Apple-Butternut Squash soup with lemon zest

TWO recipes in less than THREE days.  That's just craziness.  Can you guys take it? And this one is also gluten-free, since it's pretty much just made with vegetables and a little bit of dairy.

It's been kind of foggy and cold here the last few days so a soup sounded good.

I have made another acorn squash soup in the past, and also a roasted eggplant soup which borrows some of the same principles of oven-roasting the main vegetables first before making the soup.  If you read the acorn squash soup recipe, you'll see that I stole the whole-squash roasting technique from The Pioneer Woman, Rhee Drummond, who instructed her readers that a squash or gourd does not need to be cut up or peeled prior to roasting and that it in fact is much easier to do it after the fact.  Not only that, but the result is caramelized and savory and sweet, and far more pleasantly textured than a steamy, water-logged squash might be.  Now where *she* got that method from, I have no idea, but at least it saves me from any future trips to the emergency room because I can't think of very many kitchen-related tasks that are more dangerous than trying to cut open a squash or water melon.

Curry (Rotisserie) Chicken Soup

This chicken recipe brought to you, courtesy of Olympia Local Foods who generously supplied me with a kosher, pastured, organic rotisserie chicken from Tachira Farms, in Olympia, Washington.  If you live in the South Puget Sound area, please support our local farms by shopping at Olympia Local Foods store.

My most recent recipe was for two side dishes to complement the rotisserie chicken.  I was also excited to run my first ever contest for a free rotisserie chicken and a $10 gift card to their store.  You can still enter this contest, by following the directions from that last blog post, up until October 23, 2012.  Local entries only.

Today I'm going to show you how I used up the left over chicken to concoct a spicy, hot, healthy and flavorful  curry soup from scratch. And when I say 'From Scratch' here, I mean FROM SCRATCH.  We're even going to make our own broth... no bouillon required.

Ratatouille

RATATOUILLE

Onions, celery, carrots, tomatoes, garlic, eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, potatoes... and some fresh herbs= one delicious and hearty soup. 

Time for The Off The Cuff Chef to butcher a traditional French recipe.   Ratatouille (ra-ta-TOO-ee) is a vegetable stew, although mine always ends up more like a soup, so that is what I'm showing you how to make below here.  For more information about more authentic versions, please consult this link.  Please don't report me to Julia Child's estate.  I know my recipe is not quite up to par, but it's a darn good version, in my humblest of opinions.  And isn't that basically what always happens? Alternate ingredients come into the picture, substitutions are made, etc.  So here's something similar to a traditional ratatouille, that I make every so often.  I regret that I did not have a nice crusty loaf of bread to go with this, but alas, you can't always have everything.

Acorn Squash Soup

The weather here has been downright stormy, blustery and rainy this week.  It is definitely soup weather, and all I could think of today was a big pot of squash soup.  I had a big acorn squash (a rather large one—easily the size of a small melon) and recently I learned, thanks to The Pioneer Woman's spaghetti squash recipe, that a squash does NOT have to be steamed or even cut up to be perfectly roasted.  In fact, it’s so amazingly caramelized and delicious when leaving the whole squash intact while roasting it.  Another bonus of this method is that you don’t have to risk life and limb hacking into a round, rolling, rock-hard squash with a kitchen knife.
I have seen and tried and perused a variety of squash soups, (this one for instance looks really good, too:  Butternut Squash Soup with Sage) and thought I would experiment with some other spice-combinations.  I kept it very simple with the ingredients so that I just let the savory squash do it’s own talking.
So here goes!

Spring Rolls

(Edited on 02/16/2011 for additional optional ingredients & alternate soaking directions).

Maybe it is the pressure of being challenged to do new things in my cooking, as spurred on by this food blog, but wandering down the Asian food aisle, I think was what inspired me to buy the rice-wrappers for spring rolls.  I love so many Asian dishes, but sometimes it just simply doesn’t occur to me to make them myself.  That was my incentive to change things up, and make something new.
I always enjoy eating the spring rolls at restaurants, and realize there is no hard and fast rule as to what should go in them. 

