Butternutz

My mom delivers seasonal fruits and vegetables to me every time I see her at my grandmother's weekly Sunday night dinner, like a CSA that knows your proclivities. She gave me a butternut squash, and after I roasted half of it with olive oil (delicious!!), I decided to try a soup. Butternut squash has the most wonderful natural flavor. Really does taste like butter.

This is the second veggie soup I've made (the first was potato leek; the post is forthcoming), and I am a total convert. Soups are soup-er simple (Margot isn't the only one who can pun!!) to make when you have a food processor, which I bought only about a year ago. So key.

This was, of course, a Minimalist recipe from his list of Thanksgiving dishes:

13. Sauté sliced shallots in olive oil, then add chunks of butternut squash, some rosemary and chicken stock or water to cover. As the soup simmers, bake strips of prosciutto until crisp. Purée the soup, swirl in some cream if you like and serve topped with crumbled prosciutto.

I used half of a butternut squash, about 1.5 cups of chicken stock, rosemary from the front of my parent's house, and one strip of BACON. so delicious!

Thanksgiving Eats: Coconut-Sweet Potato Pie

It's no secret by now that we love Mark Bittman of the NY Times. I totally jumped on his twist on the traditional sweet potato pie and was not disappointed. I'm not a fan of sweet potatoes (sweet potato fries: I am not impressed with you), but add sugar and I'll eat almost anything. The recipe is here, but I've also pasted it below.

Recipe

2 medium sweet potatoes (peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks, boiled for 12–15 minutes and mashed)

1 1/3 c. graham cracker crumbs (1 package, which has 9 sheets)

1/4 c. shredded unsweetened coconut

1/2 c. plus 2 tbs. sugar

1 1/4 tsp. ground ginger

1 1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1 stick of butter (8 tbs.), melted

3 eggs

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

pinch ground cloves

large pinch of salt

1 c. coconut milk

Pre-heat oven to 350 F. While the potatoes cook, crush the graham crackers and mix with 2 tbs. sugar, 1/4 tsp. ginger and 1/4 tsp. cinnamon. Add melted butter and toss until just combined. Press into 9-inch pie plate and bake for about 7 minutes. Let cool.

Mix eggs, rest of sugar, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, salt. Add coconut milk. Mix until just combined. Add mashed sweet potatoes, mix until just combined. Pour into cooled pie crust. Put pie plate onto a baking sheet and bake about 40–45 minutes, until mixture is set but still moist. Cool and serve.

I love the coconut, sugar and spices in the graham cracker crust. The coconut milk in the filling was a little too much coconut for my taste. But I'm still glad I tried this recipe out this year. Maybe Okinawan sweet potatoes or Hawaiian purple potatoes with the coconut milk would be an awesome combination for next time.

Thanksgiving Eats: Bacon-Balsamic-Roasted Garlic Deviled Eggs

I've never had to be at the helm of any Thanksgiving celebration before (thank goodness? Or should I be yearning to stay up the night before, freaking out?). So contributing a dish or two is a way to enjoy seasonal cooking without all the stress. This year, I had two T-Day celebrations to attend (score!) and I ended up making two dishes. The first one was a classic that gets devoured no matter how simple or fancy you make it: deviled eggs. While the bacon-in-everything trend has been beaten to death, that does not change the fact that bacon will always be a delightful salty addition to almost anything. So I took bits and pieces from this recipe and this recipe to create the egg-sellent appetizer.

Recipe

18 large hardboiled eggs

1 head of roasted garlic (in the future I'd either increase this to 3 heads or leave out the garlic and add more mayo)

6 strips of bacon, cooked to crispy and finely chopped

3/4 c. mayonnaise

1.5 tbs grated red onion

1.5 tsp granulated sugar

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

3/4 tsp. balsamic vinegar

chopped chives (optional garnish)

paprika (optional garnish)

Everyone has their own method of boiling perfect eggs. Mine is to heat up the eggs and cold water together in the pot from the get go. Once the water starts to boil, I lower the heat a little so the eggs don't crack. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes, then immediately rinse with cold water and dunk the eggs in an ice water bath so the membrane shrinks back from the white, making peeling a piece of cake.

Slice the eggs in half and dump the yolks in a mixing bowl. Mix all ingredients together, then spoon or pipe the yolk mixture into each egg white half. I don't have a piping bag, so usually I snip the tip off of a Ziploc bag and use that to pipe the yolk mixture in. Works pretty well, if I might say so myself. I chopped chives to use as garnish (the store was out of a lot of other herbs, ha) and added a sprinkle of paprika for color. EGG-STREME!