butternut squash spread

My friends Melvin and Emily came to visit me before they headed off to see the fireworks. I had been straightening up in advance of the new year, so I took the opportunity to grab the butternut squash that had just been sitting around, and roasting it.

I coated it with oil, put it in a pan, and baked it at 400F until it got soft - took about an hour and a half.

The cool thing about butternut squash is that you can go savory or sweet with it. Since I didn't have much other food to offer, I decided to lay out a spread of toppings.



Melvin topped his with pistachios, Emily with nuts and honey, and mine was spiced pecans (from Trader Joe's), salted caramel sauce (from a previous post), and cacao nibs (also from Trader Joe's). As a side note, Emily is a huge fan of Trader Joe's and couldn't stop exclaiming at my spread :)



As they're both pursuing advanced degrees in psychotherapy, true to form we spent the evening discussing interpersonal relationships. So happy to have people on the same page.

Also glad not to have spent New Year's Eve alone. Happy New Year to you and yours!

chicken fingers & potato latkes

Feeling lazy today, so I peeked in the freezer and found some potato latkes and chicken fingers to bake. 400F oven, 10 minutes on each side.

This meal would've been pretty bland just by itself, so I decided to add some variety with different sauces. Sauces, especially when you have a couple, automatically make a meal funner to eat.

Pictured here (from left to right) is ranch + cayenne, barbecue, ketchup + sriracha, and greek yogurt + 21 seasoning salute + salt.

swedish tea rings

Amy took me home for the holidays, and as her heritage is partly Swedish, I got to experience the making of a holiday treat known as tea rings.

Her dad made the dough from scratch, but I think a Pillsbury type of pre-made dough would work. We rolled the dough out to 9" by 18". Took a lot of elbow grease and brought me back to my pastry days. It was also cute to have Amy's dad giving us suggestions the entire time. Just like all the nuances that my chef instructors would have us pay attention to, borne of their years of experience.



After rolling the dough out we spread a thin layer of soft butter on, then topped it with a combination of brown sugar, cinnamon, and raisins.



Then it got rolled up.



And pinched shut.



Depending on how cooperative the dough is you may have to re-pinch it to get it to stay shut.



We also rolled the dough to get it to be even, width-wise, before forming it into a circular ring-shape, with the seam-side down. The ring was placed on a sheet of aluminum foil, on top of a cookie sheet. Then we used a knife to cut slits in it. You'll want to cut the sides more than the top, and to make the cuts slightly diagonal.



Once cut, twist each slice diagonally to open it up.



Bake in a 400F oven for 20 minutes, until golden brown.



Rest until cool and then frost it - powdered sugar with milk make a good frosting (you can control the consistency of the frosting by adding more or less milk).



And there you have it! I ate it for breakfast with coffee, so good.

green bean salad

For the past couple of days I've been eating this green bean salad. Blanched green beans, caramelized onions, crispy bacon bits, and balsamic vinaigrette (balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, cayenne).



I've also garnished it with cheese, alternating stealing from Jonah (feta) and Amy (Danish blue). Before Amy my appreciation of blue cheese was extremely limited - to cheese plates when paired with sweets such as honey, jams, dried fruits. However, I saw her putting it in salad, and I guess the sweetness of balsamic vinegar does take the edge off.

sweet potatoes

Sometimes I buy sweet potatoes and keep them around because they don't go bad quickly and they make a good meal when you're in a pinch.

One day I slept in and woke up in a lazy mood, so it was a perfect way to start the day. I washed them, poked holes all around them with a fork, and microwaved them - 5 to 6 minutes, flipping halfway through.

Jonah made his a sweet one, topped with honey and Greek yogurt and peanut butter (!). You could easily use caramel or maple cream, and add spices like cinnamon.



I made mine a savory one, topped with caramelized onions, feta, and pieces of steak. I sprinkled Balti seasoning on the steak and it literally transformed how it tasted. (I can't tell you how much I love Penzeys spices and their spice mixes.)



I made it again for breakfast a different day, this time with shredded Italian cheeses rather than feta. I think I might have liked the feta better, although I microwaved everything so the cheese would melt here, whereas the feta was added on afterward microwaving on the one before.



It wasn't until I ate one half and folded the sweet potato onto itself that I realized it's basically like a Philly cheesesteak, except instead of bread it's sweet potato. No carb cheesesteak!

we met Santa

At Philly Homebrew Outlet West's holiday party. That is all.



Just kidding I lied. They had amazing latkes and mulled cider (with orange slices, lemon peel, cinnamon, cloves, and all spice), plus these addictive cheese balls. And Santa wasn't creepy, which is always a plus.

taking cornbread to the next level

This was a box of Trader Joe's cornbread mix. I don't tend to buy mixes (since they tend to be more expensive and prevent you from customizing), but they didn't have cornmeal in the store, so I did.

It was an easy mix, which yielded a cornbread that was crumbly and gritty (in a good way). I wanted it to be more cake-like, but that's my own cornbread preference.

