Roasted Squash and Cumin Soup

Roasted Squash and Cumin Soup

Roasted Squash and Cumin Soup - makes 8 servings

• 1 - 5 pound sweet orange squash ( I used golden delicious) peeled and cut into chunks
• Spray on olive oil
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 2 medium onions
• 2 Teaspoons ground ginger
• 1.5 Tablespoons ground cumin
• 5 cloves garlic
• 3 cups chicken stock
• black pepper
• water to cover

Coat squash chunks with olive oil and roast in a 350F oven for approximately 30-45 minutes until chunks are nicely browned and soft. While the squash is roasting, melt butter in the bottom of a large soup pot and, over medium heat, gently brown onions and garlic. When the onions are softened and golden, add in cumin and ginger. Cook, stirring for 1 more minute. Add stock, black pepper and simmer. When squash chunks are roasted, add them to the pot, add enough water to increase the liquid just enough so it comes to the top of the squash chunks, increase the heat to medium high and simmer for 30 minutes. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup.

Serve with croutons, Parmesan cheese, chopped chives, or chopped parsley - or all of the above. I fried large multi grain bread chunks in garlic butter and topped them with sharp cheddar, before plonking a few into each bowl of soup. It made a very warming and filling Winter weekend lunch.

Smokey Barbeque Beans

I've always wanted to make my own baked beans. Ever since I was a kid and my mom brought home a copy of the "Cowboy's Cookbook" from her school library. It was written by a guy who went around interviewing little old men who used to be the chuckwagon cooks on the cattle drives in the wild west. That book, with its ugly yellow 1970's cover, did a great job of conjuring up images of smokey late-night campfires and pots of boiling coffee and beans. Here I am some 20 years later, finally making my own baked beans.

And just in time for the Summer Barbeque Challenge too. Lucky me.

These beans have a deep smokey sweet flavour that can only come with long (bloody long if you ask me!) cooking. They need a solid day to make. Don't worry about the beans going mushy, haricot beans simply don't do that very easily. After even 8 hours of solid simmering they are still perfectly shaped and a little al dente. If you really like your beans mushy, be prepared to cook them longer, or use smaller white beans such as great northern beans.

These were so yummy, this huge batch disappeared in a matter of minutes.

Lex's Smokey BBQ Beans

(serves a lot! close to 10 or 12 as a generous side dish)

• 700 grams (1.5 pounds) dried white haricot beans
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup italian parsley, finely chopped
• 1 small red capsicum (bell pepper), chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 x 796 ml (28 oz) can diced stewed tomatoes
• 1 x 156ml (5.5 oz) tin tomato paste
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 200 ml dark soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon dried hot chilli flakes
• 1 Tablespoon ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons hot English mustard
• 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 450-500 grams smoked duck or goose wings (I used goose)
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups beef stock

Soak the beans overnight in plenty of cool water. Drain and rinse.

Chuck it all in a big ole pot (at least 8 litres/quarts!), bring it to the boil and let it simmer for 7 to 9 hours. Check on it periodically. If it looks like the liquid is getting thick, add an extra few cups of water. You'll probably have to do this a few times during the cooking process.

Towards the end, use tongs to fish out the smoked bird pieces. Strip the meat off the bones, dice the meat quite small and throw it back in the pot.

Two-For-One Sausages

I don't know what the heck Otto Von Bismarck was on about when he lumped law and sausage into the same category of things you never want to see made. That's disrespectful of sausage. And now that I am an official sausage maker, complete with sausage making device and several thousand feet of hog intestine in my freezer, I take exception to his most famous statement. Sausage is pretty fun to make.

My nude little sausage experiment a few weeks ago confirmed for me what I already knew. I would like to make actual sausages with actual casings. So Cakes and I trotted off to K&K deli last Saturday and bought us some hog guts. Than we trotted off to Home Outfitters (which, by the way, still has a HUGE assortment of the sexiest blenders and mixers ever, please buy one. I think everybody should have one!) and procured us a sausage stuffer meat grinder contraption for the Kitchen Aid.

Then we stuffed ourselves a heap of sausages. We made two different kinds: a beer, garlic, rosemary and mustard sausage and a spicy black olive Chorizo sausage with red wine. Both were pretty yummy, although I think we'll have to use slightly fattier meat next time as they felt a little dry to me.

I thought I'd be grossed out at having to handle innards, but it really wasn't gross at all. Mind you, the casings came all nice and clean. I don't know that I would have enjoyed the sausage making as much if I had to clean the intestines from a hog I once knew as "Pinky".

