but besides the pumpkin pie...

last night we had our friends ali and brandon over for dinner. for the occasion i made peasant bread, the same butternut/acorn squash soup as before, rosemary/mushroom risotto and pumpkin pie.

the dinner was great but the pie was less so. without the cinnamon whipped cream i made it would have been a disaster. maybe the pumpkin wasn't ripe enough. either way i'm not giving that recipe until i figure out why it did not taste good. my polite guests finished their slices regardless of the taste. i think they just liked the whipped cream.

rosemary and mushroom risotto.

this is a fancy dish that is not too hard to make, even though everyone thinks it is. so you will look like a star in the kitchen with minimal effort.

1 cup arborio rice
1 cup milk
1 tbs chopped parsley
1 medium yellow onion, minced (in culinary school the trick was the make the onion the same size as the rice so that you couldn't tell which was which until you ate it.)
chicken stock
mushrooms, chopped, any kind you like
two good sprinkles of dry rosemary
salt and pepper
1 tbs olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 cup parmesan cheese

in a sauce pan pour about 3-4 cups of chicken stock - save the container because you may have leftovers. heat it on low. have a small ladle near by for scooping. next to the sauce pan, in a skillet heat up olive oil. add garlic and onions. sautee until the garlic starts to brown a little and the onions are translucent. add parsley, rosemary and mushrooms. lower the heat to a simmer and cook until mushrooms are soft. season with salt and pepper. add milk and stir in rice. when milk is absorbed add one ladle of chicken stock. stir the rice until the stock is absorbed - this is called au sec or until it's dry. keep doing this until the rice is cooked. keep tasting it to make sure. while i a big supporter of al dente pasta i am not a fan of al dente rice. if it's not done add more stock. be patient. when you feel that rice is done, stir in the cheese. cook for a few more seconds and serve right away.

it can be kept warm for a little while but it starts to get gluey. our guests were late and the rice sat for a while so it wasn't the best. but straight out of the pan all gooey and creamy. i almost died it was so good.


peasant bread.
another fancy looking thing that's really simple to make.

i saw mark bittman do his thing for ny times and he visited a bakery that makes this bread. it's so easy a 6 year old can do it - they say this several times.

3 cups warm water (100 degrees)
1 1/2 tbs dry active yeast
1/2 tbs salt
6 1/2 cups flour (all purpose)

put all dry ingredients in large bowl. mix together loosely. add water. stir. when it gets dough-ish. cover with a towel and let it rest for about 2-3 hours.
when you come back it will be huge! and dough may or may not be on the towel. there was dough on my towel.
get a floured surface ready. flour your hands well. reach in a grab a big grapefruit sized ball of this dough (save the rest) it's very wet and sticky so just get ready. plop this glob on the floured surface.  sprinkle with flour and lightly stretch it into a ball, folding the sides under to create a smooth top. then put this ball into a pie plate or cake pan, cover and let it rest for 2 hours. preheat your oven at 500 degrees. place a bowl of ice cubes at the bottom of the oven. bake the bread for 10 minutes at 500. lower the temp to 450 for another 10 minutes. then take the bread out of the pan and put it directly on the rack. lower the temp again to 350 and bake for another 10 minutes. check to make sure it's the color you want and put it on a cooling rack. then eat it.

the dough recipe makes a ton of dough and you can save it in the 'fridge for up to 2 weeks!

there are other ways to make this bread like with a dutch oven like in the video. but i don't have one so i did it this way. it still turns out delish though. plus the great thing about bread is that it tastes like bread regardless of what it looks like.

as lisa would say, stay classy, chicago.

love,
keighty

chili and co'n bread - is that inappropriate?!

but seriously.

chili and corn bread. or as my great grandpa used to call it, corn pone. why? i don't know. italians don't speak english well.

chili is the best.

there are many ways to eat chili but rarely is this delicacy found alone. not in my house anyway.

my favorite partner is fritos.

others are mashed potatoes and corn bread.

when it was my birthday and my mom would make me whatever dinner i wanted i asked for chili and fritos. so to honor my mom, since i just trashed her about steaming vegetables, i will write about chili. although her chili came from a can i still love the idea of it.

chili is in the same category as stews and soups. a group which rarely has down to the letter directions. with these things you taste as you go and add things as they come up.

that said....

tomato sauce - i used carmelita brand from august. you can also cook down your own tomatoes but i didn't have a lot of time.

