Okay, lameness over, if you’ve been following my tweets, to soothe my angst over student loans and photography, I’ve been throwing myself into making lots of food. Gloria reminded me of this blog’s existence, and today I’ll share with you a pretty simple curried butternut squash soup that I thought up while eating a different, inferior, store-bought squash soup.

What you’ll need:
Blender or Food Processor
Pot for soup.

Butternut Squash – medium sized, ours yielded about 4 cups of inner meat, but James ate a lot before I started making this.
1 medium onion – I used red because of what’s on hand, but up to you!
1 tbsp unsalted butter – OR all the butter you want in the world.
3 cloves garlic – confession, I used more, but I’m a garlic addict. Spice to taste.
1.5 teaspoons curry powder – again, I used 1 tbsp, but not everyone is as spice dead as me.
3 cups chicken broth – Vegetable broth okay.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Optional: Heavy cream for fancy spiral topping.

First things first, you have to roast the butternut squash. Cut that sucker in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, put it on a baking sheet face down and stick it in the oven heated to 400 degrees. After about 20-25 minutes, it should be done. Check on it occasionally. You’ll know it’s done when the outer skin is easily pierced by a fork.

Alternatively, you can cut the squash into quarters, put it on a plate, cover it all with saran wrap, and microwave it on high for 6 minute intervals until done. I vastly prefer baking, but James did it the microwave method, before swearing “NEVER AGAIN.” Now, that’s a resounding success if I’ve ever heard one.

After taking the squash out of the oven and setting it aside to cool, you can chop up your onion and garlic, and start frying up the onion in your butter. I just used a regular stainless steel pot that I knew would hold all my ingredients. When the onion starts looking translucent and yummily cooked, put in the garlic, chicken broth, and curry powder and start bringing it up to a simmer.

As that happily gets up to a warm bubbling, turn back to your squash. If you haven’t already removed it from the oven for whatever reason, do so, and prepare to scald your fingers. Now, remove the inside “meat” of the squash from its skin and put that meat into the soup on the stove. If you’ve baked it properly, the meat usually just falls off and it’s quite easy to separate the two. If you find yourself having some trouble, I use an ice cream scoop to get every little bit I can out of the rinds. You should have a yield of about 3-4 cups of squash meat.

Once all the squash meat is in your pot, you should now have all the ingredients heating on the stove – butternut squash meat, butter, onion, garlic, curry powder, and chicken broth. Bring this up to a nice bubbling simmer and let it sit for about 30 minutes. I check on mine and stir it around every 10 minutes, but whatever you feel comfortable with as long as it’s not on fire.

After 30 minutes, pour the mixture into your food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Salt and pepper it to your taste, or add more garlic/curry powder if you want, and tada! Delicious soup! Because I was trying to be fancy and had heavy cream lying around, I put a cream spiral on top of the soup I was serving, but this is completely optional. Highly recommended for those with steadier hands than me, though!

Ingredients:

• Potatoes (yukon golds are best)
• Whipping cream
• Butter
• salt to taste
• 1-2 bulbs of garlic
• olive oil

Gloria will tell you that I am a measure-twice-cut-once kind of cook. I am very careful with quantities, and I don’t improvise very well. This is the one exception, so I’ll go over quantity pretty carefully.

HOW MANY POTATOES?
It’s hard sometimes to gauge how many potatoes you need. You really need to judge what the rest of the meal is like and how fat your diners are.

They are all different sizes! Fuck you!

I usually go for around half a pound of potatoes per person, if you have time to measure. If you don’t, about four people is four potatoes that you’d chuck to ward off a medium-persistent robber.

Step 1. Roast some garlic. I think we’ve gone over this in an earlier post, so here is an MS Paint synopsis:

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Step 2. Boil potatoes. I usually cut the potatoes into 2″x2″x1″ cubes, but it’s not an exact science. Gloria likes it when I leave the skins on, so I am lazy and leave the skins on. Boil them until they cut like butter with a fork.

Step 3. When your potatoes are soft enough, drain them really well, then put them in a mixing bowl. Drop 1/2 a stick of butter in there for around 4 potatoes. (Actually, regardless of how many potatoes I use, there’s usually a 1/2 stick of butter in it.)

Step 4. While the butter is melting, retrieve your roasted garlic and pop the soft cloves out of their pods. Put them into the mixing bowl with everything else.

Step 5. Take an egg beater to your potatoes, low speed. While the eggbeater is going, pour some whipping cream in. Usually I use anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 cup, but it really depends on the texture you want. We used 1/4 cup for about 3.5 pounds of potatoes last week, and it made a smooth, dense mashed potato.

