Bumper Crop of Butternut Squash

Back on June 12th we picked our first batch of butternut squash.  The variety name is Waltham, I'm pretty sure.  These hold up pretty well if you don't refrigerate them.  Their flesh is a dark orange and the taste is rich and sweet, even if you cut them in half and just oven roast them.  A perfect side dish for any protein on your plate.

My favorite way to eat them is butternut squash soup.  It's so rich and creamy.  Down here in Louisiana, it's so hot.  It's hard for me to enjoy soup until the temperature drops or else you're eating it and dabbing your forehead to wipe the sweat off.  So our excitement intensified when a "cool front" rolled through.  I'm being generous with the term cool front.  By that, I mean that it was the first week in which the high temperatures didn't go over the 90 degree mark.  It's a judgment call, but we consulted with one another and determined that it could be decreed "gumbo weather."  That means that in our home, and by our rules, it is safe and legal to eat gumbo and/or soup.  

Using some fresh cream from LuLu, who generously donated some heavy cream to the butternut squash soup project, Tricia whipped up a pot full of soup.

After a long hot summer, the shallots have revived themselves.  I went out and cut some fresh shallots to put atop the butternut squash soup.  We also toasted some sourdough bread and drizzled some olive oil on top of the toast.  Even though it's not exactly cool enough outside, it was cool enough to enjoy our first bowl of butternut squash soup in many moons.

Here's the "money" shot.  Rich, creamy, smooth and flavorful!

Butternut squash soup.  There's plenty more of those to be made in the next several months!

A "Soup-er" Day

It was very hot and humid this past week.  I am hot natured and sweat buckets-ful around this time of year.  I really don't enjoy soup in hot weather as I'm looking for something to cool me off after being outdoors.  However, it was raining, and my wife said, "It looks like soup weather."  I guess you could look outside and trick yourself into believing that it was a cold, rainy day, if you had an active imagination.

Tricia had already pulled out one of the last Butternut Squashes that we harvested and had positioned a sharp knife over it.  I really wanted to save it for later, when it got cold.  Butternut squash store nicely.  But it was not to be.  She plunged the knife deep into the flesh of the butternut, killing the squash along with my hopes of butternut squash soup on the first cold front of the season.

The squash was beautiful, orange, and meaty.  The color of the squash screams "fall" or "autumn!"  The temperature outside is still screaming, "SUMMER!"

Tricia always has fresh chicken broth stored in the fridge, so she was good to go as far as ingredients.  She started throwing things together in the kitchen.  She uses Emeril's recipe for Butternut squash soup.  It goes like this:

1 Butternut squash (approx. 2 lbs.)
2 T butter

1 Cup onion

1 1/2 tsp garlic

1 1/2 cup carrots, thinly sliced

1/2 tsp cumin, ground

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 T jalapeno, finely minced

2 Cups chicken stock

1/4 cup cream

Cut the squash in half and scoop out seeds.  Peel and cut in 1" pieces.  Heat butter.  Add onions and garlic.  Cook about 5 minutes.  Add carrot, cumin, salt & pepper.  Cook 1 minute.  Add squash, jalapeno and stock.  Simmer for 15-20 minutes.  Puree.  Add Cream.

And here is the final product:

Hot soup on a hot day.  I added more jalapenos and some green onion tops for additional flavor.  This is some delicious soup.  I'm talking restaurant quality style.  So rich and smooth and creamy and tasty!

I asked Tricia for one favor.  I asked her to save some seeds from the pretty butternut.  She did just that.  She scooped out the seeds and put them in a bowl.

Then she washed off the stringy material and separated it from the seeds.  The seeds were placed on a paper napkin on the window sill to dry.  Once dry, I'll package them and label and date the package.

These were organic, open pollinated butternut squash so I should end up with good stock when these germinate.  I'll try to get some of these in the ground shortly so that we can enjoy many more soups, in cold weather this time.

Popeye Would be Proud!

We plant two different types of spinach in the garden - Galilee Spinach (from Israel!) and Monstrueux De Viroflay Spinach (from France).  The Galilee Spinach has already bolted and I'm waiting for the seeds to dry so that I can plant again this fall.  The French Spinach is still producing and producing well, but with several days approaching 80 degrees, it won't be long until it bolts as well.

With that in mind, I picked a big colander full of the leaves and packed them down.  I wanted to get all the leaves I could before bolting.  I'll try to get another picking off of it, but we'll see how that goes.  The leaves are dark green and healthy.  There is no pest damage to speak of on the leaves.

