Easy, creamy butternut squash soup with truffle oil

Recently, while my son was visiting from Seattle, we went to a shop I've been meaning to explore ever since it first opened. Vom Fass is a shop originating in Germany•, that sells bulk artisan oils and vinegars which are decanted from kegs. For some reason, our little city has the first, and so far only, U.S. store.

Confronted with a large room full of kegs of exotic sounding products, we just stood there and stared until the very friendly and extremely knowledgeable shopkeeper handed us small spoons and invited us to taste anything we wanted. Even that was daunting, but we gave it a shot. I tried to limit my tasting so as not to get too confused, but Aaron tasted widely. In the end, I chose a truffle oil made with extra virgin olive oil and a balsam cherry vinegar that can be used to made fizzy-water drinks as well as for more traditional recipes. There are bottles in sizes starting at 50 milliliters that you purchase with the idea of bringing them back to refill. I got 100-milliliter (a little more than three ounces) bottles.

I'm still thinking about the avocado oil I tasted. Did you know that avocado oil, in addition to being good for skin and hair, has a very high smoke point and is good for cooking? And it tastes exactly like avocado. Next time.

Now for the butternut squash soup. I made dinner the way I'm most comfortable cooking, and the way I cook most often—no recipes. The plan was to use the pressure cooker to create a fast and easy soup. (I've been making simple soups in my pressure cooker for 20 years so the basics are pretty much cemented in my mind. But you could also bake or steam the squash.) And to try out my Cuisinart Smart Stick immersible blender. I've had the blender for quite a while but never tried it! I mostly make soup in an enameled cast iron pot, and you're not supposed to use an immersion blender in that 'cause it might scratch, so using the pressure cooker was incentive to try the blender. We have winter squash from the CSA piling up so I picked the largest butternut squash. It was huge, but I wanted a lot of soup left over for lunches. I won't give an exact recipe but just general guidelines for using the pressure cooker. (I have a six-quart stainless steel Aeternum pressure cooker.) I cut the squash into large (two inch?) chunks and peeled them. Butternut has an edible skin, but I wasn't sure how the blender would deal with the skin, so I peeled off the thinest possible layer.

I sliced a medium onion and sautéed it in the pot with a little extra virgin olive oil. When the onion was translucent, I added the cut squash. I added water just below the top of the squash, and brought the pot up to pressure. I turned down the flame a bit and cooked it for 10 minutes at pressure. I brought the pressure down by running cold water over the lid.

I added a blob of sweet white miso to the pot and went at it with the immersion blender. In no time at all and with virtually no effort, I had a pot of ultra creamy squash soup. I couldn't believe it—no messy blender to wash; no multiple filling and emptying into an extra pot. As I've said before, pressure cooked vegetables are so flavorful that not much is needed to season them, so I took a minimalist approach. I added a scant teaspoon of truffle oil, a few grinds of black pepper, the juice of one lime and some minced parsley.

A co-worker groaned when I told him about the oil and said it was way too much. What do I know? It was a large pot of soup, and it tasted sublime. There was a faint earthy mushroom flavor that was not at all pronounced or overwhelming.



To go with the soup, I put brown basmati rice into the rice cooker with chopped up red Hungarian peppers and a teaspoon of dried chipotlé powder. When it was cooked I added a large handful of baby arugula and a small amount of grated Teese.

On the side we also had some steamed broccoli Romanesco; just about the weirdest looking vegetable I've ever seen, but the CSA grows it. It looks like it was created in a math lab. (Yes. MATH lab.) It was sweet and delicious and served unseasoned. Unfortunately, the photo didn't turn out.

•note #1: For terrific Wisconsin-made vinegars, I recommend Colleen's Tough Times.

note #2: Don't have an immersion blender? No Problem. I used to make this soup using my regular blender. Just blend it in batches and pour it into a second pot.

note #3: Usually when I make this soup, I don't cook the onion in with the squash. Instead, I sauté three or four onions in a separate pan and then blend them with the squash once it is cooked. You get a rich onion-flavored soup this way. Or use the pressure cooker for the onions and then remove them to cook the squash.

Spinach Enchiladas with ranchero sauce

I recently posted about making quesadillas for the first time after being inspired by a Public Television cooking show. The TV chef (TVC) was really into shredded chicken and cream, but he cooked enough stuff that I was able to take a little of this and a bit of that and concoct my own version of his dishes. One of the things he made was ranchero sauce. He used the ranchero sauce for a spinach-stuffed poblano pepper dish, but I decided to stuff corn tortillas with spinach and use the ranchero sauce (no cream) to make enchiladas.

