Jenmenke

Road Warrior

squash

Meatless Monday 43

Disasterpiece Theater. Come along for the ride.

It started out innocently enough:

I found a recipe in an old cookbook of mine called “Simply Tuscan” for Butternut Squash Soup (I know, I know. I said I would not succumb to the temptation of making butternut soup ever again. But this was was different. I swear) with Kale and Farro.

I didn’t have any farro. I did have a big bag of millet that I’ve had for, oh… I don’t know, two years? Three years? I really need to use up this damn millet! When I googled “farro substitutes” I learned that barley is the best thing to use.

I did have barley… but I had just used a boatload of barley last week! I wanted to use the millet. And millet, I did.

I was bubbling with confidence, coming off two recent “winging-it” home runs. The kale soup from last week was AMAZING and this would be TOO!

It was simple to throw together and I left it to simmer on the stove for 40 minutes…

…while I took the wild indians for a walk in the deep snow to wear them out.

When I came back in the house, it smelled WONDERFUL!

“Hopefully,” I thought to myself, “There will be enough to bring to the family from church that I am signed up to make dinner for tomorrow.”

Oh, there was enough alright.

The millet had expanded like little pellets of popcorn, pushing the lid of the Le Cruset pan ajar. (The photo above is only after I cleaned up the mess.)

Undaunted, I transferred the bulk of it to a larger pot and a different, unblemished burner, and added more water. More seasoning. More water…

Lots more water.

I now had used over 16 cups of water spanning two large soup pots. If there was fear I wouldn’t have enough to share, those fears were now extinguished.

The problem was, it just wasn’t all that good.

So I figured I would puree at least some of it. You know, to give it the unctuous, silky texture.

In my mind, it was to be a pale, creamy yellow from the squash and potatoes. Not pea green.

Good Lord.

Back to plan A.

Dave wasn’t home and Charlie was at Robotics class, so I decided to have some fun with Morgan and promptly called her down to dinner. Here you go, hon:

If that was tomatillo salsa, I’d be all over it. But it isn’t.

She never believed me for a second. She’s just no fun anymore. I’m going to have to adopt some new, naive kids so I can have some real fun again.

After she rolled her eyes at me and headed back upstairs to spend some more time with the straightening iron, I sat down to my Plan A bowl, thoughtfully ladled into the ugliest bowl I own.

And, I made a decision.

I, Jennie Menke, would throw this abomination away. Yes. You heard me right. I am going to throw it away!

And I did. All 20 pounds of it.

I have never done anything like that before.

And that is how my kid’s ended up eating at my least favorite fast food restaurant:

While I contemplated this:

Some more of this:

While cleaning this:

Millet, we shall meet again.

(But maybe not for another couple years. After I have my strength back.)

Meatless Monday 42

Fall Barley Risotto

Mmmm. I did it! I finally made a winner. Here’s the thing. In busy times, I tend to do some version of the following for dinner:

  • around 3:30pm when the kids get home, and having lost all track of time, I get up from my computer and look in the freezer
  • I take something out and plop in in a bowl of water to defrost
  • then I forget about it until…
  • somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 pm when one of the kids needs to be somewhere: band, soccer, robotics, yearbook…
  • at which point I usually tell Charlie to have a bowl of cereal, or
  • tell Morgan to stop eating ice cream (or macaroni and cheese or some other large dinner-type substitute)
  • then, I start driving
  • when I return around 8pm, I
  • quickly and randomly throw something together from the defrosted item in the sink and anything I can find in my fridge

It doesn’t leave a lot of room for recipe research. I does leave a lot of room for improvement.

Maybe I have been made delusional from watching Top Chef to think that I, too, can throw some interesting ingredients and flavors together to create a harmonious and delicious meal in 40 minutes or less.

Yes, delusional.

Because it hardly ever works when I wing it. But there is always the exception. And Meatless Monday 42 is just that. The bummer, of course, is that I don’t document anything. I might take one picture and then as the cooking spirals downward, I stop. I mostly laugh.

And drink red wine.

So, I can’t really relate this recipe to you verbatim. But I can tell you the basic outline and structure of the dish. It certainly wouldn’t suffer from variations in ingredients or quantities. The fact that it is a barley risotto, rather than a traditional rice risotto, is simply because after having set my sights on squash risotto, I found I did not have enough rice to make it. Nothing new there. But I did have enough pearled barley. I had tried making a barley risotto sometime last year that was rather disastrous, but I did not let that distract me! Ed on Top Chef made a risotto out of corn! So there!

Here is a comparison of the grains. As you can see, they are somewhat similar. But guess what? Pearled barley (and squash, for that matter) takes over an hour to cook! I didn’t have an hour! (It was already 8 pm at this point, mind you.) So I got out the pressure cooker and dumped the barley in with water (about 2 cups more than the basic recipe on the package called for), a bit of wine and plenty of salt and got it cooking while I put two sweet potatoes in the oven at 425 and sauteed some shallots.

