butternut squash soup

Can you believe that October starts at the end of this week!? For each year that I am not a student, the speed with which the summer passes me by gets more depressing. Thankfully, fall is my favorite season and butternut squash, one of my favorite foods, is everywhere you look.

In honor of autumn's arrival, I made a big pot of butternut squash soup yesterday. I make it so often that I don't really use a recipe anymore. But here is the gist, in case you'd like to make some too, with three delicious variations:

BASIC SOUP RECIPE:

2 tablespoons olive oil

one large butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed

one large onion, chopped

6 cups chicken or vegetable broth/stock

salt and pepper

1. Heat oil in large pot. Add onion and cook until softened. Add butternut squash and stir to coat.

2. Add chicken/vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Cover pot and simmer over low heat for 25 minutes.

3. Remove soup from heat. Puree soup in batches in a blender or with an immersion blender (which I HIGHLY recommend if you don't have one). Season with salt and pepper.

THREE VARIATIONS

One: replace one cup of the broth with one cup of apple cider. While soup is simmering, sauté some sliced mushrooms in a little olive oil. When mushrooms are almost cooked, add some soy sauce to the pan. Stir mushrooms into puréed soup.

Two: while soup is simmering, cook one box of Uncle Ben's "original recipe" long grain and wild rice. When rice is cooked, stir in 1.5 tablespoons of truffle oil. Add cooked rice to puréed soup.

Three: add 1 tablespoon of minced fresh sage leaves to cooking onions when you add the diced squash in Step 1. Add 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese to puréed soup before serving.

Also in celebration of fall, I bought a "peck" of Empire apples (~30 apples) at an orchard in Red Hook this weekend which are currently being converted into applesauce in my kitchen. In cold months when berries are not in season, I like to mix a little applesauce into the greek yogurt I eat for breakfast every day.

jam making 101

My sister and I decided to try our hand at making our own jam last week. And it was quite an undertaking. In addition to procuring canning jars (which you buy at most hardware stores, but also Zabar's) and A LOT of fruit, we also had to get some special canning equipment including curved tongs (to remove the jars from boiling water), a special funnel (to get the jam into the jars), and a magnetic lid wand (so you contaminate the lids by touching them).

We relied heavily on Williams-Sonoma's "The Art of Preserving" for instructions and recipes. It's a great cookbook with recipes for both sweet and savory preserved food and also recipes that include preserved food as an ingredient. Over two days, we made their mixed berry preserves, plum blueberry preserves, and peach preserves. Once she got the basic formula down (fruit + lemon juice + sugar), Kristy also ad libbed a recipe for peach raspberry preserves.

There are many time consuming steps involved in making jam in addition to washing, cutting, sometimes peeling, and cooking fruit. For example, you need to sterilize the jars and lids before using them and then keep them warm in a large pot of simmering water so they won't crack when you fill them with the very hot jam. The canning lids also need to spend some time in a pot of simmering water before you place them on top of the jars, using the aforementioned magnetic wand. Once filled, the jars need to return to a pot of water to boil for ~20 minutes, then removed from the water and left to seal and cool on a rack. Once the jars reach room temperature, they can keep on a shelf for up to a year!

Our first batch of jam was problematic. We did not fill the jars high enough (in canning parlance, we left too much "headspace") and the lids never sealed. This innocent mistake required us to empty all of the jars, resterilize them, refill them, reboil them, etc. It was quite frustrating to say the least. Later batches went more smoothly.

If you have a big kitchen, a lot of free time, and and even larger amount of patience, I definitely recommend home preserving. It is a nice way to prolong your enjoyment of seasonal produce, though not inexpensive. In fact, it is undoubtedly cheaper to buy a jar of Smuckers than it is to make your own jar of strawberry jam. But much less satisfying.

For more information on canning, including a step-by-step illustrated tutorial, check out the website for Ball, the leading make of home food preservation equipment.

middle eastern turkey burgers

We've grilled at least once per day out on the Cape. Hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken breasts, barbeque chicken, steaks, shrimp, lamb, zucchini, asparagus, romaine lettuce (Judd's idea), and even peaches. But for lunch yesterday I make middle eastern flavored turkey burgers from an old issue of Fine Cooking magazine that were particularly delicious (and I consider myself a turkey burger connoisseur) and also super easy. Here's the recipe:

1.5 lb ground turkey (including some dark meat - 93% lean)

1 small shallot, chopped

2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons sweet paprika

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes

salt and pepper to taste

In a large bowl, mix all ingredients. Shape into 4 equal patties and refrigerate, covered, for at least 20 minutes and up to 4 hours. Grill until burgers are cooked through, 4-6 minutes per side. Serve with grilled pita and tzatziki (recipe below).

1 17.6 oz container of greek yogurt

1/2 English cucumber, seeds removed and finely diced (no need to peel)

1 tablespoon chopped dill

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, minced

juice of one lemon

salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Will keep 2-3 days in refrigerator.

Ben & Jerry & Kristy

As I mentioned, I recently bought an ice cream maker (just like this one) and decided to bring it up to the Cape so I could make my own dessert during our two week trip. I also brought my copy of the Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book which I've had since I first took an interest in ice cream making in 1996.

I have been cooking a lot these last two weeks (more to come) and the task of making ice cream has fallen to my sister, who has turned into a frozen dessert virtuoso. She started with coconut ice cream, pictured above with a scoop of blueberry ice cream, which she made two days later. She has also made french vanilla ice cream speckled with bourbon vanilla beans and coffee-oreo ice cream. Tonight, she'll try her hand at peach ice cream.

All of these ice cream recipes start with a sweet cream base -- a combination of eggs, sugar, milk, and heavy cream -- to which the flavoring ingredients are added. In the case of the coconut ice cream, that meant pouring in an entire 15 oz can of Coco Lopez to the sweet cream base before pouring the mixture into the ice cream maker. The resulting ice cream was insanely delicious if also insanely bad for you (do not read the nutritional information on the back of a Coco Lopez can if you want to enjoy anything you make with coconut cream). The coffee flavor in the coffee oreo ice cream came from several tablespoons of instant coffee.

Kristy has been jogging every day to counteract the caloric surplus spurred by her new hobby. I have not. As a result, I am not looking forward to putting my any of my work clothes back on come Monday morning.

An unwelcome visitor

In case you hadn't heard, Hurricane Earl is headed our way. The heavy rain and 60 mph winds are supposed to arrive around 6pm and the worst of the storm will pass south east of Nantucket around 2am. No indication so far that it's going to get nasty tonight - the sun is shining and it's quite warm. But when we drove in to town this morning, it was clear that we are not the only ones watching the forecast.

I think losing power is pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point, but we've got plenty of flashlights and candles. I am making turkey sausage lasagna for dinner - seems like the right kind of comfort food for a hurricane. And then the sunny skies are supposed to return tomorrow morning and we can get on with our Labor Day weekend.