that's nutz

Another item included in my cooking fury mentioned in my previous post, were roasted cashews. It probably took several hundred dollars worth of purchasing various kinds of roasted nuts during my lifetime to finally realize, hey I could do this myself and it'd most likely taste better. I've made caramelized cashews with cayenne a few times. I have the same feeling towards this recipe of cashews as I do towards m&m's: they're not that great, but for some reason you cannot stop eating them. The maple syrup most likely makes them particularly addictive. Although, there's something about the zing from cayenne. Below is a photo of the little raw nuts. Cute, yes?

liquid gold

I am a bad blogger (p.s. I hate that term). It's been far too long since I last documented my kitchen adventures.
A few Sundays ago, I was a fiercely productive domestic debbie in the kitchen. On the menu that evening was my favorite, butternut squash soup! I've experimented with a lot of recipes, receiving different results each time. Are all butternut squash created equal? Roasting versus being impatient and just cutting up a raw squash until your fingers bleed? Mysteries I have yet to solve. I really wanted to make a butternut squash soup on the sweeter side. I found an Alton Brown  recipe with rave reviews that looked worth a try. Honey, ginger and heavy cream! Can't go wrong!


Is that a squash on your counter,
or are you just happy to see me?




First, I'd like to introduce my giant ass butternut squash. Giant ass squash, meet readers. Readers, meet giant ass squash. Seriously. Look at the size of this thing. Surprisingly, it was the "smallest" to select from at the store. I bought it during a pumpkin picking excursion. The farm has a country market where they sell produce and jams and such. All of their "homegrown" produce was unnaturally huge. I'm talking peppers the size of an infant's head. Typically I use two small butternut squash for a pot of soup. In this case, all that was needed was just one big giant ass squash.







 

1/4 of a roasted giant ass squash




liquid gold. yum.

 


The finished soup was pretty nice. Roasting the squash seemed to bring out more flavor. The soup was a little too sweet for what I was craving, I think the amount of honey I uncontrollably squeezed in might have had something to do with it. Adding some thyme to the top helped mellow the sweetness. Simple, quick and nice!

unattended crockpot enchilada, ay cramba

Crock pots both intrigue and scare me equally. I only have vague childhood memories of them and always mangled meat remnants were involved. How could a meal magically cook itself while unattended? If they were so great, wouldn't everyone use one? After finding a recipe for crock pot black bean enchiladas from a trusted source with pretty pictures, I considered myself a crock pot convert. Let's examine keywords first, before we proceed, shall we. Enchilada, check. Easy, check. 2-4 hours and I don't have to be home, check.

Here's what happened. I assembled as instructed. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. As I layer 3 enchiladas, things start looking a little crowded. I figure I'll just pile it all on. Can't mess up crock pot recipes, they're designed for women on the go, right? Fill enchilada, pile, repeat. Top with cheese. Great! I sit the lid on top with virtually zero room thinking this was ok. The whole time at work I was convinced I was doomed to come home to charred ashes of what was once my house.

dramatic reenactment of the great crock pot disaster

4 hours later, I get home (house still there) and can smell a Mexican aroma before I even open the door. Unsure if this was a good or bad sign, I let myself in. There's the crock pot with the lid practically exploding off and cheese and salsa and enchilada innards pouring out. I was too panicked and mad to think of taking a picture. I was starved by that point. My hopes and dreams of coming home to a magically perfect Mexican fiesta were shattered. Fortunately tortillas, cheese and black beans taste great no matter what, so you can bet I ate those babies up. With dinner devoured, 45 minutes later I managed to save a few enchiladas and scrub the crock pot clean. How did I think 12 enchiladas crammed into a tiny 3 quart Hamilton Beach slow-cooker wouldn't result in disaster.

Just as I suspected. Slow cookers only work on meat, operated by a mom.

ravioli and butter: a holy matrimony

Butter tastes great, especially when you are completely unaware of the quantity in which you are consuming. Additional items to add to this equation include; butternut squash, pasta, cheese and of course, more butter. The harvest season means I need only two things, butternut squash and the bible. My true kitchen savior has to be Deborah Madison. The book of hers that I refer to mostly, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, is my go to guide. My ideas about cooking and what to do with mystery vegetables have changed drastically for the better thanks to her. I'll stop here. Deb deserves an entire post praising her genius. 

I'd been interested in making the Deborah Madison recipe for butternut squash ravioli for a while, it just seemed intimidating. I'm too lazy to write out the whole thing, but luckily someone wasn't! Go here for the recipe. Plus, the pictures and the process are outlined more beautifully.

Making ravioli is easier than it looks. My day of ravioli making also inspired a botched old Italian lady accent, think "Mama Lisio will maka you da ravioli". Having a pasta machine, ravioli press and a willing helper makes the process pretty quick. Add in the bad Italian accent and you'll have yourself a great afternoon. While I was cranking out the dough, my kitchen buddy was filling the ravioli press and making all the magic happen.

I took some not-so-pretty photos of a few steps. Excuse the poor unappetizing lighting, please.

 

Brown butter sage and pecan sauce. This is the part where I had to use my body to shield any

onlookers from seeing the insane amount of butter the sage and pecans are now bathing in.

Baby ravioli, all grown up.
  



Tons of butter + ravioli + butternut squash = yes. Yumio! Time-a to eata the ravioli. Mangia mangia.

oh, hello martha

The title that's opening this crazy fancy blog would make a lot more sense with audio. It comes from my mom. Which she only said this way one time, and mostly out of anger and frustration toward me. Here's the scene: a sweltering hot July moving day. Whilst Jeffrey and I were mixing ginger ale and whiskey (the best help any friend can provide on moving day), my mom was slaving away upstairs, cleaning plastic horizontal blinds that I had planned on throwing away after she left. Jeffrey comes in the house and is greeted by mom with, "oh, hello jeffrey". An infamous phrase is born. Boring story without vocal inflection, sorry.

I've managed internet anonymity for a long time now. I obsessively read cooking blogs and have basically sold my soul to Martha. I love cooking and creating and sharing what comes of it with my loved ones (however, most of the time with my loved one).

This blog was inspired by a rather successful moment in the kitchen, in other words, a good cooking day. In absolutely no way are they all like that. I spill stuff. I misjudge the size of bakingware I need and have to transfer a soggy pot pie to a smaller baking dish. The pizza dough gets stuck to the cutting board. I cut the mold off cheese. The list can go on.

I've always been in awe of all things Martha Stewart. A tragic day baking a Martha pie recipe led me to a simple realization. After swearing at Martha and waving my middle fingers at my watery mess of a coconut cream pie, this happened: Martha Stewart is my kitchen mom. Just like my real mom, I want to please her and do awesome stuff to make her proud. And when I fail, it feels awful. Kitchen contender? Totally. It's like a boxing ring in there sometimes. Emotional things happen, revelations occur and f-bombs are thrown. In the midst of all of it, I always feel like a winner when I get to share the pile of food I've mixed and cut and baked with people that I care about. Cliché but very true.