Since there was nothing special about this cornbread, I decided to take it to the next level by poking holes with a fork and drizzling honey + rubbing butter all over the top - when it just came out of the oven.



The little things make a difference, even with the boxed stuff.

gourmet hamburger helper

One time Amy went out of town and bequeathed me a ball of mozzarella, which I diced up and threw into my pasta. It made all of the difference. In fact, it reminded me of hamburger helper, even though I'm not sure if I've ever eaten that.

Since that incident was before this blog's time, I decided to remake it. Here are the ingredients:

- 1 bag/box pasta (I used Trader Joe's tricolor vegetable radiatore)
- olive oil
- 3/4 lb ground turkey
- spices such as garlic, Italian seasoning, roasted red pepper flakes, cayenne, salt, pepper, etc. (I also used Trader Joe's 21 seasoning salute)
- 1 jar pasta sauce
- 8 oz diced mozzarella

While pasta is boiling, sautee the ground turkey with spices. Pour in the pasta sauce and let simmer. When pasta is done, add it in along with the mozzarella.



This meltiness, more so than shredded cheese, is what makes the difference.



Feel free to bake with a crust (a la the earlier macaroni and cheese post) if desired. Otherwise eat at will.

As a side note, I get excited whenever something tastes like a more gussied-up version of something that's mass-produced and familiar. In this case it was hamburger helper, but it could be anything. Leave a note if you know a recipe that fits this!

christmas tree

The family that decorates a tree together, stays BFF forever.

At least, that's the hope. After spending a bunch of unfruitful time trying to figure out where to buy a baby Christmas tree in Philly (Christmas Village was disappointing), we pretty much drove down the block (to S 50th and Baltimore) and found a Christmas tree lot right on a traffic island. For $25 we brought it home.

Jonah and I bought a bunch of finger puppets from Christmas Village, which fit over the branches perfectly. Amy contributed chintzy string lights (with 8 light patterns!) from a wedding she had decorated.



What really rounded things out was two straight family craft nights, in which we painted plaster ornaments for the tree.

So now it's fully decorated, just in time for the holidays!



P.S. Jonah also made a modular origami ornament, and I colored two intricate mandalas for ornaments.

mac and cheese casserole

Today I decided to take boxed mac and cheese to the next level. This was definitely not the first time something like this has happened - the last time I added goat cheese and sour cream to a Trader Joe's boxed white cheddar mac and cheese shells.

This time I made it into an extra cheesy casserole. I started with two boxes - one of the white cheddar shells and another of the regular cheddar noodles. Once cooked, I put in the cheese sauce packets, some heavy cream, some salted butter, cayenne, black pepper, and a bunch of shredded Italian cheese.

I packed it into a buttered casserole dish, then sprinkled a layer of cheese on, then a layer of panko (because I didn't have breadcrumbs, and another layer of cheese.



I put it in the oven with the broiler on high. Be sure to watch it because mine started to burn before I pulled it out. The beauty though, is the solid layer of crust, and how it crunched when I cut it. As anticipated, it was fully cheesy underneath.



I ate it with some roasted broccoli, some roasted eggplant in tomato sauce (in a can from Trader Joe's), and some salsa + sriracha + greek yogurt (to make up for the fact that I didn't have sour cream). Delicious.

maple cream (+ salted caramel sauce)

Jonah wanted to make a DIY gift for his family - Philly Homebrew Outlet had us thinking about making soap, or cultured butter, but he found a maple cream recipe he wanted to try. I was game because it was something I have never made before.

Basically you heat maple syrup up to 235 F, then cool it to 100 F, then beat it until it lightens in color to resemble tahini. It takes a lot of arm strength if you do it by hand - which apparently Jonah is in no short supply of.



While he was doing his thing, I decided to make salted caramel sauce, which I had learned to do in my internship days at the SF Westin Hotel pastry department. I edited the recipe down to home cook-sized batches, which starts with 1/3 cup of sugar, caramelized (pour the sugar into a pan and watch it while it heats to brown). Another pan should have 1 cup of heavy cream, simmering (not boiling) with 1/4 tsp of vanilla. When the sugar has been caramelized, the heavy cream should be streamed into the caramel as you're whisking. Once that step is done, you whisk an egg yolk with some pinches of fancy salt, stream part of the caramel/cream mixture into that while continuing to whisk, then return the egg mixture to the caramel/cream mixture and heat everything up to 185 F.

It made a little more than a cup, which is why I had some left over in this jar. I suggested making whipped cream in the same bowl that Jonah had hand-beaten maple cream, which of course he took to mean hand-whisking. Regardless, the whipped cream made it into the same jar as the leftover salted caramel sauce. Pictured in the background is the Kitchenaid that was never used.



It's been a day and already I've found many uses for both maple cream and salted caramel sauce. The first was at breakfast, on a waffle. It was heavenly. (Pictured also is leftover chicken from our new favorite brunch place, Aksum Cafe, and a kale and tomato salad.)



The second was with granny smith apple slices. We added crushed peanuts (like deconstructed caramel apples) and some cinnamon. Incredible.