A Bowlful of Festive

Alright, I've got to get this recipe to you stat, as a) it's crazy delicious and b) it's seasonal and since we are post-Consumermas, is probably already out of date. Also, I'm a little embarrassed to share this, as I do feel it's kind of cheating since the main ingredient is pre-made eggnog. Don't worry--I'm not going to go all Semi-Homemade kwanzaa cake on you, I promise. Just trust that this is stupid easy and ridiculously tasty, and I don't even particularly like eggnog. If you wanted to make your own eggnog not only would this recipe work with it, I would also tip my hat to you.

Eggnog Ice Cream


Adapted from Sherlie's Easy Eggnog Ice Cream at Allrecipes

Mr. Monster approves this recipe.

2 cups eggnog
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon dark rum

Mix up the goods and pour into the frozen container of an ice cream maker. Follow its directions. Mine took 50 minutes to firm up to soft serve consistency, but you know your own ice cream maker better than I. Eat a little of it now and put the rest of it in a container in the fridge to firm up properly (it will take about 2 hours).

A Winter Pick-Me-Up with the Power of Color

Winter food can get a little... well, boring, especially if your diet is heavy on the produce like mine is. How many ways can a person cook potatoes, anyway? Squash are the tiny splashes of color that keep my winter cooking from ending up monochrome and snooze-inducing. A little scene-stealer of a dish like this one can keep your meals feeing festive and interesting even when you've got, say, several inches of snow on the ground like we do here. Plus, a vegetarian dish that can stand as the beautiful centerpiece of a meal is a rare and wondrous thing (you know where I'm coming from, fellow veggies and almost-veggies: a plate of sides does not a meal make). These babies spend a long time in the oven, so they're best suited to a day when you can commit several hours to kicking around the kitchen--like an upcoming holiday, perhaps.

Roasted Acorn Squash with Corn Pudding

Adapted from Heidi Swanson's recipe at 101Cookbooks

The original recipe only called for 1 acorn squash, but I found that I had way too much filling. Either you can use two squashes (as I suggest here) or you can use one squash and cook the remainder of the filling like a custard. I did mine in an ungreased souffle pan, placed it in a cake pan full of water, and put the whole shebang into a cold oven. I then let it heat up to 375 and baked for 40 minutes. It was okay, but a little bland for me. The combination of egg and squash is what makes this dish stellar.


2 acorn squash (see note above)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup milk
1 egg and 2 egg whites
1/2 cup corn kernels (I used frozen, thawed but fresh would be great too)
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/3 cup chopped scallions
pinch of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup grated cheddar

Mise en place: the finest kitchen methodology!

Preheat oven to 375F degrees with your rack in the middle.

Cut your squash in half lengthwise to make nice little cups and scrape them out with a spoon. Then cut a flat spot on the bottom so that the cup sits level. You want to have a nice level container for your filling so there's no slopping about. Rub the top and inside of your squash with the olive oil and put them cup-side up on a baking sheet. Cover with foil and bake for 40 minutes until the squash starts to get tender.

Whisk your eggs together with the milk, allspice, corn, nutmeg, salt, and about half to 2/3 of the scallions. Please note that the corn will sink, especially if you use frozen, and everything else will float. Give it a good stir right before pouring it into the squash, filling them about 3/4 of the way. Just leave the squash on the same baking sheet to save yourself the trouble of moving a mostly full squash cup from one surface to another. The original recipe says it can take as little time as 30 minutes, depending on the oven, but I was using my mom's nice new oven (thanks Mom!) and my pudding took nearly an hour and a quarter to set--so proceed with patience!

When the pudding looks done, sprinkle on your cheese and put the squash back in the oven for another 5 minutes. If you're feeling fancy, you can also melt the cheese by putting the squash under a hot broiler for a quick crisp--just be careful not to burn anything. Sprinkle your remaining scallions on top and tuck in!

Look at this spread and try to feel dreary. I dare ya.

