Cooking & Baking

I hope that you had a wonderful holiday, and if you are into Black Friday shopping I hope you got some bragging right deals. 

Our Thanksgiving was lovely, and the food wasn't bad either. :) I mentioned in an earlier post that I was scheduled to make Pumpkin Soup, Onions Stuffed with Stuffing, and a Dark Chocolate Tart.  All three turned out wonderfully.  The soup would have been over the top if I had only remembered to bring the bacon bits! Oh well live and learn: never forget the bacon.

Pumpkin Soup

4 thin bacon slices or 2 thick bacon slices chopped into small pieces
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic chopped (or 1 tsp of minced garlic)
2 15oz cans of pumpkin puree (you can also chop up a pumpkin and let it cook a little longer, it tastes the same to me either way)
6 cups Chicken broth
pinch of Nutmeg
1/2 cup of cream (if you don't have cream I've seen recipes that use milk and butter as a substitute)
Salt & pepper to taste

Topping:
Bacon bits and Asiago Cheese

In a Dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot render (cook) you bacon on medium heat.  I like to turn the heat off while you can still see a little pink and white fat, that way they finish cooking in their own drippings and don't burn (ain't nothin' worse than burnt bacon.)

Strain out the bacon bits and set them aside in a paper towel.  Drain off some of the drippings, but leave a generous 3 tablespoon amount of drippings in the pan. Chop up your onion and add it to the hot drippings (heat should be back on to medium).  Season with salt and pepper. When starting to turn a caramelized color add the garlic and let it cook for about 3 min.

Slowly add the chicken broth. It should at first be used to deglaze or clean up the stuck on flavor from the bottom of the pan. once there is nothing more to scrape up add the remaining broth, then the pumpkin puree (Note: if you are using fresh pumpkin add it in the pan with the onions before the garlic and broth should be added.) also add the nutmeg and let simmer for 30 min to an hour. If you are working with fresh pumpkin you are looking for a very soft pumpkin before you can turn off the heat and puree.

After it is done simmering, turn off the heat and slowly add a 1/3 of the soup to your blender or food processor to puree. pour pureed soup into an extra large bowl and continue to puree the remaining soup in 1/3's.  Once, all the soup is pureed add it to your serving dish or back into the pan and add you cream.  stir until completely combine.

Serve with grated asiago cheese and the bacon bits. YUM!

Stuffed Onions (no picture)

1 loaf of French bread
6-7 small yellow onions
1/8 cup Turkey drippings (the fatty part)
4 cups Turkey broth
1 Granny Smith Apple (peeled, cored and chopped)
3/4 cup Apple Cider (white wine would do well too)
1tsp crushed celery seed
1 tsp sage
salt and pepper to taste

First chop the loaf up into 1/2 inch pieces and then bake in a 400 degree oven for 20 min.  While the bread is crisping cut up your onions.
How to cut your onions: 1. cut off both both top and bottom of onion, 2. peel outside layers off then cut in half length wise ( you should have two bowl like shaped onions. 3. with your thumb on the bottom of one of the cut pieces push out the small layers of onion leaving one to two of the out layers.  The out layer will be your stuffing holder and should be set aside till needed.  4. The inner portion should be diced and added to a oven and stove safe pan that has a fitting lid (i.e. Dutch oven or something like it).

When you are done separating and chopping the onions pour the turkey drippings on the onions, and turn the heat up to medium high.  Add the celery seed, sage, salt and pepper and stir.  Let the onions caramelize then add the apples, and let cook for another 2-3 min then add the Apple cider to deglaze the plan.

By this time the bread should be baked crispy yet a like spongy still.  once the pan is deglazed add the bread to the pan. and stir, making sure to coat the bread accordingly.  Pour the stuffing out of the pan and into the baking dish that the bread was in. 

Take a big spoon and start to stuff the halves of the onion that were set aside.  Once an onion is stuffed place it in the pan stuffing side up (the heat should be off on the stove but the oven should still be at 400 degrees).  Continue doing this until all the halves of onion have been stuffed (I started to pile the onions one on top of the other until they all were in the pan.  Then drizzled the Turkey broth over all of the onions, put the lid on the pan and into the oven.  Bake for 20 minutes.  Serve hot from the oven. Soo Good!!!

The chocolate Tart Recipe I totally took from David Lebovitz's blog. He does an amazing job of walking you through this wonderfully rich and decadent tart.  Of all the tarts and pies this was the only one people asked if they could take it home.  :)

Here are some more pictures of our holiday, and the walk we took to help up digest.