Who carved which pumpkin?

Whew! Right in under the 10/31 deadline! Confessions of an Apron Queen is hosting this month’s Weekend Cookbook Challenge and the theme is Fall Vegetables. This is a great theme as far as I am concerned as I do love the Fall vegetables. This recipe is from the Williams Sonoma cookbook, Autumn. I believe I’ve drawn inspiration from it before for WCC.

This Coq au Vin does indeed have Fall vegetables — carrots, rutabaga, purple potatoes, and parsnips. It was also supposed to have a turnip but I was trying to hurry and get dinner ready (hungry!) and I didn’t feel like prepping that one. So sad. However, I think Mr. Turnip will show up in a soup shortly.

This recipe has many parts, many bowls, lots of steps (a lot of ins and outs) but only 1 pot. It’s a good Sunday night meal. Probably not a realistic Tuesday night meal.

I followed the directions from the book mostly, except that I added a diced onion and about 10 chopped cremini mushrooms. Oh and some rosemary. And more thyme. I also roasted my veggies because I like roasted veggies. And I used less chicken stock. And…Well, hell, it’s kind of based on the recipe, I guess.

Coq au Vin with Autumn Vegetables
2 tbsp olive oil
8 cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 small onion, diced
2 slices bacon, cut into small dice
8-10 boneless chicken thighs
1 bottle of red wine (Cotes du Rhone, Cabernet Sauvignon, etc…)
3 cups chicken broth
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 cloves garlic minced
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 sprig rosemary
2 parsnips peeled, and cut into 1″ lengths
2 carrots peeled, and cut into 1″ lengths
2 purple potatoes (or small red skinned potatoes) cut into small wedges
1 rutabaga peeled, and cut into smaller wedges than the other vegetables
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 tbsp butter
salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a large, heavy pot over medium heat, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil. Add the onion and mushrooms and saute until soft and just starting to color — about 6-7 minutes. Remove and set aside in a large bowl. Return the pan to the heat and add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly golden, about 10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a plate.

Sprinkle all sides of chicken thighs with salt and pepper. Raise the heat to medium-high and, working in batches, add the chicken pieces to the pot. Cook, turning as necessary, until lightly golden, about 10 minutes. I didn’t work in batches because I was hungry, so my chicken didn’t brown as well as it should have. So, work in batches people!

When all of the chicken is golden, return the all chicken pieces to the pot along. Raise the heat to high and add the wine, broth, tomato paste, garlic, bay leaves, and the leaves from the thyme and rosemary sprigs. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer 20-25 minutes.

Using tongs, transfer the chicken to a large shallow dish and keep warm.

Meanwhile, right after you get the wine into the pot, toss your diced up fall veggies with the remaining tablespoon of oil. Salt and pepper and roast in the oven for about 20-25 minutes (while the chicken is braising), until almost done. You could also just skip this step and cook the veggies in the wine-broth completely. If you do this, give them about 25-30 minutes.

Next, add the almost cooked parsnips, carrots, rutabaga and potato to the wine. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the vegetables are completely tender, about 8-10 minutes.

Using a slotted spoon, transfer the vegetables to the dish holding the chicken. And pour the wine sauce into the bowl holding the sauteed mushrooms and onions.

Melt the butter in your pot and add the flour. Cook for about a minute and then add the hot wine-mushrooms-onions mix back into the pot. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid lightly coats a spoon, 2 to 3 minutes. Mine didn’t seem to thicken all that much but it was still mighty tasty!

To serve, pour the slightly thickened sauce over the bowl holding the chicken and vegetables. Garnish with thyme or rosemary sprigs. Recipe yields (at least) 6 servings. We had this with a big bowl of goat cheese polenta drizzled with a little fancy olive oil. Oh and the crusty bread. You must have crusty bread.

Thanks again to Confessions of an Apron Queen for hosting this month!

This recipe is from The Secret Life of Food by Clare Crespo. I actually saw these this recipe about two years ago but, I kid you not, the last two Halloweens I have had colds. And thus, didn’t really want to bake things. This year? Germ-free, baby!

These are what I made for the Halloween Baking contest at work. Pretty much followed the recipe except I used dots of red tubed frosting for the eyes (instead of red hot candies) and I used a silicone basting brush to coat the cookies with chocolate. So much less wasteful than pouring it, imho. You will also use less chocolate to begin with. I started with a half of a bag of chips and 1 tablespoon of oil, figuring I could always melt more up if I needed more. Also, try to get a larger tub of the chocolate sprinkles. The 10 oz tub size, if you can. You will use at least 6-7 oz. Finally, I used dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate because that’s just how I roll.

Oh and I broke the pretzel sticks in half to make the legs a little shorter. Just as impressive but less delicate when transporting and less tiny little stick to coat with chocolate.

To give you an idea of the time commitment, I started these at 5pm and was completely done about 7:15 pm. I started brushing the melted chocolate on the first batch (I baked them in two batches of 12) about 20 minutes after they came out of the oven. This was also the 2nd time I’ve made these cookies since Sunday, so that probably speeded duh, sped me up a bit.