I try to stick to a theme of "easy vegan cooking" when I prepare food for these posts. This doesn't always translate to "fast" vegan cooking. This dish truly is easy, and can be made faster with jarred ranchero sauce, but I was staring at a giant bowl of plum tomatoes just picked from the garden, and was not about to go buy a tomato-based sauce. So I'm going to give a recipe for the sauce and then the enchiladas, and anyone who wants to make this can make or buy whatever. However, if you have access to fresh, ripe plum tomatoes, please make this sauce.



TVC said to use 3 pounds of roasted, peeled and cored tomatoes, but he didn't say how to roast them. I love roasted veggies and make them often, but would you believe I've never roasted just tomatoes for the purpose of making sauce? I tried to find a recipe, but all the ones I saw were for slow-roasted and reduced tomatoes. I filled a 9 x 12 pan plus a 9 x 9 pan with tomato halves drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with oregano. These I put into a preheated 400˚ oven for about one hour. (Cooking time will vary with the size of the tomatoes. Larger tomatoes will take longer.) Maybe because I used plum tomatoes which have a much lower water content, or maybe because I didn't slow roast them for hours, my tomatoes really didn't reduce much. The picture you see is how they looked when I removed them from the oven. Although they didn't reduce, the flavor was intensified to the woohoo stage! I let them cool a little and started to remove (and eat) the skins but the skins were so tender and delicious that I abandoned that idea and decided to just puree the whole lot.

After pureeing, I froze one pint unseasoned, and used the remaining 2 to 2-1/2 cups for the recipe below.



Ranchero sauce

• 3 pounds ripe, roasted tomatoes, peeled if the skins are tough (see above text)
• 2 serrano chiles or jalapeños (or unidentified medium hot peppers!) I used 2 jalapeños and the unidentified choice
  
• 2 large cloves garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons olive oil (TVC used 1/4 cup)
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
• fresh black pepper
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon sugar

1. Puree the tomatoes, peppers and garlic until smooth.
2. Cook onions in oil until translucent (about 4 minutes) and add to tomatoes.
3. Stir in salt, cinnamon and sugar.
4. TVC said to simmer the sauce 30 minutes until slightly thickened. Since I was planning to bake my sauce, I skipped this step. Besides, my sauce was already really thick and delicious beyond belief.

Now for the filling. Normally I use fresh vegetables but TVC suggested using frozen spinach to save time. He said it would take 2-1/2 pounds of fresh baby spinach and you'd have to wash, chop, steam and squeeze it. This sounded like a lot of work so I decided to make the project seem more manageable by taking his advice and using frozen spinach. My bags of frozen spinach were from Whole Foods and really, when it was cooked, I couldn't tell it wasn't fresh. Anyway, the spinach was supposed to be defrosted and squeezed out, but of course, I planned poorly and was faced with using the spinach frozen or not making the enchiladas. It worked perfectly so I don't know what to say about this step. Here's what I did.



Spinach with pine nuts and raisins

• 20 ounces frozen chopped spinach
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup pine nuts
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup plain unsweetened soy yoghurt (optional but recommended)

1. Sauté the pine nuts and raisins in the oil until the pine nuts begin to brown and the raisins plump up. BE CAREFUL NOT TO BURN THEM. Stir in the spinach and cook until fully defrosted and dry.
2. Season if desired.
3. Stir in the yoghurt if using.

We're almost done. And really, I think it's taking longer to write this post than it did to make the enchiladas. The last part involves softening corn tortillas, stuffing them with the spinach and baking them. TVC used 1/4 cup of oil in a skillet to warm each side of the tortillas before draining them on paper towels. I sprayed them with a little olive oil, heated them in a small cast iron skillet, flipping them over until they were pliable. If you know a better way to soften corn tortillas, please let me know.

Assembly

• 12 softened corn tortillas
• spinach filling
• ranchero sauce
• vegan cheese
• plain unsweetened soy yoghurt (optional, but creates a sour-cream-like effect)

1. Divide the spinach filling in the pan into roughly 12 parts.(you know, spatula lines)
   
2. Place the ranchero sauce in a 9" x 12" heavy baking dish.
3. Soften, then fill the tortillas with spinach and roll up.
4. Place the tortillas in the dish and spoon a little sauce over them.
5. Place shredded or thinly sliced vegan cheese over the top.
6. Drizzle soy yoghurt here and there.
7. Bake at 350˚ for 30 to 40 minutes until cheese is melted and sauce is bubbly.

