Weekend Recipes

These are the dishes we made over the weekend, but I’m sure they’ll taste just as good any day of the week. 🙂

First up, Saturday night, was this very simple pumpkin soup recipe, adapted from Epicurious. We used fresh pumpkin instead of canned, fresh ginger instead of powdered, and a small, almost whole piece of star anise. The rye bread, pictured, was also freshly homemade.

• 2 15-ounce cans pure pumpkin (we used a small pumpkin, about 3 pounds)
• 4 cups water
• 1 cup half and half
• 1 garlic clove, pressed
• 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder*
• 4 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed, sliced

Since we used fresh pumpkin, there were these added steps:

Cut skin off outside of pumpkin and discard. Cut pumpkin into approx. 1-1/2 inch chunks, making sure to cut away any of the stringy bits and seeds. Place pumpkin in boiling water and boil, covered, for about 3 minutes, until pumpkin is just about cooked through. You don’t want the pumpkin too soft since it will cook a little more in with the rest of the ingredients in the soup. Puree the cooked pumpkin chunks with just enough water to make it easier for the pumpkin to move around the food processor or blender. Puree until it looks like baby food—small pieces are okay.

Bring first 4 ingredients to simmer in large saucepan over medium-high heat, whisking often. Whisk in syrup, 2 tablespoons butter, and five-spice powder. Simmer soup 10 minutes, whisking often. Season with salt and pepper. (Soup can be made 1 day ahead. Chill until cold, then cover and keep chilled. Bring to simmer before serving.) Melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter in heavy medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms; sauté until tender, about 10 minutes. Divide soup among 6 bowls. Sprinkle soup with mushrooms, dividing equally; serve.

* A blend of ground anise, cinnamon, star anise, cloves, and ginger available in the spice section of most supermarkets. We used fresh ginger instead of ground; since we were making our own spice blend. We chopped the ginger finely and then sauteed it with the mushrooms and put into the soup at the end.

Next, I made some pita, recipe slightly adapted from smitten kitchen. I made only 1/2 the recipe and used active dry yeast that I dissolved in the water for about five minutes before adding to the dough instead of the instant yeast.We like to eat pita, warm, with (homemade) hummus and possibly some restaurant-made felafel.

Dinner, Sunday night, polenta and mackerel and asparagus. We simply steamed the asparagus. Broiled the mackerel with this marinade and sauteed onions and mushrooms and added them to the polenta. We are still working on just exactly how to cook polenta correctly so that it comes out the the right consistency, so I’ll get back to you on that. Anyone have any polenta-cooking tips?
What did you cook/eat over the weekend? I’d love to hear about it in the comments, or you can share with me on my Facebook page!