Mushroom Bisque Soup

A shitake mushroom block that I purchased at the 2010 Mt. Pisgah Mushroom Festival from Rain Forest Mushroom Company has sat in the bottom of my refrigerator for the past 14 months. I had already grown the oyster mushroom block, but just hadn't found the perfect time for the shitake block. Last week when I checked on it, the mushrooms were already starting to sprout! So I set up the mushroom block in an old fish tank, and in less than a week we had a full crop of mushrooms. My son thought it was great fun to harvest the mushrooms.

I have two favorite mushroom soup recipes in the Moosewood Cookbook. One is a Hungarian Mushroom Soup and the other Mushroom Bisque soup. Today was a Mushroom Bisque soup day! This the first time that I have made this recipe with anything other than button mushrooms. And I normally use plain old milk, but today used up some half-and-half in the refrigerator. We served ours with additional garlic toast for mopping up the soup and Ninkasi Sleigh'r Ale. Yum.

Mushroom Bisque Soup
2 fist sized potatoes chopped (from CSA)

1 1/2 c water
1 onion chopped (from CSA)

2 T olive oil

several cups of mushrooms chopped (grown at home)

1 t salt

2 cloves garlic (from CSA)

1/4 t thyme

3 T dry white wine

2 T soy sauce

fresh black pepper

1 1/2 c half and half (milk is fine too)

homemade croutons

green onions chopped(from CSA)

spinach chopped (from CSA)

Place chopped potatoes in a pan of water and boil until potatoes are soft.

Saute onions in olive oil until soft. Add in mushrooms and salt and cover until mushrooms are cooked through. Add in garlic and thyme. When soft, drain water from potatoes and add to mushroom mixture. Stir in wine, soy sauce, pepper, and half and half. Reserve part of soup mixture. Blend the rest of the soup with a hand blender or food processor), and then mix again with chunky soup.

Serve with garnish of croutons, green onions, and spinach.

Croutons and Spinach

1 slice of bread per person cut into croutons sized pieces

Garlic

Olive oil

Butter

Spinach

Melt butter and add garlic. Add bread pieces and coat in butter/garlic mixture. Add olive oil and cook until browned. The croutons can be browned more in the oven (we didn't have time to do that and they were just as yummy).

After the croutons have cooked, add more olive oil and garlic and saute spinach until just wilted and bright green.

Happy New Year!

Easy Winter Roasted Vegetables

Only recently have I discovered how wonderful winter roasted vegetables are to eat!

Winter Roasted Vegetables
Parsnips (from CSA)
Beets (from CSA)
Potatoes
Onion
Garlic (from CSA)
Sweet Potatos

Cut vegetables, coat with olive oil and a little salt. Bake 350 F for 45-60 minutes. Enjoy.

Butternut Squash Chowder

Today is a day for a warm winter soup. This is a slow cooker recipe adapted from Slow Cooker Revolution by America's Test Kitchen.

The original recipe calls for bacon; however, the last recipe that I made in my cast iron pan was Okonomiyaki and hadn't yet cleaned out the bacon grease, so I've just cooked the aromatics in the bacon grease and called it good. I also started with frozen chicken broth and added it frozen to the slow cooker. It took several hours even on high to completely defrost. The original recipe calls for heavy cream, but we have 2% milk at home instead.

Butternut Squash Chowder
1 onion minced
3 garlic cloves minced (from CSA)
1/2 t thyme
1/8 t nutmeg
1/3 c flour
4 c chicken broth
2 c water
3 lbs butternut squash, peeled, seeded, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (from CSA)
2 bay leaves
1 T olive oil
salt and pepper
8 oz kale
1/2 c milk
1 T sage
1 t brown sugar
Parmesan cheese

Chop butternut squash.

Saute chopped onion, garlic, thyme and nutmeg in bacon grease until onions are translucent. Add 2 c water and whisk in 1/3 cup flour. Stir until thickened. Transfer mixture to the slow cooker. Add in chicken broth, bay leaves, and half of the chopped squash.

Put the other half of the squash into a foil packet and coat with oil, salt, and petter. Put foil packet on top of the soup.

Cook until squash is tender, 4-6 hours on low.

Remove foil packet. Add in chopped kale and cook on low 20-30 minutes. After kale is cooked, put squash from packet back into the soup. Stir in milk, sage, and brown sugar. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cheese as desired.

Christmas Blueberry Roll

Yum. This is one of my favorite family Christmas recipes. It never tastes quite as good as when my mom makes it (I know she doesn't use whole wheat flour and probably adds more blue berries), but the combination of gooey blueberries in sweet bread is just delicious. Everyone in our family has been snacking ALL day long!

Swedish Tea Ring

Dough
1 c scaled milk
1/2 c sugar
1 t salt
1/2 c margarine

Heat milk until just before it boils. Remove from the stove and put into mixer. Stir in sugar, salt, and margarine. Let mixture stand until lukewarm and the sugar and margarine has melted.