Post Script I mentioned before and I'll mention again that we just had our first taste of Teese. That's what I used on the enchiladas. I sliced rather than shredded it and it didn't quite melt all the way but it was totally my fault. I probably should have waited a little longer or covered it for a few minutes. No matter. It's really in a class by itself as far as vegan cheeses go. It's scarily like the real thing. I was actually a little embarrassed at work when I reheated my lunch and it smelled like actual cheese!

On the other hand, the nutritional value of Teese is somewhat suspect in my mind. According to their Web site, there is zero protein, 9 grams of fat and zero everything else, per serving. I see it as a condiment rather than an actual food. Kind of like drizzling olive oil on hummus. It does taste great though!

Quesadillas stuffed with eggplant

I watched a cooking show on public television last weekend, and there was a Mexican cook making all sorts of stuff. First he made adobo sauce which looked fantastic, until he added cream. Then he made enchilladas stuffed with shredded chicken (Yes, this is a vegan blog. I won't be using chicken.) and covered them with the adobo sauce and cheese. He made spinach- stuffed poblano peppers and baked them with ranchero sauce and more cheese and cream. Then he used more shredded chicken to make quesadillas.

I am sheepishly admitting that until I watched this show, I never really knew what a quesadilla was. I had been planning to cook some eggplant from our CSA for lunch and when I found some leftover whole wheat tortillas in the refrigerator, I knew this would be the day I prepared and ate my first quesadilla. Do traditional quesadillas have eggplant inside? Can't say. But quesadillas are basically a sandwich, so the fillings probably vary widely.

My husband had also just purchased our first roll (it comes in a long roll) of Teese, the much acclaimed vegan cheese from Chicago. This stuff actually tastes like real cheese. There's honestly no comparison with any of the other fake cheeses we've tried. I popped a piece in my mouth and WHOA. Couldn't believe it. So it was quesadilla time in the cookeasyvegan household. I only made one so I'm not giving ingredient quantities. Make as much as you need.

First I dredged 1/4 inch slices of baby eggplant in potato flour* and sautéed them in a cast iron pan with just a little olive oil and a little extra spray oil when I turned the slices over. I cooked the eggplant until the slices were browned and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. I added fresh ground pepper and a tiny sprinkle of salt. As I've mentioned before, I don't like to salt vegetables when their incredible fresh flavor is so intense anyway. In this case, I also knew I'd be using other non-homemade ingredients with added salt (tortillas, salsa, cheese) and that the salt content would be on the heavy side. I prefer to make my own tortillas and salsa but this was a quick dish and I didn't have time.



To assemble the quesadillas, spread grated or thinly sliced vegan cheese on a large tortilla. Next place a layer of cooked eggplant. I think the TV chef used a top layer of cheese on the chicken quesadillas but I didn't. Cover with the second tortilla and press down to seal the edges. (This part is theoretical—my edges didn't seal but this wasn't a problem because of how I cooked them.)

The TV cook used a heavy griddle, but I used my waffle iron. I reversed the plates so the smooth grill side rather than the waffle side was exposed. (My iron has reversible plates but I think most of them do.) I placed the quesadilla in the preheated iron and within seconds I heard a hiss. The Teese was melting and oozing out! How perfect. The tortillas were crisp on the outside, the cheese was melted and the filling was warm, just as the TV cook said it should be. He cut his quesadilla into eight slices and offered them with a choice of pico de gallo or guacamole, which sounded great, but all I had on hand was fire-roasted salsa, so I used that.
With a large spatula, transfer the quesadilla to a cutting board, cool for a minute and cut into eight wedges. Serve with the toppings of your choice.

My husband and I both agreed that the quesadilla was really, really good.

*potato flour. I've been experimenting with potato flour and potato starch. I've added the flour to bread to see how the taste and texture would be affected, and I've added the starch to cake to for the same reason. The flour will make baked goods more dense and the starch is used to lighten the texture of baked items. Potato flour is made from whole potatoes, and if you taste it, it tastes just like baked potatoes. It is gluten-free and can be used as a thickener in sauces and soups. You can also use it as a coating for sauteeing vegetables like eggplant. It enriches the flavor with a slight potato taste and helps create a crispy crust, much as flour would. Potato starch is made, as the name implies, from just the starch of the potato.