Now, we've been eating fresh spinach salads for a while now, and we enjoy it that way.  We also make a Creamed Spinach side dish that is a copycat of Ruth's Chris Steak House recipe.  We'll make that next.  Tricia wanted to try a spinach quiche with a twist.  The crust is made of sweet potato.  Turns out we still have some sweet potatoes that we harvested over the fall.  They've stored well.  Tricia sliced and baked the sweet potato, lined the pie dish, poured the spinach and egg and topped with cheese and baked.  Voila!

Looks rich and delicious!

And as it turned out, it was.  Now, I'll admit, I would rather a regular crust, but I love sweet potatoes, too.  I would think vegetarians would like this.  I'm definitely NOT a vegetarian, but it was good.

The final thing we did with our 'spinach-fest' was a good ol' Cream of Spinach soup.  Tricia had just made some fresh chicken broth from one of our chickens and that was just what we needed for this dish.  Creamy, spinach-y, and it was kinda cool last night so the soup hit the spot.

Popeye the sailor man would be digging our meals this week!

A Smorgasbord of Beans and Peas

Tricia and I were having an afternoon cup of coffee on Saturday, sitting out on the swing in the backyard.  It was pretty hot and we were discussing how the month of June is a very busy one in the garden.  July - not so much.  By the time July rolls around, the tomatoes are done, the cucumbers have all but quit producing and the yellow squash and zucchini squash are waving white flags at the heat.

In July the crops still producing include okra.  My goodness, okra is such a hardy crop.  The hotter it gets, okra doubles down and grows taller, adds more blooms and produces pods in open defiance of the sun.  Peppers are also really hopping.  Jalapeno, sweet bell, and banana peppers load up.  Last but not least are the numerous varieties of southern peas, lima beans and and pole beans.  It is at this time that those peas and beans spread like wildfire across the garden.

While they were planted in an orderly fashion in neat rows with the intention of keeping things separated, something happened along the way.  It is as if they had a mind of their own and decided that there are no barriers and they resolved to intertwine themselves into a jungle-like mass of vegetation.  That's okay, I thought.  I'll just harvest them all, even though they are mixed up, and enjoy the different colors and shapes and sizes of peas and beans.  I brought them in and shelled them.

A non-exhaustive list of peas and beans include: purple hull peas, Ozark razorback peas, blackeyed peas, dixie speckled butterbeans, baby limas, whippoorwill peas, Reverend Taylor beans, Cades Cove peas...  I think I'm forgetting a few, but who's counting.

I remember growing up, from time to time, my mom would buy a package of dried beans and peas that represented a mixture of different types.  It was called 13 Bean Soup.  We always enjoyed it.  We like to re-create that dish when we have a plethora of peas like we currently do.  We soak the beans overnight and then add tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers.  For a smoky flavor, Tricia adds cut up smoked sausage to the pot. 

This dish is a hearty one that sure can warm you up on a cold winter's day.  However, I'm not going to push this away on a hot summer's day.

The peas and beans are continuing to produce in the heat and we continue to harvest and shell them.  We have another bowl of our version of 13 bean soup ready to be worked into the rotation for supper one night this week.  We'll need to make some cornbread, too.  Nothing like crumbling some cornbread on top to take this dish to the next level.

Making Cream of Spinach Soup

I have a row of fresh spinach growing in the garden.  It is beautiful and so far, with a cool snap, the bug pressure has been minimal.  Cool temps and a drizzle gave us a hankering to make a soup - Fresh Cream of Spinach soup, to be specific.  We used a recipe from a cook book we have by Jude Theriot called La Cuisine Cajun.  Let's take a walk out to the garden...

The recipe calls for a pound of fresh spinach.  I'm hoping I can snip off enough spinach leaves to make a pound, but I won't know unless I weigh them, right?  I'll bring the kitchen scale out to the garden.  I carefully snipped the biggest spinach leaves off, being careful not to damage the plant as the spinach will re-grow leaves and continue producing for us through the winter.  There we go - I harvested a pound of spinach:

Even though a rain had washed them, I brought them inside and filled the sink with water and let them soak in the sink.  For some reason, spinach has a propensity to hold little dirt particles.  I don't like eating grit, so I want to be sure I cleaned them up good.  I soaked and drained and then repeated, pulling out little pieces of grass.  Finally the job was done.

Here are the other ingredients:
3 cups chicken stock (we had just made fresh chicken stock from some chicken backbones and necks)
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup of chopped onion
1 1/2 tbsp minced celery
2 tbsp of AP flour
3 large egg yolks, slightly beaten (the hens made this contribution to our soup)
3/4 cup of heavy cream (the cows got to make a contribution, too!)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
1/4 tsp of freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp white pepper

In a black skillet we melted butter and sauteed the onion and celery.  After five minutes, we added the flour and cooked for 2 more minutes.

