Seasonal Soup and some Homebrew

Yes, I eat pumpkins. And they taste amazing.

Specifically, pumpkin soup. If you're really adverse to eating pumpkins, you can do this with any winter squash, though I don't know why you would want to.

"Winter Squash Soup"
This recipe comes from Laurel's Kitchen which my mom gave me :) Makes about 7 cups of soup.

Pumpkin soup simmering with the roasted seeds in front.

5 cup cubed raw winter squash or 3 cups cooked winter squash
2 1/2 cups vegetable stock
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 Tbsp oil
1/2 cup parsley (I actually omitted this and used some sage instead)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp basil
1 cup dried skim milk (I use more like 1/2 or 1/3 cup)
1 Tbsp torula yeast (same as nutritional yeast flakes as far as I can tell, which is what I used. And I used at least triple that because I love it)
Optional: 1 pound fresh spinach, a couple tomatoes, a red pepper, or whatever you feel like adding.

If you're using raw squash/pumpkin, cook it in a large pot in the broth until it is tender, then blend it until it is the consistency you want.

Saute the onion in the oil until soft, then add parsley. Cook just long enough to soften the parsley, then add, along with the seasonings, to the squash in the soup pot.

Add the milk powder and yeast and blend in well (the book suggests taking out a cup of the squash and mixing all this together in a blender, but I don't do that). Bring the soup to a simmer. Add the spinach at the very end. I also use the pumpkin seeds by roasting them in the oven with some oil and salt and then adding them on top. It gives it a nice texture.

Pumpkin soup with spinach and red peppers. Get in my belly!

I also brewed some beer with a couple friends a little over a week ago. I wasn't sure I was ever going to homebrew again, but it was fun to brew with some new people. And I used some of my grain share rye! It will hopefully be a delicious rye IPA style beer. We put about 3 pounds of flaked rye in and a ton of hops.

Whole hops, I love how you smell!

None of us had ever used raw grains before so we chatted up the people at the homebrew shop, who were extremely helpful. Even though I had flaked the rye it had not been heated up in any way, so I needed to cook the rye, which we did by boiling it in a gallon or so of water for 15 minutes and then added all of the water and cooked rye to the brew kettle (which contained the rest of the water).

Malted barley on the left, rye on the right

It will be transferred to the secondary fermenter this weekend, then bottled a week or two after that! I am so excited to try it!

A Tale of Two Breads

 I have been on a mission to make all of our bread from scratch as I get prepared for our grain CSA from White Oak Grains in Belchertown MA (what an unfortunate name that town has) that will be coming at the end of next month or so. This means experimenting with bread recipes so that I am able to actually use the grains that I get from this farm (50lbs!!!).

I have tested out 2 wheat recipes in the last couple of weeks. One from King Arthur Flour called "No-Knead 100% Whole Wheat Bread" and another from a food blog called Tammy's Recipes called simply "Homemade Wheat Bread".

The King Arthur Flour recipe (with my adaptations) is this:

• 1 1/4 cup lukewarm water
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons dry instant yeast
• 1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 3 cups King Arthur whole wheat flour

Directions:

1) Grease an 8 1/2" x 4 1/2" loaf pan. This loaf tends to stick, so be sure to grease the pan thoroughly with non-stick vegetable oil spray.

2) Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl. Beat the mixture vigorously for about 3 minutes.You should have a very sticky dough. It won't be pourable, but neither will it be kneadable. Scoop it into the prepared pan.

3) Cover the pan with lightly greased plastic wrap, and let it rise for 60 to 90 minutes; it should just about rise to the rim of the pan, perhaps just barely cresting over the rim. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 350°F.

4) Uncover the bread, and bake it for about 40 to 45 minutes, tenting it with aluminum foil after 20 minutes. The bread is done when it's golden brown on top, and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center registers between 190°F and 195°F. Remove it from the oven, and after 5 minutes turn it out onto a rack.  It says to wait until it cools to slice it but really, who does that? It smelled so good I couldn't resist and dug in after about 5 minutes. It was super wheaty, really moist and delicious. Problem was, it didn't rise very well in the oven: Not the best picture ever, but it gets the point across; there was little rising going on here.

This, of course, made the bread very dense and not very pliable. But it was tasty.

The next recipe looks like this:

Ingredients: 

1 cup warm water (110-115 degrees F)
1 tablespoon milk
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons instant active dry yeast

Instructions: 

1. Combine first 6 ingredients in a large mixing bowl; stir.

2. Add flours and yeast, and knead until dough is smooth and elastic, about 10-15 minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover with a clean towel and let rise until doubled, about 40 minutes.

rising dough

3. Punch dough down; knead for a few minutes until smooth and then form into a loaf. Place in greased loaf pan and cover.  Let rise in a warm place until almost doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

4. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. 

5. Remove bread from oven and allow to rest in pan for a few minutes. Remove to a wire rack and cover with a cloth. Slice and enjoy while still warm! Leftover bread can be stored in an airtight bag or frozen until needed.

The finished product

This one had no trouble rising and yielded a lighter, airier, more flexible bread than the KA recipe. Which could very well be due to the fact that it's only half whole wheat.

I still had some of the King Arthur recipe bread left, so I thought a side-by-side comparison would be useful:

Tammy's recipe on the left, King Arthur on the right

 Here's a shot of the tops of the loaves. The KA bread on the right is only smaller because we'd eaten a bunch of it, they were probably the same length coming out of the oven since I used the same bread pan.

The moral of the story is that today I am remaking Tammy's recipe. I would like to work on the KA recipe or try some other 100% whole wheat recipes but I was too lazy to look that up this morning.

Also, I finally made it over to Mead Hall in Cambridge, MA (as of this post their website is STILL not up, but I thought I'd include it anyway). I had heard some really mixed reviews about the place but it seems that it is finding it's footing a bit now. I had 2 really good beers. The first was a porter from Finland called Sinebrychoff Porter. This beer has won numerous awards and is considered one of the best imported beers in America. And I'd never had it before this! Unacceptable!

Sinebrychoff Porter at Mead Hall. Look at all those taps! And that's less than half of them!

I have to say it was pretty darn tasty. Slightly sweet, balanced well with the bitter roasty flavors, chocolate, coffee, this beer has a lot going on. I would definitely get it again.

The next beer I had was pretty different. It was Pretty Things (a local brewer) Jack D'Or mixed with a raspberry lambic (I think Lindeman's framboise?). It was interesting, lots of flavors going on since the Jack D'Or is brewed with plums. It was good, but I'm not sure I would get it again. If you're in the mood for something fruity and slightly sour with a bunch of that Belgian funk going on though, this is it.

The Pretty Things glasses are crazy. I always feel like the stem is just going to snap, it's so thin.

 The bread is calling to be put in the oven...mmmm...warm bread. I don't care how hot it is, homemade bread fresh out of the oven is always irresistible!