Carrot Soup and Homemade Pita

Get ready for soup - lots and lots of soup. Fall has officially arrived in St. Louis: leaves, sweater-worthy temperatures, and soup. First up, with carrots, since we got a bunch of free carrots from an event when my parents were here.



Cast of characters:
-Lots of carrots (approx 2 lbs), peeled and diced
-6 cups vegetable broth (or cheater substitute)
-1 large onion, diced
-1/3 cup coconut milk (or more to taste) 
-Cilantro, chopped
-2 cloves garlic
-Salt, pepper, and cayenne


1. Saute the onion in the pan, until brown.
2. Add the broth and carrots, simmer until reasonably soft.
3. Add garlic, cilantro, and spices.
4. Blend to desired consistency (I left some pieces to avoid feeling like baby food).
5. Add coconut milk, warm until heated through.

Note: I don't really have any idea how much liquid I want at the end to make the consistency right (since I don't really know what I'm doing ;) ), so when I'm using the immersion blender I always take some liquid off first and add it back in at the end if I need it.

We ate this with homemade pita bread from this recipe. Game changer. It is so amazing and SO EASY! Here it is:

1 cup warm water
2 teaspoons yeast (I used instant yeast, but supposedly active dry works in the same quantity?)
2 1/2 - 3 cups all-purpose flour
Salt (calls for 2 tsp., I have used little if any)
1-2 teaspoons olive oil ("optional", but most savory things are better with olive oil)

1. Add yeast to warm water, dissolve (~5 minutes)
2. Add 2.5 cups flour, salt, and olive oil. Mix until it resembles dough.
3. Knead 5-7 minutes, until it is "smooth and elastic", adding flour as you need.
4. Coat ball with a little olive oil, place it back in the bowl, and cover with saran wrap until doubled in size. It says 1-2 hours, but I have stopped it 30 minutes and had it doubled already. Maybe with the instant yeast?
5. Deflate, and roll out pieces to desired thickness. I have made about 9 with this recipe, but that is for really little ones.

For cooking, you have two options. We've done both.

1. Cook on a hot cast iron skillet sprayed with a bit of olive oil. Let cook about 30 seconds one side, flip, cook 2 minutes, flip again. It's done when there are some brown spots and it (hopefully) puffs.
OR
2. Preheat oven to 450 with pizza stone (or cookie sheet) inside. Cook pitas for about 3 minutes, or until they puff a little.

Ours have rarely gotten super puffy, regardless of which way we make them. But the dough is not super dense, so they aren't like the previous wood-like discs I have made. Just light and delicious. You can save the dough in the refrigerator too! If anyone has any recommendations for better puffing, let me know. Even with marginal puffing, these were amazing.

Hope you have a lovely fall day where you are!

Mr. C Turns 3!

I meant to post earlier, but the week got away from me. Last weekend Mr. C turned three (gasp!). We had a beautiful weekend, complete with pizza in the park, a lovely walk, a dinner outside, and of course some Ted Drewes. The only food of note I made is a cupcake train for Mr. C's birthday. I will copy the recipes later, but I made apple cupcakes from here, this recipe cut in thirds and made into chocolate cupcakes, and this caramel buttercream for frosting.

Looking forward to another lovely fall weekend! Just a bit more homework between now and then...

A Red Meal, and Apple Mango Crisp

This isn't really a recipe. But I love lentils. And it seems obvious, but lentils cooked in veggie broth are a whole different experience.
We at them with beets sauteed on the stove, and tomatoes and corn.

Num. But does anyone successfully cook red lentils without them getting a bit mushy? I can successfully cook other lentils, but red lentils not so much.

And since that's not really a recipe, how about some Apple Mango Crisp?

Ok so this is not rocket science. But next time you are making apple crisp, add some mango. Num!

Cast of characters:
-3 granny smith apples, peeled and sliced
-1/2 cup frozen mango (mine was from Trader Joe's), defrosted. I'm sure it would be even better with great fresh mango but I live in St. Louis and it's September.
-1 T lemon juice
-1 T sugar 
 
-1/2 cup white sugar
-1/2 cup brown sugar
-1 cup flour
-1 stick butter, diced
-dash of cinnamon

Mix dry ingredients together. Blend in butter with a pastry blender. Set aside. Grease pan, and add apples, mango (diced into smallish pieces), lemon juice, and sugar. Top with crumb topping, and bake at 350 until brown.

I'm sure everyone has a favorite crisp topping, but this is thus far my favorite. Mostly (ok exclusively) because I don't need a recipe to make it. And if you're only making an 8x8 pan, you can halve the recipe!

