Yes, Soup for Us!

Winter is always a great time to cozy up with a warm bowl of soup, and tonight was no exception.  We put together a tasty butternut squash soup, and it couldn't have been easier. 

We halved our squashes and threw them into the oven to roast.  While those were cooking up, we put together a proper mirepoix...onion, carrots, and celery, all sauteed in some butter.  We also threw in a little thyme and some sage.

Once the squash was roasted, we let it cool a bit before scooping out the meat of the squash.  Into the pot it went to mix and mingle with the mirepoix.

We also threw in some cream and chicken broth and just let it simmer.  Because we didn't have any meat in this meal, we decided to cook up a few strips of bacon to crumble over the soup.

 

While the bacon crisped up, and the soup came together, I put together a nice little salad.  We spooned some goat cheese into a couple radicchio leaves, and put them into the oven, along with some mushrooms, to top off the salad.

By the time the mushrooms and cheese were done, it was time to puree the soup.  I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but my immersion blender is one of the best kitchen tools.  It easily pureed everything together, and gave us a rich, thick soup.

The salads were topped with the mushrooms, radicchio, and goat cheese, and dressed lightly with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  The soup got a light drizzle of truffle oil, and cream, a sprinkling of parsley, and a nice little pile of bacon.  This soup was even better than a certain mulligatawny.  Despite the minimal amount of meat in tonight's dinner, it was still a filling meal that definitely warmed me up!

That's What Its All A-Trout!

And we're back from out little weekend hiatus.  So tonight we bring you some cornmeal crusted trout and farro with kale and sunchokes.  We weren't really sure what to do with the sunchokes when we got them in our share.  Neither of us had cooked with them before, so we turned to the interwebs for some assistance.  We came across this recipe that not only used the sunchokes, but also put our kale to good use as well.

If you're not familiar with farro, its a delicious little grain.  You cook it like rice until it gets tender.  It has a nice nutty flavor too.  So while the farro was cooking, we started on the other components of the dish.

We sliced the sunchokes and boiled them for about 10 minutes in some salted water until they were fork tender.  Then the kale was boiled for a few minutes, followed by sauteeing the onions in some butter and oil.

Then it was time to slice the sunchokes into smaller pieces, and pan fry them in a little olive oil and vegetable oil.  It didn't take long for them to become golden brown...maybe a few minutes on each side.  Then we tossed in the oyster mushrooms for a few minutes.

Then we tossed the other components back into the pan, including the cooked farro, and gave it a good toss, so everything was coated in the remaining oil in the pan.  All the flavors melded together, and we just added a little salt and pepper to season everything.  We did put our own spin on the recipe by adding a little bit of our porchetta.  It gave our side dish a nice savory, salty component.

While the finished the farro, Justin got to work on the trout.  He pulled out the few pin bones in the filets, then did a simple coating of salt, pepper, cornmeal, and secret hobo spices.

They went into a pan of melted butter, skin-side down, for about 4 minutes while the skin got nice and crusty.  With a quick little flip, it only took another 4 minutes for the other side to cook through.

It was a light, rustic meal.  I felt like I should've been sitting in a log cabin, in front of a roaring fire eating this meal.  With a little squeeze of lemon over the fish, the meal was complete!

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

I was really excited to pick up our meat share and see that we had chicken from Polyface Farms.  I've never had any of their meat, but I've been wanting to try it ever since I read about their farm in "The Omnivore's Dilemma".  If you haven't read it, it talks about that state of food these days, and how we eat.  I'd also highly recommend picking up the follow-up book, "In Defense of Food".  Back to Polyface...they operate their farm the way a farm should run...letting their cows graze freely, and rotating them through different pastures, using their manure for their plants and produce, letting their chickens roam freely and eat bugs and worms, like their supposed to, etc.  So you can understand my excitement when I saw 2 chicken thighs and legs in this week's share.

We thought ahead (for once), and using this recipe as inspiration, decided to marinate the chicken overnight in some garlic, rosemary, thyme, all spice, salt, pepper, and a little grapeseed oil.  Once everything was in the bag, we massaged the chicken a bit to make sure they were evenly coated with the spices.

Since we're going to sous vide the birds, we had to remove as much air from the bag as possible.  And since we don't have a vacuum sealer, Justin went the old school way and used a straw...being careful not to suck up any raw chicken juices.

Sadly, we don't have an immersion circulator (maybe next Christmas?), so we just warmed up a pot of water to about 135 degrees.  We don't have a thermometer either, so we went by feel...hot enough to cook the chicken, but cool enough that you can touch it.  We dropped the bag o' chicken in the water and let it cook.

