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Guess what! Guess what! It is very easy to make your own butter. It even gets you a little bit of exercise and fills in that half hour you spend watching the Office very nicely. It is also very economical. We savor our buttermilk pancakes on Saturday mornings, but buying buttermilk and butter for it is several dollars more than buying cream and making your own butter and buttermilk with it. Here’s how it works:
Buy some heavy cream (we tried light cream last week out of curiosity and it was an absolute flop). Maplehoffe’s has nice cream at Central Market. Put the cream in a canning jar and seal the lid well. Shake it up for about half an hour. Greg shakes it fast and energetically, and I shake it evenly and slowly because I’m lazy, and both ways we still get butter. Eventually you will get a lump of butter swimming in your now-buttermilk.
Take the butter lump out. Put it in a cheesecloth or something similar, and rinse it a couple of times, squeezing it gently to get the buttermilk out of it — this helps it keep for longer. Greg’s method of rinsing it is pouring the buttermilk out of the jar and refilling it with cold water. He shakes it for a little while, then pours out the water and adds more water. He does this a few times until the water runs clear.
Add salt if you want your butter salted. We normally just leave it unsalted. Sodium control, right?
Then we use the buttermilk for delicious, delicious pancakes and put the butter on top (or use the butter in something even more amazing like making your own caramel candy?).
DuPont left a comment on my previous post. Yes, my dear 10 readers, DuPont. My political leanings aside, I published the comment so you can read that DuPont (the maker of Teflon) thinks that Teflon is perfectly safe. They even have a link to more information. As a further balancing opinion, here’s a brief snippet from the EPA about PFOA (Teflon includes this chemical, also known a C8). Oh, and here’s an interesting point from that page:
“EPA is taking action to help minimize the potential impact of PFOA on the environment. In January 2006, former EPA Administrator Johnson’s letter initiated the 2010/15 PFOA Stewardship Program, in which the eight major companies in the industry (including DuPont) committed voluntarily to reduce facility emissions and product content of PFOA and related chemicals on a global basis by 95 percent no later than 2010, and to work toward eliminating emissions and product content of these chemicals by 2015.”
I’ll let you make of those facts what you will. My own interpretation is that if it is perfectly safe, why is the EPA concerned and why would DuPont voluntarily remove it from the market? Of course, everyone who knows me knows that I am a hippie who wants to own a treadle-powered sewing machine in order to use less electricity and be able to make my own clothing from vintage fabrics. So I’m sure you’re not surprised that neither Wal-Mart nor DuPont top my list of favorite companies.
My real purpose in posting today is to tell you my hard-earned tip about cooking pumpkin soup in a pumpkin. Say you find a recipe online that tells you to cook soup in a pumpkin to wow your friends. Say they tell you to simply scrape the sides of the pumpkin while it’s cooking to get that delicious pumpkin flavor into the soup. Don’t believe them. There is no way you’re going to get enough pumpkin flavor into your soup that way. My tip? Add at least 2 cups of pumpkin puree to the soup independent of the shell. Really, cooking your soup in a pumpkin is a way to make it fancy, not a way to add flavor. I’ve tried at least twice now to make the scraping method work for me and it flops every time. This time, I tried with black bean pumpkin soup. It tasted like a nice black bean soup. But not very pumpkin-y.
Now, how do you make your own pumpkin puree?
1. Buy a neck pumpkin or two. My initial mistake was trying to use a jack-o-lantern type pumpkin (so much wasted effort!). I think we get about 4 c. of puree from one neck pumpkin.
2. Peel the neck pumpkins. Cut them into thick 1-2″ slices, removing the seeds and cutting off the stem ends.
3. Cook the slices in a 350 degree oven until they’re soft in the center when you stick a fork in them (1/2 hour? 45 minutes?).
4. Puree the cooked slices in your blender, adding a little bit of water if necessary. Freezing the puree in a tupperware container works perfectly well.
