Baked Butternut Squash Stuffed with Sausage and Apples (p. 309 and p. 533)

I think I have some new readers! I'm excited! Tell all your friends (unless you don't like the blog--in that case, keep it to yourself!).


I'm feeling very fall, so I thought that Baked Butternut Squash Stuffed with Sausage and Apples (p. 309 and p. 533). It was a rather complicated recipe with a lot of steps and that produced a lot of dirty dishes. I will also admit--the more complicated the recipe, the more attractive it is to make when I'm trying to avoid studying for a big Biochemistry-type test!

There are two pieces to this recipe--the squash and the stuffing are made and then combined. The stuffing is a variation of the basic bread stuffing that I've made before (for Thanksgiving).


The bread is toasted--I'm pretty sure that my bread wasn't in the half-inch cubes that it was supposed to be but close enough.




A pound of bulk pork sausage is browned. The recipe says 8-10 minutes but after about four minutes, my pork started burning! There was almost no fat in my sausage! That was pretty disappointing but I thought the sausage was still acceptable.




Peeled Granny Smith apples were diced and cooked until tender--I love cooked apples so these looked great! I added a little bit of vegetable oil because there was almost no fat and I was worried about the apples burning.

First, a stick of butter is melted--a great start to any recipe!


Onion and celery is added to the butter (the typical Joy recipe start). Spices are added--parsley, sage, thyme, salt pepper, nutmeg, and cloves. Before the spices are added, the combination of colors is incredibly beautiful--after, they get pretty dingy.




The celery/onion/spice mixture is then mixed with the bread. I always try to be careful at this point because it seems like you could smash up the cubes into crumbs.






The apples and sausage are then folded in--looks like about the right amount! I added some chicken stock to moisten it, but did not add any egg (which makes the stuffing more stiff).






The butternut squash are split and the seeds and strings are dug out. I HATE splitting butternut squash--I seem to never be able to get the job done! That will be solved when I eventually get my cleaver. And these particular butternut squash were also *ahem* amusingly shaped *ahem*. They barely fit in my glass pan!




The squash look pretty much the same, even when they are cooked:




The squash are then supposed to be hollowed out, leaving a 3/8 inch shell. Now THAT is a bizarre distance--why not a quarter inch or a half inch? The entrails of the squash are added to the stuffing and stirred as to break up the squash "as little as possible". Why? Why does it matter if the squash is broken up? The stuffing is loaded into the squash, brown sugar sprinkled on top, and little dots of butter all over....






But uh oh! There is WAY too much stuffing for those four little squash halves...



I figured a little extra would be fine! Who doesn't like stuffing? And the final product was fairly attractive!





So how were they? Really good! I love butternut squash and it was sweet (squash, brown sugar, and apples) juxtaposed with the savory (sausage). I love stuffing! And Josh happily ate some of the extra stuffing (he's not a big winter squash fan). I think these would freeze and reheat really well, if you went on a cooking binge.

Cornmeal Pancakes (p.645) and Hash Brown Potatoes (p.298)

First off, the weekend's goal was to catch up on blogs. I've posted about five blogs in a few days (but they are all dated back to the date they were made) so even if you are a loyal reader of TJOTJOC, it is unlikely that you have seen all the entries.

I have been indexing the recipes that I have made--if you are looking for a specific recipe, I recommend going to the sidebar and selecting "index" and it will show you all the indexes.

I had the urge to make breakfast this morning (granted, it was around eleven, but whatever!). I decided to make Cornmeal Pancakes (p.645) and Hash Brown Potatoes (p.298).

I'm no expert at pancake-making. As you may remember, my first experience at pancakes didn't go perfectly. I am happy to say that the recipe had a mistake in it! Apparently the recipe says "tablespoons" where it's supposed to be "teaspoons". So maybe it wasn't my fault that the pancakes were weird!

I love cornmeal so I thought that these pancakes would be delicious.


First, cornmeal (mine was yellow cornmeal for the bulk container at Whole Foods), honey, and salt are mixed together. The honey did NOT want to mix in but I decided not to worry about it.





And a cup of boiling water (I boiled mine in a teapot) is then slowly added. Milk, butter, and baking powder is added. At this point it occurred to me that the recipe might need to be adjusted for the altitude so I looked it up. Yes sir, I was supposed to decrease the baking powder and it was too late...I really was hoping that it didn't matter.

An egg and flour are then added in--TJOC makes the point (over and over) not to overmix the dry in with the wet, so I barely stirred.




A lot of butter is added to the pan and a ladlefull of pancake batter is dropped into it.




