Spaghetti Squash Parmesan Casserole (Easy)

I just ate the leftovers of this -- tasty.  Whenever I cook spaghetti squash, it seems like a single squash makes too much.  Usually I serve it tossed with marinara sauce but we never make it through all the leftovers, so this made sense as a way to freeze half the squash and use it up later in a slightly different format.  I think next time I'll make the casserole and freeze that since it uses similar ingredients to how I usually serve the squash anyway.

Ingredients (approx):

• 2 c. spaghetti squash, prepared. (Mine was frozen and thawed... I included all the juices.)
• Handful of dried pasta (Maybe 1/2 cup?  I used some leftover egg noodles.)
• Half a jar of tomato/basil marinara (Mine was Trader Joe's organic marinara, but I'm sure any sauce you enjoy is fine.)
• 1 tsp. granulated garlic
• 1 c. shredded mozzarella.
• 1/3-1/2 c. grated parmesan (I just used the good ol' green shaker variety... but go ahead and get fancy.)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 350
• Spread spaghetti squash in bottom of medium casserole pan (I have a sort of 6x9 Pyrex oblong that I use). You could butter or spray the pan first.  I don't think I did.
• Place individual dry noodles throughout the casserole.  Press them into the squash to soak up juices. (I did this because my squash looked really watery.  If yours if pretty dry, this might not work out.)
• Sprinkle granulated garlic around the squash.  Salt and pepper the squash to taste.
• Pour the marinara over the squash.  Spread around fairly evenly.
• Sprinkle the mozarella over the sauce.
• Sprinkle the parmesan over that.
• Cover with foil and bake until really bubbly.  Mine looked pretty sloppy/juicy.
• Remove foil.  Bake until cheese looks a little toasty/ yummy.
• Maybe 30 minutes total in the oven (?)

The casserole sort of congealed as it cooled a little.  It cut into portions with somewhat the consistency of lasagna.  

This dish was hearty enough for a lunch entree or a light dinner.  I enjoyed it more than my kids, but we all ate it!  

Butternut Squash Soup

One of my weapons for the soup coup.

As always, amounts are approximate and variable.

1 huge butternut squash (3 lb?  More?)

1 1/2 med onion

6 cloves garlic

2 carrots

5 ribs celery

1 1/2 qt. homemade vegetable stock (just because that's how much I had)

3 bay leaves

1 cinnamon stick

grated nutmeg (fresh)

dried ginger (1/2 tsp?)

dried thyme leaves (1/2 tsp?)

dried sage (1 tsp?)

dried marjoram (1/2 tsp?)

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tbsp brown sugar

olive oil

salt

pepper

I started the pot with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and the garlic cloves, whole (crushed would work, too.) 

Chopped and threw in the onions, carrots, celery and let them sautee as I added each ingredient.

Added salt and a little pepper.

Poured the vegetable stock over it.  

Added the bay leaves, cinnamon stick and other herbs/spices.

Chopped and added the butternut squash (peeled first, and cleaned out the seeds & membrane w/ large spoon.  Chopped about 1" cubes more or less)
Added enough water to cover

Added the brown sugar, more salt and a little more pepper (don't go too crazy with the black pepper).

Let it cook for close to an hour.

Removed cinnamon stick and bay leaves.

Used the immersion blender to mix it up.  Left a few chunks.

Served with a little drizzle of olive oil.

Probably a dollop of plain yogurt or sour cream, or some sharp cheese might go well on top, too.

Soup Coup

"A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting."

       Abraham Maslow

I am staging a soup coup.

I am going to take over the world with soup.

Jesus Christ has a mythic and metaphorical corner on the loaves and fishes market, but my vehicle will be soup.

Here's why soup will conquer evil and create world peace:

1. Soup is good food.

It tastes good.  It is nutritious.  With soup, you can have all four food groups in one pot.  Unless you are making cheese soup or a fancy-schmancy cream soup, it's probably pretty lean, too.

2. Soup is diplomatic.

It's hard to shove yourself away from the table in rage when you are eating soup.  You have to take care.  Unlike steak, grilled cheese or Chocodiles, you can't shove soup in your mouth and chew angrily. And you can't yell at anyone through a mouth full of soup, so you must listen.  First I talk and you eat and listen.  Then I'll eat and you talk and I'll listen.

Soup is disarming, which you already know if you've ever read the children's story Stone Soup.

3. Soup is loving.

A big pot of soup is meant to share. Feed your friends soup and see what happens.  My friend Heather makes her Love Soup if she loves you.  I've decided I'm making vegetarian pho when I want to show my students or friends I care. I hope you have or had a mother who made you homemade soup when you were sick or sad.