Stuffing the sausages is dead easy, although it's definitely a two person job: one person to fill the hopper and work the on/off switch and one person to guide the sausage and twist the links as they come off. We stuffed the whole batch that you see in the photo above inside of 30 minutes. We had 4 Friends over to help us celebrate our new talents and by the end of the night, the six of us managed to eat all the sausages but about a dozen. Pretty impressive feat. J-Y kept claiming that they were the best goddamn sausages he'd ever eaten, but then J-Y also drank a whole bottle of wine all by himself so perhaps was feeling pretty positive about the whole world, deserving or no.

Judge for yourself.

Chili and Black Olive Chorizo

Will make about 20 to 25 sausages if you use 18 mm casings

• 800 grams organic ground pork
• 600 grams organic ground beef
• 150 ml red wine
• 5 cloves garlic minced
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 1 cup minced pitted semi-dried kalamata olives
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 1 1/2 cups cooked arborio rice
• 1 cup minced fresh organic parsley

Mix really well. Before you stuff into casings, take a tablespoon or so and fry it up quickly in the frying pan so you can taste whether the seasonings are what you want. Then you can adjust the seasonings because there's not much half for a badly seasoned sausage once its in the casing. Once you're happy with the taste, stuff into soaked, rinsed casings. You could also roll these into roughly sausagy shapes if you don't have the equipment for stuffing casings, but in that case I'd add a raw egg or two in to help the sausages stick together better.

Garlic, Rosemary and Mustard Seed Sausages

Will make about 20 to 25 sausages if you use 18 mm casings

• 800 grams organic ground pork
• 600 grams organic ground beef
• 150 ml beer
• 5 cloves garlic minced
• 1/2 tablespoon crushed dried rosemary
• 2-3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/2 cup seeded Dijon mustard
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon cayenne
• 2 teaspoons chili pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 2 teaspoons liquid smoke
• 1 1/2 cups cooked arborio rice
• 1 cup minced fresh organic parsley

Follow the same directions as for the spicy black olive chorizo.

The Science of the Souffle

Easy as all get-out grapefruit souffles

(adapted from a recipe found in Australian Gourmet Traveller March 2006 page 36)

Serves 6

• 250ml (1 cup) fresh squeezed grapefruit juice (you could use lemon, lime, orange or a combination as well) (about 3 small grapefruits or 2 large) - reserve the spent skins - you'll need the skin of six grapefruit halves.
• rind of 1/2 grapefruit, finely minced (about 1.5 tablespoons)
• 100 grams sugar (divided in half)
• 15 grams corn starch (about 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon)
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 egg whites

Use a grapefruit spoon to clean any remaining pulp and membrane from the inside of 6 grapefruit halves. Dust the inside of the pith with sugar. Set aside.

Combine juice, 50g sugar and rind in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Simmer until juice is reduced to 150ml. Strain out rind pieces.

Mix starch and water together. Whisk starch mixture into hot juice and continue to whisk over low heat until juice is substantially thickened. Remove from heat and immerse pan into a cool water bath. Whisk until the juice mixture is cold, about 3 minutes. Set aside.

Whip egg whites until soft peaks form. Add 50 gm sugar and continue whipping until firm peaks form. Fold egg whites into grapefruit mixture in two batches.

Spoon souffle mix evenly into grapefruit halves, filling until level with the top.

Place halves on a baking tray and bake in a 360F oven for 15 minutes, or until puffed and the tops are brown.

Serve with a dusting of icing sugar. If you're making these ahead, cool to room temperature and then refrigerate inside a plastic container large enough to accommodate the souffles without touching the tops. Reheat them in a 360F oven for 8-12 minutes, until they have re-puffed, before serving.

Each of these souffles is: 100 cal, 0.2 grams fat and 2 WW points

Do the Mashed Potato

"What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow." A. A. Milne (1882-1956)

Ask a roomful of cooks how to make perfect mashed potatoes and the answers are all over the map. It seems everyone’s got their favourite one or two methods for this ubiquitous side dish. Having grown up on the Canadian Prairies in a mixed German and Ukrainian household, I can’t honestly think of another side dish that has graced my table more frequently. I imagine a warm bowl of mash got plenty of our early settler forebears through a bitter Prairie winter in a drafty sod house.