It cooked for about an hour, so while that was cooking, we caught up on some shows we'd DVR'd.  But back to the task at hand...about 10 minutes before we took the chicken out of the hot tub, I got to work on the carrots.  Our share gave us some more purple carrots, so we decided to glaze them.

Into a pan, went some butter and brown sugar.  Once it was all melty, I tossed in the carrots so they were all nicely coated.  We added in a little five spice to cut some of the sweetness, and just let the carrots hang out while we finished off the chicken.  We finished off the carrots with some aged balsamic sea salt that Justin received in his Christmas stocking.

To get that nice, brown, crispy skin on the chicken, we put it skin side down into a pan with some melted butter.  We let it sear for 5 minutes on each side to finish it off.  We made sure to dump all the garlic, spices and juices from the bag into the pan as well, and Justin continued to baste the chicken while it seared.

Since we had some parsnip and turnip puree leftover from the other night, we it off with the chicken.  It turned out to be one of the prettiest dishes we've put together lately, and one of the tastiest.

Southern Hospitality

Tonight's dinner was quick and easy, and took me back to my days spent in NC.  Surrounded by bbq, this is where I learned to love cole slaw on my bbq, and vinegar-based sauce on my pulled pork.

Luckily, we already had everything we'd need on hand.  The pulled pork came from this week's share.  It already had some sauce on it that was slighly sweet, so we just threw it into a pan to reheat, along with some Dinosaur Bar-B-Que roasted garlic and honey sauce to balance out the sweetness.  I'm sure by now you're tired of me blabbering on and on about how delicious Dinosaur is, so I'll spare you the spiel, but I can't help it.  Its just THAT good!

We finally put some of our cabbage to use by shredding a few leaves, along with one of the carrots we got yesterday, to make some coleslaw.  For the dressing, we just mixed together some red wine vinegar, whole grain mustard, cumin, and a little grapeseed oil.  It had a nice tang to balance out the sweetness of the cabbage and carrot, and the cumin gave it a nice depth of flavor.

And our bbq meal wouldn't be complete without some fries...sweet potato fries!  For seasoning, we went with some truffle salt, roasted garlic salt, parsley and rosemary.  We tried to emulate the village fries at Good Stuff Eatery, adding our own twist with the truffle and garlic salts.

This was probably one of the easiest meals we've put together, and we even have leftovers for lunch tomorrow!  I can't complain about that!

Gimme Back That Filet o Fish

Since the meats we got in Tuesday's share were all frozen, we made a quick stop in Eastern Market to pick up a protein to go with some of our fresh veggies.  We decided to go with some nice salmon filets, atop a parsnip and turnip puree, with a side of red kale.  Luckily the salmon was not as annoying as this fishy.

So let's get cookin'!  The puree took the most work, so I got to peeling the parsnips and turnips, while Justin chopped them.  After a little salt and pepper, those went into the oven to roast.

While the parsnips and turnips were roasting, Justin made the brown butter.  If you haven't made it before, its a very simple technique that adds a great nuttiness to your food.  You just melt some butter in a pan and let it caramelize until it turns brown and tastes nutty.

As soon as the butter browned, we added some black mission figs cut side down, and half of a red onion, and let them cook down and get coated in the delicious butter.  Once the turnips and parsnips were roasted, those were added to the brown butter, figs, and onion.  We kept it all in the pan for just a few minutes, to allow everything to be coated in the butter, and let the flavors kind of meld together.

Then it was time to puree!  If you don't have an immersion blender, you should really consider getting one.  We've used it to make sauces, soups, purees, smoothies and shakes.  Its such a versatile tool and it doesn't take up a lot of space.  Anyway...back to the puree...

The only other thing we added to the puree was some flat leaf parsley and a touch of heavy cream.  The figs added a nice sweetness, but the tang from the turnips still came through.

While the puree rested, we got to the rest of the meal.  Justin seasoned the salmon with some smoked applewood sea salt, lemon salt, a touch of cayenne, some brown sugar, and some fresh dill and thyme.  We popped those into the oven for about 12 minutes, and they came out perfectly cooked.

While Justin took care of the fish, I got to work on the red kale.  Using the same pan that we browned the butter in, I sauteed a shallot and some garlic.  Then I tossed in the kale and let it wilt down a bit.  I noticed the shallot and garlic were starting to stick to the bottom of the pan a bit, so I deglazed the pan with a little lemon juice and red wine vinegar to give it a little tang, and to pick up all the buttery bits at the bottom of the pan.

By the time the kale had wilted, the salmon was ready.  We're getting a lot better at this whole timing thing!  Everything came together wonderfully!  The salmon had a nice sweet, smokey, herby taste, while the puree was sweet with a hint of tang, and the kale gave us some crunch.