Butternut Squash Soup…Italian Style!

Tags

roasted butternut squash, soup, Vegetarian

I was in the mood for butternut squash soup.  What I was not in the mood for was  something rich.  I’ve only ever had rich butternut squash soup.  Very rich.  So I thought I would try roasting the squash in the oven with olive oil. You know, bring out its  natural caramelization, making it more flavourful and thus omitting the need for butter and cream.  Where does the Italian style fit in?  That came later, as I started tasting the soup.  You’ll see.

I started out with cutting the squash into chunks.

Into a roasting pan they went, along with olive oil, salt, pepper, a few sprigs of thyme and… garlic.  I thought that just maybe, roasted garlic would be a nice touch.  4 unpeeled cloves.  Unpeeled because I would be roasting the squash at a high temperature and did not want it to burn.

I popped it in the oven at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes.  Depending on how big you cut up the squash, it could take longer.  Just test with a fork for doneness.

Remove the garlic from it’s husk and set the whole thing aside.

Slice an onion. Heat olive oil in a pot, or butter for a richer tasting soup, and add the onion. Cook for about 10 minutes on medium-low heat.

Add the roasted squash and garlic to the onions and give it a stir.

Add chicken broth, enough to cover the squash. You could add vegetable broth for a vegetarian version.  Cook for about 5 minutes, just enough for the broth to absorb all the flavours.

This is where I decided to add a little Italian touch to my soup. Instead of adding salt, I thought I’d grate some Parmigiano Reggiano into it.

I added some cold 1% milk, about 1 cup, maybe 1 1/2. You could adjust the amount to how thick, or thin, you like your soup. Start with 1 cup. Purée the soup with an immersion blender if you have one, otherwise carefully pour the soup in batches into a blender and purée. Return pureed soup to the pot.  If you think it’s too thick,  add more milk. Or cream for a velvety-rich soup. After giving it a taste, I decided to add a touch of Mascarpone cheese. Just because I had it in the fridge. And for yet another Italian twist to it.

It was ready to serve! Don’t you just love that colour?

And because it’s that time of year, how about a few pumpkin seeds to give it some crunch!

Oh, that was good!

Guess who’s cooking dinner

Tags

Cheese, Cooking with kids, Main Meal, pasta, Vegetarian

Emma has always loved baking.  She started  baking with me when she was 4 years old.  This past year she started coming into the kitchen while I was cooking and ask if she could help.  I always obliged.  I think that one of the best ways to get kids eating new and different foods is to get them involved with the cooking of it.  I know it works with my kids.  Because Emma gets involved with the ingredients that go into a meal and with the whole preparation of it, she becomes more familiar with those foods and therefore feels more comfortable trying them out.

I picked her up from school yesterday and said, “Guess who’s cooking dinner tonight?”  “Who?”, she asked.  I replied very excitedly, “You!”  She was equally excited, asking what she would be cooking and stated that she wanted to do it all by herself.  Fine by me!

I did have to do one thing which I thought she was just a tad too young for. Cook the giant pasta shells in boiling water and drain it.  They look like sea shells, don’t they?

Emma was on her own from here.

Empty one container of ricotta cheese into a bowl.

Chop 3 tomatoes and add to cheese.

Finely chop some parsley and basil leaves and add to cheese mixture.  

Grate some parmesan cheese into the mixture.  Add a little salt.  Mix it all up and stuff the giant pasta shells.

 

Place into a baking dish with a little olive oil poured onto the bottom.  It’s o.k. if they’re snug in there, just squeeze them in.

Pour a little olive oil over the pasta and grate some parmesan over them.

Into the oven they go.  350 degrees for 15 minutes or so and voila!  Don’t they look good?

If there are any pasta shells left over, do what Emma did.  Put them in a small baking dish, add a few dabs of butter with grated parmesan and throw them in the oven.  You know what?  They were pretty tasty! Emma even took the pictures herself and said, “You can put them on your website.”  She’s only 9!

Winner of Au Pied de Cochon’s Cabane aux Pommes!

