. i can't even tell you.

• 
  

zuchotto

(daddy, mama, michael, nardo, kevvie, j, bill, sue, mary, frankie-baby, james, moi, joseph, jim & joe. mara & col were gone by then and old greg graciously took this one for us. and i have no idea where steven was. i kept asking and never got an answer.)

this past weekend, we had my favorite annual tradition: gaining four pounds in two days while the ice in our drinks melts way too fast in the sweltering northern virginia august. also known as the hughes cousins convention at uncles jim & frank's.

after a solid year of emails and obsessive, mouth-watering discussion, jim & i finally got to make our zuchotto. bill recorded it for posterity. because by the time it was unveiled, jim & i were SEVERAL margamaritas in. what? they're GOOD.

zuchotto is a dome-shaped confection compromised of layers of pound cake "bricks," whipped cream with roasted hazelnuts and whipped cream with chocolate chips, all generously doused with booze and set in the fridge for several hours.



so, basically, you line a bowl in cheesecloth, spray booze, then line it in bricks. which you spray with booze.


does my family turn it ON when there's a camera, or what? this was about 10am. if mama didn't do it, kevvie would have had to, but he was busy JUMPING OUT OF A PERFECTLY GOOD AIRPLANE at the time.



then a floor of whipped cream with whichever mix-in. you want to alternate. then bricks. then booze. repeat as necessary.



we used about five 8" pound cakes, 2 quarts of heavy cream and... um... some nuts & chips. and booze.


young james was SUPER helpful with disposing of leftover bricks. spread with nutella, natch.



did i say REAL whipped cream? cause: REAL. and unsweetened. trust me.







after a good spraying, wrap her in cheesecloth, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 7-24 hours.







perfect!


and HUGE. cutting through it wasn't doing my tendinitis any favors, let me tell you. so uncle jim took over and people started sharing cause-- whoa-- my uncle cuts a serious piece of cake.





(i mean, he DID jump out of a perfectly good airplane that morning!)

irish milk stout bread (or: beer for breakfast)

oh, hai! how do you like the detail on that picture? can you practically taste the beery goodness? or perhaps your screen isn't hd. mine is. because i have a new! fast! laptop! and a new! shiny! camera! and a new! fancy! mobile! hotspot! thus, i am blogging in bed and drooling over the pics of this irish porter bread which i actually made with a milk stout. mmmmmm. in order to keep myself in fancy technology upgrades, and creatively fulfilled, i'm back in the kitchen making sure daddy & bill still love me enough to give me fancy, spill-proof keyboards and a better camera than the one i gave a shower to. okay, TWO showers.

ingredients:

• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon EACH ground cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon. and allspice if you have that. i don't.
• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 a bottle of porter or stout
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 beaten eggs

prep:

• warm up your beer
• grease 2 8-inch round cake pans
• preheat to 350*

actual cooking:

• combine flour, salt & spices
• work in butter with a pastry cutter or your hands
• add sugar
• make a well in the mixture
• combine beer & baking soda
• pour the liquid & eggs into the well and still until just combined
• divide between pans
• bake for 20 minutes and then reduce heat to 300*
• bake for another 40ish minutes until bread pulls away from the sides of the pan
• enjoy warm or room temperature with the rest of the beer

what i ate on my summer vacation

Click here to view these pictures larger

a margamarita

these are the world's best margaritas. that's what i told everyone at nardo's graduation party, and i'm standing by it.

• 1 part limeade concentrate
  
• 1 part tequila
• 1 part corona
• 1 part water
• over crushed ice
  

to fill a 3-gallon beverage dispenser, a part is 84 ounces (or 7 cans/bottles).