Recent Recipes

I've been cooking a lot this week because schoolwork hasn't really piled up yet. Here are a couple of the recipes that turned out really well, and notes on my modifications.

THIS is Ina Garten's butternut squash recipe from the foodnetwork website. It was really pretty good and tasted quite rich for a vegetable. Her recipe calls for 2 squash, I only used one for the two of us, and it made enough for a couple of days. I cut down on the butter a bit, from 3 tablespoons to 2 tablespoons, and really, only 1 would probably have been fine. I didn't bother much with the seedy end of the squash. Maybe it was the particular squash, but it wasn't very thick on that end, not much seemed worth saving. I added a tablespoon or two of dried rosemary to the squash and spice mixture, it's a trick my grandmother uses, and it gave the squash extra flavor. I definitely would recommend putting parchment paper or tinfoil between the squash and the cookie sheet, it saves a lot of clean-up trouble. Garten says that it will take between 45 and 55 minutes, mine were starting to brown around the edges by 40. All in all, a very nice way to eat vegetables.

Tonight we had a cheesy fondue
We'd made this recipe before, so this time we felt confident enough to make a few changes. Instead of 4 cups of cheddar (we used a nice aged Vermont cheddar, it made a big difference), this time I did 3 cups of the cheddar, and 1 cup gruyere. It added a little subtlety. We doubled the spices (normal practice for us). We left everything else about the same. We ate it with a couple day-old baguette, and peeled carrots, celery, and apples cut into nice dipping strips. Very nice and filling! There was plenty of the fondue mixture left over, so I'm planning on using it for a macaroni in the next couple of days.

Tomorrow we're planning on a bolognese sauce (Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything) is the source for it, it's really nice, tastes almost like the real thing. I think the secret to that is the carrots in it.