Tags

Apples, Au Pied de Cochon, Cabane a Sucre, Cabane au Pommes, Jamie Oliver, Martin Picard, Sugar Shack

I feel extremely lucky to have won a seat at the highly coveted Martin Picard’s Au Pied de Cochon Cabane à Sucre (Sugar Shack).  Cabane à sucre in the Fall, you ask?  Let me explain.

We all know the iconic Martin Picard, he who created the Foie Gras Poutine and owner of the reputable Au Pied de Cochon restaurant in Montreal.  In 2009, he introduced us to his version of Cabane à Sucre with a fixed menu made for maple heaven.    Reservations are by e-mail requests only, begining on December 1^st .  Every foodie in town clamours to get a reservation to this 10- week maple syrup extravaganza à la Martin Picard.   Within 12 hours, they are fully booked 3 months ahead of time!

A month ago, I read an article in The Montreal Gazette about the launch of Martin Picard’s Cabane aux Pommes, a menu paying homage to the apple.

This new diabolical feast would now  take us to apple heaven, spanning over a 9-week period, Fridays through Sundays.  Needless to say it was sold out.  The good news was that they were now opening up Thursday nights as well and we could try (and hope) to get an in by requesting a reservation by e-mail.  So I did.  I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  I actually forgot all about it.  Until I came home last Wednesday afternoon and noticed on my display that I had missed a call from a “Cabane a Sucre…”.  There was no message, but it had to be them!  What other cabane a sucre would be calling me?  And why did they not leave a message?  What if they had given my spot to someone else?  I quickly pressed redial and took a deep breath.  When my call was answered with the full name of the sugar schack, I was ecstatic!   I let out a sigh of relief.  “It is you!  I noticed you called but didn’t leave a message.”  They don’t leave messages, they just keep going down that list until somebody takes that lucky, open spot.  “Do you have a spot for me?” When she replied with an affirmative, I felt like I had just won a prize!  Not only did she have a spot for me, but because there were just two of us I actually had a choice.  When people cancel (crazy as that may seem!), they refer to their very long waiting list.  My choices were Thursday, Friday or Saturday evening, or Sunday afternoon lunch.  Because I was going to the country Friday afternoon, I had to go Thursday eve.  Last night I discovered, to my great dismay,  that had I gone Sunday afternoon, I would have lunched with non other than Jamie Oliver!!!  As in The Jamie Oliver!  Instead, I was in the country watching Jamie on the telly!  Darn it!

You need to be open to adventure when it comes to dining with Martin Picard. His specialty is over-the-top spectacular when it comes to food and its presentation.  Peter not being one who takes too keenly to adventure when it comes to eating,  I went with my girlfriend Sue. Lucky Sue had attended his Cabane a Sucre Feast in the Spring so she knew what all the fuss was about.

We started off with apple cocktails.  Sue had an apple Martini, with a salted apple core replacing the olive, and I had a Pommette, a drink consisting of sprakling apple cider and… something else.  All I know is, it was yummy!

The 10 course fixed menu begins with jars of homemade pickled eggplant, corn relish and cornichons sitting on the table. There was even a bottle of very good olive oil.

Any hot foods were served in magnificently colourful Le Creuset pots and pans of every imaginable shape and size.  I wanted them all!  Picard makes use of local produce from neighbouring farms.  The honey comes from Intermiel just around the corner, and the cheese from his neighbour, Les fromages du verger.

And then began our decadently rich feast.  Four appetizers were brought out all at once.  First, the caillé de brébis, a firm sheep’s yogurt, almost cheese-like, topped with thin slivers of apple,  shavings of foie gras, honey and a honeycomb on the side.  Sublime!

Next up was the unctuously, velvety-smooth Squash soup Gratin.  With both Emmenthal and Gruyere cheese, this rich and creamy and buttery soup was to die for!  It seemed like the thin slices of apples were added in just at the very end, keeping the apples firm and crunchy.  Crushed Amaretti cookies filled in for the bread croutons, adding just enough sweetness and crunch.  Oh man, this was good!

And then, the pièce de resistance.  A piglet’s skull came out draped with feather- thin slices of head cheese, similar to Italian pancetta, drizzled in an olive oil and shallot vinaigrette.  Also on this piece of wood bark was a deliciously, salty prosciutto-style ham. Served with an apple mustard.  All homemade, with the piggies grown on Picard’s land.

