Saturday, January 7, 2012

Butternut Squash & Sweet Potato Soup

Blame Charles Barkley. I'm back on Weight Watchers.  They have revamped their program.  I've decided to give this new, revamped program a try instead of going back to the program two changes ago.  Does that make sense?

In any event, I remembered some of my favorite WW recipes and since I'm leaving Illinois in the morning, I decided to use up some of the stuff in the house.  Try it.  Quick, light and refreshing.


1 butternut squash
1/2 sweet potato
1/2 cup carrots, peeled (optional)
1 granny smith apple, peeled, cored and quartered (optional)
32 oz. Organic vegetable broth
salt and pepper to taste

If you have an immersion blender, this recipe is so simple you'll feel guilty.  Peel and quarter the squash, potato, carrot, and apple if you used them.  Boil in the vegetable broth until soft about 20 minutes.  Use your immersion blender to puree the vegetables and salt and pepper to taste.  If you don't have an immersion blender, blend it in a regular blender.

Makes about 6 servings.
Weight Watchers PointsPlus: 1 per serving (2 if you include the apple)

Follow Me on Pinterest

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Southern-Fried Skillet Cornbread

Cornbread.  It's so simple really.  Just cornmeal, flour, eggs, fat and a splash of buttermilk.  But the secret to great cornbread is lard.  There.  I said it.  Lard.  Just like the stuff on my behind after an indulgent December.  And when it comes to cornbread and lard, pork fat rules.  Normally, I'm no fan of pork.  I will eat the occasional piece of sausage, but I'm no bacon lover and I could live without sliced ham for the rest of my life and never bat an eye.  But when it comes to certain facets of southern cooking, there is absolutely no substitute for pork fat.  So if you are like me (which I genuinely hope you aren't!), you can cook the bacon and feed it to the dog.  The fat is what you are after anyway.

The second key to great cornbread is buttermilk.  Now buttermilk is a funny thing. It makes your baking legendary, but no one really wants to drink that stuff.  And to make cornbread, you don't need much.  Although commercially available buttermilk tastes better in my book, you can make your own by adding a tablespoon of white vinegar per cup of whole milk.  You must use whole milk.  Low or no fat milk will not react properly with the vinegar.  The beauty of the at-home method is you have no leftover buttermilk on your hands.

Now, for the cornmeal.  I use Martha White cornbread mix.  You can use any quality commercial mix you like, or you can mix your own cornmeal-flour mix.  I've done that before, too.  But the commercial mixes already have the flour and cornmeal mixed together in their proper proportions.  Cornmeal is cornmeal.  Flour is flour.  It's not the cornmeal, it's what you do with it.

Now to make skillet cornbread like a true southerner, you start by preheating your oven. I believe 400 degrees is a reasonable cornbread temperature.  Take about 5 slices of bacon and fry them over medium low heat in a 8"-10" cast iron skillet.  You want all the fat to render out of the bacon, but you don't want the heat so high that you lose volume through evaporation.  Now, if you don't have a reserve of bacon grease in a canister on your stove top, first of all, what the hell is wrong with you?  Don't you know you should never throw away flavor?  Bacon grease should always be put in a grease can and kept in your fridge or on the stove top.  But let's just say you are a northerner or westerner and you don't have a grease canister.  You have a couple of options.  The first is to simply use vegetable oil in the mix.  It won't be quite as good (OK, it won't be nearly as good) but it will be quicker.  The other is to cook bacon until you have enough fat available for the mix.  Of course, you'll have to wait for that fat to cool somewhat before you can add it to the mix, but that's okay because you still need about 5 slices to render fat for the pan.  In any event, mix the wet and dry cornbread ingredients and set aside until those 5 slices of bacon have rendered their liquid goodness.

When the bacon is crisp, remove it from the pan and turn the burner up to medium high.  You want the oil very hot, but not smoking...say a minute to a minute and a half.  Remove the pan from the heat and immediately dump the prepared cornbread mixture into the pan.  It should sizzle and pop.  Spread it out roughly with a spatula and place in the preheated oven.  Cook until peaks on the bread top just start to turn golden brown.  Remove from oven, slice and eat with butter.  Lots and lots of butter.

Now, there are nearly endless varieties of cornbread that are great.  You can add jalapenos.  Or New Mexico chilis.  Or cheese.  All are very good.  But the thing about skillet cornbread is the fat-rendered crust you get on the bottom.  It will be dark.  Almost black.  And you will savor every bite.

Because of the fat, skillet cornbread should be kept in the fridge so it doesn't go rancid.

I hope you enjoy your pork-powered goodness.

Follow Me on Pinterest

Sunday, January 1, 2012

New Year's Resolutions

My new year’s resolutions are a little different this year.  Before, I was focused on graduation or losing weight, but I feel like I’ve got a handle on those things.  This year, it’s all about making my life balanced in ways that graduate school seemed to strip me of, but that I miss terribly. So without further explanation, here we go.

1.  Hike with dogs.
2.  Sleep in tents.  In all four seasons.
3.  Downhill ski.
4.  Exercise until it becomes a habit.
5.  Track food until it becomes a habit.
6.  Identify and focus on what’s important to me.  I suppose this demands I get serious about identifying my goals, figuring out what it will take to achieve them, planning and scheduling steps to get from point A to B, and not just depending on the universe to bring success to my doorstep.  In other words, live purposefully!
7.  Reconnect with friends.
8.  Date.  If anyone would like to volunteer to date me, I’m wide open here.
9.  Travel.  My ultimate travel goal this year would be a trip to South America in December to climb a mountain.  We’ll see.  I imagine money will be more of the issue rather than lack of interest or ability to make time.  See #6.
10. Read for pleasure.  At this point, I’d settle on a comic book.

Now, because this is supposed to be a food blog, I thought I'd give at least 10 cooking goals I have for the year.

1.  Popovers
3.  Home-brewed beer.
4.  Southeast asian foods.
5.  Home.  Made.  Pizza
6.  Curry!
7.  Gourmet/specialty desserts.  I have found a couple of really interesting sweets shops and bakeries in my travels and I'd like to try making some interesting things I have found in them. Think fig and walnut "fruit cake" or curry cashew brittle.
8.  vanilla extract and infused oils.  I want to make my own from ingredients out of my own garden.  With any hope, I WILL have a garden this year.
9.  Speaking of which, a kitchen garden that includes some exotic spice plants.  Fresh curry leaves, anyone?
10.  Overcome the obstacle that my sister's kitchen presents and actually cook.

Follow Me on Pinterest