A few items of interest to the food-nerd out there:
1. Check at your local library to see if they have The French Chef on DVD. Ours had 1 season, and I am so loving it. Julia Child is weird, she’s charming — she’s enlightened me to the possibilities of lettuce and got me to craving crepes. She shows you how to roast a whole suckling pig (can you imagine if I were to make my guests eat a tiny pig today? And what would happen if I told them it was only 12 weeks old? And where would you find a whole suckling pig?). She shows you how to de-bone a whole duck. She uses lots of cream and butter and doesn’t worry about the calories. She says the wrong thing and corrects herself on screen. She loses dishes and drops things. She says you can make recipes any way you want once you know the basic idea. I am so nerding out over that. And I don’t even care if it’s too trendy to talk about loving Julia Child because of that movie or that guy in the Times or whatever — I want to own all the French Chef. The end.
2. Also, isn’t it cancer awareness month? This brings me to teflon or non-stick pans. Why would you want chemical coatings that flake off into your food when there are perfectly good alternatives? For instance, Greg got some hard anodized aluminum pans for his birthday. They make a perfect fried egg with a little olive oil and some good old fashioned paying-attention-to-how-hot-your-burner-is. And since a fried egg is the only thing you would ever need a nonstick pan for, you’ll never need a nonstick pan again. Pow! Instantly healthier lifestyle!
3. I often tweet what I eat. So if you are jonesing for a little mid-week food-nerding, you can go to twitter.com and search for tweetyourtummy. That’s me! But I am only in the middle of abandoning my former twitter name. So there is not much there yet. (Get it? Treatyourtummy? Tweetyourtummy? And I’m on Twitter? Oh, I kill myself.)
My co-workers and friends and I sometimes play the food game. If you could eat one food every day for the rest of you life, what would it be? Top answers have been pizza, crepes, omelettes, and soups (and pickles, but only on the assumption that you could actually sustain life on solely pickles). Inevitably, the reason for these choices is something along the lines of “you could add anything you want and have balanced meals with only that one dish.”
This makes me feel justified in being a one-dish cook. Secretly, it is everyone’s desire to only ever make one dish per dinner. Right?
It is definitely soup time around the Snader household. It might snow this weekend. It rained all day and was freezing. I actually caved and turned the heat up to 42 yesterday evening because I was afraid it might freeze in the night. I actually got excited to go to work because they have the heat turned up there.
The recipe that follows is just about a complete meal. Also delicious. And our very own invention. It’s a proud day. Should I put a copyright or something? Is the internet safe for our baby????? (just kidding.) Also, all the credit for this soup really ought to go to Greg. I just sort of nodded my head and promised to share it with posterity if it was good (it is). He was reading a book about gardening and how the “three sisters” (corn, squash, and beans) can be planted together. The corn forms a stake for the beans to climb and the squash shades the ground at the base of the corn, keeping it more moist. And he decided those three would make the most amazing soup. And they do. A very hearty, earthy soup perfect for a freezing rainy day.
Three Sisters Soup
1 chopped medium onion
1 lb. (approximately) butternut or other squash, peeled, seeds removed, and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 c. corn kernels
1 can black beans (while I have mastered the art of making broth ahead of time, I have never mastered the art of re-hydrating beans ahead of time, so canned it is.)
2.5 (or thereabouts) cups of vegetable stock
1.5 c. of milk (today we had cream on hand so I did 1 c. milk and 1/2 c. cream, which definitely added a little something-something)
1 small-ish bunch of fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
Melt a few tablespoons of butter in your big soup pot. Add the onion and cook slowly until translucent. Add the cubed butternut squash along and a little salt (not too much as your stock is probably already pretty salty). Cook covered for about 10 minutes until the squash releases its juices. Then add the stock, milk, and can of beans (drained — I won’t even go into why I’m specifying Greg =). Put the lid on and cook until the squash is very tender, about 20 minutes. Milk will make it boil over easier, so leave a gap in the lid.
In the meantime, preheat the broiler. Put the corn with a little bit of melted butter on a cookie sheet and stir to coat the kernels. Broil with the pan on the top rack for about 8 minutes. Stir it about halfway through the 8 minutes.