Last, but not least, came one of my personal faves.  A dish of ravioli filled with liquified foie gras, cavatelli and chunks of sous-vide cooked foie gras, all in a luxuriously rich apple-Parmesan-rosemary sauce.  Oh My Heaven!

For large groups, the serving of this pasta dish is a show in itself.  A wheel of Parmesan is rolled out and the pasta is dumped into its centre.  Added to that is the foie gras and then huge shavings of Parmesan go flying into it as the waiter grates around the edges with a spoon.  Magnificent!

Oh, and their bread… crunchy crusts on the outside, light and airy on the inside. Served with apple butter.  I could have eaten that bread with the sheep’s yogurt-cheese all night and been quite happy.  With a bottle of wine.

Did I mention these were the appetizers?  Yes, really!

Oh man, were we full!  As the next three dishes were served to us, we decided that a bite of each would suffice, and then we would doggy-bag it.  We needed room for the desserts!

First up was the Salmon “en papillote”.  Wrapped and cooked in a newspaper, the salmon came stuffed with thin slices of apples, basil, onion, garlic and lemon. Steamed to perfection!

The accompanying sauce reminded me of a clam chowder, consisting of cream, cider, bacon, cubed potatoes, clams and whelk (a.k.a. sea snails).

We’re almost there… The Surf and Turf à la Martin Picard came with a fall-off-the-bone-tender shoulder of beef, braised with white wine, apples, caramelized onions and mushrooms.  (I’m sure there was butter and cream in there somewhere.)  The surf part was warm oysters from Malpeque, P.E.I., sitting on top of the beef.  Yum!

And then the last main.  An eggplant pancake topped with hazelnut broccoli, reminding me of a peanut sauce.  At this point, the richness in every single dish we had been served was just a little too much for us.  We barely managed a taste before packing up the left-overs.  The little bowl of Boston lettuce leaves drizzled with olive oil and light vinegar was a welcome treat.  I could have used a few more of those lettuce bowls!

Lastly, a smorgasboard of desserts!  Three of them!  Four if you count the ice cream!

Apple pie.  The same apple pie recipe I posted a few weeks ago and I’m happy to report that my apple pie was just as delicious as this one!  It came with marble ice cream, a mix of vanilla-honey ice cream and apple sorbet, topped with apple cotton candy.  The apple sorbet was a welcome freshness.  Fantastic!

There was an Apple Soufflé.  Light and airy soufflé on top, caramelized apples and  chocolate ganache on the bottom.  Delish!

And lastly, my personal fave.  A sticky apple-toffee pudding, cooked in a can and drenched with a caramel-honey sauce.  OH. MY. GOD.  Sue laughed when she saw my face as I took the first bite.  She wished she could have had my reaction on camera.  Instead I found this video, courtesy of montrealbreakfastreview.com, which describes my love affair with this pudding!

We ended this Au Pied de Cochon Apple Extravaganza with some Apple Cotton Candy and Honey-Almond Popcorn to go… for our kiddies waiting at home!

More pudding please!

I mentioned in my last post that we were invited to dinner and I had offered to bring dessert. I got a little side tracked with my Halloween treats and never did discuss the dessert we adults indulged in.

Our friends had lived in London, England for over 20 years and we were being honoured with a British sup. Yup!  With Yorkshire pudding too, which I was very excited about as I’d never had but always wanted to try.    To complement the scrumptious meal I was sure we would have – oh, did we ever – (The Yorkshire puddings were so good!  After I was done with my meal, I just couldn’t resist another piece of that pudding and dunked it in the gravy.  Oh man, it was good!) –  I decided to make an English pudding.  Steamed pudding.  As in Caramel Apple Steamed Pudding.

Although I’ve had a metal pudding mold  for about 15 years, I had never made one.   Not long after Peter and I were married, we were in a fabulous kitchen store in Ottawa  and I had come across these pudding molds. I thought they were very cute, with their lids and all.  Brilliant! I was going to make figgy pudding – you know, like in the Christmas song.  I’d never had figgy pudding but I liked the idea of making a very traditional English Christmas dessert.

