Squash Soup on a Fall Day

Fall is most definitely here, with cool days, cold nights, and the leaves starting to shade into their autumn glory. An annual ritual of fall, from the time I was old enough to toddle along behind my dad with a small log, is stacking the wood by the side of the house, to keep us warm through the winter. We always get it delivered in September, and then for the next couple weeks, cloud or shine, my father, sister, and I are out stacking wood almost every day.

The finished wood stack, circa 2009.

My sister is away at a camp right now, so it's currently dropped to a two-person job, and to make up for that my dad and I spent quite a bit of time today stacking.

After coming in today after the second stacking session of the day, and making and sharing some hot chocolate, I decided to make one of the best things for a fall day: winter squash soup.

Even though I don't look great in this shot, it's so rare anyone gets a pic of me cooking I had to include it.

My (vague) recipe for roasted acorn squash and black bean soup:

• 1 medium acorn squash
• 2-3 stalks celery
• 3 small onions
• 3 large garlic cloves
• 1 dried or fresh hot chili pepper
• 4 cups veggie stock or broth
• 1-2 cans black beans (I used a can and a half)
• Several tablespoons of olive oil
• Several tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon cane sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons cumin seeds
• 1-2 teaspoons freshly ground pepper (I use a five pepper blend, but black pepper should work fine)
• A dash of cinnamon
• Salt to taste

Roasted squash. 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (Fahrenheit)
2. With skin left on, cut the acorn squash into approximately one inch segments, and brush with a half-half mixture of olive oil and maple syrup, plus freshly ground pepper. Put on a cookie sheet and bake until the top starts to turn golden brown.
3. Meanwhile, finely chop the celery, garlic cloves, and onions. Pour several tablespoons of olive oil in a large-ish pot or dutch oven, set it on the stove top at medium-low heat, and add the chili slit length-wise but otherwise left whole, as well as the onions, garlic, and celery. Cook until the veggies have greatly reduced, turned light brown, and are starting to stick and brown on the bottom of the pot (in other words, well caramelized)
4. Dry toast the cumin seeds in a small fry-pan on medium heat until fragrant and slightly darker in colour (it should only take a couple minutes. Make sure you don't burn them!), then grind (I use a mortar and pestle, but I'm sure a spice or coffee grinder are also useful).
5. Add the ground cumin, about a teaspoon of freshly ground pepper, and a dash of cinnamon to the pot, then add 4 cups veggie stock and 1-2 cups water, as well as the roasted squash (skin removed), including caramelized browned bits, as long as they don't seem burnt. Bring to a boil, add the beans, approximately 2 tablespoons of maple syrup and 1 tablespoon of natural cane sugar, and salt to taste. 
6. Simmer for anywhere between 10 and 35 minutes. Cooking longer will let the flavors combine more, but the squash disintegrates if you cook it much at all, so it depends what consistency you want your soup to be.

All done! Mmmm.

This soup was a big hit with my mother, who loves soup, and I was surprised just how much I loved it, as I tend to be a lot pickier about soup! It's a really warming, cozy, tasty fall soup, with just enough heat to keep it interesting. Plus, it's super simple and quick to make (I even used canned beans, and bottled stock, instead of cooking my own as I often do)!

Now I just have to figure out what yummy thing I want to do with the butternut squash that's currently hanging around the kitchen...

(Thanks to my mom Debbie for all of the pictures in this post besides the one of the woodpile!)

Kimchi Adventures: A First Attempt at Lacto-Fermentation

I've been vaguely interested in lacto-fermentation for a while now. But then again, I have at least a vague interest in almost all aspects of food preparation besides butchering, and cooking live sea creatures. But it always seemed maybe a little bit scary, almost an occult process, undertaken only by folks who know what they're doing. Even reading instructions for fermenting in cookbooks didn't help much.

However, it started seeming a lot less scary once I saw it done. At the Common Ground Country Fair, one of the demos I went to was by chef David Levi, on lacto-fermentation (I actually went to two of his demos, the other being on cooking with wild/foraged foods, which was SO cool, and included the most delicious tasting of what he'd made at the end). And it looked so easy. Like, SO easy. He even soothed my fears about sterilization, saying that dangerous bacteria in unlikely to grow, and simply not to eat it if it tastes/smells gross or off to you. Okay, I thought. I can do this.

So I did! The day after I arrived home, I decided to make something resembling kimchi. I chopped up some nice organic green cabbage (nappa cabbage isn't out at my local farmers market quite yet) and radishes, finely chopped some hot pepper and garlic, then grated in a bunch of ginger. I massaged everything but the hot peppers (which I did NOT want all over my hands) with sea salt until the cabbage was tender and there was liquid at the bottom of the bowl, then packed it into a small (since I'd made a small batch only, this being my first try and all) mason jar, put a cabbage leaf on top, a weight (a different sized mason jar filled with water) on top of that, then put it all in a glass container to catch any overflow (and there's already quite a bit of that!).

And now, all that's left to do is wait. It just does everything else itself. Which all just seems pretty magical... Just leave food sitting in it's own juice, plus some salt, on the counter, and it will transform itself into a tasty healthy condiment/salad/pickle-like-thing. I mean that's just awesome. And exciting.

I washed my hands beforehand, and all the containers and utensils used had been washed in soapy water since their last use, but nothing was boiled or anything. Since reading some other sources with far more of an attitude of IF YOU DON'T STERILIZE EVERYTHING YOU MIGHT DIE I'm a little more worried, but trying not to be. If it looks/smells/tastes really gross, I obviously won't eat it. But otherwise... I have a feeling I'm really going to enjoy this stuff.

Kimchi day 2.

Dark Chocolate Finds in Maine

My mother and I recently went to the Common Ground Country Fair in Maine, and we had a really great time there (I went to lots of food related session, of course!). We don't often (as in, ever) go on trips just the two of us, and it was really nice to do that (until we hit a moose on the way home, which was scary, but that's a whole different story). Both my mother and I are huge fans of the ocean, so when leaving the fair, we decided to swing past the coast before heading further inland to home.

Going on the recommendation of a friend, we headed into Belfast ME and found the co-op. Now, this friend really likes co-ops (as do I) and she knows about an awful lot of them, so I tend to trust her judgement on which ones are good. It seemed like just your average co-op as we wandered around inside. Nice enough, but nothing to write home about. But then, then we decided to get some dark chocolate for the road. And we discovered what's special about that co-op. They have THE BEST chocolate selection I have ever seen. Tons of delicious, dark, high quality chocolate, most of which is also fair trade and/or organic. It was awesome.

The Belfast Co-op Store.

Of course, being me I picked out one bar, that also happened to be on sale, while my mother couldn't make up her mind (not that I'm complaining in this case), so we ended up with 6 bars from 5 different companies. Then we had to have a taste test and try them all, of course. My winner was the Equal Exchange brand Extra Dark Chocolate from Panama. Yummm. Mum's favorite was the Taza brand Counter Culture Coffee Chocolate Mexicano, which while not quite my favorite, I still agree is pretty delicious.

So if you're a chocolate fan like we are, and you're ever in the area of Belfast, I highly recommend you check out that co-op! There's not much better than a good bar of dark chocolate...