To be fair to the humble mashed potato, its allure must be stronger than just a biological need for sustenance. Even though we now live in big glass towers and have more money than ever with which to house and feed ourselves, mash still appears everywhere. It’s tasty and hearty and pretty darn easy to whip up. It’s dead easy to tart up by adding a few exotic-sounding ingredients.

Scientifically speaking, (inasmuch as my lifelong study of mashed potatoes can really be said to be scientific) there are really only 4 variables in the mashed potato equation: Potato, Fixin's, Method and Equipment. And everybody’s got an opinion on their correct combination.

The Humble Potato
There are definitely varieties of potatoes that work better for mashing and those that work best for baking or boiling. The selection within the "good for mashing" group is pretty impressive: Yukon Gold, Blue, Russet, Bintje, Sebago, Idaho White, Kennebec, plus heaps more are claimed by all and sundry to be good mashers. My personal favourites are Yukon Gold and All Blues. More on that later.

Fixins
"Fixins" is the variable that probably bears the most responsibility for the evolution of mash over the years, from a simple farmhouse staple, to something just as at home in a fancy-pants restaurant, as say, crispy fried leek stacks. It's also the place to have the most fun! You can produce a classic and always tasty mash just using a little butter, milk and salt and pepper, or you can go a little farther out with buttermilk or sour cream and garlic, or parsley and cream cheese. Go wayyyyy out an add brie or fontina instead of cream and butter. Get low fat by using chicken broth in place of milk and butter. Go a little Mardi Gras by adding New Orleans Olive Salad! Some people add raw eggs or mustard. The sky really is the limit.

Method to the Madness?
Do you leave the skins on or do you peel your spuds? Do you microwave or boil or bake? All these are options. Personally, I’m a boiler but not a peeler, especially if the potatoes are new with lovely thin skins. If I’m in a hurry, I’ve even been know to use the microwave. But more likely, I’ll just cube the potatoes quite small so they boil faster.

I’ve heard tell of all sorts of mashed potato method madness out there. Some of the “secret to the best mashed potatoes” claims I’ve come across are:

• adding cold milk will “seize” your potaoes. For fluffier potatoes add warm milk;
• the secret to light and fluffy mashed potatoes is to let the steam escape for 15 minutes after the potatoes are cooked and before mashing them;
• whip Yukon Golds in a Kitchenaid with a whisk attachment and put it on 6-8 for 10-15 minutes.

Equipment
Some people swear by a ricer. My mother used to use electric beaters. I swear by my good old-fashioned coil masher – the $26 fancy-pants one with the little holes in an oval of stainless steel doesn’t work worth a crap. The key is, whatever the implement you use, mash swiftly and under no circumstances over-mash. A few too many passes with the masher and your beautiful potatoes will end up gluey and sticky and gross instead of fluffy. Very breifly, this is because potatoes are made up of little sacs of starch - if you break the little sacs then the starch leaks out and gets all sticky and sugary. That’s why I tend to eschew my mother’s electric beaters – too great a risk of over mashing, although she always seemed to get it right.

The recipe test

Parmesan, Garlic and Green Onion: I added about 1/2 cup good grated reggiano, 1/4 cup sliced green onion and 2 clovesd mashed garlic to a 2 cups of mash - this worked really well with the Fingerlings. Was just the thing for settin' beside a grilled chicken breast.

Green Olive and Hot Pepper: I added a 1/2 cup finely chopped green olive and a tiny teaspoon of minced hot red (thai) pepper to 2 cups of mashed Yukon Golds (along wqith butter, salt, pepper and milk). It was amazing with some rich smoked turkey breast. Would be out of this world with a nice grilled rare steak.

Blue Cheese and Parsley: I added 1/4 cup crumbled bleu de bresse and 1/2 cup chopped Italian parsely to 2 cups mashed All Blues (along with butter, salt, pepper and sour cream)- amazing!

• Laying a potato peel at the door of a girl on May Day showed her that you disliked her.
• If a woman is expecting a baby, she should not eat potatoes because the baby will be born with a big head.
• A potato in your pocket will cure rheumatism and eczema.
• If you have a wart, rub it with a cut potato, then bury the potato in the ground. As the potato rots in the ground, your wart will disappear.
• Treat facial blemishes by washing you face daily with cool potato juice.
• Treat frostbite or sunburn by applying raw grated potato or potato juice to the affected area.
• Help a toothache by carrying a potato in your pocket.
• Ease a sore throat by putting a slice of baked potato in a stocking and tying it around your throat.
• Ease aches and pains by rubbing the affected area with the water potatoes have been boiled in.