1 onion - we had half a red onion and half a yellow onion so i used both. two halves equal one whole!

cumin

cayenne pepper

2 pinches of brown sugar

1/2 tomato - unless you like the chunks they use the whole thing

1/2 red pepper

1/2 serano chili pepper

2 splashes of darker beer (optional, i was just drinking one at the time)

you can easily add meat to this too, just brown it first and add it in. i didn't use meat because august didn't have any today.

chop up your veg and throw everything into the pot. cook on high until it starts to boil then simmer it for say, 35 minutes or so and let is simmer while everyone takes their time coming to the dinner table. shred some cheese on top and serve!

serve with corn bread. use the recipe on the back of the corn meal box. or if in a pinch use the blue jiffy box mix. the only mix i ever use. hot damn it's good. and oh so cheap.

like i said chili can be whatever you want, so do you thing with it.

enjoy and happy fall everyone.

love,

keighty

oh the wonders of cauliflower

upon returning home from my honeymoon i found a gigantic cauliflower in my 'fridge and decided it must be eaten. 'but i hate cauliflower', i tell myself. no. i hate steamed cauliflower. for some reason my mom felt that steaming vegetables was the best way to make them. in her defense i think everyone in the 80s and 90s did. but they are wrong. to quote amy poelher in baby mama, 'oh you are dead wrong'.

sauteeing, blanching or baking are the best way to eat vegetables. besides raw of course. steaming tastes bad, plus they're all sogged out and unless you drink that green liquid left in the pot, all the nutrients are gone. please don't drink that, that would be sick.

so on to this recipe.

accompanying sauteed sweet potatoes and herb and cheese biscuits i made crunchy cauliflower.

a lot of cauliflower
1 slice of bread - for crumbs!
cheese
2 tbs butter
salt and pepper

chop cauliflower into bite-sized chunks. take of the trunks of the trees! they taste bad. unless you like..ugh. throw your white trees into a baking dish. cover with grated cheese, bread crumbs and dot the top with butter bits. like if you were making a cobbler. season it up. bake at 400 until it's done. which is really quickly.

this is such an easy dish but i really liked it and so did raul. i don't know if it was the fresh cauliflower or just the fact that i wasn't eating a soggy piece of crap, but this vegetable is back in the game. give it a try. you'll like it.


but really, all that was just a way of getting to the main story. this is for jessica longeuay. they girl with too many vowels in her last name. but that's going to change. in honour of her engagement to the adorable mike takacs (forgive me if that's spelled wrong, according to spell check it is. he doesn't have a facebook how can i know the spelling?!) i am posting her idea about cauliflower mashed potatoes.

while i have not tried this recipe myself, i think i actually will. i'll let you know how it goes.

http://www.mealsmatter.org/recipes-meals/recipe/9906

while this one says to use butter and heavy cream, something which i think jess' co-workers would have not used, this is all i could find. if you're dieting, use 'i can't believe it's not butter'. the thing i don't get is, if you want something to taste like mashed potatoes why would you eat cauliflower? are potatoes bad for you? i'm going to research this weird problem.

anyway. jessica. we love you and mike and wish you the best!

someone tell that kid that's staring at my vespa to get a grip.

love,
keighty

summer's over, hooray for fall!

when i got to the market on sunday morning i walked past iron creek as i always do but something was different. the tables were not lined with tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce but instead something glorious was there: SQUASH! and SWEET POTATOES! and decorative baby pumpkins! that's right, friends. fall is here.

i am so excited. i cannot wait to eat stew and soup and squash and delish fall foods.

i got a big butternut squash, an acorn squash and two sweet potatoes. (also jane at seedling gave me a bottle of apple cider and that's fall too!) i also got sunflowers! my house is so fall.

after work raul and i had to run errands including replacing tricia's book that i borrowed and destroyed and getting pastry bags - see cream puff post. (i also ended up getting a yellow 3-cup food processor - cuisinart! on sale!

it started to rain and it got all scarf-ish outside so i knew it was time for butternut squash soup.

