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Cookbook Review Recipes Soup

Beef and Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

December 3, 2012 – 11:25 pm

Time for another soup recipe, like I have men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous post on Easy Veg­etable Beef Bar­ley Soup recipe, I love home­made soups. They are very com­fort­ing and healthy, espe­cially warm­ing in this cold win­ter weather. If you like soups as much as I do, you will prob­a­bly love this cook­book too: 300 Sen­sa­tional Soups by Carla Syn­der and Mered­ith Deeds. Most of the recipes are pretty easy and straight for­ward, there are also some very cre­ative recipes such as the Rasp­berry and White Choco­late Swirl Soup with Brownie Crou­tons — that sounds very decadent.

The book has 300 soup recipes, basi­cally any soup you can think of — veg­etable, chicken, chow­der, chilled, desserts, etc. and even recipes to make your home­made stocks. Since it is win­ter, I chose a squash soup from the book to share. It is very easy to pre­pare and yet so flavour­ful. I love the but­ter­nut squash, it is a lit­tle sweet, and its flavour also com­ple­ments the beef well. The thyme added a deli­cious earthy flavour. For the crou­tons, the recipe calls for white bread, but I used a sprouted grain loaf (try­ing to eat healthy here), and it worked well, they were but­tery and crunchy.

Print
Beer and Roasted But­ter­nut Squash Soup

Yield: Serves 6

Ingre­di­ents

    Soup
  • 1½ lbs bone­less beef for stew, trimmed and cut into 1 inch (2.5cm) chunks
  • salt and freshly ground pepper
  • 4 tbsp olive oil, divided
  • 2 large onions, chopped
  • 2 bay leaves
  • ½ tsp dried thyme
  • 6 cups beef stock
  • 1 but­ter­nut squash (about 1½/750g), peeled and cut into ½-inch (1cm) dice
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp freshly ground pepper
    • But­tery Croutons
  • 3 cups cubed rus­tic white bread (½-inch/1cm cubes)
  • ¼ cup unsalted butter
  • ½ tsp salt

Method

    Soup:
  1. Sea­son beef with salt and pep­per to taste. In a large pot, heat 1 tbsp (15 mL) of oil over medium-high heat. Add beef in two batches, and sauté until browned on all sides, about 5 min­utes per batch, adding oil as needed between batches. Remove with slot­ted spoon to a warm plate.
  2. Reduce heat to medium and add onions to the pot; sauté until just browned, about 5 min­utes. Add bay leaves and thyme; sauté for 1 minute. Reduce heat to medium, return beef and any accum­lated juices to the pot and add stock; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and sim­mer until beef is ten­der and eas­ily pulled apart, 1½ to 2 hours.
  3. Mean­while, pre­heat oven to 425°F (220°C). On bak­ing sheet, com­bine squash, the remain­ing olive oil, salt and pep­per; toss to coat evenly and spread in a sin­gle layer. Roast, turn­ing occa­sion­ally, until just ten­der and browned in spots, about 40 minutes.
  4. Remove beef from pot with a slot­ted spoon and, using two forks, pull about into bite-size shreds. Dis­card any fat and gris­tle. Return beef to the pot and add roasted squash; sim­mer for 10 min­utes to blend the flavours. Dis­card bay leaves. Taste and adjust sea­son­ing with salt and pep­per, if neccesary.
  5. Ladle into heated bowl and gar­nish off with croutons.
    6. But­tery Croutons:
  6. Pre­heat oven to 400°F (200°C) On bak­ing sheet, com­bine bread, but­ter and salt; toss to coat evenly and spread in a sin­gle layer. Bake, stir­ring once, until crisp, about 10 min­utes. Let cool on sheet on a wire rack an use within 3 hours.

Notes

Excerpted from 300 Sen­sa­tional Soups by Carla Sny­der and Mered­ith Deeds © 2012 Robert Rose Inc. www​.robertrose​.ca All rights reserved: May not be reprinted with­out pub­lisher permission.

http://​yum​my​work​shop​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​1​2​/​0​3​/​b​e​e​f​-​a​n​d​-​r​o​a​s​t​e​d​-​b​u​t​t​e​r​n​u​t​-​s​q​u​a​s​h​-​s​o​up/

Also check out the gallery to see the process of mak­ing the soup!