Bubbles eventually form. The pancake is ready to flip until there are bubbles all the way through.




The pancake is then flipped and the other side is browned.




The final product:



How where they? WOW! Super delicious. I LOVE cornbread and these were buttery, sweet, and wonderful. They were easy and fast to make. These have 100% chance of being made again--I am absolutely in love with them.


So onto the hash browns....

Three cups of potatoes, finely diced. My potatoes are totally not finely diced--more like randomly diced. I don't think I would pass the first day of cooking school! Potatoes, salt, and pepper and fried in oil (it would be better if they were being fried in bacon grease but I didn't have any.




I was suppose to press them down into a cake. It totally wasn't working. I eventually gave up and just shook them around and let them brown.



The recipe then says to pour a quarter cup of...what's that?



Cream?? Why would you pour cream all over hash browns? I've totally never heard of that...not that I'm an experienced short order cook. So I poured it on there--even though it seemed bizarre.





But I'll be damned!! The cream totally soaked in--they weren't soggy at all!



They were AWESOME! Crispy on the outside, soft and delicious on the inside...wow were they good! They took a while to cook but it was worth every second. The breakfast was great! I'm totally making this in the future for guests!

Grilled Cheese Sandwich (p. 180), Cream of Carrot soup (p. 144), and Soup Croutons (p. 151)

What is better on a rainy day than grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup? Nothing! But I didn't want to make tomato soup, so I decided we would have grilled cheese sandwiches and cream of carrot soup.

Grilled cheese sandwiches are another American staple that I've never made for myself (a fact that horrified Josh). I don't really like them but that's no excuse. Grilled Cheese Sandwich (p. 180) was my starting point. The intro says that the writers like their sandwiches with mayo on them (ick!).


First step--butter the bread (these are going to American-style, classic grilled cheese--white bread and Kraft singles).




Cheese is then put in the middle, butter-y side out. One side is browned, then it's flipped. Eventually the sandwich gets toasty and the cheese is melty and it's ready to go!





How was it? Good, although I still don't love grilled cheese. It's easy and filling, though.


I've been meaning to make another "cream of" soup for a while and I decided to make Cream of Carrot soup (p. 144) tonight. The recipe starts simply--an onion, some ginger, a little bit of homemade curry powder, and some butter were fried up in a little chicken stock. It turned this beautiful golden color. Poultry stock, orange juice, and a ton of sliced carrots are then added in...



The soup is boiled for about twenty minutes until the carrots are tender. I then blended the soup with my immersion blender.



Isn't that pretty? Heavy cream, salt, and black pepper were then mixed in and it was finished!




The recipe says that Soup Croutons (p. 151) are really good sprinkled on the top. I'm afraid that I didn't make them correctly now that I reread the paragraph--I just made croutons but now that I read the section, it seems like they are supposed to be cooked on the stove? That is not how I made them. Uh oh....


I started with bread slices:



My bread pieces were spread all over a cookie sheet and sprinkled with olive oil:



And they toasted up really well...Yum! I love croutons (and truly feel that they are the best part of salads--the croutons and the dressing).



The croutons sprinkled on the soup...perfection!



How was it? The soup was incredibly sweet. I know carrots are sweet but not usually THIS sweet. If I made it again, I would replace the orange juice with chicken stock--or maybe just leave it out. Maybe I just don't like sweet soups. I did find the soup to be extremely attractive. The croutons were terrific though.

E-Awards!

I received an E-Award from The Mediocre Cook! How exciting! I am extremely happy to be mentioned and I'm a big fan of the MC which makes it even better :) I read a TON online, although I do have some favorites.

My favorite blogs (all of these are on my google reader, along with about twenty more):

1. Pieknits. I would read this blog even if she wasn't one of my oldest (in terms of friendship years, not age years!) friends. If you have ever had the slightest interest in knitting--this blog has everything from skull wristbands to knitted pie slices. There are also extremely tasty recipes every so often and terrific step-by-step house projects, like upholstery.

2. Cake Wrecks. If you don't read this blog, you are insane. It's so funny! I don't recommend reading it at work because you'll seem unhinged--giggling to yourself in the corner. There is no way that I would ever pay for any of these hidious cakes--and I hope never to have a cake to submit!

3. Fast Food News. I'm not sure why I like this blog so much--but it always makes me feel up to date on what's happening in the fast food world.

4. Reality Blurred. I have been a fan of RB FOREVER. If you like reality shows, you must read this blog (and I do love reality shows...as embarrassing as it is!).

