Sunday Chores, Sourdough Flop and Butternut Squash Soup

I accomplished some strategic Christmas shopping on Sunday. I mapped out what I wanted and where I was going, then started early…well 10:00, which is pretty early for me. I was able to get in and out pretty fast and even got home in time for my Sunday nap. Ok, so maybe some chores got waylaid in order to squeeze in a luxurious nap. Eh, I have enough clean underwear to get through without doing laundry for another week…barely.

I experimented with my sourdough recipe this weekend, with sorry results. The crumb was tight, and the loaf didn’t rise very much in the last rising. My theories of what may have gone wrong: 1. I may have possibly over kneaded it. I used the mixer, and I let it go longer than I think I should have. I think good evidence of this was when I was trying to roll the dough into a batard shape; it kept trying to spring back to a tighter form; 2. I added too much flour. It is hard to tell when the dough is still shaggy if it is too wet, so I added some more. Definitely, not worth a picture. Perhaps I need to error more on the side of wet next time. The one thing that has improved is the splitting of the loaf. The scoring turned out a lot better this time, now that I am actually getting the blade to cut and not pull. Well, I think I need to get back to reading Hamelman’s book, Bread: The Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes and work out of that.

Since it was rainy and cold outside, I thought some nice hot soup would be nice, so I decided to prepare a butternut squash soup, which has a lot of flavor and I really enjoy. I adapted it from a bisque recipe; however one of the changes I made was instead of adding heavy cream to the soup, I limit it to a garnish at the end. That way I still get the rich cream taste and body, but am not killing myself with the fat.

Butternut Squash Soup Recipe
1 butternut squash
Olive oil to coat
½ cup diced onions
½ cup diced carrots
½ cup diced celery
1 tbsp vegetable oil
½ tsp allspice
56 oz. of chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste
heavy cream

Clean and de-stem the butternut squash.
Split the butternut squash in half lengthwise.
Coat the halves and place open side down on a baking sheet with sides.
Place in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 35-45 minutes, until the squash is soft.
Allow squash to cool, then scoop out the flesh.
Heat vegetable oil, add onions, carrots and celery. Sautee until soft.
Add the butternut squash flesh along with the spices to the mire poix.
Once the mixture is combined add about 28 oz of chicken stock, let simmer.
Once the vegetables are soft, puree with immersion blender or food processor.
Add remaining stock until preferred consistency.
Add cream upon serving to taste.

Mmm, too bad I only had a dense sourdough bricks to dip in my soup.

My Wild Friday Night

It is a cold and windy night in San Francisco. The moon is spectacular (well it was before the infamous San Francisco fog rolled in to obscure it); apparently it is the fullest moon in the last 15 years. I was able to capture a picture of the moon amidst the crazy cloud formations from my back deck.

These days, my idea of an enjoyable Friday night is relaxing at home with the cats and enjoying a glass of wine while surfing the internet and watching TV. Tonight, my new favorite blog is http://www.fuckyoupenguin.blogspot.com/ And tonight's TV line up includes Stargate Atlantis and Sanctuary. While I enjoy Stargate Atlantis, I still prefer Stargate SG1, which I still miss. As for Sanctuary, I enjoy it, it is a little darker than what I normally like.

Now back to relaxing in front of the heater with a cat or two on my lap.
Have a good weekend!

Birthday Cakes and Waffles, What a Tasty Weekend!

This weekend we had a birthday party for Bill and Kat. In honor of their birthdays, I baked a cake for each of them. A chocolate cake for Bill and an orange ginger carrot cake with an orange cream cheese frosting for the ginger loving Kat.

Ever since I started baking this chocolate cake from The Barefoot Contessa at Home, it has been a frequently requested item. It is a moist, dark brown chocolate cake with a hint of coffee to enhance the chocolate flavor. I prefer Valhorna and Sharffen Berger cocoa powders for this recipe.

I made a couple of mistakes this time around, neither of which altered the flavor, however the look of the finished cake suffered. First, I was being lazy and didn’t sift the powder sugar in the chocolate frosting, which lead to little white specks of powder sugar lumps in the frosting. In an attempt to rid the frosting of the little lumps of powder sugar, I made my second mistake and whipped the frosting, which caused it to thicken to a stiff consistency. The stiff frosting made it difficult to spread on the cake and then if formed a kind of shell on the cake. Lesson learned, laziness didn't pay off in this cake. I need to work on my presentation of the cake. Fortunately, the room was dark and the audience raved about the cake, the mistakes will be my little secret.



The second cake was inspired by Kat and her love for ginger and also by my need to experiment. In perusing the various recipe resources, I found this recipe for an Orange Ginger Carrot Cake with and Orange Cream Cheese frosting on the Cooks Illustrated website. I am not always a huge fan of ginger, however I enjoyed it in this cake. The diced crystallized ginger added a nice testure to the cake and the ginger flavor really complimented the orange and the spices of the carrot cake. I also liked it because the spice were moderate and didn't overpower the cake. The orange accented cream cheese frosting really brought the flavors together nicely.



For dinner, Kat and Laurel prepared an awesome pork rib roast. They coated it in lemon olive oil, lemon juice, a seasoning rub that they really like and lemon pepper (?) and roasted on a bed of sliced lemons. It was juicy, tender and so flavorful. And Chelle prepared her sinful scalloped potatoes made with a béchamel and gruyere cheese. We garnished this fabulous meal with some steamed asparagus with an aoli.

Of course we had some nice wine over the course of the evening. We started with the 2005 Novy Syrah, Judge Family Vineyard. It had some very nice dark fruit notes, which came out nicely after we let it breathe a little. From there we had a 2006 Robert Young Red Winery Road Cabernet Franc blend. It has a really nice bright fruit and floral nose. It has a softer finish, which makes it enjoyable now. This was one of the bottles from my first wine club shipment from Robert Young Estate Winery. After that we had a Leal Lavanda. The nose on this is so full of fruit and it is such a well rounded wine.

One of my favorite things to do on a weekend morning is to sleep in with the kitties and then get up and enjoy a nice breakfast with my Peet’s Coffee. This weekend I made myself sourdough waffles with my sourdough starter. The King Arthur Flour website had an excellent suggestion of what to do with the cup of starter you throw away before feeding the remainder of your starter. I have made these before and really enjoy them. While I think they taste best immediately out of the waffle iron, heated up in the toaster oven works too.



Lots of good food and wine this weekend. I think I'll have to go back to eating lighter this week. Hopefully next weekend I will be able to find some time to continue my experimentation on bread baking.