Step 6. Season. You want to use some salt, definitely, but it’s at your discretion. I love throwing some pepper into mine, and maybe some Lawry’s seasoned salt. But if you’ve got only one bulb of garlic in there, less intense flavors are necessary. Remember, the base is creamy and buttery.

It does.

I had never heard of swai before, but sure enough, it was stocked right next to the tilapia and was cheaper, so I gave it a try. Apparently the proper name for it is “iridescent shark” (even though it’s a catfish, not technically a shark), which makes it even better. I don’t think I like it better than tilapia, as Gloria, did, but I certainly liked it an equal amount.

I don’t like onions, so I threw some fresh chopped garlic and dried basil (my fresh basil had gone off) and a couple tablespoons of olive oil into the pan. I added a splash of apple cider vinegar to the mix, which added a nice tang to the smell, though it didn’t taste especially strong on the fish. Then I rubbed salt and white pepper on the fish, and cooked it for about three minutes per side, following Gloria’s directions.

I sprinkled some rosemary and tarragon on the fish, and then thought, “What the heck?” and added a dash of ground cloves. Then a generous amount of white wine, since that was what I had handy.

Meanwhile, I was cooking some white rice on the back burner, and steaming some mushrooms and broccoli over the rice. When the fish was done, and the mushrooms and broccoli were starting to get there, I flipped the fish onto a plate and added the veggies to the pan I’d cooked the fish in, adding some more olive oil, wine, and spices.

Next time I think I might plan ahead a bit more about the sauce for the veggies — compared to the fish, they and the rice were a bit bland. The fish, though, turned out perfectly.

Now, I don’t have any pictures of this recipe because I wasn’t sure it would turn out that well initially. However, this thrown-together sauté with frozen “basa swai” turned out even better than I expected. So here we are!

“Basa Swai” is a super cheap fish that is similar to catfish. I actually prefer it to tilapia, especially when just doing a simple pan sear. It is a bit meatier than tilapia, and has a softer texture.  Bonus: the basa swai package I got was actually  cheaper than tilapia!

So I cobbled this recipe together after reading up online on various pan searing recipes.  I don’t really have precise measurements since I was winging it, so I’ll just give estimates and leave it up to your (most excellently developed) judgement! Ingredients:

• Garlic – minced
• Onion (yellow, red, or white …up to you!) – sliced to thin strips
• Basil – chopped roughly, generous portions
• Marsala – feel free to experiment and substitute a dry white wine or something else… though the marsala was very delicious
• Olive oil
• Salt and Pepper

Defrost the fish. I normally just stick it in a plastic ziplock bag and then dump it in a bowl of hot water; it should not take very long to defrost.

As the fish defrosts, chop up your onions and basil, and then mince your garlic.

Take the fish out when it’s thoroughly defrosted. Rinse quickly, then pat it down.  Rub on some salt and pepper – I like to be very liberal with both.  This is the only flavoring going directly onto the fish, so err on the generous side!

Get out a pan – I find that ones with a heavy bottom work out better.  Heat about a couple tablespoons of olive oil on medium-high heat, and then throw in the onions.  Let the onions cook a bit until they are just starting to look a bit translucent, then throw the garlic in.  A moment later, throw in about half of the basil.  Sauté a bit more – the basil should wilt. Now, take your fish filet and place it into the pan, keeping the heat at medium-high. Let it sit there for about 3 minutes without moving it. You can, however, poke at the onions and stuff a bit to keep them from burning. While the fish is cooking on this side,  take out the marsala/wine/whatever, and then spread as evenly as you can across everything.  I usually do about two turns of the pan (two circles around the pan).  AFter the fish has cooked for about 3 minutes, turn it over and cook for about another 2 minutes.  You can check to see if it’s thoroughly cooked by seeing if it flakes easily when you stick a fork in it.  The surface of the fish should be lightly browned, looking yummy.

Ta-da!

I found that this dish goes really well with some couscous. You can buy couscous in boxes at most supermarkets – it barely takes any effort to make.  Just boil a bit of water, throw the flavoring packet in (I used a garlic flavor that worked very well), then take it off the heat, dump the couscous in, cover, and let it sit for 5 minutes.  So easy, and the perfect complement to the fish.

P.S. Ever since Jo bought us a tiny basil plant to keep on our windowsill, basil has suddenly become a household staple and I love it. It is so satisfying to not have to pay 3 bucks for a tiny case of basil at the supermarket every time I want to use it…