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.

placeholder/excuses

dear interwebs:

my memory card filled up shortly before christmas.

and i lost my cookie notes on my desk somewhere when we rearranged furniture.

and i'm really lazy.

i have to transcribe a recipe from photos of the cookbook-- including julia's editorializing and mom & enid's notes from 1980.

i'll be back soon!


love,
clare

christmas cookies 2008: finale

(sorry for the picture... i had a much more dramatic one planned, but for some reason blogger & i don't agree on how the picture should be oriented. and the sideways-cookie thing was not doing it for me. at. all.)

so... funny thing. when you're spending every free moment baking, it's hard to find a moment to write about baking. to sum it all up: they were wonderful. had i gone through it blow-by-blow, you can bet i'd have been singing a different tune. i was, in fact, in my kitchen, and it was a pretty bawdy tune. with crying. but i learned some things.

1. i need more flour-- like, twice as much.
2. vanilla does cost just as much at trader joe's as it does for the store brand at the supermarket-- the difference is, tj's bottles are twice as big.
3. it's difficult to buy chocolate when you boycott nestle and hershey's... trader joe's to the rescue!
4. the broiler won't just melt the jam... it'll burn the shortbread.
5. a candy thermometer makes all the difference.
6. a quarter of an inch is a lot thicker than i think it is.
7. a little less flour makes the dough softer. ummm, duh?
8. too much water will ruin gingerbread.
9. expensive non-stick baking sheets really are non-stickier than the regular ones.
10. wilton sells no-taste red food dye.

i made everything i was supposed to make, pretty well, plus some extra fudge for gifting. i had a couple mishaps, too, like when i broke the christmas tree plate for my cookie press with my super-tough dough. i overdid it, of course, but i'm sure the recipients of the extra bags don't mind-- and let's face it, everybody has a lonely, old neighbor who will appreciate being thought of (though, perhaps not as a "lonely, old neighbor"). now i have some new cookie recipes and ideas to work out before next year. maybe then, i'll get through it with a little less crying.

cooking-related christmas gifts: a pastry workshop (on sunday!), subscriptions to bon appetite and martha stewart's everyday food and a giant cupcake cake pan.

cooking-related new year's resolutions: cook one thing from each magazine and bake cookies year-round-- not just christmas!

oh, and one final thought:

christmas baking is not complete without a nice set of... giant chocolate chip cookies.

autumn double-cake (part one)

okay, i forgot to blog this phenomenal cake that i invented because i intended to play it close to my chest until almost thanksgiving, and now thanksgiving is tomorrow and i haven't posted it and i meant to do it in time for thanksgiving, so here are instructions, if not a recipe.

basic plan:

1. in a spring form pan, bake a spice cake from the recipe of your choice. (i use the spice cake adaptation of the "lightning cake" recipe from the joy of cooking but use pumpkin pie spice blend instead of whatever the spices called for are.)
2. next, in the same pan (or same-sized pan), make a cheesecake with crust only on the bottom and the crust mixture spiced with pumpkin pie spice blend. (i use this recipe, sans topping-- and the helpful hints? they are totally helpful.)
3. after both cakes are cool, so, several hours later, plate the cheesecake and put the spice cake on top of it. (you can use a little caramel sauce or cream cheese frosting to secure it if you want, but probably don't need to.)
4. either frost with a crumb coating of cream cheese frosting and top with butterscotch pudding or drizzle with caramel sauce and top with lightly-spices whipped cream.

so, what i really love about this cake is, once you get the idea, you can make it ANYTHING. you can make it chocolate and vanilla. neapolitan. chocolate-cherry. strawberries and cream. gingerbread. do you see where i'm going with this?

i'll post the full recipe later.

(oh, and i also made this for my mom's birthday. hi, mom's boss!)

i got behind again...

this weekend i'll be making rosemary-olive oil bread, lasagna and maybe a gluten-free, egg-free cake. also expect an apple pie (THE ONE?) and a quick write-up on last weekend's raviolis and pumpkin pie.

so much to blog...

not enough time.

in the past four days i've made: bagel-rolls, a turkey-taco casserole, a 3rd apple pie (several posts on that, i think), rosemary-olive oil bread and the newly dubbed "autumnal equinox double cake" which i might keep under my hat until closer to thanksgiving.

later.