In my brain stem, I felt a familiar stirring: I think I have actually heard of a risotto made entirely in the pressure cooker. Anyone else know of something like that? I know I’ve never tried it, but based on how the barley turned out, I can certainly see promise in concept. The barley was perfect, and the water had turned somewhat risotto-ish — as if I had been stirring it all along.

Anyway, I used water for the broth, rather than stock, because sweet potatoes (or squash) are rich enough. To the sauteed shallots I added a couple of cloves of garlic, then the 1/2 cup of risotto rice I had left in the container. Next, I added about 1/3 cup of white wine, stirring all the while as I normally would with risotto. When the barley was done (after about 15 minutes), I dumped half of it (I froze the other half. Do you have any idea how much two cups of dried barley actually makes? It’s INSANE!) along with it’s cooking liquid into the pot and simmered it with some slivered sage leaves.

When the sweet potatoes were done, I added those to pot, gently stirring to break them up. When everything was cooked to al dente — and barley is very forgiving in this respect, I added about 1/2 cup of finely shredded pecorino and garnished each bowl with a little more. The main spice I used was sage, but in retrospect I would choose rosemary. For whatever reason — and I normally LOVE sage — on this particular night the smell reminded me of cat pee. It seriously bummed me out.

I would also probably choose butternut squash over sweet potato if given enough time to roast it. The sweet potato was good — and very similar to squash — but had a vibrant, Tang-like color that wasn’t all that appealing. I continued to add more pecorino romano, which I have come to love more than aged parmesan, probably because I am cheap. But I really do love the flavor. It’s not quite as strong or sharp. Or something.

Of course the next day NOT being Meatless Monday, I added one small, but spectacular, topping for my lunch: Leftover pot roast!!

Sacrilege!

The Great Pumpkin

…Or Not.

Remember my nail biting back in late June about whether or not I’d get pumpkins grown in time this year due to my late planting date of June 28th?

Well, thanks –I think– to the hot summer and an unusually late first frost, I did!

I had a few surprises though. This was one of them:

To my knowledge, I did not plant any cantaloupe. I thought I had planted Cinderella pumpkins but never got any of those. It’s pretty hard to mistake thin and whimpy cantaloupe seeds for massive Rouge vif d’ Etampes seeds — the proper name for the cinderella pumpkin, and my favorite — so that doesn’t really make sense. Who knows. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the cantaloupes until last week, since they were completely hidden from view until the frost, and all but one were overripe.

All was not lost, however. I did get enough pumpkins to decorate my front steps:

The regular pumpkins — with such cool stems this year — are just starting to turn orange. I like them when they are in that transition period. I wish they would stay this way.

This one is my favorite:

I also got enough butternut squash to keep me happy for a while.

I don’t know why, but the three summers prior to this one were horrible for butternut squash. I just couldn’t get them to germinate and when they finally did, where overtaken by the more vigorous pumpkins. So, I’m happy with this bunch.

We really only eat the butternut, though we could eat all of them, I think. Every year I vow to finally try one of the pale green “Sweetmeat” squash that I grow only because they are so pretty (the gray-green one in the the photos above). They are supposed to be delicious.

The problem is, I get very befuddled about what to do with giant squash. We tend to be a bit single-minded in our squash consumption (see favored recipe below). Like many other things in life I have vowed not to do and failed (plant corn, underplant/interplant chaos, swear at my kids), I have vowed not to fall prey to another squash soup recipe. I don’t know what it is, but I am drawn to the idea of squash soup. I make one every year and am always disappointed with the results.  So many of them have that sort of heavy cinnamon/clove combo that I don’t like all that much in anything but desserts. Others have curry or apple… which sounds good right now, but I know from experience I haven’t liked them.

And inevitably I’m left with gallons of the stuff that no one wants to eat.

Then I feel too guilty to just dump it, and end up eating it for lunch for the next week, freezing the rest, and eating that throughout the winter — vowing each time to never, ever make squash soup again.

Is it just me? All these food writers wax poetic about luscious, velvety squash soup and I end up feeling so inadequate…

Anyway, it’s hard to beat this Ina Garten original recipe for caramelized butternut squash. Try it and tell me it isn’t the best way you’ve ever had it:

Carmelized Butternut Squash (serves 4)

  • 1 butternut squash
  • 3T butter, melted
  • 1/8 cup brown sugar
  • 1t salt
  • 1t freshly ground pepper
  • sprinkling of cayenne (optional)

Preheat oven to 400. Cut off ends of squash, then peel with a vegetable peeler, making sure to get through to the deep orange of the squash (otherwise the outside is tough). Cut in half and remove seeds. Cut squash into  2″ cubes and place on a heavy baking sheet or large cast iron pan.

Stir together the melted butter, brown sugar, salt and pepper and pour over the squash, stirring to coat thoroughly with your hands. Spread in a single layer on the pan and roast for 45 to 55 minutes, until squash is tender and glaze begins to caramelize.

While roasting turn the squash with a spatula to ensure even browning. Serve hot.