Winter Squash Muffins

In a continuing effort to use all the winter squash we have been receiving in our CSA (this was the last week of the CSA and there are currently five acorn and one buttercup squash sitting on our counter) I decided to make some muffins.  I settled on this recipe but used a buttercup squash instead of a butternut (in my opinion all the winter squash tastes pretty similar).

The muffins were good but a little on the small side to be filling by themselves for breakfast.  If I make them again I would increase the recipe by 1.5 times to fill the muffin tins higher and still only make twelve muffins.  Also the addition of some walnuts and/or wheat bran might be nice as well.

Baked squash out of the oven getting ready to be pureed

Dry ingredients

I made twelve but had to taste one right away

Fondue

For some reason that I can no longer remember, LJ got it in her head that we needed to make fondue for the Superbowl.  I'm not sure she knew who was playing in the game, and we weren't planning on having anyone over to watch it (I'm not sure how many people would have enjoyed crowding around our laptop watching the NBCsports.com streaming feed) but who was I to pass up fondue.

I think part of the inspiration for making the fondue was that we had a bottle of hard cider available and LJ was aware of this recipe that called for cider in fondue making.  The process for making the fondue was simple and straight forward.  My only complaint with the recipe was the addition of the curry powder to the fondue.  We found the flavor of curry overwhelming and wouldn't add any in the future so that the flavor of the cheese could come through.

I baked up a few loaves of bread and LJ chopped some veggies and we were able to tear through the whole batch before halftime.

It really did not make very much

Garlic Lentil Soup

In honor of Valentine's Day I decided to post one of LJ's favorite meals.  The recipe comes from one of our go to soup books and you can find the recipe online here.

This soup takes almost no work, other than the chopping of the carrots, onions, and garlic.  We have found the recipe to require more liquid than is originally called for and also it cooks in much less time (you can eat it within about 30 minutes of it simmering).  The soup itself isn't that different than dal, only a little thinner and with a few different spices.  It is really wonderful with some nice crusty bread.

When we originally tried this soup a number of years ago we both though it pretty excellent.  I've gotten a little tired of it because we ate it so regularly at first but after taking a break from it for a year or so I've gotten back on the horse.  LJ loves when I make a big batch which provides her lunches for the rest of the week.

Mac and Cheese

Dear valued blog reader, I apologize for my unannounced hiatus last week.  Life intervened in the form of a few employment opportunities that deserved following up on, and though I don't think I am much closer to landing work, it was a worthwhile exercise in the interview process.  I promise to renew my attention to this blog and will do my best to coax a few more posts out of LJ as well.

Speaking of LJ, if there is one food that she could gorge herself on until she became sick, that food would be cheese.  Specifically Tillamook cheddar.  We have visited mecca on a few occasions and for her it is like Christmas, her birthday, and the Superbowl all rolled in to one.  For this reason I have been working to find the best homemade Mac and Cheese recipe in existence and I feel like I am finally getting close.  Don't get me wrong, LJ isn't all that picky when it comes to eating Mac and Cheese.  In college it wasn't uncommon to find six or eight boxes of Shells and Cheese in her pantry.

When trying to make Mac and Cheese over the past few years I've run in to a number of challenges.  Some recipes were too gooey, some too dry, others too stringy, or not flavorful enough.  I had all but given up until I stumbled across the Fannie Farmers Classic Baked Macaroni and Cheese recipe.  With over 500 reviews and averaging better than 4.5 stars it seemed like a recipe worth trying.

From my own experience I knew I preferred a baked dish versus only making a cheese sauce to coat the noodles.  I modified the recipe slightly to add onions and garlic to the beginning of the cooking process and  I used extra sharp cheddar to increase the flavor. The results were pretty spectacular, though also a little artery clogging.  Definitely worth making though in the middle of winter if you are looking for a little comfort food.

Not too many ingredients needed.  It does help to shred the cheese finely

Making the rue

Seasoning

Cooked and strained noodles

Added the liquid

Added the cheese to complete the sauce

Noodles and sauce covered with breadcrumbs before going in to the oven

Golden breadcrumbs add a nice texture

Sandwich bread

I've made a lot of bread over the last few years and I can say with confidence that this is the best sandwich loaf recipe I have found.  For those of you who are serious about eating excellent sandwich bread (if you refuse to buy anything other than Dave's Killer Bread you fall in to this category) I strongly encourage you to give this recipe a shot.

I got the recipe from The Bread Bible but you can also find it online here.  The difference between this recipe and most other recipes is the addition of bulgur wheat to the dough.  To cook the bulgur before you add it to the dough you soak it in boiling water until all the water is absorbed (about an hour) so that it goes from hard and crunchy to soft and chewy.  The flavor and texture that the bulgur adds to the bread is completely worth the extra step.  Bulgur wheat is relatively inexpensive and can be found in the bulk section of most good grocery stores (if you shop in a grocery store without a good bulk section, you have my deepest sympathies).

