Autumn Squash and Apple Bisque

Fall Leaves on Pleasant Street

What can I say but fall has arrived. We are enjoying a beautiful week of Indian Summer weather here in the Chicago burbs. The temperatures are warm and the leaves are beginning to turn and fall. Today I felt the first crunch beneath my feet. In some ways it felt like a switch was flipped the way the seasons just seemed to change almost overnight.

I think as you get older you are more aware of these things or at least I try to be. Or maybe it is my conscious effort to slow things down a bit and feel the world around me.

To me the first things I thought about when the kitchen temperature dropped was baking and soup. What a better soup to make other than butternut and apple bisque. With squash and apples at their peek this is seasonal cooking at it's best. This soup was a recipe I prepared and styled years ago for a Chicago Tribune article. I spent about 7 years as a freelance food stylist for the Sunday magazine section of the Chicago Tribune. I loved trying the recipes and some stayed with me over the years.

What I love about this soup is the texture and the sweet, spicy goodness it possesses. I love to have it with a hunk of French baguette for dipping. Top it off with creme fraiche for extra zing and a sprinkle of paprika for color. 

Autumn Squash and Apple Bisque-
Adapted from “Apple Companion” by Liz Clark and jill Vorbeck

4 Tbsps butter
1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp cinnamon
1 qt chicken stock
2 medium autumn squash (I used butternut) 1 ½ lbs total, peeled, seeded, diced
2 ½ firm apples, cored, peeled, diced (I used honey crisp)
½ cup heavy cream
salt and cayenne pepper to taste

1. Melt butter in heavy saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add onions, ginger and cinnamon.
3. Saute, stirring constantly, until onions are transparent.
4. Add chicken stock, squash and apples and bring to a boil.
5. Simmer until squash and apples are soft.
6. Cool mixture slightly.
7. Puree in a blender, filling container no more than ¾ full or you will be splattered with hot burning soup and no one wants that.
8. Return to heat and add cream season to taste. 


Cooking Tip: When cutting a hard squash be very careful. My only kitchen accident involved an acorn squash and the emergency room. My advice on this squash avoid it at all costs. Just kidding of course. I love acorn squash but to peel it whole I recommend softening it slightly in the oven until it is slightly softer and you could get a knife through it. When cutting round things it is a good idea to cut a part off the bottom so it will sit flat and not roll.

Chocolate Chip Cookies-My Best Ever.... So Far

Ah Americas favorite cookie? I think so. When it comes to this cookie we all have a vision in mind. Some of us may like crunchy, some may like chewy, some a lot of chocolate and some not so much.

Some like my son love the cookie dough the best. Which brings me to a story. In this world of so much information and daily reports of a new thing that is going to kill us. It is a wonder we are not all nuts. So one day a few years ago I was making cookies. A group of kids wandered into the kitchen. My son was like “cookie dough yum”! One of the boys in the group looked at him eating the cookie dough with horror on his face like you are going to die and proceeded to tell us about salmonella and how you will get sick. Wow I think it is good to have information but that poor kid was missing out on the best part of the cookie making process. Licking the beaters. Scraping the bowl with your fingers until it shined.

It made me sad actually that he had to look at cookie dough as a poison. I have to say in all my years of eating cookie dough and everyone in my family eating cookie dough no one has ever gotten sick. My kids are 11 and 14 and have been eating it as long as they could eat it and they are thriving.

This is not poison

Yes, as with all things there is a risk. But we can't live our life being afraid of everything. Eggs either have salmonella or they don't. The odds are with us that in our lifetime we will not be infected with salmonella from an egg.

As parents we need to look out for our kids and give them information but being alarmists just stresses everyone out. For God’s sake let them eat the cookie dough.

I have tried different recipes over the years and the Toll House  one is a darn good one. I have also tried the Neiman Marcus Recipe. All good but not the best ever. While I hate to use the term "best ever", because my best may not be your best so I will just say the recipe I adapted is “my best chocolate chip cookie, so far” recipe.


What I love about baking versus cooking. Baking is more science. I studied food science in college and loved how there was a reason for everything that happened in baking. When you know the reasoning behind what is happening it makes it easier to understand. 
For instance one of the most important factors is the temperature of the butter and the creaming process. We read our recipe and it calls for soft butter or room temperature butter. Well what does this really mean? How soft
should it be. Nearly melted?

I pulled out some books and internet research and found that the best temperature for creaming butter is 65 degrees F. How to tell if your butter is at 65 degrees? I use an insta read thermometer. Another way is to push your finger in it and it should give slightly and leave a slight indentation.

Butter is basically an emulsion of water in fat, with some dairy solids that help hold them together. Keeping the butter at the right temperature keeps the emulsion intact. One day this summer I left my butter out on the counter and it was melted because the temp in the kitchen was about 80 degrees. The butter was runny meaning the emulsion broke. It would never be able to form a structure if I used it.

In addition to the butter another factor is the flour. I have always used all purpose or ap flour. However when I came across this recipe by Jacques Torres I noticed him using cake and bread flour. Dah that makes sense. The bread flour would give some more structure to the cookie due to the added protein.

Ok so I did some testing and this is my recipe.

Chocolate Chip/Chunk Cookies


2 sticks unsalted butter, 65 deg F
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
2 tsps vanilla
1 1/4 cups cake flour
1 cup bread flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
chocolate chips or bittersweet chocolate bars, chopped 
fleur de sel, for sprinkling




Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. About three minutes in a kitchen aid on number 3 speed. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well. Add vanilla.

