My fiancé is generally polite about what I produce in the kitchen. If she likes it, she’ll say “you can make that again”. If it’s something truly offensive (like the ultra-sour vinaigrette I made a few weeks ago. Big mistake: not tasting the stuff before I served it. It could have been fixed) she’ll ask “do I have to eat this?”. Between those two extremes, she’ll eat and express gratitude that I made dinner.

Last night, I got a rare “you can make that again” on a dish that was wholly improvisational, a soup made with baked butternut squash.

She’s right, I should make that again.

Well, crap. How do I make that again?

I need to start writing stuff down. If I want to reproduce something, or improve on it, I need to know what I did. There’s nothing earth-shattering here, this basically follows the accepted template of a creamy vegetable soup. It’s still worth keeping track of.

So, consider this a proto-recipe.

ingredients

• 1 whole butternut squash, cut in half, baked until… Mushy. Scoop the squash mush into a bowl and discard the skin
• 1 whole onion, chopped
• 2 carrots
• olive oil
• 2 tbsp butter or substitute
• milk (2 cups?)
• white wine (1 half cup?)
• balsamic vinegar to taste
• powdered ginger to taste
• Chinese five-spice to taste

steps

1. coat the bottom of a large pot with olive oil, and put over medium-low heat
2. when the oil is hot, throw in the onion and carrots. Stir often.
3. when the onions are translucent, add the wine
4. let the wine cook down a bit, continuing to stir
5. add the squash mush, keep stirring
6. add the milk, and increase the heat. Keep stirring
7. add the butter
8. taste, and add ginger, five-spice, balsamic vinegar, salt, and black pepper as you see fit. To my best recollection, I used maybe 1-2 tsp of salt, a few grinds of pepper, a few shakes of the ginger powder, a small pinch of the five-spice, and two or three splashes of the vinegar

Here are some improvements I think I’ll try next time:

• blend it, after the milk is incorporated. That was actually my intention, until I saw how nicely everything came together with just stirring. In the bowl, it turned out not quite as smooth as it looked. Blending should improve the texture.
• I would have included chopped celery with the onion and carrots (a proper mirepoix) if I had celery on hand
• use fresh or dried ginger, instead of the powdered stuff
• it seems like maybe this should have garlic.

After I had a few Ratio-driven successes under by belt, I had an idea: The Maximum Peanut Butter Cookie.

Ruhlman describes the “essential” cookie as 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. I’ve made this, and it’s OK.  Somehow, I got to wondering how it could be adapted to a peanut butter cookie. I stayed up late and actually did the math: I came up with a recipe where peanut butter provided all of the fat and most of the sugar. I made no other changes and added no other ingredients.

I thought this was brilliant. I gave it a name (see above). It was a few days later that I actually got around to trying this crazy thing, but that night I went to sleep convinced of my own genius.

The “cookie” it produced was awful. Imagine a lump of peanut butter in your mouth, with flour (making it drier) and being baked (even drier). You’re thirsty just thinking about that, right?

If I try this again, I think I’ll use a liquid for the additional sweetener (honey, perhaps), lower the amount of flour (to account for all the other “stuff” in a serving of peanut butter that is neither fat nor sugar: the peanut solids and whatever else), and probably add some eggs to soften and leaven it a bit.

I’ve been absorbing a lot of information about food in the last year(and actually cooking too!), but there a lot of basic things I have yet to try or learn.

I’ve read On Food and Cooking, but (until last week) had never made mashed potatoes. I’ve read Ideas in Food, but had never made gravy– and gravy is perhaps the best “idea in food” ever.

Preparing a traditional Thanksgiving dinner was educational, then. Here’s the menu we ended up with (including what Patty & I made, and things brought by family) :

• Turkey
• Stuffing
• Mashed potatoes
• Brussels sprouts
• Strawberry Salad
• Gravy (!)
• Cranberry applesauce
• Sweet potatoes
• Green beans
• Pumpkin Pie
• Chocolate-chip pumpkin bread

There were no major disasters, but I’m already plotting The Next Turkey. I would have liked the bird to have come out with crispier skin– I’m not sure whether to blame the electric roaster, the brining process, both, or neither. I was happy that I took Ruhlman’s advice to make turkey stock ahead of time. Otherwise there would have been no gravy at all– there were no juices in the pan after the turkey was done.

The train of thought was:

1. This tuna should have some kind of sauce. What kind of sauce can I make?
2. We have a bunch of clementines. Maybe I could make some sort of orange sauce
3. This sauce– it doesn’t taste quite as… orangey as I want.
4. Hey, we have some orange liqueur! That might do it
5. (digs around, produces a bottle of blue curcao)
6. (Pours some in, only realizing the chromatic consequences of this decision when it’s too late to back down)
7. Oh lord, what have I created?

Patty and I have volunteered to host Thanksgiving dinner this year. She’s a vegetarian, and I’ve never cooked a turkey before– so this should be an adventure. I’m in charge of turkey and stuffing.

The first result when I googled “turkey brine” is this complete recipe from Alton Brown, and honestly it sounds really good, so I’m going to attempt it. My 5 gallon bucket is on it’s way, and tomorrow I’m cooking up a batch of vegetable stock.

We’re already using an electric roaster for the bird (it’s been in the family for years, I’m not sure who actually owns it), and it makes sense to keep the oven free for other dishes. Thus, I’m going to try this slow-cooker method for stuffing. The recipe calls for chicken stock (which Patty won’t eat), so I’ll be substituting more of vegetable stock.

Since The Great Poundcake Débâcle of 2011, we’ve made:

• Bread– other than being baked in  a loaf pan instead of the dutch oven, there isn’t much to report. It sure is nice that having fresh baked bread at home is nothing special anymore. This is progress.
• Yeast Waffles ala Cooking for Geeks– quite tasty.
• Beet Rosti– a staple at our house. It didn’t quite come together this time, though: it was more like a beet hash than a beet pancake. I have theories.
• Pizza– Wasn’t as crispy as I’d like, but still OK. Next time: pizza stone.
• Croutons– hell yeah I made croutons. This is leftover bread from the batch above.

On the pound cake– generally fine. The glaze was perhaps too tart and/or sweet (Patty thinks the former, me the latter), which made the end pieces (glazed on five of six sides) basically unbearable. I had an inside piece this morning, which was much nicer.

The cake itself tasted… like pound cake. Score!

Lessons learned

I think the glaze was basically sound, I just used too much of it. It also absorbed into the cake more than I wanted. I wonder how you fix that?