At the same time this was going on, on a separate burner, we put the spinach in a pot and covered with water.  We brought the water to a boil.  Once boiling, we reduced heat to low and simmered for 15 minutes.  Then we added the chicken stock and simmered for 5 minutes.  Once 5 minutes passed, we removed from heat and allowed to cool.

We added the light roux (onions, celery and AP flour/butter) to the soup base and stirred it in.

We then used an immersion blender to blend all well at high speed.  This chops everything up real fine and you can start to see the soup come together.

We then put the soup back on the burner and bring to a boil.  It will thicken.  We beat the egg yolks and heavy cream together, adding some of the hot soup to the egg/cream mixture.  Reduce the soup to low and add the egg/cream mixture.

Add the salt, Tabasco sauce, black pepper and white pepper and stir all together.  Then get a bowl and get ready to eat!

Delicious!!  The neat thing about this soup is that you can substitute other vegetables to make the kind of soup you want.  For example: asparagus, carrots, squash, zucchini, broccoli...  This soup will serve us well over the winter.  It will warm you up, for sure!

Our Supper Was Hacked By The Russians!

Russians!  We have had a nice crop of beets this year.  Almost too many to eat. We've been pickling them and roasting them.  We were looking for another recipe to use up some of the bumper crop of beets and I happened to be talking to someone I work with who lived in Ukraine while she was a missionary.  She began telling me that she developed a taste for a Russian dish while there called Borscht. One of the main ingredients is beets and she promised me she would send the recipe.  Sooo....

I picked 3 medium beets.  These are bull's blood beets.

The recipe she gave me does not call for the tops so those go to the chickens.  They ate up the beet tops quickly.

I came in and peeled the beets.  I love the deep red color of beets.

I was told that there are many variations of borscht, but this one is the one that my friend got from the mission in Ukraine.  Here are the rest of the ingredients besides beets:
1 whole chicken, deboned (you can also use beef shank or pork roast)
1/2 cabbage shredded
2 large carrots
3 medium potatoes
Onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaf
1 can tomato paste
salt
sunflower oil
fresh dill chopped
sour cream

Make broth by placing the chicken in a large pot and bringing to a boil, reduce heat, cover until meat is tender, approximately 1 1/2 hours.  Debone the chicken.  Clean the beets and put in a pot with water covering them.  Boil until tender, once done grate them and set them aside.

A very important thing to do while cooking borscht is to make a zazharka (fry up). While the meat is boiling, saute in sunflower oil, grated carrots & chopped onion, adding the tomato paste to the vegetables after they are tender.

Zazharka

Chop up the chicken after de-boning and put into the pot of broth along with potatoes and cabbage.  When the cabbage is tender, add the carrot mix back to the broth, along with the grated beets.  Add bay leaf, garlic, chopped dill and salt. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

This is a VERY RED dish!

I served mine up in a white bowl.

We were told by my friend at work to add a dollop of sour cream to the bowl.  Tricia really likes sour cream, so she added it and stirred.

Borscht is a hearty, tasty soup.  We like trying new things and this helps us to use up some of our inventory of beets.  It was my first time eating borscht and I must say I was surprised and I really liked it.  It seems to get better each day.  I can see how this is a dish, like gumbo, that is extra tasty and nourishing on a very cold day.

Next beet recipe we'll try is a roasted beet hummus...

Wild Mushroom Soup

A friend of ours grows a number of things and sells them in a couple of Farmer's Markets in the area. We grow things for him like Bok Choy Asian Greens in the winter and also provide him with eggs. He has recently gotten into growing and harvesting mushrooms.  He dries them in a dehydrator and sells them at the market, and he gave us some to try last week.  I wish I could remember the name of the mushrooms, but I can't.  Needless to say, it is important to be able to differentiate the edible ones from the non-edible ones.

Dried Mushrooms

In order to rehydrate them, Tricia let them soak all day long in a bowl of water.

Soaking mushrooms

Using a slotted spoon, Tricia fished out the mushrooms, but don't throw away the 'mushroom broth,' that's the best part.  Once the mushrooms were out, Tricia cut them up, sauteed them in butter, added onions, garlic and celery and continued to saute them until they were all happy.

Sauteed mushrooms with onions, garlic, and celery

 Then add 1/4 cup of flour to the pot to thicken.

Thicken with some flour

Tricia lined a container with a coffee filter to strain out any sediment and poured the mushroom broth into the container.  Notice how rich and dark the mushroom broth is!  This is what makes the soup so flavorful.

Wild Mushroom Broth

Pour the mushroom broth into the pot of sauteed mushrooms & vegetables.

Adding the broth

Allow the soup to simmer for about 15 minutes then add some heavy cream that we skimmed off the top of the morning milk.

Wild Mushroom Soup is on!

A rich and flavorful wild mushroom soup made with nature's finest ingredients really hit the spot tonight!