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Chinese Freestyle Recipes

Pork and Vegetable Dumplings — My Way

June 17, 2012 – 6:38 pm

Chi­nese are obsessed with all sorts of dumplings, we have them pan-fried, steamed, or even in soups. I like to make my own when­ever pos­si­ble. That way, I am in con­trol of what goes it and its sea­son­ings so they can be quite healthy and deli­cious. Com­pared to store-bought ones, of course I pre­fer my home­made ver­sion. There are end­less ways to make them and they dif­fer in dif­fer­ent regions of China. In Man­darin Chi­nese, they are called “jiao-zi” or in Can­tonese, “gao-ji” and “gyoza” in Japan­ese. Some­times they are called “pot-stickers” if they are pan-fried.

The way I make them is def­i­nitely influ­enced by Can­tonese cui­sine. The napa cab­bage in the recipe is pick­led by using salt to extract the water, result­ing in a crunchy tex­ture. It is then mixed into ground pork shoul­der, I find this cut of pork works well in this recipe because it has a good tex­ture that isnt too soft nor too stiff. To make a tasty chive vari­a­tion, you can also add chopped Chinese/garlic chives directly into the pork in place of the picked napa cabbage.

I some­times make the dumplings from scratch, that includes mak­ing the wrap­per from flour and water just like how restau­rants do it — I could also con­trol the thick­ness of the wrap­per but it is time-consuming. So if I don’t have the time, I often buy ready-made wrap­pers from the super­mar­ket which saves me all the knead­ing and rolling.

Print
Pork and Veg­etable Dumplings

Yield: 80–90 pieces

Ingre­di­ents

  • 1 pack­age Ready-made Dumpling Wrap­pers — about 1 lb. (not Won­ton wrappers)
    • Picked Cab­bage:
  • 620 g Napa Cab­bage, chopped
  • 3 tsp Salt
    • Pork and Seasoning:
  • 730 g Pork Shoul­der, ground
  • 2 tsp Sugar
  • 3 tbsp Soy Sauce
  • 1 tbsp Minced Ginger
  • 2 tbsp Rice Wine (optional)
  • 3 tbsp Corn Starch
  • ¼ cup Water
  • 1 tbsp Veg­etable Oil
  • 2 tsp Toasted Sesame oil (optional)

Method

    Picked Cab­bage:
  1. Chop napa cab­bage into lit­tle pieces, place in a colan­der — it will look like a lot but will shrink when the water is squeezed out. Add 2 tsp of salt into it and let it sit for about 5–10 minutes.
  2. Squeeze out the excess water from the cab­bage, and drain. Set aside until ready to use.
    3. Sea­son­ing the Pork:
  3. Add the fol­low­ing sea­son­ings into the ground pork: soy sauce, sugar, rice wine, and minced gin­ger. Mix until incorporated.
  4. Mix in the corn starch.
  5. Add water in sev­eral addi­tions, mix­ing after each addition.
  6. Mix in pick­led cab­bage, veg­etable oil, and sesame oil.
    7. Mak­ing the Dumplings:
  7. Place about 2 tea­spoons of fill­ing onto a piece of dumpling wrapper.
  8. Dab your fin­ger with some water and spread the water around the edges of the wrapper.
  9. Fold the wrap­per in half and press the edges together firmly.
  10. You can also make some creases on one side of the wrap­per before fold­ing in half to make it look nicer.
    11. Pan-frying:
  11. Heat some veg­etable oil in a non-stick fry pan in with medium heat. Place dumplings into pan.
  12. Add water until it reaches about ¼ of the dumplings’ height.
  13. Place a lid on the pan and let it sim­mer with medium heat for about 5–7 minutes.
  14. Remove lid, the water should be almost all gone by now. As the water evap­o­rates, the crust will start to form on the bot­tom, fry until the bot­tom of the dumplings are golden brown.
http://​yum​my​work​shop​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​6​/​1​7​/​p​o​r​k​-​a​n​d​-​v​e​g​e​t​a​b​l​e​-​d​u​m​p​l​i​n​g​s​-​m​y​-​w​ay/

I always make extra and freeze them and they can be steamed, boiled, or pan-fried with­out defrost­ing. To freeze, place them on a tray sep­a­rated and place the whole tray in the freezer until the dumplings are frozen. Store them in a freezer bag until ready to cook. (Note that cook­ing time will be longer if cook­ing frozen dumplings.) It makes a con­ve­nient quick meal or an appe­tizer. You can also eas­ily make chicken dumplings by replac­ing the pork with chicken. I’ve made a tasty veg­e­tar­ian ver­sion by fill­ing them with sea­soned chopped cab­bage, car­rots, shi­itake mush­rooms, and Chi­nese ver­mi­celli. It is very easy to be cre­ative with the filling.