Mix dry ingredients together and add to creamed mixture.

Add some of chocolate to batter (see tip below) and scoop with a #40 scoop on cookie sheet, not insulated. Add extra chocolate to top. Sprinkle lightly with fleur de sel. Bake at 350 degrees F until golden brown.

Food Styling Tips: When I make cookies for work or the home studio I always use a food service scoop. This will give you uniform cookies.

When placing pieces in my cookies be it nuts or chocolate I add some to the batter and leave some out to place on the cookie before it goes into the oven. This will insure you have some identifiable pieces on top. You can even add part way through baking if you like!

I find the fleur de sel makes a nice addition and reminded me of the carmels I make of the same name. The little splash of salt with the sweet is a nice touch. So enjoy these cookies and please comment on how they worked for you.

Ramblings

I have a big fan of my blog my friend Anastasia a creative genius in so many ways. Her talents are astounding as an author, artist, musician, salad maker, craftswoman. One of those people that can do anything well.

She is always telling me you should write about this or that. So many things to write about I don’t know where to begin. I don’t want to bore the pants off people with what I had for breakfast and what my kids did funny but talking real truth about daily life is kind of interesting. It helps us connect with other people.

I guess if you come to a blog you want to feel like you are sitting at the kitchen table with the person discussing life.
So this post will be some of this and that and ramblings along those lines so pull up a kitchen chair and let’s chit chat.

The biggest challenge for me as a mom /freelance working mom is to balance it all. I mean work, home, kids, dogs, husband, shopping. Enough to make my head spin. Well I admit I am a bit fascinated by those women who seem so put together and life seems calm for them.  I am NOT one of these woman. I heard Suze Orman speaking the other day, I love her by the way, she has a great philosophy about life, finances whatever. She says “know your truth.” Wow that one is IT in a nutshell. She was referring to spending primarily but it relates to all aspects of life.

Know what your good at, your strengths and weaknesses, and spend time doing it. The stuff you suck at forget about it. Or if you really want to punish yourself keep trying until you get better at it.

Now my husband has often thought I have ADD. Well I don’t think that is the case more like I am not 30 anymore and I stayed at home raising the kids and now they are older and I am on a mission from GOD!
To quote Elwood Blues.

Seriously I have things to do and learn. I love it that my husband was on board with me staying home to raise the kids. To me it was important and something I waited my whole life to do. Yes I was one of those girls. I had no post partum anything just pure bliss with baby/toddlerdom. Pre-teen/teen years not as blissful!! LOL

Now that the kids are teen and pre-teen they don’t need or want me as much and with college looming in the forecast I better get making some dough. Plus getting out of the house and being with adults is a good thing. For me and the kids.

My career has suffered or lets just say I could have been further along if I had not stayed home with the kiddies. It was hard entering the workforce after 10 years and expecting people to hire me again.

The people who were assistant food stylists were now lead stylists and I could not exactly say hey here I am I know you have all been waiting for me to return. Really, the fact is there were plenty of others to take my position. And chomping at the bit to do so. So starting all over again has been hard. That is why the blogging has been so good for me. I can be creative in my home studio/kitchen and use my talents as a food stylist and also perfect my photographic skills.

Anyway back to my ADD. So my friend Anastasia came over last night to deliver a red velvet cake she got from one of her students after having her emergency appendectomy. I had worked out of the house food styling so everything felt chaotic. That is when she said you should blog about this. Oh you mean my crazy life?

I have been freelancing all my career so that is all I know. Here is how it goes. So I get the call to work a job for the next day. Ok it’s a book. So I proceed to put all the ducks in a row like hiring Lynn the dog walker, figuring out who will take Michael to football practice, making sure everyone has food, feeding dogs, cooking and cleaning house, doing laundry, packing lunches, signing school papers and so on.

When I work I come home and literally leave one kitchen and step into another. Yesterday I left the photo studio and walked in the house and went right to our sink to tackle the days dishes as well as a few from the evening.

As in most households the kitchen is the hub. Well mine is no different. Everyone is hungry all the time.

I actually have a big smile on my face as I’m writing this because it is so comical when I am in the kitchen. I have three dogs yes I am crazy and yes it was a mistake but would not give them up for the world. So every time I am in the kitchen I have at least one if not all three waiting for any crumb to drop. I have a black lab that is obsessed with produce and when I even so much as open the fruit or vege drawer she is running from wherever she was prior to sit for a piece of fruit or vegetable. Or sometimes half a cantalope if I turn my back and she gets on the counter.

My son has been begging me for cake. My daughter wants muffins. My husband wants meat of any kind that pulls away from the bone and is fork tender.

So my house is set up like a restaurant kitchen because that is what it feels like to me. I have all my white restaurant dishes on a shelf above the stove. Ready to grab. Frig behind me for easy reach.

A small breakfast bar to the left of the stove where people like to hang while I cook. Above the breakfast bar is an industrial strength pot rack put in by Bob my handman extraordinaire.

So my life is a bit crazy as a freelancer the stopping and starting the wearing of this hat or that but I would not change it for the world. I could never go to a cube all day I am not cut out for it. I need the constant change and stimulation of new things. Even though I do get a bit stressed it all works out and when I am working on new things and get that fix of creativity from my styling it makes it all worth it.