2 1/2 t yeast
1/4 c warm water
1 t sugar

Dissolve yeast in water and 1 t sugar. Let grow about 15 minutes until bubbly. Add to milk mixture.

1 egg beaten
4 cups unsifted flour (mixture of whole wheat and white)

Add to egg and 2 c flour to milk mixture. Beat until smooth. Add additional 2 cups of flour to make a stiff batter. Place in a lightly oiled bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Cool in refrigerator for at least 2 hours of up to 2 days.

Filling
2 c blueberries (from McKenzie River Farm)
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c flour
1/2 c chopped nuts (Filberts from Thistledown Farm)
1 t cinnamon
3 T melted butter

Mix sugar, flour and cinnamon together. Add blueberries and nuts.

Roll our dough into a square. It can be made into 2 smaller rolls (rectangle 7"x14") or one larger roll. Smaller rolls are easier to handle.

Put melted butter on dough once rolled out. Spread filling over the dough.

Roll up and pinch the edge to seal.

Form into a ring on a greased baking sheet (stuff in more blueberries before sealing ends together) with the sealed edge down.

Cut 2/3 through the ring at 1 inch intervals.

Twist each section sideways.

Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled (about 1 hour). Bake at 375F for 20-25 minutes.

Warm Christmas Salad

I needed a side dish for our Christmas dinner that would allow me to use many of the leafy green vegetables from our CSA this week. In my Moosewood Cookbook, I found and adapted this recipe for Warm Salad. I chopped all of the vegetables the night before and stored them in the refrigerator so all I had to do was cook everything together. This recipe made a huge amount of salad. It was enough for the eight adults at our dinner with plenty of left overs!

Warm Salad

1 bunch Swiss Chard chopped (from CSA)
1 bunch Sugarloaf (aka Castel Franc0 Chicory) chopped (from CSA)
8 cabbage leaves chopped--in this case one whole small cabbage (from CSA)
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
3 leeks chopped (from CSA)
1 red onion chopped
3 cloves garlic minced (from CSA)
10 mushrooms sliced
1 stalk of celery chopped
3 T balsamic vinegar
1/2 c Parmesan Cheese

Heat oil in a large pan. Add in greens a little at a time and salt before adding more greens. Cook until the greens are wilted but still retain some of the color. Remove from the heat and place in serving dish. Add more oil to the pan and saute leeks, onion, garlic, mushrooms, and celery together until onions are soft. Add to the greens dish. Toss with balsamic vinegar and cheese. We served it warm, but the recipe instructions indicate that it can be served at any temperature.

Okonomiyaki

Several years ago, my husband and I spent a wonderful December vacation in Japan with our friend Ben. He took us to an okonomiyaki restaurant in his hometown where we cooked our own vegetable and meat filled pancakes on a griddle at our table. The resulting okonomiyaki were very flavorful, and it was great fun to sit around the table and make our giant pancake dinner. We haven't had okonomiyaki in the United States, but a friend of a friend posted this version online recently. I thought it would be nice to try since I still had cabbage left from an earlier CSA bag, and everyone in my family likes bacon.

They were very similar to the Cabbage Fritters that I have made in the past. While we enjoyed having bacon for dinner, I'm not sure what was missing, but these did not taste like the ones we had in Japan. I do like the idea of a cabbage fritter with more vegetables in the batter.

Okonomiyaki
3 eggs
1 1/2 c flour
1 c water
1/2 t salt
2 T freshly grated ginger
1/2 head cabbage shredded (from CSA)
1 onion (from CSA)
6 mushrooms sliced (or chopped and added to batter)
1/2 lb bacon strips cut in half

Beat eggs and stir in water, flour, salt and ginger. Add scallions and cabbage. Heat a stove top skillet or griddle. Cook one piece of bacon in the pan and remove. Scoop some batter and make a pancake. Place mushrooms and bacon on top of the uncooked pancake. Cook until the bottom of the pancake is browned (3-4 minutes). Flip and cook the second (aka bacon side) until the bacon is browned.

Mexican Wedding Cakes, Russian Tea Cakes, Snowballs

These crowd pleasing cookies are called Mexican Wedding Cakes, Russian Tea Cakes, and Snowballs in our family. My husband's mother included this recipe in a lovely book she made for us of family recipes. I wanted to use up a little rye flour that was in my freezer so tried to make these with rye flour rather than wheat flour. I liked the taste, which was a little "earthier." My four-year old proclaimed that they were delicious and ate many cookies!

Recipe
1/2 c butter
4 T powder sugar
1/2 c ground nuts--filberts (from Thistledown Farm)
1 t vanilla
1 c rye flour (from CSA)
Powdered sugar for top

Grind nuts in food processor. In mixer, beat butter until soft, add sugar and beat well. Mix in flour, nuts, and vanilla and beat well. Roll into small balls or scoop with melon baller and place on cookie sheet. Bake 325F for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden. Remove from pan and roll in powdered sugar or dust tops and bottoms with powdered sugar.