My process came with a steep and fast learning curve.  For instance, those little wrappers are delicate, so I have learned that the kind of lettuce I had on hand was way too stiff to be rolled up without tearing the wrappers up. A few of them had to be double wrapped to be contained properly.
 
INGREDIENTS:
1 package spring roll rice-wrappers
1/4 package rice vermicelli / rice sticks (i.e., pad thai noodles) OR
1/4 package "glass" noodles (they will have different thicknesses / textures so experiment with which type you prefer)

The first step, depending on the type of noodle, can take up to 30-40 minutes.  So check the soaking directions on your noodle package, and get a large skillet out, and pour about 2 cups of water in it… heat it up until boiling, turn the heat off, and then soak the rice noodles in it until soft—usually about half an hour.  After that, rinse them in a colander in cold water to get excess starch off.  Let them sit in the colander in the sink to drain.
 
Filling suggestions:
In this batch, I used the following--
cilantro
basil
carrots
red cabbage
green onions
rice noodles
lettuce (butter lettuce would probably work better than what I had, because it’s softer and rolls up better)
Other tasty ideas would be fresh bean sprouts, red bell peppers, cucumber or zucchini, endives….

While your noodles are soaking, wash and mince your herbs, wash, peel and finely sliver or julienne all the veggies length-wise for easiest assembly.  Leave each veggie in a separate pile on your cutting board so you can assembly-line the … uh… assembly.  (That’s a whole lot of assembling there.  But I guess that is where the art-form is inherent. My spring rolls—not so much! Yet.)
 
Simultaneously pour some fresh water into your large skillet, and heat it up, and then shut the burner off.  Use this hot water to soak your rice wrappers for 15-20 seconds each.  Lay out a clean and wetted tea towel on your countertop, and when you pull your moistened rice wrapper out of the skillet, carefully spread it out on the tea towel, and dab off the excess moisture if necessary.

Next, place a lettuce leaf in the center of a rice wrapper, topped with about 1/4 cup of rice noodles, and arrange a pinch of all the vegetables in a stack, leaving about 1 1/2 inches on the ends, plus enough on the sides of the wrapper to roll it up like a burrito.  Except it is a spring roll.  Not a burrito.

Finally, fold the short ends of the wrapper into the middle, grab one of the long sides, and gently, gently roll it together.  The rice wrapper should be sticky enough to seal itself.  If you have never had these before, they are served cold, so they make a good side dish for a hot protein, or an appetizer, or – as my husband said – a portable salad!

Serve with your favorite satay peanut sauce, or as I did, Mae Ploy Sweet Chili Sauce, 25-Ounce Bottle (Pack of 2) which is The Goodness in dipping sauce.

Technorati Tags: Asian,thai,cilantro,cabbage,carrots,green onions,spring rolls,rice noodles,side dishes

Cranberry Almond Chicken Salad

What’s always funny to me is when people refer to things as “salad” that to me do not constitute a salad—case in point: the ubiquitous “marshmallow salad.” There are zero vegetables and absolutely no redeeming nutritional qualities to them—they are really a dessert, but I suppose by calling it a salad, people feel vindicated in eating it with their dinner.

A few nights ago I had a “salad with chicken.”  It was salad greens, with tomatoes, cucumbers, grilled chicken pieces, sauteed red bell peppers, feta cheese and balsamic vinaigrette.  So was that a chicken salad? Well, it was, but not the kind of chicken salad that this recipe entails. 

For most Americans, the “chicken salad” is something like 1 cup of mayo, canned chicken, and some chopped celery and salt & pepper.  This is kind of the cholesterol bomb lunch equivalent of the marshmallow salad I mentioned above. 

My sister-in-law-once-removed (i.e., my sister’s husband’s sister) makes a really good chicken salad that’s considerably healthier, and I’ve tweaked her version a little, and come up with my own version.  Most of the ingredients can be substituted, and I’ll make note of other suggestions that are equally good.