Notable Potables: Brugge Brasserie's Thunder Monkey

When I think of a winter beer, I tend to imagine molasses with a head of foam: something thick, viscous, and chewy that likely counts, calorie-wise, as the entirety of my meal. The holidays are my favorite time for beer for precisely this reason, since for about three months brewers suddenly remember that people really do like dark brews. Brugge Brasserie, Indianapolis' temple to Belgium, offers a holiday beer by the name of Thunder Monkey that is anything but the heavy, rich variety of winter beer that I know and love, but to be honest, I kind of dig it anyway.

I failed to take a photo so you will just have to use your imaginations, cats & kittens. This brew is about the color of a good bourbon, lightly effervescent, and light in the head department. Coriander and cinnamon are the first notes I got in a sip, with a little anise and hops bite at the end. The beer is very light, so the flavor is gone as soon as you've sensed it, making this a fabulous beer to drink with dinner: no fighting between flavors. Now if you hear "cinnamon" and "holiday beer" and fear you're going to have a swig full of Essence of Christmas Febreze, don't panic. If the brewers had messed with any bourbon barrel aging or cloying vanilla notes or even yeastiness, maybe. Nothing of the sort here. In fact, I'd like this brew as well in autumn as I do in winter. It's great with crepes & frites, but I bet it'd be killer with an apple and cheese plate.

The bad news? This stuff is only available in Indianapolis, and is a rare occurrence on Brugge's menu. If you happen to be there and it's on tap, go for it. Hoosier Beer Geek gave Thunder Monkey 3.96 mugs back in 2007, but their review sounds like an entirely different beer, so I imagine it's undergone some revisions between then and now. I strongly recommend the current version--that is, if you manage to snag some.

Magical White Trees: The Tale of Unloved Veg

I have an admission to make, gentle reader.

I have never liked cauliflower.

There, I said it. Will I lose my food blogging license? It doesn't matter: the truth must out. I can do broccoli, fine, but cauliflower has always seemed too... sulfur-y. There has always been something to cauliflower that reminded me of hard-boiled eggs, which also are not too dear to my heart. Besides, every way I have had it cooked, it is either stalky and tough or a complete mush-fest. Not, as Saint Alton would say, good eats.

But cauliflower is such a winter staple, and as a vegetarian I feel a certain duty to actually try different vegetables from time to time (I can't eat peas in everything, Wife will remind me), so I decided that I should figure out how to make cauliflower delicious. Did I succeed? Well, no one was more shocked than I when yesterday in the grocery store, I made a beeline for the cauliflower and popped a head of it in the cart. Gleefully, I might add.

Don't believe me? I dare you to try this and not want seconds. Go ahead. Try it.

Roasted Cauliflower with Ricotta and Peas
Inspired by cauliflower 'pasta' with peas and ricotta by Jules at Stonesoup.

Shown here on top of some puffy pancake, but it's just as good on its own.

1 head cauliflower, cut like so
1 TB olive oil
2 clove garlic, minced
pinch of red pepper flakes
1/2 onion, minced
2 cups frozen peas, thawed (if you don't share my enthusiasm for peas, you can reduce or eliminate this)
2 cups ricotta
1 cup or so parmesan, shredded

1. Cut up your cauliflower all neat-like and saute in the olive oil in a nice big pan until they soften.
2. Add the garlic, red pepper flakes, onion, and peas to the party. Saute on medium-high until brown and tender.
3. Kill the heat but leave on the burner and add the ricotta. It will take a little convincing to stir through, but it'll behave once it's heated through.
4. Taste, season, and add the parmesan to your liking.
5. Devour. If you included the peas--congratulations. You've just had two servings of veg. MAGIC.

Canning Adventures: Marmalade!

This is the first year I have ever canned and I am officially smitten. I am an utter cheapskate, so the opportunity to preserve goods in the hand for later is irresistible. Besides, glowing color in glass in rows and rows on my shelves is never a bad thing. And there's the whole mad-scientist-in-the-kitchen thing.


Anyway.


Since the garden is officially sad-looking, canning adventures have moved from fresh produce to preserves. My first jammy experiment: marmalade!