When the squash is tender, puree the soup in your blender. Add fresh chopped parsley. Serve with the toasted corn sprinkled on top.
We found it! We found salsify! To be quite fair, Greg found it at market on Friday after work before I got home. I will now share with you a weirdly flavorful soup. The roots themselves look (texture and color-wise) and smell essentially like potatoes. But when you cook them like this, I kind of get why they call it “oyster plant.”
Salsify Soup
5 salsify roots
1 c. water
3 c. milk
1 T. butter
1/8 t. pepper
1 t. salt
Scrape the roots and slice them into 1/4″ slices. Cook slowly in 1 c. water until tender, about 20 minutes. Add milk, butter, and seasoning. Bring to a boil. Serve with crackers (or in our case, bread crumbs).
Enjoy! It tastes a bit like oyster soup.
In other news, I’m in the midst of an artistic crisis. As in, getting up early only helped me to work for a week, and now I am back to my procrastinating ways. =(
Good morning! My Liz is coming by train today! so you can imagine that I did not really feel like food blogging. Also, it is cold today, so I wanted to finish my fingerless gloves rather than type. In any case, I bribed myself by watching The French Chef on PBS. Oh, Julia Child. She has a crazy voice, but it is a charming show. It makes me want to see Julie & Julia.
I made this for Greg’s birthday. Pretty darn delicious! If you can find wild rice, that is. All I could find were those weird prepared uncle ben’s rices, until I searched the very bottom shelf and found a tiny, 1/4 c. container. Grown in Wisconsin. Sigh. (But special occasions are for splurging, right?)
Wild Rice Salad with Walnut Oil and Lemon Dressing
1/4 c. uncooked wild rice.
1/3 c. uncooked brown short-grain rice
1 c. water
1 c. fresh or frozen green beans (I had frozen)
1/2 c. pine nutes
2 T. chopped fresh parsley
2 T. chopped fresh dill
about 1/2 a small onion, sauteed in butter
Rinse the wild rice thoroughly under running water. Cover with about 1 inch of water in a medium saucepan. Boil for 15 minutes. Cover and remove from heat. Set aside for 15 minutes. Drain the wild rice, rinse, and cover with water again. Cook uncovered until tender, about 30 minutes. You should have 1 c. cooked wild rice.
Meanwhile, combine the brown rice and the water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Cook until the water has been absorbed, about 30 minutes. Set aside for 10 minutes. You should have 1 c. cooked brown rice. Cook the green beans until just tender, about 5 minutes (I just defrosted my green beans, drained, and threw them in).
Mix the wild rice, brown rice, peas, nuts, and herbs together in a medium bowl. Add the dressing and gently toss salad. Chill before serving.
Walnut Oil and Lemon Dressing
2 T. walnut oil
2 T. lemon juice
2 T. water
1/2 t. salt
black pepper.
Combine all ingredients and shake well. Keeps in fridge for up to a week. Makes about 1/2 c.
This recipe, Cabbage and Apple Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing, comes from one of my favorite cookbooks of all time, “Ladle, Leaf, and Loaf.” Once upon a time it was a present from my family-in-law (was it my birthday last year?). Although it doesn’t specifically advertise that it is seasonal, many of its recipes are seasonally arranged and include seasonally-appropriate combinations (like cabbage and apples, rather than snap peas and salsify). It’s also got some unusual combos. Corn soup with avocado garnish? yogurt cheeses? seafood bisques? And it’s not going to be over your head if you’re a beginning cook. It’s very accessible. In any case, I highly recommend the book if you can get your hands on it. Hopefully this salad convinces you.
Cabbage and Apple Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing
2 c. bite-sized pieces of unpeeled tart apples (i.e. granny smith or cortland)
1 1/2 c. thinly sliced savoy cabbage
1 1/2 T lemon juice
1/4 c. unsalted roasted peanuts
Mix together apples and cabbage in a medium bowl. Toss with the lemon juice. Sprinkle with the peanuts. Add the dressing (below) and stir to coat the salad evenly. Serve at room temperature. Serves 6.