Just a few months ago as I was reorganizing my kitchen “stuff”, Peter noticed my pudding mold and said, “You still have this.  I guess you’re gonna toss it.”  Toss it?  Was he kidding?  I couldn’t fathom tossing a cooking gadget that I was sure to need one day!  Well my friends, that day had come!  Oh joy!  I was going to use that pudding mold.  (I hate to say I told you so Peter.)  Only thing is, my pudding mold has this tube in the middle, like a tube pan.  Oh well, now I need to get one without!

Thanks to Martha Stewart, I found this fabulous recipe.

I started with the apples.  The original recipe calls for 4 Granny Smith apples but I used a combination of McIntoch, Cortland and Spartan apples.  At least that’s what I think… they were from our apple picking venture and were all mixed together (yes, still got some of them apples).   4 apples for all those steps and steaming the pudding for almost 2 hours?  I used 6 apples, just to make sure all that work was going to result in my pudding tasting of apples.  I peeled, cored and cut the apples into 1 inch chunks.

 I placed 1/2 the apples in a  saucepan and added : 2 tbsp of water, 1 1/2 tbsp of sugar, 1/2 tsp each of cinnamon and ginger and 1/4 tsp each of nutmeg and cloves.  I placed the pan over low heat and cooked the apples, covered, for about 12 minutes, until they started falling apart.  Uncover and cook  for 5 minutes, stirring every now and then.  Set aside.  This is the applesauce.

Next I made the apples that would sit on top of my pudding.  Melt 1 tbsp of butter in pan and add remaining apples with 1 tbsp of sugar.  Cook over medium-high for 5 minutes, until apples have browned.  Put aside.

Now that caramel.  Add 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 tbsp of water into a small saucepan.  Over medium heat, cover until sugar melts, 2 or 3 minutes.  Uncover and cook, swirling pan occasionally, until the sugar turns a deep amber colour.

Carefully pour the caramel into the mold, tipping it and swirling it around so that the caramel coats the sides of the mold.  Words of caution… wear oven mitts or hold that metal mold with something other than your bare hands.  I seem to remember, a little too late, my kid’s science lessons and how metal was a great conductor of heat!

I added those apple chunks to the bottom of the mold.

I took my stock pot and added water and placed a folded dish towel on the bottom.  This allows space between the pudding mold and the direct heat from the burner.  You need about 2 inches of space all around the mold and enough water that it will go 1/2 way up the sides.   I brought the water to a boil and then just lowered  it to a simmer and kept it going until my pudding was ready.  As I awaited for the water, I proceeded to the the cake part of the pudding.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, you can also use a hand-held mixer, cream together 8 tbsp of butter and 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar.  Add 2 eggs and 1/4 cup of molasses and mix well.  Now you can add that applesauce that’s been sitting around, waiting…and mix well.  Then I added 1 1/4 cups of unbleached flour, 2 1/4 tsp of baking powder, a pinch of salt and 1 cup of bread crumbs – I used panko because that’s what I had.  Stir until just combined.  Add to the pudding mold and clamp on the lid.

Now it’s ready to go into that simmering water.  Add lid over the pot and simmer for 1 hour and 40 minutes, checking every now and then to ensure the water is at a steady, low simmer.

Remove from water and if you like, you could check for doneness with a toothpick.  If it comes out clean, it’s done.  I clamped the lid back onto the mold and just let it sit until it was time for dessert.  I carried it over to our friend’s place in the mold – I think she was quite impressed.  I ran a butter knife around the sides of the mold,  turned it upside down onto a dish and voila!  Isn’t it gorgeous?

But how did it taste, you wonder?  Oh my word… it was light and moist and caramelly and… a taste of apples in every bite!

Apple of my eye

Tags

candy, caramel apples, Halloween, kids

We were invited to dinner last night and I offered to make dessert.  Seeing as Halloween is just around the corner and we love, love, love Halloween, I thought I’d make a special treat for the kiddies.  Caramel apples! Who wouldn’t love that?