And soup leads to bread.  Sharing soup and bread is nourishing for friendships, for our children and for our own souls.

Soup can even be seductive.  If my man makes me soup, he is likely to get some appreciation from me at some point in the future.  He has only done this... maybe twice in our marriage.  But it was hot.  Sometimes I fantasize about him making me soup.  It's a lovely dream.

4.  Soup reduces waste.

Soup reduces food waste. America wastes anywhere from 40-50% of our food supply. Make stock from leftovers stashed in your freezer.  Show a bit of restraint, though (asparagus trimmings aren't good in pho broth, I discovered.)  As a rule, I don't go shopping for many soups I make unless it is a special occasion. Mostly I make soup when I have a bunch of scraps saved up in the freezer and some other veggies to use up.  Here's a recent article on food waste, an issue which seems to be getting some needed press lately.

Fresh produce doesn't come individually wrapped.  Homemade stock doesn't come in shelf-stable packaging. Soup can take advantage of seasonal, local produce. Soup reduces other kinds of waste as well.

5. Soup resists hierarchies and hegemony.

Nothing is more egalitarian than soup.  I suppose there are gourmet soups that are not, but most soups (and definitely the ones I make) are pretty basic food.  I hardly even use wine in them.  The basic flavors are onions, celery, carrots, bay, salt, pepper, garlic... for almost every soup. Nothing fancy, intimidating, holier-than-thou.  I sometimes use a prepared stock, but more and more I don't even do that.  Homemade soup, even gazpacho, rarely gives anyone any attitude.

Canned soups and prepared soup mixes are at the grocery store, but you don't need them to have plentiful and tasty soup.  You just need a little bit of time and practice.  Soup will take down corporate America. Soup is subversive.

6. Soup will be there in a recession.  

Schools may go without librarians and copy paper. Potholes may not be filled. But you can always find something with which to make soup.

7. Soup is forgiving.

It's hard to mess up soup too terribly.  Oversalting is probably the toughest problem, but then just add more water or some potatoes.

8. Soup will simplify your life.

A huge pot of soup, if you don't feed it to your friends, will store easily in fridge and freezer.  It freezes well in old yogurt containers, and heats up easily at work.  You can make a big pot of soup and enjoy it for several meals. And most soup recipes are low-maintenance:  chopping, seasoning and waiting.

9. Soup is meditation. 

Whether chopping vegetables or focusing on your soup spoon as it nears your mouth, soup slows you down, gives you time to think.  To work in the present, process the past, or plan the future.

"Beautiful soup, so rich and green

Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup! 
Beautiful soup! Who cares for fish
Game, or any other dish? 
Who would not give all else for two
Pennyworth of beautiful soup?"

Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice in Wonderland’

Caprese Bites

I don't think this quite counts as cooking, but I'm charmed every time I make these. And they'll look so cute for our department pot luck today. Yay.

Pho Failure

We must be allowed the freedom to fail, yes?  That's the adventure in life.

Recent pho cookery learnings:

Rule 1:  Don't try to make semi-vegetarian pho by making a homemade vegetable stock using a completely indiscriminate combination of vegetable scraps you've been stashing away in your freezer as your wise father has taught you to do as an exercise in both economy and deliciousness.

Leftover parings of fennel and asparagus might make delicious vegetable soup, but combined with the cinnamon, anise, cloves and ginger of pho broth, the combination is fairly weird...  kind of like artichoke flavored mulled cider.  Blech.  It can be overcome with lots of lime, herbs, and other goodies as garnishes, but not the best move. [p.s. using the whole spices was really fun for a change.]

Rule 2:  When your husband has two fingers on each hand, do him a favor and chop the garnishes smaller so he can scoop them up with a big soup spoon.

I personally enjoy the big sprigs of cilantro and using chopsticks to pick through the tangled mess of snappy bean sprouts, noodles and large torn leaves of basil, but it's not a sportsmanlike offering if my life partner has to pick up a spoon to sip the broth, and put that down and pick up a fork to get the goodies.  Too complicated.

Rule 3:  Make sure the noodles, tofu and cabbage/bok choy are warmed up before putting the broth on them.  Otherwise the broth is too cooled to wilt the herbs and everything is really crunchy.  Still good, but tougher.

Rule 4: If you put a couple of slices of jalapeno in your broth to lend spiciness, don't forget they're there and go to drink the rest of the broth out of the bowl and take them into your mouth thinking they're cabbage, then chew thoughtfully on them until you wonder why the roof of your mouth is going numb.  Especially if it's hot jalapeno season.

