Date Night Dinner!

Tonight my husband and I are having a special evening out:  a show at the Fox and steak for dinner!

For the soup:
1 acorn squash
1 c chicken stock, optional
2T margarine, optional

Preheat oven to 375F.  Wash the skin of the acorn squash.  Pat dry.  Stab repeatedly with knife--this is very good for stress!!!  It also keeps it from exploding in the oven under the pressure of the steam from its flesh cooking.  Put on baking tray, to catch any leaking juices, and roast for 45 minutes or until tender.

Let cool.  It should be soft enough to pierce easily with a fork.

Cut in half.  Scrape out the seeds and innards, discard. 

Cut in four pieces and peel off the skin, discard.  Puree the flesh and add choice of liquid and spices to make a tasty soup to the desired consistency!

I added turmeric, a little coriander, a little ginger powder, and fresh ground black pepper. 

The puree can be frozen, and snuck into other veggie-less meals to pump up their healthiness.  Stealth veggies!!  You can also add brown sugar, orange juice, and milk or cream to make a sweeter soup, or blend in apple puree or parsnip puree to make a veggie side, sweet or savory respectively.

Steak

Ingredients
3 beef eye of round steaks
1/4 c sweet vermouth
1/4 c white vinegar (white wine or cider would have been better)
1/4 c olive oil
1 onion, diced
Salt and pepper

Salt and pepper both sides of the steak.

Marinade the meet in the vermouth, vinegar, oil and onion.

I never finished this post, because while the soup was delicious, simple and filling, the steaks were too greasy and underseasoned.  I should not have used olive oil, I should have used a more acidic marinade, and I should have kept the onions separate from the meat as they cooked at a different time and temperature.  Lesson learned.

Chicken Stock

What do I do with the chicken after a delicious roast chicken dinner from my previous post?  I use the giblets and the carcass to make chicken stock.

Ingredients
leftover whole chicken (or soup bones from the butcher)
carrots, onions, celery, any root veggies (you can use the ones that had been roasted under the chicken, or fresh roughly chopped ones.  If you need to be frugal, you can save the chopped off ends and the pared skin of veggies in a freezer bag, and use them in this stock.)
water

Remove the chicken meat from the carcass of the roast chicken.

Save the chicken meat for other things.  (You could throw into a tortilla with salsa for a nice taco, add to the stock you'll be making with this recipe for a nice soup, add to a casserole.) 

Put the carcass, the reserved giblets, the vegetables, and skin into a stock pot.  Fill with water and bring to a boil.  Let simmer for about an hour.

I forgot to take pictures of it, I will fill them in next time I make stock, but once it smells fragrant and all the water is golden-brothy, place a colander in a large bowl and pour out all the water.  I put that in the refrigerator to cool.  I don't have a stockpot, so to get the quantity of stock that I want and the flavor level,  I generally refill the pot with fresh water and boil it again for another hour.  Then I pour it again into a colander, adding it to the first batch of stock, since the first batch was very flavorful stock and the second batch is weaker, it evens out to a nice balance.  Then I cool it, measure it into freezer bags, and freeze the stock for later.

Vegetarian Lentil Soup

This recipe was adapted from The Joy of Cooking (1997 publication) Lentil Soup Recipe (page 104).

Ingredients
2 c lentils
2 carrots
2 onions
2 celery
1 zucchini
2 T diced garlic
olive oil
can of diced tomatoes
bay leaf, thyme, peppercorn
8 c water
balsamic vinegar (optional--could also use sherry, chicken stock, etc in which case substitute for some of the water)
turmeric, your favorite spices

Supplies
colander (for rinsing lentils)
pot
knife and cutting board
either string, or an empty tea bag

Dice the onions.

Chop the celery finely.

Dice the zucchini finely.

Dice the carrots.

Heat the olive oil in the soup pot.

Add all the vegetables and the garlic to the pot until they soften, which is before they brown.

While you wait for the veggies to look like this:

Sort the lentils to remove any rocks or bad looking legumes.  Rinse.

Add the can of diced tomatoes with their liquid to the pot of softened veggies.

 

Add the rinsed and strained lentils to the soup pot.

When adding the water, I like to rinse out the tomato can into the total water to get all the tomato juice out.

Measure the water and add it to the soup pot.

Put the bay leaf, 1 peppercorn, and dried or fresh time into a food safe bag of some kind.

I used an empty "fill-your-own" teabag.  The important thing is it should be food safe, contain the spices, and make them easy to remove, but still be permeable to liquid so that they can flavor the soup.  You can make a bouquet garni tied with string and just use ground pepper as well.

Bring the soup to a boil, turn down to a simmer, and cook until the lentils are tender, about 45 minutes.  Stir occasionally so that nothing sticks to the bottom and burns.  Feel free to add more water so it is to your desired "soupiness".  Before serving, remove the herb packet.

Add the balsamic vinegar, turmeric, and your favorite spices.

Ladle into a bowl and serve!

This soup freezes very well.  It also goes delicious with some kind of warm and hearty bread.  You can also add ham hocks or sausage for more flavor, at the beginning of the cooking process in place of the olive oil.