Good evening, Kibitzers! Today there was indeed heavy rain, just as promised by the National Weather Service — a little over 2 inches, but it was patchy, so the rainy parts were pretty rainy. There was thunder and lightning and quite a lot of wind; not enough to be really damaging, just enough to knock over a few things and bring down a few small branches. I was wondering about the power, but so far, it’s stayed on. If I vanish suddenly, that’s probably why, but by now the big weather should be well east of here.
Anyway, I was casting about for something to tell you. (Sunday was a very nice meetup in New York City, and we are totally in the doghouse with navajo because we don’t have photos. We have photos of the food! Of course!!! It’s just, we were having a good time and no one thought to photograph the people. So I probably shouldn’t mention that.)
Oh! So, last week I did make a supper that turned out well — I can tell you about that.
Let me start by saying that, for this diary, I checked on the difference between “roasting” and “baking”, so I would not call it the wrong thing.
Roasting involves cooking foods that already have a solid structure before the cooking process begins (think: meat and vegetables). Baking involves foods that lack structure early on, then become solid and lose their "empty space" during the cooking (think: cakes and muffins).
This will be the last week of my local farm market (they open after Thanksgiving for a couple of weeks to sell Christmas trees and stuff, but this is it for fresh produce). So I’ve been buying a bunch of winter squashes. For some weird reason, one day I bought a big acorn squash.
Yeah, like about the size in that photo. Acorn squash are good for stuffing because the entire inside is hollow, instead of having a small cavity and a solid part, like butternut or its small offspring the "honeynut” squash. So I decided to roast the big squash, make a lot of stuffing, and end up with several portions from a single effort.
I roasted the squash empty so it would cook more quickly. I cut it in half, scooped out the pulp, and rubbed some softened butter on the inside and oil on the outside skin. If you do not do saturated fat, olive oil on the whole thing is perfectly good too. I set the oven at 425 and put the squash halves face down on the pan for the first maybe 20 minutes, and then flipped them over for maybe ten or fifteen minutes more. You can stick them with a knife to see if they're done, and they brown a little too. They look done when they’re done.
Meanwhile, I put a big handful of golden raisins, almost half a cup, in a glass measuring cup, covered them with water and microwaved until the water boiled, and then I let them sit there plumping while I did everything else.
I chopped up a Granny Smith apple, and sliced a sweet onion of about the same size. I sauteed these in a big pan in olive oil and a little hazelnut oil (the hazelnut oil just gives it a nice fragrance — walnut oil would too, but again, just olive oil is lovely.) If I’d had any working brain cells to speak of, I’d have toasted a handful of walnuts or maybe pine nuts in the pan first, but I didn't think to. I did season the apple/onion with black pepper, cinnamon, ground ginger, and dried sage. (I almost never salt anything, but normal people would probably like to add salt.)
While the apple and onion were cooking, I chopped up a package of chicken-apple sausage links, which are already fully cooked. I emptied the apple/onion mix into a bowl and browned the chopped sausage in the same pan. (You could do this with regular raw pork sausage, but you’d need to deal with the grease, not an issue with pre-cooked chicken sausage.) When that was done, I added back the apple/onion mixture, dried off the drained raisins and added them, and mixed it all up. And then, I drizzled just a little maple syrup on the whole thing and stirred it well.
By that time, the squash halves were cooling off. I cut the halves in half, put one in my bowl for supper and the others in containers, divided the stuffing among them, and there you are: autumn supper main course for one, for four days! (Or four for one day, or two for two days...) I am sure you could extend this with breadcrumbs or other grain if you wanted more stuffing volume. I was actually prepared to do that, but this was a surprisingly ample amount on its own. If I make it again, I’m bound to add some kind of nut (hmm, maybe chestnuts...)
So! Do you cook (or eat) anything particularly autumnal?
Note: I keep carrying these boxes forward, because fire relief is still pretty new and we all know Puerto Rico is in terrible shape and getting no help from this asshole racist somebody apparently voted for. By the time I finish writing a KTK, it’s usually awfully late, and I end up not rifling through the site looking for updates as I always intend to do. If you think I’m missing something important, please tell me or direct me to it and I will add it. It takes a village blog.
CALIFORNIA FIRE DONATION LINKS
- The Redwood Empire Food Bank is a good way to help right now, with money or donations of goods.
- Redwood Credit Union has a donation page to help people displaced by the North Bay fires. 100% of the funds go to the victims.
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PUERTO RICO DISASTER RELIEF DONATION LINKS
To get the latest Puerto Rico news in your stream, follow the DK group SOS Puerto Rico.
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well. |