Rule 5: It's okay to serve fortune cookies even though pho is Vietnamese food.  But only if you explain to your children that they were invented in California in a Chinatown and we're just being silly.

Turkey Carcass

I love turkey soup, but the experience of breaking down the carcass of a 23 pound turkey so that half of the remains will fit inside my inadequate stock pot is an exercise in coming face to face with one's own mortality.

The endless labyrinth of skin, roots of feathers remaining in the pimpled, fatty skin, layers of muscle, perimysium (ooh, new word), cartilage, tendon, bone... the popping of joints and the snapping separation of vertebrae.  The greasiness of it all.  Using my fingers to pick the meat, so we can consume it later.  This is enough to make turkey soup less appetizing.  All the parts of the turkey:  drumstick, wing, thigh, and breast-- they all become unrecognizable as I become more and more disoriented by the insides of the bird and as, part by part, they disappear into the pot.  The bones in the wing are impossibly large-- the size of three or four chicken drumsticks, and I find myself both awed and disgusted by modern farming methods.   I turn what is left of this creature over and over on the cutting board, trying to figure where there might be another deposit of meat I may have missed.  And, sure enough, I keep finding more.  We can easily eat for a week off this thing, and my cousin took home at least three pounds of meat on Thanksgiving.

About half the bird is now dismantled in the pot on the heat.  The rest will go into the freezer for the next batch.  I can only hope that if I can keep the stock clear, spoon off the fat, and create small enough morsels of meat that by the time I eat the soup my imagination will have separated itself from this gruesome process.  Perhaps a squeeze of lemon and several handsful of fresh parsley will help.

Random Dickinson Inspiration:

Soup is the Thing with feathers
In storage in the fridge
With most of the feathers Plucked
And greasy pimpled skin

It sat-- once--in Confinement
Ate steroid-soaked grain all day
And never stopped to Thank--
For its bounty in its Breast

Its heft weighs on Extremities
Unconscious-- to the pot
to Feed the family for a year
Consumed-- consumed-- we eat.

Banana Lime Sorbet

Here is a fantastic little recipe I invented this summer when I wanted something cool and sweet.  I was inspired by Alton Brown's show Good Eats in which he talks about using avocado in ice cream because you can use less sugar, since avocado is a natural emulsifier.  He mentioned that bananas were similar, and I had been meaning to test the theory since then.

This sorbet is even more fantastic with a shot of tequila over the top.  Ay, ay, ay!

I used our small Krups ice cream mixer-- the one where you freeze the bowl in the freezer and then the motor mounts on top.  It worked great for this purpose and this small batch.
As always, amounts are approximate!

Ingredients:
5 ripe bananas
1 c. simple syrup
lime zest finely ground/chopped
lime juice (1 or two limes total for zest and juice—4 tablespoons of juice?)

Blend all ingredients in blender until smooth.

Freeze in ice cream mixer.

Adult Slushie:
Add a scoop of the sorbet, squeeze of lime and tequila in a cup and eat!

Additional note (Summer, 2012):  I tried making this recipe as a granita by pouring it into a shallow pan and putting it in the freezer, and scraping it every 40 minutes or so.  It worked great and tasted great.   Also worth noting, the color of this can be off-putting.  It's the color of ripe banana flesh, of course, an unappetizing sort of pukey taupe.  Sorry.  There's nothing I can really figure out to do about that.  If you have any ideas, let me know.  Otherwise, it is a really great way to use up ripe bananas.

Chile Lime Pork Tenderloin

Here is a recipe I made over the summer that turned out quite tasty.  As in all my recipes, amounts are approximate!  Make with Love, and ENJOY!

Ingredients:
3-4 pounds pork tenderloin, silverskin removed.
¼ cup mild red chile, ground (New Mexico)
2 tablespoons cumin
1/2 -1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
1 tablespoon garlic powder (or to taste)
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. salt
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1-2 teaspoons liquid smoke
4-5 chopped scallions
zest of three limes, in larger pieces.
juice of three limes (1/4 cup? More would be okay.)
¾ of a Corona beer (drink the rest)

Mix everything but the meat in a gallon sized Ziploc bag. Squish to mix ingredients and dissolve the honey.

Add meat to the bag and seal, pressing out as much air as possible. Squish the meat and marinade around gently to evenly distribute the marinade.  Place bag in a 9x9 square baking dish or similar dish or tray to prevent spills if there is leakage.

Marinate for at least 4 hours in the refrigerator; more would be better.

Before grilling, pat meat dry with towels. remove most big chunks of scallion and lime zest. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.  Grill over coals until it reaches a safe internal temperature (I stopped at 145 degrees) & allow to rest before slicing.

Good accompaniment: grilled vegetable skewers.