Spicy Peanut Dressing
1/4 c. nonfat buttermilk
3 T. unsalted, unsweetened peanut butter
1 T. lemon juice
1/2 t. honey
1/4 t. salt
1 1/2-inch-square piece of dried red chili, minced.
In a small bowl, mix together the buttermilk and peanut butter. Blend in the lemon juice and honey. Stir in the salt and chili. The dressing will keep refrigerated for up to 1 week. Makes about 1/2 c.
Well, try that out for an easy Monday meal for yourself! I’m actually looking forward to this Monday because Dear Husband is coming home from his weekend away. I never thought I’d say this, but the weekend was too quiet. (You’ll be proud Mom, this time I did not spend the weekend sleeping on the bathroom floor with the door locked as I did when you left me at home in high school. I slept on the couch, quite normally.)
Brr! The last day or so has been a small taste of winter emphasized by our new up-at-6a.m. regimen. Yesterday I woke up and it was 45 degrees. Needless to say this has thrown us into a tizzy of planning as we desperately need to figure out how to avoid $300 heating bills this time around. Our new secret plan? Keep the house at 45 degrees so the pipes don’t freeze, make heavy curtains for the windows and doorways and use a space heater to heat whatever room we plan to be in during the evenings. Yes? Anyone else have any genius anecdotal ways to beat the cold?
I have also been knitting a pair of fingerless gloves (one is done now! Thank you, youtube!). They are pretty rocking — I have ribbed them and cabled them and learned how to cast on 3 different ways and bind off in a scallop-y pattern and purl. Woot!
Oh wait, you want a recipe from me? Not a paean on how awesome fingerless gloves are for bloggers in cold houses?
Have I got the thing for you. Cream of Anything Soup. This is how we get around the difficulty of every recipe I grew up with (and every cookbook for a modern mother) calling for cream-of something soup. And it yields a soup surprisingly similar in texture and not too much more time-consuming.
Because canned cream-of soups stand for everything evil in convenience cooking. As do frozen pizzas, microwave dinners, and dehydrated soup mixes. And Uncle Ben’s rice. And boxed cake mixes.
Well, let’s not go down that list. Let’s just say we try to avoid canned cream-of soups for reasons of sodium and preservatives (and because, according to the NY Times online, you can eat anything as long as you are willing to cook it and you will avoid obesity!).
Cream of Chicken Soup
1 c. milk (I have recently fallen in love with whole milk, by the way. Mmmm. . . best calcium ever.)
2 c. chicken broth
1/3 c. flour
The secret to avoiding lumpy broths is to mix the flour into a cold liquid. Simple, yes? And yet I went so many years without knowing. So, heat your 2 c. of chicken broth on the stove and bring to a boil. Mix 1 c. milk and 1/3 c. flour in a separate bowl and then pour into the broth. Then turn down the heat and cook (stirring the whole time because milk burns easily) until thickened.
Cream of Anything Vegetable Soup
Essentially you can do the same thing for any variety of soup you can find in a can. Just substitute vegetable broth for chicken broth and add a cup of the veggie of your choice (and no it is not OK to buy cans of swanson broth. Make your own! It is not hard! I do it while I cook dinner the day before.):
For cream of broccoli soup, add a cup of broccoli to 2 c. vegetable broth and cook until the broccoli is cooked, then puree the mixture, add milk+flour and cook until thickened.
For cream of asparagus soup, do exactly the same thing but with asparagus.
For cream of celery soup, you face the difficult choice of using either celery or celery root to achieve your ends. I have not, in all honesty, used either, so try one and see how it works for you. The celery vendor at market has assiduously promised us celery root this week so we are planning to try them in mashed potatoes and in cream-of-celery soup.
Here is where I am a bad food blogger. I have not tried prepping a huge batch of any of these and freezing it (mainly because we just discovered how great this particular ratio of ingredients works last night — see? I did at least test several ways of making it before dumping it on you). But I’m thinking it would be fine. . . once upon a time my mom used to buy milk when it was on sale and freeze it (and the same with cheese). And I think she said that the higher fat content dairy products froze OK. Mom? Did I remember that right?
