Food adventures | Squash goodness

Another week, another new recipe with my good old pal Tammy. This week's theme: Squash! More precisely, butternut squash. We did crostinis and a thick delicious potage. For the butternut squash crostinis, the recipe is fairly simple.

Ingredients:


1 or 2 pound butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into small cubes
Lemon juice
Lime zest
1 Baguette cut into slices and toasted
1 Cup ricotta
3 Tablespoons of melted butter
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
2 Tablespoons of brown sugar
Salt and pepper
Sage leaves

Firstly,  preheat oven at 425 degrees Celsius. Then, in a large bowl, put your squash, butter, sugar, oil, salt and pepper. Mix it up good and pop it in the oven for a good 25 minutes. During that time, prepare your ricotta in another bowl by simply adding some lemon zest to it and a little salt and pepper. Also, start toasting your baguette slices in a small oven or even along your squash. For the sage leaves simply fry them in olive oil in a small pan for 2 minutes. Scoop them up. They should be a little crunchy. Finally, spread the ricotta on the baguette slices, add your squash cubes,  1 or 2 sage leaves on each slice and drizzle some lemon juice and voila!

For the yummy potage you can find the complete recipe here! I hope we can turn these food rendez-vous into a weekly thing! 

Potato blini with salmon tartare / Food adventures

My dear friend and I managed to make delicious potato blinis with salmon tartare the other day. We found this amazing recipe on Couture au Chocolat, an inspirational blog about both food and fashion. So it literally took us three hours to make and five minutes to eat. What was long to make was the potato base. But it was truly worth it. 

Our plan was to have this for lunch, however, by the time we were done it was more like supper. We didn't give up on desert. We had some crème fraiche left so we made these delicious crêpes with chocolate and blueberry toppings.  So much for dieting...

Comfort foods

Merry late Christmas! It's been a little while since my last post, but I have a few good excuses for that. First, I've been sick, second, the holidays kept me busy and third, I've been in the midst of figuring out which road I should choose for 2012.  Go back to school and get a second degree or concentrate on a career path. The second seems much more appealing to me since I am really eager to move out and buy a place of my own however, that isn't possible if I am to go back to school.

Most of the people around me right now have an entire week off for the holidays either from work or from school. So the mood is very festive and I am surrounded daily by the ones that matter. I wish this week could last a little longer. I've been having many culinary experiences lately and trying out many different recipes. I managed to make MOCHI for the first time. They ended up being really hard the second day since I didn't add any wheat starch..  I stacked them up to make a little mochi christmas tree!

Recipe

Basically I mixed 2 cups of glutinous rice flour, 1 cup of sugar and a bit of baking powder in a large bowl and gradually added water. Don't forget the wheat starch, around 1 cup should be good. Mix it up until the mixture becomes like dough. If the dough is sticky, add flour or cornstarch to make it more manageable. I split the mixture in 3 different parts and added different food colouring to each part. You then make little balls with it in your hands and fill them up with red bean paste. Finally, you steam your mochis for 10 minutes and serve! Wait for them to cool down a little first. 

Here are a few more little delicacies I had fun making this past week with my family.

 We all know how our relationship with food changes during the holidays. Whatever diet you were following went out the door in a split second and if you weren't on one you might consider starting one now. Here are a few yummy photos/prints found while browsing on Etsy.  Visit their shops!

1.JessaMaePhoto2.RaceyTay3.HoneyTree4.AniseSprout