I started by inserting sticks into 8 apples and placing them in the fridge.  The Granny Smith apple is for Charlotte.  They’re her fave.

Next came the caramel.  In a saucepan, I added 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cups (175 ml) unsalted butter, 300 ml sweetened condensed milk, 2/3 cup corn syrup and 1/4 tsp salt.  Over medium-high heat, bring to a boil. Stir often or the caramel will scorch on the bottom of the pan.  Once it reaches a boil, reduce heat to medium-low and continue to cook for 18-20 minutes, stirring often.

Don’t be daunted by making caramel. Just keep an eye on it and stir often. It will turn out perfect. This is a “soft-ball” caramel. Soft-ball is a term used when making candy. You need to cook the sugar syrup to a temperature of 235-240 degrees. To test if it’s ready, drop a spoonful of the caramel into a bowl of very cold water. With your fingers, gather the cooled caramel and if you can form a ball in the water, it’s done. Or do what I did and use a candy thermometer.  Soft-ball is even written right on it, next to the temperatures. Basically, it becomes a chewy caramel.

After 18 minutes, this is the colour of the caramel. Gorgeous, no?

I had this bottle of black & orange sugar crystals and thought it looked very Halloween’ish.

After dipping an apple in the caramel, I rolled the bottom half of the apples in the sugar and placed them on a sheet of tin foil which was slathered in butter. In the fridge they went for 15 minutes.

I melted some white chocolate and proceeded to make the spider webs with a piping bag.   I took a short-cut and used the micro.  You need to do it very carefully or you will burn your chocolate.  I placed my chopped chocolate, about 1 cup , in a glass bowl.  Working on medium power and for only 1 minute at a time, I melted the chocolate, stirring after every minute, for a total of about 5 minutes.  You really need to allow the chocolate to cool somewhat or it can become rather messy. And then, the final touch… spiders!

Note: The recipe calls for placing the finished apples back in the fridge, which I did. I took them over to our friend’s place and they were again placed in the fridge. When the time came for the kiddies to delve into those creepy-crawler-apples, they were hard. Rock hard! We suggested they wait a half hour to see if it would help, but how could they once they’d sunk their teeth into them? They continued their struggle until they’d had enough and that was the end of that. I had saved a couple of apples for the next day and this time I removed them from the fridge 1 hour before dinner. When the time came, I just had to have a bite.  Oh, gooey goodness!!! They were perfect! Except for that black sugar which tainted all our hands and mouths black!  Oh well.   Keeping in the spirit of Halloween, I guess!

You can see full recipe details, courtesy of CBC’s Best Recipes Ever, here.

How about them apples!

Tags

apple pies, Apples, desserts, Sweets

It was a chilly, rainy Autumn evening and after a bowl of hot soup, the girls and I wanted a little something sweet and warm to satisfy us.  After rummaging through the fridge, I discovered that I had some left-over pie dough from those yum apple pies and still lots of them apples.  It was 6:30 pm and I had no inclination to start pie-baking.  Well, how about just wrapping a whole apple with the pie dough?  If you recall, there were two different pie doughs, one for the bottom crust and one for the top.  Seeing as they were now both mixed up together, I had no idea how this would turn out.  But why not give it a try?

I began with peeling and coring the apples whole – and discovered that I really need to get a gadget to core apples.  I placed them on top of three pieces of rolled dough.

Just for fun, I sliced up one of the apples to see what that would give.

I made up a little mixture of sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle on the bottom of the dough and over the apples. I also threw in a dab of butter into the centre of the apple – why not?

I wrapped the dough over the apple, brushed it with an egg wash and sprinkled it with sugar.

I baked them in a 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes… and voila! Aren’t they gorgeous?

But how do they taste?

Charlotte’s reaction was, “Oh Mama…if you and Sue do Puces Pop again, you have to make these.”
I guess the kiddies loved them!

I noticed that each of us gobbled them up in different ways. Charlotte ate the apple first and then devoured the crust.

Then there was Emma. She just tossed the apple aside and dived right into the crust.

And then there was me… I just dove right in and gobbled the whole thing up! Oh yum!