Butternut squash & cauliflower soup

[yady]

Originally posted on LiveJournal

I mentioned this on #afp and was told by Arwen to post it here, so, here we go...

Everything in this recipe is approximate, as I was just going along with what I happened to have.

Ingredients (for 4 to 6 normal or 2 to 3 huge bowls):

1 smallish or 1/2 large butternut squash
About the same amount of cauliflower florets
4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1 2 cm piece of ginger, peeled and grated
1 teaspoon of garam massala
1 teaspoon of ras el hanout or curry powder
1 1/2 teaspoon of stock powder (or use vegetable or chicken stock instead of water)
Maple syrup or honey (optional)
Milk (optional)
Greek yoghurt (optional, for serving)
Bread of some sort (optional, for serving)

Equipment:

Pan
Oven
Shallow oven dish
Blender
Garlic grater, if you have it (for grating the ginger)
Knife
Thing to stir with

Cut the squash into quarters, halve if those are very large. Deseed the parts, but don't peel yet. Place in a shallow oven dish, skin side down, with the unpeeled garlic cloves in between them. Put dish in oven at 250 degrees for 15 minutes.

In the mean time, wash the cauliflower, put it in a pan, just about cover the florets with water and add stock powder (or cover with stock and omit stock powder). Cover with a lid, and put on the stove to cook. Leave simmering while you deal with the squash and garlic.

Take the dish of squash and garlic out of the oven. Carefully remove the skin from the squash, cut into 2 cm/1 inch dice and place in blender. Peel garlic (which will now be quite soft) and add to blender. Add ginger to blender, too. Then take the cauliflower off the heat, divide cooked florets into smaller pieces if necessary, and add those to the blender too, as well as the cooking liquid.

Start gently, but once it gets going, turn the blender to high and blend like that for a minute. I assume that if you don't have a blender you can put things into, an immersion blender will do fine, just add all the other ingredients to the pan with the cauliflower.

Return the blended mass to the pan. Stir in the spices. Bring back to boil. If the soup is too thick for your liking, add some more water or stock, or possibly some milk (turn the heat off befor adding milk, though, or it might curdle). Also taste it, if you think it should be a little sweeter, add a teaspoon of honey or maple syrup. (I did none of these things this time around).

If you like, serve with a good dollop of Greek yoghurt on top and some bread (I had mine with toast) on the side.

Whisky and lemon marinated salmon

[yady]

Originally posted on LiveJournal.

I guess I might as well post this too, then... I made this last Friday, when my brother and his wife came over for dinner before we all went to a whisky tasting evening.

Ingredients (for 4 people):

For the fish:

1 piece of fresh salmon fillet, approximately 600 gram
1/2 lemon
Whisky (of the 'drinkable, but not a waste to cook with' kind, I use Jameson for this)
Olive oil
Thyme
Black pepper
Honey

For the vegetables:

1 courgette
2 onions
250 gram of mushrooms
250 gram of cherry tomatoes
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Thyme

For the pasta:

300 to 500 gram of your favourite pasta
Fresh basil, a couple of handfuls
Garlic, 4 or so cloves
Pine kernels, one or two handfuls
Olive oil
Some coarse salt
50 to 100 gram of Parmesan or Pecorino cheese, as a block

Grate the zest of the lemon. Juice the lemon. Mix the zest, thyme and pepper with the honey. Add the lemon juice and stir until well mixed. Add about as much each of whisky and olive oil as there was lemon juice. Put a little of the mixture into an oven dish, and put the salmon in. Pour the rest of the mix over the fish. Cover (not with aluminium foil, I think) and place in the fridge for a couple of hours, turning the fish over a couple of times during that time.

With a pestle and mortar, crush the basil leaves to a fine paste. I find the addition of a couple of grains of coarse salt makes this easier. Add the garlic, crush and mix into the paste. Add the pine kernels, crush, and mix well. The mixture should now be rather thicker than peanut butter. Transfer the mixture to a bowl. Finely grate the cheese, and mix it in, along with as much olive oil to achieve a consistency about as thick as peanut butter, or a little thicker. This may be a bit more than you need, I would use 1/2 to 3/4. Put what you're not using in a small sealable container, smoothen the surface, pour on a bit of olive oil to seal it from the air, seal and place in the fridge.

About 20-30 minutes before you want to eat dinner, preheat the oven to 200 degrees. take the salmon out of the fridge. Put a large pot of water on for the pasta. Cut the vegetables into pieces about the size of the cherry tomatoes.

When the pasta water boils, add some salt to it, if you do that to pasta. Have a look at the pasta's cooking time; the salmon needs about 12 minutes, and you want the pasta to be cooked one or two minutes before it's done. Put the pasta in the water and the salmon in the oven in the appropriate order.

In a large skillet or wok, heat up some olive oil. Put the vegetables in, as well as the thyme. Stir them around; when they are covered with oil and starting to look a bit less raw, add a good splash of balsamic vinegar. Stir. Turn the heat to low, and keep stirring occasionally.

When the pasta is cooked, reserve some of the cooking water, then drain. Stir a little of the reserved cooking water into the pesto. Then, add the pesto to the drained pasta, and stir well. If it seems too dry, add a little more cooking water.

Take the fish out of the oven and serve everyting.