You can tell when home­made food really makes a dif­fer­ence espe­cially when you have fresh ingredients!

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Baking Cheesecake Dessert Recipes

Strawberry Jam Cheesecake

June 5, 2012 – 12:26 am

This recipe was taken from a cute Japan­ese bak­ing cook­book. I just love the rus­tic qual­ity of the design and pho­tos of the book. The for­mat of the book is like a jour­nal with lined pages inside. The author has a “web­site”. There’s not much infor­ma­tion on there, so I am bet­ter off just read­ing the cook­book. I decided to try this recipe because I hap­pened to have all the ingre­di­ents at home, and more impor­tantly, I have my home­made straw­berry jam made from local straw­ber­ries. The flavour and colour of the jam is just so much bet­ter than store-bought — I don’t think I will buy them again. I am patiently wait­ing for local berries to be in sea­son again so I get to pick and eat them!

Don’t expect a very dense cheese­cake from this recipe, it is rather soft and smooth, more like a cus­tard. I have noticed Japan­ese cheese­cake recipe often yield a softer and creamier tex­ture than North Amer­i­can recipes — prob­a­bly because of the high liq­uid con­tents. For this recipe, straw­berry jam is actu­ally mixed into part of the cheese­cake bat­ter and them poured on top. I don’t know if it is the ingre­di­ents here that made the dif­fer­ence, my cake didn’t turn out like the one on the pic­ture — it turned out more like a swirl instead. How­ever, it was quite tasty and creamy.

Print
Straw­berry Jam Cheesecake

Yield: One 8\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\” cake

Ingre­di­ents

    Cheese­cake Batter:
  • 250g Cream Cheese (1 package)
  • 100g Sour Cream
  • 200 mL Whip­ping Cream
  • 90 g Gran­u­lated Sugar
  • 20 g Cake Flour, sifted
  • 2 Eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 tbsp Lemon Juice
  • Pinch of Salt
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 60 g Straw­berry Jam
    • Crust:
  • 130 g Gra­ham Crackers
  • 60 g But­ter (melted)
    • Top­ping
  • 100 g Sour Cream
  • 3 tbsp Whip­ping Cream
  • 1 tbsp Icing Sugar

Method

    Prepa­ra­tion:
  1. Pre­heat oven to 325F/160C, heat water for water bath.
  2. Line spring-form pan with parch­ment paper and wrap bot­tom with foil to pre­vent water from going in when baked in a water bath.
    3. Crust:
  3. Place gra­ham crack­ers in a plas­tic bag and crush them into lit­tle pieces using a rolling pin.
  4. Mix gra­ham cracker crumbs with melted but­ter, press onto the bot­tom of the pre­pared pan. Refrig­er­ate until ready to use.
    5. Bat­ter:
  5. Place cream cheese in a mix­ing bowl, with an elec­tri­cal mixer, cream together cream cheese, sugar, and salt until well combined.
  6. In the fol­low­ing order, blend in: sour cream, eggs, whip­ping cream, cake flour, lemon juice, and vanilla extract.
  7. Reserve about one-third of the bat­ter, pour the rest into the pre­pared pan.
  8. Mix straw­berry jam into the reserved bat­ter, pour into the pan.
  9. Bake in a water bath for about 45 min­utes, until the cen­ter sets.
    10. Top­ping:
  10. Mix together whip­ping cream, sour cream, and icing sugar.
  11. When cake is done bak­ing, increase oven tem­per­a­ture to 350C/180C.
  12. Pour top­ping mix­ture care­fully onto the baked cake, smooth top.
  13. Return cake to the oven and bake for about 3–5 minutes.
  14. When done bak­ing, cool cake and chill overnight before serving.

Notes

Recipe adapted from Takako Inada’s “Small Baked Goods and Sweets to Share”, 2007.

http://​yum​my​work​shop​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​6​/​0​5​/​s​t​r​a​w​b​e​r​r​y​-​j​a​m​-​c​h​e​e​s​e​c​a​ke/

I like the creamy and light tex­ture of this cheese­cake, it is also not too sweet. The jam also adds a sub­tle straw­berry flavour. You can also top it off with more straw­ber­ries, or a straw­berry sauce, but I find it deli­cious as is.

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