Cute Spider Cookies to nom-nom-nom
Makes about 2 dozen cookies
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking soda
10 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 bag thin, short pretzel sticks
11.5 oz bag of dark (60% cacao) chocolate chips
2 tbsp vegetable oil
6+ oz Chocolate sprinkles
Small red candies, mini m&ms or a tube of red frosting + pastry tip

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well blended.

Gradually add the flour mixture and cocoa powder. Beat to form a smooth, slightly dry looking, dough.

Roll a tablespoon-sized ball of dough, and place it on a baking sheet. Arrange eight pretzel sticks around the ball like spokes on a wheel. Press the tips of the pretzel sticks firmly into the dough ball. Continue with the rest of the pretzels and dough.

Bake until cookies start to brown around edges, about 10-12 minutes.

For comparison, I got 24 cookies from my dough and mine were perfect at 12 minutes. So, scale the cooking time to your cookie size.

Lift the cookies from the baking sheets with a spatula, and place on wire cooling racks. Let cool completely. Place the racks on sheets of aluminum foil or waxed paper.

Melt the chocolate chips with vegetable oil in the microwave, 30 seconds at a time, stirring between each blast. When chocolate is almost melted completely, just stir until it’s all melted. You can do this all at once or do half the bag of chips plus 1 tablespoon of oil at a time. That’s what I did. And then I just melted more chocolate and oil when I needed it. And I did have melted chocolate left over. I’m sure I will think of something to do with it!

Use a pastry or basting brush to coat each spider with melted chocolate.

I did about 4 at a time, then sprinkled down with chocolate sprinkles. If you are pressing the eyes into the spider (red hots, m&ms), do it now, while the chocolate is still soft. If using frosting, let the chocolate firm up a bit first.

You can set the chocolate and sprinkles quicker by putting the cookies in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes. Then squirt all te frosting eyes on.

The cookies are very tasty — not just all show.

We ate all the ones I made this weekend as a test (well, jwa brought some into work too) and hopefully, these will go fast at the Halloween Party Wednesday.

Okay, once again it’s time for split pea soup. Although, today (Sunday) it was beautiful here — about 69 degrees and sunny. We had our windows and front door open! Maybe I was a little too quick with putting flannel sheets on the bed last weekend?

Anyway, here’s the soup! It’s from Bon Appétit. Oh, I reduced the original’s 4 slices of bacon to two. Yay me.

I know that I’ve made split pea soup before. It’s just so good I can’t help myself from trying different variations…

Split Pea Soup with Rosemary & Bacon
2 bacon slices, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 medium leek (white and pale green parts only), sliced
1 large carrot, peeled, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 14 1/2-ounce cans 7 cups low-salt chicken broth
1 1/4 cups green split peas, rinsed
2 bay leaves
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
Garnish: Sour cream, crème fraîche or plain yogurt & more rosemary

Sauté bacon in heavy large pot over medium-high heat until crisp and brown. Add onion, leek, carrot and garlic and sauté until vegetables begin to soften, about 6 minutes.

Add broth, peas, bay leaves and rosemary and bring soup to boil.

Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until peas are tender, stirring occasionally, about 1 hour. The peas will fall apart and make a creamy soup.

Season soup to taste with salt and pepper. Top with a dollop of sour cream or other creamy garnish and a little rosemary.

Next up: Halloween treats!

First off, can I just say that I am looking forward (I think!) to Nov 5th? I am getting sick of having to obsessively check wonkette, fivethirtyeight and google news > elections like 50 times per day.

::sigh::

Anywho, this recipe is from Food & Wine, via Bobby Flay, and it was super good. I changed some things so I’m going to say that I adapted it from Bobby Flay. We like the Mahi Mahi as you can find it at Trader Joe’s, frozen, for about $6-something a pound. Woo-hoo! I’ve seen it both plain and marinated in a chimichurri-type marinade. This was that variety — I just wiped off the extra marinade after defrosting it.

If you have leftover pesto it is excellent with pasta, chicken or, uh, a spoon.

Rub
2 tbsp smoked Spanish paprika
1 tbsp chile powder blend
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp dark brown sugar
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper

Mahi Mahi
Four 1/2 pound mahi mahi fillets
2 tbsp olive oil

Cilantro Pesto
2 large yellow bell peppers — peeled, seeded and chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/4 cup walnuts
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
3 tbsp freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

Make the pesto by placing the peppers, garlic, nuts, cilantro and Parmesan in a food processor and pulse until combined. With the machine on, add the oil and process until emulsified.

Season with the salt and pepper. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Okay, now make the rub. Basically, mix all the rub ingredients together. Done!

Now, heat a pan (a grill pan or regular skillet) over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil. Rub each fillet with the "Barbecue" Rub and cook until a bit of a crust has formed, to 3 minutes. Turn the fish and grill for 3 to 4 minutes longer, or until cooked to medium doneness.

We had this with some cheddar polenta (make polenta, add a bunch of cheddar cheese to it), tomato slices and black beans. And of course the cilantro pesto.

Super good and tasty.

We are having a dessert baking contest thing at work next week (at the Halloween Party) and I am trying to come up with an idea. Well, I have some, but we really haven’t gotten any specifics yet on the contest. So, I’m not sure if it can be any baked item or a specifically Halloween-themed thing. I have two contenders. I will decide this weekend I suppose. After making them each to taste test. Yeah.