Caramelized Apple Grilled Cheese

I love fall saturdays. I love them even more when they involve a trip to the farmer's market, the dog park, and coffee on our porch. There's a grilled cheese stand at the farmer's market, and last weekend they had a grilled cheese made with caramelized apples and goat cheese. Num!

We have now tried it out with two cheese options - first with goat cheese:

 and then with cream cheese:

On a fresh Companion bâtard, of course.

To make them, I just caramelized apples in a saucepan with a little butter and sugar, plus a little lemon juice. Then I lightly buttered the outside of the bread, and put cream cheese/goat cheese on each side, along with caramelized apples. Certainly not a health food, but a pretty great Saturday brunch, along with a muffin from one of our new favorite places, Pint Size Bakery:

 
Gertie likes September saturdays too:

Hope you have a lovely weekend! 

Relatively Ordinary Mac and Cheese

This Mac and Cheese was titled "revolutionary" here, and with a few tweaks it might be, but not this time. The "revolutionary" piece comes in it's preparation: the noodles are cooked in the milk, which becomes part of sauce.

Start with 2 cups of dried noodles (I used medium shells). Bring to a simmer in ~4 cups of milk. Cook 20-25 minutes, or until noodles are cooked as you'd like. Remove from heat, and add 1 cup cheddar cheese, and a bit of mustard (this part they were spot on about). I also added garlic powder and cayenne, along with some Tony's.

I think the key to actually making this revolutionary would be a greater amount of patience (shocker, I don't possess it ;) ). More routine stirring to prevent sticking at the bottom of the pan, and adding the cheese after the pasta is completely removed from the heat for a couple of minutes. I had turned the burner off but not moved it, and as you can see from the photos, my sauce broke. From my preliminary google search, it seems that happens when it's too hot...anyone else have any great tips how to avoid this blunder? (Dad?)



A very exciting post I know...a fairly flopped recipe. But that is what's cooking around here, and if you are one of the 5 people who read my blog, you've probably come to terms with that.

Hope your week is lovelier than this mac and cheese!

Southwest Squash Soup

It feels like fall. In the best way. This weekend, that meant jeans. And tea. And roasted squash soup. I based it off of this recipe.

Cast of characters: 

-2 butternut squash

-4 cups vegetable broth

-1 large can whole, peeled tomatoes 

-1.5 cups frozen corn

-1 bunch kale, washed and torn into pieces

-Cream cheese (I used approximately 1/3 of an 8 oz. brick of Neufchatel) 

-2 cloves garlic (or in my case, cheater frozen cubes from TJ's) 

-Cumin seeds, cumin, cayenne, Tony's, extra garlic powder 

-Quinoa, to serve it with (if desired) 

 1. Roast the squash. I halved them, scooped the seeds out, and roasted them face down on a cookie sheet for 50 minutes at 350. I read somewhere that you can actually roast them whole, so I may have to try that sometime! Also, if I didn't have a homework-full Sunday where I was home, I would have probably boiled them in the broth for time's sake.
 2. Toast the cumin seed in a bit of olive oil, then scoop roasted squash into pot. Add can of tomatoes with juice and the 4 cups of broth.
3. Bring to boil, then blend together (yay immersion blender). If I had been thinking, I would have taken out about a half cup of the blended material at this point.
4. Add kale, frozen corn, garlic, black beans, and seasonings.
5. Blend together the cream cheese with the removed blended soup. (Again, yay immersion blender).
6. Add cream cheese mixture to soup, mix together.

If you are healthier than me, you could probably do no cream cheese. That was my original plan, but it seemed to be missing something. Also, this made a LOT of soup. So if you aren't obsessed with a desire for leftovers like I am, you could halve this.

Robin approves. Not so much of me taking his picture, but of the soup anyway.  But I had to show off his fall-worthy attire:

And a couple of Gertie shots for good measure:

 Loving some scritches:

Hope you had a lovely fall weekend as well!

P.S. Have you seen the recipes tab at the top? If I ever actually make anything exciting, you could get to it! 

A week in pictures

Hurricane Isaac brought a lot of green to St. Louis

Gertie expresses her desire for attention

Yum.

Walks in the park and beautiful old cars

 

The first cyclocross race of the year, the Wild Trak Bikes Superprestige, was last Sunday and we couldn't have had better weather. Previous rain kept the course tacky while the day's sunshine kept mud to a minimum. They even brought out the BMX rollers to keep things interesting:

With bright green handlebar tape and yellow shoes, what could possibly go wrong?

 Looking forward to cooler weather and more cyclocross throughout the fall!

(And lots of napping puppies)