1 onion, chopped, pretty finely
2 tbs butter
1 lrg. butternut squash, peeled, seeded and chopped into 1 in chunks
6 cups of chicken stock
salt, pepper and nutmeg

in a large pot melt butter and add onions. sautee until translucent. add stock and butternut squash chunks. boil until chunks are tender. with a slotted spoon remove the chunks and put in a blender (or food processor if you have one that's bigger than 3 cups...) puree the chunks and put them back in the pot. whisk the squash back into the stock and onion mix until it's consistent. season with salt and pepper and nutmeg. ** careful with nutmeg! only use a tiny bit. i used two quick shakes. and always taste it before you add more. nutmeg is the silent killer of food - see beet cake post** put back on low heat until you're ready to serve.

my mouth is watering right now. i'm going to get a barrel for my kitchen where i can store all my squash and potatoes for the winter so i won't have to eat anything else until spring! yes. i am excited.

stay dry, chicago.

love,
keighty

cream puff update

upon further research about cream puffs i realized that you don't need a pastry bag to make them creamy! in fact most cream puffs are big puffs, half puffs filled with cream and topped with a lid. the little ones with the cream inside is a minority puff.

so to alter the recipe a little.

let them cool, but you before you devour them. cut each puff in half. spoon in a bit of the filling and put the lid back on. you can also get rid of the lid, but really, why? serve it with the lid on the side like a clam chowder bread bowl.

so while chris, tricia, and raul and i were held back by my ignorance of cream puffs you and your party will not.

vacation over.

ok so. i got married, my foot healed enough for me to walk, i went to catalina for two days, i found out i got replaced at the farmers market - a lot has happened. but most important is what kind of food did i eat while it was all happening.

while in california i can not remember eating dinner, except one time we ate hot dogs outside. i did eat some dinner at my wedding but i also broke a champagne flute while making fun of thomas so that pretty much made me not hungry.

but i had some delish seafood while in catalina fresh out of the sea. that was refreshing.

we technically got home on wednesday but we were available on friday. so chris and tricia had us over for dinner. chris made mussels and rosemary beans and bread. i made cream puff sans cream and a salad - first vegetables in weeks.

the cream puffs are so easy to make. the only reason i didn't put cream in them is because i couldn't find my pastry bag and we had nothing to make a make-shift one with. so i dusted them with powdered sugar and moved on.

cream puff sans o avec creme.

1 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs

preheat oven to 450
in a sauce pan boil water, butter and salt. when it gets nice and boily, remove from heat and add flour all at once. stir it vigorously until it forms a ball. as soon as it does add one egg at a time. incorporate the egg completely before adding the next. on a cookie sheet (i also used my silpat mat to keep them from sticking but you could use parchment, or just grease the pan really well. this egg fest of a cream puff will want to stick to the pan for sure) spoon out bits of cream puff batter. so, these things get pretty big - i put 12 on the pan and that was all the batter and they were really filling. you can make them smaller for sure too, just do it in a few batches.
put puffs in the oven for 10 minutes at 450. after 10 minutes drop the heat to 350 and bake for another 25 minutes. you're freaking out right now and saying food can't tell time, it's done when it's done -- but remember, eggs are the smartest and most evolved food, they can tell time and since this dish is mostly eggs, cream puffs can also tell time.
let cool and devour.

now do your thing as far as filling goes. i used powdered sugar on top but you could whip up some whipped cream you could make a cream cheese filling... sky's the limit.


glad to be back.

love,
keighty