Since fall is here, I decided that I was going to take my aforementioned vegetable swag and make some tasty soups.
First up was my vegetable cassoulet. The making was pretty uneventful, so here are some pretty pictures for you guys to look at.
Tastes fantastic, but I will warn you that you will most likely have some pretty gnarly gas a few hours after consuming. TOTALLY WORTH IT.
Add in some decent bread, a beer, and some Badger football, and you've got it made.
Tonight I was going to go to Zumba but decided to make butternut squash soup instead. It made sense at the time.
Things I've learned throughout the course of the night:
1. In a fight between a peeler and a butternut squash skin (rind?), the squash will piledrive the shit out of the peeler.
2. One should really not try to make soup that involves pureeing when one does not own a) a blender, b) an immersion blender, or c) a normal sized food processor. While it is possible to make soup in a two-cup mini-processor, I would not recommend it.
3. Mushing up cooked squash with your hands is supremely satisfying.
I found this recipe on Food and Wine. I really need to stop spending my free time on there because of two reasons. First, I spend way too much time pinning recipes (Pinterest is the new Facebook), and second, I get excited about these really involved recipes and spend way too much on ridiculous ingredients. I am a budding foodie on a budget. Le sigh.
Anywho, this piqued my interest because of the number of spices used and the fact that it involved goat cheese. Love goat cheese.
There was also an ingredient listed called "harissa" which is an African chile paste. Supposedly it's pretty easy to make yourself, but I lacked the motivation to find the correct types of chiles and then mush them up. I think you can also find it in the imported food aisle, but inertia had set in and I didn't want to go to the store. I used this instead; I may make a new label that says "Layman's Harissa."
So after cooking the squash with the onion and tomato paste and putting the first batch through the little food processor that could, I found huge chunks of squash still sitting in my puree. Which I could not get rid of no matter how long I held down the "fast" button. Smug bastards.
I got annoyed with trying to chase down and squish the chunks with the back of my spoon, so I got proactive and mushed up the cooked squash in the pot BEFORE I put it in the food processor. If you ever get the opportunity to be elbow deep in a squash pot squishing squash, do it. It's therapeutic. Also hot. Wait for the squash to cool sufficiently so that you don't burn the ever-lovin' bejeezus out of your fingers.
No pictures of that; the iPhone is not butternut squash-proof.
Add the cream and goat cheese...
And stir it in...
Soup!
Was that part of the Elder Swear?
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