Frittatta

This chef had a surplus of eggs in the refrigerator. Eggland's Best Eggs. Time for this chef's first Frittatta!

Fritatta seems like a better spelling, and stupid Cooks Illustrated's least robust search engine ever can't recognize this spelling. Oh well.

Besides the eggs, zucchini is the next most important ingredient:

In order to make this more like the egg dish from Jaleo (the tortila, not tortilla), some onions were added. Sauted onions.

Kitchenaid made it so easy to shred three zucchini.

The shredded zucchini was pressed in some towels so to remove the excess moisture.

The shredded, dried pile of zucchini was added to the onions.

Two cloves of garlic followed.

Once the zucchini was mostly cooked, it was taken off the stove, and mixed in with six scrambled (yet raw) eggs. And some basil

This went back into the frying pan to cook until mostly set. Because non-stick skillets usually can't go into the oven, especially under the broiler, no matter what CI says, to finish the frittatta, it was put on a baking sheet. An oven-safe baking sheet. And finished under the broiler:

Ta-da!

Pumpkin bread

Words to be provided at a later date.

A post in pictures

Yum.

More squash!

A visit to a farm brought more squash into this kitchen this weekend. The squash were plentiful and of many varying varieties.

Acorn and Carinval squash were chosen. The original plan was to steam them in the microwave or roast them in the oven, as was suggested by the very nice squash selling lady at the farm, but after having seen a recipe for butternut squash risotto, that plan was changed.

These are not butternut squash, but they are squash.

To start, the squash were peeled and cut into cubes. These cubes were sauted for about 8 minutes, then in chicken broth. When they were soft, they were drained, and the broth was reserved.

Next, onion was sauted (in butter) with a little garlic. Once the onions were nice and soft and a little bit browned, the 2 cups of arborrio rice were added and cooked until translucent. To this rice/onion/garlic mixture a little white wine was added.

Once the wine was absorbed, three cups of the reserved chicken broth were added to the rice:

This was cooked away until the rice had absorbed the liquid.

Back in went the squash, some parmesan cheese, and some chopped sage.

Delicious and very fall-like.

It's squash time!

Even though it's still way too hot here, it is beginning to feel like fall. One of the more exciting signs - the availability of all types of squashes. Today we will be using the butternut variety for Sage Butternut Squash Soup.

These squash can be hard to cut. But to start, the squash was cut into roughly 1/2 inch cubes.

Fist into the pot: 1.5 tablespoon of butter with an onion.

Add in a little chopped sage.

Then continue to cook. Saute for about 6 minutes, then add in the squash.

Cook that whole mixture for another 5-6 minutes, add in a clove of crushed garlic and cook for one more minute. Then we need to make it into soup, so add the chicken broth. The recipe called for five cups, but this was too much for the amount of squash.

Then put the mixture into the blender. This is a lovely KitchenAid blender, given as a birthday present to this chef.

The soup is done at this point. Unfortunately, the amount of liquid was too much for the amount of squash. Perhaps next time, the squash should be separated from the liquid after cooking, and added to the puree only as necessary.

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Experiment: Test 2

In the continuation of the Toll House cookie experiment, we will continue with cold butter, sifted flour, volume measured ingredients.

There was another variable unintentionally involved here. In order to cream the butter and sugar while the butter was cold, the Kitchenaid Mixer was used.

Sift in the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Mix in th chocolate chips.

Teaspoon sized balls on the baking sheets.

And ta-da! Soft, puffy cookies.

This result is perhaps what the traditional toll House cookies are meant to be.

Next up, we will try to get the cookies to turn out how my mom's cookies come out - thin and chewy.