Butternut Squash Soup

This is by far my favorite soup, and one of the few soups I don’t screw up (really, you don’t need a full hand to count them).  It’s a combined recipe from some of my favorite sites: Giada and FormerChef.com. I was planning on making this for Thanksgiving and so I practiced it for Sunday dinner last week.  It got good reviews there so I’m sticking with this version for now!

Yield: Approx. 8 cups.

Ingredients:

1 Tbs Olive oil, bacon grease, and/or coconut oil for sauteeing & flavoring
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, chopped
3-4 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 celery stalk, thinly sliced
1-2 butternut squash (depending on size), peeled, cored, and cut into chunks
2 c. chicken or veggie stock (homemade is best-tasting, healthiest, & even easier than these recipes)
1/2 c. apple cider
Whole Milk, Plain Yogurt, or Cream
4-6 strips bacon (optional)
sea salt
fresh cracked black pepper
cumin

Directions:

1) Prep the butternut squash and steam it until it slides off a fork when pierced.

2) Meanwhile, fry the bacon and saute the veggies in a bit of the grease (or olive or coconut oil for a lighter taste).  Season the veggies with a bit of salt.

3) Add the butternut squash, chicken stock, and cider.  Cook at least 10 minutes to get the flavors melding.  If it looks like it may be too watery, cook it longer (uncovered) and the juices will reduce.

4) Spoon the mixture into a food processor or blender (doing it in batches may be necessary).  Blend until smooth.  (This is an optional step & just depends on your texture preference level.)

5) Put blended soup back in the pot and add a splash of milk to thin it out as well as add a bit of creaminess.

6) Season as desired with salt, pepper, and cumin.

Garnish Ideas:

Crumbled bacon is SO GOOD on top (or pancetta, or prosciutto, or Beef Bacon from Rocking Z Ranch).  Alternatively for the bacon, try a few drops of liquid smoke, which is found near the mustard, I think.  It’ll still give a smokey flavor without the hassle of bacon (or if you’re on a special diet that says bacon is bad).  I’m just gonna say it:  Prepackaged bacon bits pale in comparison to real, freshly cooked bacon, especially if you’re going to the trouble of making soup from scratch anyway!  Croutons make good toppings for any soup (cut bread into chunks; drizzle with olive oil; sprinkle with salt; bake at 300 until desired crispness is reached).  Cranberry sauce is also tasty!  We had cranberry sauce and bacon crumbles the other week and the tart-smokey-savory-salty combo made a party in my mouth.  One of the original recipes had pomegranate seeds on top, but I haven’t tried that yet.  I think Feta or some other kind of similar cheese would also be amazing – especially if you served the soup into individual dishes, put the cheese on it, and broiled it until golden.  We’ve had Feta like this on top of toasty French bread & eaten alongside the soup – yum!

Battered, Pan-Fried Cucumbers

If you have a RIDICULOUS amount of cucumbers from your garden or CSA this week, check out a bunch of things you can do with them besides eat them raw.    I had 2 1/2 of Japanese Long Cucumbers leftover from this week and last, plus a bunch of little ones from our CSA and neighbors.  Too many!

So I made a cold cucumber soup, with some lemon balm leaves (also from our CSA!), some garlic, swiss chard thrown in just to use it, dash of cumin, salt, a splash of orange juice, and some yogurt for creaminess.  It tastes pretty good!  Just blend in a blender or food processor and season to taste!

But the yummy thing last night?  Battered and pan-fried cucumbers!  The nice thing about eating well 90% of the time is that you usually don’t feel any guilt when you try things like this.  ;-P

Ingredients:

cucumbers (depending on the size; whatever looks like it will fit this batter)

1 cup of milk

1 egg

1 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1 heaping cupful of whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder.

Directions:

Peel cucumbers and cut into slices half an inch thick.  Beat the batter together, dip the cucumber slices into it, and drop, one at a time, into a hot pan that has a bit of butter melted in it.  Don’t mess with it or try to loosen it from the pan until the edges start to slightly brown after a few minutes!  Then you can flip it and brown the other side.  If they are sticking too bad, add more butter, olive oil, bacon grease, whatever.  Best eaten warm, but I’m going to try and freeze them and warm them back up in an oven sometime!

Broccoli Cheddar Soup

It’s fall and the temperature has dropped.  That means it’s soup time!  And a broccoli and cheddar soup sounded like it would just hit the spot.  Rebecca tells me that Panera has a pretty good broccoli cheddar soup, and she found a recipe that was close to theirs to work from.  She found this one at CDKitchen.com.

This recipe is doubled from the original and makes about 16 cups of soup in a Crock Pot.  If you have a huge Crock Pot, I recommend tripling it so you have more leftovers!

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter or leftover bacon grease
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup flour
4 cups plain yogurt
4 cups chicken stock or bouillon
1 pound fresh broccoli (about one head)
2 cup carrots, julienned
salt and pepper to taste
16 ounces grated sharp cheddar
1/2 cup parmesean cheese 

Directions:
Saute onion in butter. Set aside. Cook melted butter and flour using a whisk over medium heat for 3-5 minutes. Stir constantly and slowly add the yogurt.  Add the chicken stock, whisking all the time.  Add the broccoli, carrots and onions, salt, and pepper.  Cook over high heat until the veggies are tender, for about 4 hours.  The soup should be thickened by now. Pour a few batches into blender and puree.  Return to pot over low heat and gradually add the grated cheese and parmesean; stir until well blended.

We made a few changes to suit our tastes, like using less butter and non-fat plain yogurt instead of half-and-half like the original recipe suggested.  (Yogurt is a great, healthy substitute for fatty dairy products.  It almost makes the amount of dairy fat in this soup respectable.)  We also threw in some Parmesean cheese and used less onion because I don’t care for it too much.  We think it would taste really good with some small pieces of diced ham or bacon.

This soup turned out to be absolutely delicious!  We made enough to have plenty of leftovers, but I know I’m going to be disappointed when it’s all gone.  When you make this soup yourself make sure to toast some bread for dipping, or maybe have some croutons availble.  This soup was good by itself, but bread drizzled with olive oil, toasted til crunchy, and dipped in the soup was so amazing, I almost didn’t even need a spoon.

Broccoli-Cheddar Soup with breadsticks and salad