Making a great enchilada sauce can be very time consuming. Maybe one day I’ll attempt to perfect a recipe. In the meantime, I use store bought salsa for a tasty substitute. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: January 2013
Tip: how to unstick sticky honey
From time to time, I bake or cook with honey. It’s a great substitute for sugar, but I often wonder how much of the honey I’ve left behind in the measuring spoon/cup since it naturally sticks to surfaces.
Here’s a tip: spray or wipe down your spoon/cup with any kind of oil or butter, and then measure out the honey. The honey will slide right out of your spoon/cup and into your bowl. Using some oil or butter makes cleaning up the honey much easier and you won’t wonder how much extra honey you need to add to make up for the amount left behind!
Butternut Squash Tart
This past summer I planted butternut squash in my garden for the first time. Oh my stars, they were the most delicious squashes I have ever tasted. The depth and sweetness in flavor were surprising to me. My palate could also be colored by the fact that it came from my garden, but that is beside the point.
I tried out this recipe from Epicurious: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Butternut-Squash-Tart-with-Fried-Sage-51117300
I served it as a Thanksgiving pre-game warm-up and it got devoured (mostly by me). I changed it up a little though and made a pastry dough instead of using puff pastry. Although puff pastry is very easy to work with, it can buckle under the weight of food, especially while it sits on a table waiting to be eaten. And, next time I will add whole wheat flour and more chilis (I like some heat!).
This recipe is a definite fixture in my future party planning.
Beer for Breakfast
8 countries in 3 three weeks: Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Spain. We did it. My biggest souvenir was the 5 lb beer belly I brought back with me. It’s hard not to drink beer in eastern Europe. Not only is it cheaper than water (bottled or tap), it tastes so much better than it does in the States.
We were excited to find a bar in Prague that had separate taps at each table. This particular bar was linked up with other bars, also with taps at each table, so that you could see how you much you drank compared to others. A dangerous/brilliant idea, no doubt.
Another dangerous/brilliant idea is fried cheese. Some places served it with a blueberry or pomegranate relish, thus making it even more awesome.
We made our way from the Czech Republic into Hungary. Again, lots of beer. I’m not going to lie, I have no idea exactly what this is a picture of. I just call it a pile of yum. I had some heartburn after inhaling it, but I seemingly survived.
Burek is my newest obsession. This is a phyllo dough-like shell stuffed with with a variety of fillings (cheese, meat, potato, or spinach). We ate this particular spinach burek in Sarajevo for breakfast. It is often topped with yogurt. Of course, we tried every kind so to be most accurate, I should say that I brought back a beer/burek belly.
No trip to Spain is complete without eating pimientos del padron or jamon iberico.
I hope we will be back to this part of the world again soon. Besides the food, the rich and interesting histories of these places will pull me back. It is scary to think that the strife in the former Yugoslavia was so recent and you can still see the remnants of war. Nonetheless, it did not detract from the beauty of each of these countries.
Pumpkin Soup
Pumpkins are not just for carving and leaving them to die on one’s doorstep. I had bought a few sugar pie pumpkins a few months back for stuffing with chunky croutons and cheese. I had one that lingered in my kitchen though, and on this grey day (at least in my neck of the woods) soup sounded just perfect.
You’ll need:
- 2-3 lb sugar pie pumpkin, cut into large cubes
- 2 cups of sweet potatoes, cubed
- 1 large russet potato
- 5 cups of low-sodium stock, chicken or vegetable
- 1 cup of yellow onion, chopped
- 2 tsp garlic
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
- salt and pepper
- olive oil
To make:
Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees.
First roast the pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and potato. Make sure to cut up everything into similarly sized pieces. I find it easier to leave the pumpkin’s skin on and cut it off later, but peel the other tubers. Toss the cubes with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Lightly sprinkle salt and pepper. You can even omit the salt entirely if you wish. The broth will add enough saltiness to the soup.
Roast for 45 minutes and toss the cubes halfway through the process to bake evenly. Pull out and set aside.
Meanwhile, chop the onions, garlic, and ginger. After the cubes have sufficiently cooled, peel off the pumpkin skin.
On medium heat, saute the onions, garlic, and ginger with olive oil for 3 minutes. Add in all of your cubes, 4 cups of stock, cayenne, and cumin. Let simmer for 15 minutes. (I also had thrown in some leftover sweet potatoes that I had roasted earlier with thyme and garlic, but I think the soup would taste just as good without the thyme.)
Turn down the heat to low or off. You can use an immersion blender or transfer everything to a blender or food processor. Blend it all together. Add the additional cup of stock (or more) if necessary, depending on how soupy you like it. Season with additional salt and pepper if desired.
You can certainly substitute a cup of cream for the stock. I left it out, however, in a baby-step attempt to detox from the holidays.
If you are planning to plant a summer/fall garden, don’t forget to keep some of the pumpkin seeds for use later.
Eat - Drink - Roam 