A trifecta of Gourmet themed blogs :)

5. Cooking Gourmet. Always fascinating and it's awesome to follow along with a cook-through blog from someone who actually has cooking experience (unlike myself!). I have found myself bookmarking pages in my Gourmet cookbook because her posts look so interesting!

6. Gourmet all the way. I have to say, I love that Adam's recipes don't always turn out either! And he posts a lot of pictures, which I adore.

7. The Gourmet Project. Teena always has such interesting stories (I loved the stories about the guys who she wasn't dating breaking up with her)--and she also got engaged and announced it on her blog :) Her pictures are beautiful and always make me want to make what she just made (especially the macaroons!).



By the way, this award comes with rules, here they are: Please find at least 10 more blogs of any kind which you deem to be excellent; but hey if you only come up with 3 or 5, I don’t mind. Post about the blogs you picked, linking back to me and to them. Once you’ve posted, return here to let me know your post is up, and of course let your 10 award winners know too.

Curry Powder I (p. 974)

First off, the weekend's goal was to catch up on blogs. I've posted about five blogs in a few days (but they are all dated back to the date they were made) so even if you are a loyal reader of TJOTJOC, it is unlikely that you have seen all the entries.

I have been indexing the recipes that I have made--if you are looking for a specific recipe, I recommend going to the sidebar and selecting "index" and it will show you all the indexes.

In the meantime, Josh and I bought some salmon and needed to use it before it went bad. I made my go-to condiment for salmon, curry mayo. I don't like the curry I have because it turns everything a muddy gray-green (although I'm thankful that my mom bought it for me!) and decided to make my own.

TJOC has four recipes for curry (five if you include garam marsala) and I decided to make Curry Powder I (p. 974), mainly because I didn't have fennel, poppy seeds, or fenugreek for the other curries.





The curry was great but tasted pretty strongly of cardamom.

And a note to all of you--don't send the bowl that was used to mix the curry powder in through the dishwasher. Josh opened the dishwasher up to unload it and said "why is our dishwasher a different color?" I figured that was a bad sign. I looked inside--the inside of the dishwasher was yellow, although our plates and stuff were fine...I immediately knew the culprit was the turmeric. It had also dyed my hands yellow. So wash anything with turmeric in it throughly and in the sink!

Chili Con Carne (p.513) and Mexican Orange Drops (p. 874)

More candy making! I had no specific reason to make candy but I was in a baking mood (probably because I'm stressed--I like to bake when I'm stressed!). I decided to make Mexican Orange Drops (p. 874).

The first step is to melt one cup of sugar. I have to admit--I didn't know that sugar would melt with no liquid at all.

This is what I started with. You can see the sugar starting to liquidate at the edges.



Eventually, the sugar looked like this:




And it ended looking like this:



I figured that was what the recipe meant when it said "rich brown"--I was pretty excited because this was a new experience for me--and a new skill!

The recipe than says to add in some boiling water or orange juice--because the recipe's name has "orange" in it, I decided to use orange juice. The sugar DID NOT like the orange juice being added and it spit it all over. It was pretty scary! I was glad I was wearing an apron (yes, I know, but it protects my clothes).



Hot evaporated milk, sugar, and salt are then added. This was scary! As the milk was added, the boiling mixture kept threatening to boil over--and I was not looking forward to the kitchen being covered in scalding hot sugar. The pot is then covered an cooked for a few minutes.







It then had to be cooked until it was 234 degrees. I was expecting to have a lot of time since the marshmallow mixture took FOREVER to get to temperature...but this was totally different! It hit 234 almost immediately. If you make this recipe, watch the temperature closely.





The zest from two oranges is then added. I really really recommend a microplane grater! I really despise zesting with a grater--but the microplane not only zests to the correct degree quickly (only zest, no white pith) but also collects the zest. It's fast and easy and I think every one who bakes should have one in their collection.





A cup of nuts are mixed in and the mixture is beat until creamy. Now, I don't know how they are supposed to get "creamy" but it started to make snapping noises and was almost impossible so I decided to quit stirring--it was almost breaking the wooden spoon.





The candy was then dropped on the foil. It was NOT easy to drop either--it was very sticky.




I was terrified that the candy wasn't going to come off of the foil. My solution was to let it dry for a day--and then they did come off. I wrapped them in saran wrap. They were very strange. The MODs were EXTREMELY citrusy--if you like orange flavor, these are for you. I'm not as into extreme citrus so I wasn't sure about them...the consistency was that of pralines. I LOVE pralines, so that worked really well for me. I'm not sure what MODs are supposed to look and taste like but these were great.