I've found the recipe (as with most recipes in The Bread Bible) to be a little overly complicated.  I know the author is working to create the most flavorful bread possible, but often it seems like extra steps are added that aren't completely necessary for achieving quality results.  When I make this bread I omit the second rising/shaping step which cuts approximately an hour off the process.  After mixing all the ingredients together and letting the bread go through its first full rise, I divide the dough (I always make a double batch to create two loaves), shape it and put it directly in to the loaf pans for a final rise.  By doing this I find that the final rise happens more quickly as well.

My only other piece of advise when following this recipe is that when making a double batch the ingredients can cause the standard Kitchen Aid mixer to overflow (as you can see from the photos below of the kneading process).  As long as you mix the ingredients together slowly at first, you should be able to incorporate everything without causing too big of a mess in the kitchen.

Lastly, slicing the bread in to even slices does take a little bit of practice.  I use to always ask LJ to slice the loaves once they had cooled because she has a much more stead hand than I do.  After slicing a few loaves myself, I've been able to create uniform slices with only a bread knife, though I have considered creating a jig to make the process easier.

The flour mixture covering the sponge

Dry bulgur

Soaking bulgur

Sponge bubbling through

Cooked bulgur is added

Slowly mixing everything together

The dough trying to escape during the kneading process

First rising

Split the dough after the first rising

Shaped dough in loaf pans for second rising

Finished rising

Slashed loaves going in to the oven

Finished product

Winter Squash Bars

I feel like I may have been a little too hard on winter squash in a few of my previous posts (here and here).  At the time of writing those I had begun to feel overwhelmed by the onslaught of squash that was arriving in our weekly CSA share.  When you choose to participate in a CSA you give up control of a little of your grocery shopping in exchange for supporting small scale agriculture and eating more locally.  However when you receive unfamiliar ingredients nearly every week, even the most liberal supporter can start to wear down.

Up until this fall I had only cooked winter squash a handful of times in my life (the occasional experiment with spaghetti or baked squash dishes).  Since I had begun to get sick of all forms of squash, and knowing that we still had a month left in our CSA share, I made the decision to rededicate myself to getting satisfaction out of the squash.

After a little bit of Googling and pondering, I decided desserts and baked goods was the direction to head in with the squash.  LJ and I don't make desserts often because when they are in the house we devour them without abandon until they are gone.  We have found the only way we can maintain some semblance of self control is by doing our best to refrain from buying sweets to keep in the pantry or fridge.  To redeem the winter squash piling up on our counter I would have to lift our self imposed ban on desserts.

I settled on making these Pumpkin (Winter Squash) bars after reading that the author's child refers to them as "cake" which made me feel confident that LJ and I would enjoy this rendition of squash.  The recipe couldn't be more simple.  The only change I made was out of necessity since we do not own a jelly roll pan.  I used a glass 9 x 13 pan and baked the bars a little longer than the original recipe called for.

The tray of bars didn't last long, which was a delicious reminder of why we don't keep sweets on hand.

Pre adding of the squash

Post adding of the roasted squash

Dry ingredients

Finished bars

Hamburger buns

As a person who prides himself on my baking ability I always feel shameful when I am forced to purchased baked goods.  I feel that with a little additional planning the situation could have been avoided.

It isn't a coincidence that I have similar feelings about cellphones.  It seems to me that 95% of phone calls could be avoided if people made better plans in advance.  I realize the counter argument is, "How would you make the plans in the first place without the ability to talk on the phone?" to which my counter counter argument would be "That is what e-mail and Facebook are for and they don't cost me a dime." I realize by being one of the last holdouts without a cellphone I am becoming an inconvenience to everyone else.  I apologize in advance.  <end rant>

One of the biggest sources of angst when purchasing bread products comes from hamburger buns.  When I purchase them I rarely ever need a package of eight since it is just LJ and myself.  Every couple of months when I clean out the freezer I find a partially used bag of buns buried in the back.

Buns seem like they would be difficult to make because of their unique shape which was one of the main reasons I had avoided making them for so long.  Also the recipes online vary greatly in ingredients and approaches so I was unsure on which direction to go in.  After a lot of searching I finally settled on this recipe, partially because of the glowing reviews online and partially because the author sounded like they had put in some extensive research in trial and error to make the perfect bun.  I also felt confident since the recipe was based off a NY Times recipe where a lot of effort goes in to finding the best recipes.

I made half a batch and found the recipe easy to use.  I skipped the sesame seeds since we didn't have any on hand but that was the only change to the recipe that I made.  In the final shaping process, after creating the four balls, I pressed them down to make them a more flatten shaped which wasn't explicitly stated in the recipe but made sense for what the final product should look like.

These buns made for the greatest hamburger I've ever made.  To be fair though it wasn't just the buns.  I was using grass fed ground beef from Colvin Ranch which provided absolutely astonishing flavor.  The first time we made burgers using these buns and the beef from Colvin Ranch I included bacon and grilled leeks.  When I made burgers the following week again using the same buns and meat the burger only had cheese, mustard and ketchup and it was even better.  This may be the first time in the history of my palate that I would say something was better without bacon.  That is how good this bun and meat combo are.  You have been warned.