the last soup of the season, perhaps

I heated up the leftover butternut squash soup for lunch yesterday, and I think it was even better warmed over. It was so good! It makes me a little sad to think that I have gone all these years without knowing that. I have talked in the past about my extreme aversion to cooked vegetables while I was growing up and for many years thereafter. The only vegetables we ate when I was a kid came in frozen cubes with Birdseye labels on the boxes. (The frozen spinach was the worst, if you want to know.) But I digress.

I asked for an immersion blender for Christmas, mainly so that I could make my own butternut squash soup. I had some this fall at Atwater's, a neat little bakery in downtown Catonsville that serves a lunch every day that consists of homemade soup, freshly baked bread, and dessert. The soup was a revelation to me! Simple and complex at the same time, I knew it was something I could add to my repertoire.

Accordingly, I got online and started looking for recipes. I don't even bother with the cookbooks I have collected anymore. It's all out there, man, on the interwebs. The recipe was as simple as I thought it might be, and after a couple of times making the soup, this is my version.

Butternut Squash Soup

1 large butternut squash, cut in half lengthwise, with seeds removed
1 large onion, peeled and halved
2 apples, peeled, halved, and cored
olive oil
salt
freshly-ground pepper
32 oz. chicken broth (homemade stock would be fantastic, if you have it)
½ cup milk
marsala (optional)
freshly-grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 400°. Liberally oil a cookie sheet. (I like to cover the cookie sheet with aluminum foil first. It makes for an easier clean-up.) Drizzle olive oil on the cut side of the squash, then salt and pepper it. Place the two halves on the cookie sheet, cut side down. Place the onion and apple halves on the cookie sheet, drizzle oil on them, then salt and pepper. Place in oven, and roast until vegetables have carmelized, about 40 minutes. While vegetables are roasting, heat chicken broth in a six-quart pot.

Give apples and onions a rough chop, and place them in pot with chicken broth. Cut the squash into cubes while it is still in the shell, then use a large spoon to scrape the cubes into the broth. Simmer for about a half hour, or until everything is well-cooked and falling apart. Remove pot from heat, get out your immersion blender, and blend until soup is smooth and free of lumps.

Return to burner and simmer soup until it is hot. Taste soup and add salt and pepper as necessary. This is also the time to add milk. I like the creaminess the milk adds, but be careful not to add so much that the soup becomes too thin. This should be a thick, creamy soup. Add marsala to taste. Be sure to simmer until all alcohol is evaporated. Ladle soup into big bowls, grate nutmeg on top of each serving. Easy does it! This soup has a delicate flavor, and too much nutmeg can overpower it. Bon appétit! Hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

making lemonade, metaphorically speaking

May has let me down this year. Perennially my favorite month, May usually abounds with bright, sunny days when the temperature hovers around 70 to 75° , which even my outdoor thermometer recognizes as "ideal". Not so this year. Cold, rainy day is followed by cold, windy, rainy day, and it's a good thing I kicked the sunbathing habit or I would be really pissed.

As we know, however, this blog features things that are nice, not naughty, so in that spirit, I offer a soup recipe for a rainy day. This is not just any soup recipe. It is for the best damn potato soup I have ever tasted, and I think you might agree with me if you try it. It all started a couple of months ago after one of my blog posts mentioned how I longed for a good potato soup recipe. Bryan (who turns 30 today - happy birthday, Bryan!) sent me his mom's recipe, which I promptly tried. And, I tell you, it was darn good. But I knew I could make it better - if less healthy - and this is the recipe I came up with.

8 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
medium onion, diced
2-3 celery stalks, diced
3-4 cups cabbage, coarsely chopped (Ben thought 4 cups of cabbage was too much, but that begs the question, can there be too much cabbage?)
2-lb. bag Ore-Ida frozen cubed hash browns
6 cups homemade chicken stock
2 Tbsps butter or margarine
2 Tbsps Wondra flour
2 cups milk
salt
freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup shredded cheese (Whatever you like, really. I use a 4-cheese, reduced fat, Mexican blend.)

Fry the bacon until done in a large frying pan. Remove bacon pieces and drain. Sauté onions, celery and cabbage in bacon grease until cabbage is well-cooked.

In a large saucepan, cook potato cubes in chicken stock until potatoes are tender. Add about a teaspoon of salt. You may want to mash some of the potatoes at this point for a thicker soup.

Melt the butter or margarine in with the sautéed vegetables, whisk in flour to make roux. Remove from heat and whisk in 1 cup of the milk. Return to medium heat and bring to a gentle boil.

Slowly stir the vegetable and white sauce mixture into the potatoes. Add the second cup of milk. Let soup simmer, stirring frequently until thickened. When ready to serve, add bacon pieces and shredded cheese. Heat through until cheese melts. Season with freshly-ground pepper, and check to see if soup needs more salt. Serve in big bowls, because it's really good.

Bon appetit!

it doesn't come in cans

Is there anything better than a steaming hot bowl of homemade soup on a winter day? I mean, if you have to live in Northeast Ohio in January, you should, at the very least, have something hot and tasty to eat.

I make a lot of soup in the fall and winter, big pots of it that only taste better with each re-heating. I make bean soup with ham and ditalini. I make lentil soup with chunks of kielbasa and lots of garlic. I make Ben's favorite, beef barley soup with turnip greens and a medley of mushrooms. New for this fall, I made up a recipe for stuffed cabbage soup. I downloaded four different recipes I found online, and took what I wanted from each. Not to brag, but that is damn good soup.

The best soup I make, however, is also the simplest and the one I have been making for the longest time - chicken noodle soup. When Julie had a cold she couldn't shake last week, I knew it was time to make some. I took a couple of roast chicken carcasses from the freezer, put them in the stock pot with onions and garlic and celery and carrots and filled the pot with water. Then I let it simmer all day. I swear, the smell alone is good for what ails you.

Once the stock has been strained, I add noodles and some fresh parsley, and that's all. Oh, I sauté some vegetables and chop up some chicken for others to add, but nothing else goes in my soup bowl. I am a chicken noodle soup purist.

For years, I have preferred extra fine egg noodles above all others, in spite of the fact that they generally slip off my spoon faster than I can slurp them up. I have, however, found a new noodle that is worthy of my chicken stock, and, I would go so far as to say, completes the soup in a way I didn't even know it was lacking.

Julie and I found these noodles in a little import store in a strip mall in Uniontown. The store sells mostly Eastern European food, and we found a whole shelf of Hungarian egg noodles. Now, I happen to know a little (well, very little) about Hungarian egg noodles, as I have a very clear memory of my Hungarian grandma rolling out noodles and cutting them into long strips on the big kitchen table in the basement of her house. I had never seen anyone do that before - nor since, for that matter.

Julie and I bought a couple of different shapes, but the ones I like best are called Csiga, and they look like little ridged horns. And I am telling you, they are perfect for my chicken noodle soup. They are eggy and delicious, needless to say, but what I really love about them is they stay on my spoon. I don't think I can overstate the importance of that.

So, if you're cold and hungry, give me a bit of advance notice and I'll cook up a big pot of soup for you. I don't think it will be chicken noodle, however, unless I have some Csiga in my cupboard.