INGREDIENTS:
1 - 12 oz can of chicken breast (or approximately 1.5 cups of chopped, grilled chicken, whichever you prefer.)
2 stalks of celery, diced
2 carrots, peeled, and grated with a cheese grater
3/4 cup “craisins”
4 green onion stalks, cut into rings, about half-way up the green stem…(fresh chives will also suffice if approximately the same amount.)
1/2 cup slivered or chopped raw almonds – make sure the chopped or slivered pieces are small enough to blend in well with the salad’s texture, and just add a bit of crunch and extra protein.  Another option is salted, toasted sunflower seeds or pine nuts

Optional: 1 apple (preferably something like Gala, Fuji, Cameo, Jonagold…) diced, and/or 2/3 cup red grapes, sliced

Dressing:
2-3 tbsp mayo
1 tsp Dijon mustard (or try any other deli mustard that you like)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

Mix all together in a bowl until evenly coated, and serve in a tortilla, pita pocket, or with bread or crackers.

Technorati Tags: chicken,carrots,green onions,Dijon Mustard,salads,lunches,cranberries,celery,almonds

Potato and Carrot Frittata

The subheading on this blog says recipes are more of a recommendation, and since I’m not a trained chef, and often learn by experimenting, I have to share this funny little anecdote which eventually led to the development of my potato and carrot frittata. A few years ago, when I was a newlywed, I tried making hash browns, even though I had never made them before. (It is rather funny since it’s one of the most simple things in the universe, and I had at that point already been cooking for over a decade, and making delicious dinners and whatnot. Breakfast foods were just a new endeavor for me, after years of being single, and eating cereal or bagels in the morning. ) Back to the story: What I ended up with was a gray, gluey mess. As I deduced from my grave error, when you grate potatoes, you should always rinse them in a colander to get the extra starch off. At that point, most people would have gone to Denny’s for hash browns, but I wanted to figure out how to fix that. So the next time I rinsed them, drained them, and then I heated up some olive oil, and threw my spuds in the big cast iron skillet. Within a few minutes, they started to brown up nicely. On ONE side. But I still had poor luck in flipping them over.

So the next time, I made one more tweak, which was to pour scrambled egg mixture over the top of the browned potatoes, and cook that through. I tried flipping that as well. Not so easy. Then I finally started researching frittatas online, and discovered that it’s quite okay to ‘finish’ them in an oven to get the top solid.

The moral of the story is that learning is part of cooking, and if hadn’t made those mistakes, I wouldn’t have come up with this, which is easily one of my favorite breakfast foods.

INGREDIENTS (enough for 2 people who eat a large breakfast, or 4 diminutive breakfast eaters.)

6 eggs, and 1/3 cup milk whisked together in a bowl

3-4 medium sized red potatoes, peel still on
1 carrot
5 fresh basil leaves or 1 tsp dried basil
1 tbsp fresh chopped chives
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
2-3 tbsp olive oil

DIRECTIONS:

Peel and grate the carrot, and then grate potatoes either by hand, or with a food processor with a grating attachment if you have one. (This speeds up the process greatly when you’re really starving for breakfast, not to mention saves you from having bits of your knuckles in the frittata!) Rinse grated potatoes thoroughly in a mesh sieve or colander until the water runs clear. Let drain until the potatoes are fairly dry. Meanwhile, preheat a large skillet on medium high (cast-iron would be preferable, but any skillet with an oven-proof handle will do.)

Mix the carrot & potato gratings together before adding them to the hot oil. Spread them out in the skillet so they’re evenly thick.

Lower the heat to medium, and periodically check that the potatoes and carrots are not burning or sticking. Adjust heat as necessary. When things seem to have heated & cooked through fairly well, and the bottom starts to brown (check with a spatula along the edges) pour egg mixture over the top, making sure to coat everything. Lower heat a little more, and let the egg mixture set up. Sometimes this is sufficient and the top of the egg mixture will set up just fine, but if the bottom cooks faster than the top, preheat your oven to 375 and put the whole skillet in the oven for a few minutes until the top is firm.

Sprinkle with minced herbs, salt and pepper, and serve up with a side of breakfast meat like bacon or sausage. Sometimes I also put cheese on top, like cheddar, or feta, which is also quite good.