Bitter, citrusy, and perfect on the sort of tasty baked goods that are just around the corner this time of year (or already in your kitchen, if you're like me). I used an Ina Garten recipe that (appropriately) is called Anna's Orange Marmalade. I used more oranges than she called for, but that was because my oranges were medium, not large.


Anna's Orange Marmalade
adapted from Ina Garten, original here


Ingredients:
4 large oranges (or 6 medium, in my case)
2 lemons
8 cups of sugar
8 cups of water
patience (you will have to wait 24 hours between prep & cooking)


1. Cut oranges & lemons in half, very thinly. Do you have a mandoline? Bully for you. The rest of us, cut very thinly. Pitch the seeds, save the juice. Using one of those bendy cutting mats is helpful.

2. Put all your citrusy goodness in a big stainless steel pot with the 8 cups of water. Bring it to a boil and add the sugar. 

3. Once the sugar is all incorporated, cut the heat, cover it, and let it sit overnight.

4. So, the next day, you might think "ah! I've waited long enough!" But you would be wrong. Bring it to a boil again, reduce the heat, and let it simmer uncovered for 2 hours.


5. Give it a stir and bring the heat up to medium. Boil for another 30 minutes. Skim off foam that collects on the top. You want the mixture to hit 220 degrees Fahrenheit.


6. Don't trust your thermometer? Chill a plate in the fridge and, once it's cold, put a spoonful of marmalade on it and pop it back in the fridge. Once it's cool, it should be firm, but not as hard as you think it ought to be.


7. Can it! Ladle the marmalade into your sterilized jars, lid 'em, and process in a hot water bath for 5-8 minutes. They'll keep a year.

Note: this is bitter, bitter stuff. I like it that way, but if you wanted a less bitter product, try putting in only half of the peels.

Egg Yolk Alchemy

The other evening I found myself in a bit of a pickle: I'd made my favorite go-to egg dish, the puffy pancake (more on that another day), which calls for two whole eggs and two egg whites.


As a woman who hates to throw anything away (and has recently started buying more expensive eggs), I was left with two yolks and a determination not to toss them. I knew I had to have a culinary gold mine on my hands. So off I went to my second-favorite cook book: Google.


Within a few minutes of clicking about, I found not only did I indeed have a culinary gold mine, I had an Anglophile's culinary gold mine. With very little effort, I could turn these egg yolks and a few other bits and bobs into lemon curd.


Let it be known that I am crazy for lemon curd. I think it is best served on a spoon, headed rapidly for my mouth, but on a finger will suffice. I have never actually bought any to keep around the house because it seemed kind of frivolous. Now that I know it is this quick and simple, AND that it uses up leftover ingredients from other dishes, I'm unlikely to ever be without.


Quick Lemon Curd

My recipe is adapted from the one I found at My Kind of Food. I tweaked it since I had fewer egg yolks and no limes lying about.


Ingredients:

2 egg yolks

1 1/2 lemons, juiced (do yourself a favor and don't cheat with the bottled stuff)

sugar to taste (4 tbsp did me, but I like very tart curd)

4 tbsp butter, separated

1. Start a pot of water boiling. Once it's there, pop a metal mixing bowl of the top of it. Don't put the bowl on and wait for the boil to start--you'll cook the egg with that hot bowl. 

2. Are you ready to whisk? Here it comes. Put your lemon juice in first (again, cooling that bowl) and start whisking. Add your yolks, still whisking. Once that's incorporated, add sugar to taste. Do not stop whisking while you taste for sweetness--you'll regret it.

3. Add your butter 1 tbsp at a time, still whisking.

4. Your curd should now coat the back of a spoon easily. It'll still seem thinner than what you may have had out of a jar before, but a session in the chill chest will firm it up. Take your bowl off of the pot, still whisking. You can stop whisking when the bowl is cool enough to touch.

5. Pour into a clean container and pop it in the fridge (after eating several spoonfuls for quality control purposes).

IF you can keep yourself from eating it all right away, this should keep a week or so in the fridge. I dare you to make it last that long.

Lemon curd, whipped cream, & puffy pancake: breakfast of champions.