I needed something fast to make because it was a Wednesday night. Why does it being a Wednesday matter? Because on W, Josh likes to watch Bones and I like to watch American's Next Top Model, and I tend to watch it in my office, which is nowhere near the kitchen. I decided to make Chili Con Carne (p.513).

The first step is to combine onions, garlic (a lot of garlic!), a jalapeno, and some salt in a pan, until the vegetables are softened. Easy, right?




This was where I ran into chili-problem-number-one. I made a big error in judgment. I seeded the jalopeno and didn't immediately wash my hands. Why does this matter? Because I managed to touch the bottom of my nose and my lips with the jalapeño hand. And it felt like I lit them on fire. ALWAYS wash your hands after doing anything with peppers. I washed my face with soap and water, which helped, but it burned for about an hour.


Meat is then added. The recipe calls for three pounds of boneless beef chuck cut into cubes. I used stew meat that I bought at the grocery store.




I hate browning meat because it seems to toughen it. I think I overbrowned it because I was in the middle of making the candy and ignored it. A half cup of chili powder was then added (you can make your own but I just used purchased chili powder).




At this point I got totally overwhelmed. This was what my stove looked like:




Four burners--all full. Because I was so busy I didn't manage to get an "after" picture of the chili. But tomatoes, vinegar, and water are added to the mix, and it's cooked for a couple hours.

How was it? I thought the flavor was delicious but I hated the big chunks of meat. I think that's just a personal preference though--if I made it again I would use either finely diced or ground beef. I think chili is one of those things that everyone has very specific views on what is best--lots of beans or no beans, ground meat or cubed meat, spicy or not spicy. I have to make it again at some point because the following recipe is exactly the same as chili con carne, expect with beans, so I might make it with chili ground beef (ground with a larger diameter than normal ground beef).

German Potato Salad (p. 168) and French Toast (p. 648)

I finally got Duchess to the pet expo that we were trying to go to last week. The pet expo was fun, I won two tickets to mini golf in the raffle, and Duchess enjoyed sniffing at other dogs and getting tons and tons of treats.

They had biscuits, hot dogs, and carrots frozen into big chucks of ice for the dogs to gnaw at--it was a BIG hit with Duchie.





The next day we took her to the Doggie Olympics where she competed in various contests. She did pretty good considering she had never competed in anything before. I was particularly impressed by how she did on the jumps on the agility course!




Since starting TJOTJOC I've noticed there is a whole set of foods that I should already know how to cook, but I have never made for myself. I say "for myself" because the vast majority of these foods are things my mom cooked, so why should I bother? French Toast (p. 648) is one of these things. When I told my mom I didn't know how to make French toast, she pointed out that I don't LIKE French toast, which, while true, wasn't helpful :)


Easy enough start--half and half, eggs, sugar, vanilla (after the drunken frosting, I stay away from rum in recipes), and salt. Some whisking later, this is what I had:






Bread is added to the egg mixture:




And the eggy bread is placed gently (or in my case, slopped) into the pan.




This is where I ran into problems. The recipe just says to "brown the bread on each side in a hot well-buttered skillet". So I had the heat on my pan fairly high. Unfortunately, this was burning the bread while not cooking it through (so it was still grossly soggy). Josh came into the kitchen and pointed out the problem--the heat was too high. I lowered the heat and it seemed to mostly solve the problem. I eventually ended up with this:



I hate these clear plates but I do like this picture because it looks like the French toast is levitating! How was it? Okay I suppose. I still don't like French toast, but at least I know how to make it. Josh insists that he can make it better so I seriously doubt that I will make this recipe again.



Onto food...I wanted something quick to eat while watching The Amazing Race and German Potato Salad (p. 168) seemed just perfect. Josh dislikes potato salad, so I knew this one would be all me (even though I tend not to like them either).

Easy enough start...boil potatoes, while at the same time frying up some minced bacon (I really recommend mincing the bacon with kitchen shears--otherwise they are pretty difficult to cut). Remove the bacon.




Onion and celery are then added to the bacon grease.



Chopped dill pickles are added (how could Josh not like this recipe? Bacon, potatoes, pickles? What could be better?!?). In a another pot (this recipe is not afraid to make a ton of dishes) the dressing is made (broth, vinegar, sugar, salt, paprika, and dry mustard).


I noticed after I had dumped the potatoes in the water that I was supposed to leave the skins on...whoops! My potatoes were yukons and they didn't keep their shape very well when sliced. The potatoes are added to the onion mix.







The bacon was added and the dressing was poured on top.





I didn't take an "after" picture but the potato salad was really really good (if you like vinegar). I really enjoyed the bacon and pickles and I like vinegar, so it was a great combination.