use real butter

Recipe: roasted butternut squash soup

Confession time. Until just a few years ago, whenever I heard the words butternut squash I envisioned the acorn squash. I was not much of a squash consumer other than zucchini and pumpkin. I was squash stupid. It was when Nicole and Andrew had us over for homemade butternut squash ravioli one evening that I became enamored with the lovely gourd.

Recipe: hot and sour soup

*rant is on*
Ever since I split my blog and made the food blog public, I’ve been posting my recipe entries on Tastespotting. Last night, since I didn’t have a recipe per se, I didn’t bother posting to Tastespotting. To my surprise, I saw one of my photos from last night’s entry show up this morning. When I looked, I saw it was submitted by GingerbreadGirl03 who makes a point of posting practically everything that comes across their browser as if this were a high school popularity contest. When I clicked on the image it took me to… not my blog entry. It went to some bullshit BBC recipe on tuna sashimi. A recipe for tuna sashimi?! That is like a recipe for eating an apple.

So if GingerbreadGirl03 had actually linked to my blog entry, that would have been fine, but to snarf my image without my permission and then to point it to some crap recipe? That’s totally uncool. I requested the entry be removed and Tastespotting quickly obliged. And I see that GingerbreadGirl03 has done this on several other posts of other unsuspecting people as well. You know, I blog because I enjoy it. I love to cook and I love to photograph and I put quite a bit of time and energy into both. I don’t appreciate someone stealing my images which is part of the reason I have that Copyright Notice at the bottom of the page. Hello? So GingerbreadGirl03 - since you obviously read this blog (or peruse it long enough to steal a photo), let me give you a little freebie pointer on blog etiquette: It is not alright to post my photos and link to something other than the entry it came from without my permission (and no, you don’t have my permission). I’m going to assume you didn’t know any better - this time.

Sheesh.
*rant is off*

I have a tiny, old recipe book that my mom’s house mother (in grad school) printed in 1974. Several years later, Mrs. Li sent a couple of copies to my mom who in turn passed them along to me and Kris. I love this book. The binding is half-missing and the pages are stained, but it contains 100 authentic Chinese recipes. I tend to be a visual person and I am a total whore for cookbooks plastered with glossy pictures, but this modest book is a simple black and white with a few line drawings to illustrate the more complex steps. Next to my parents and my grandma, this book has taught me how to cook some traditional Chinese favorites. Imagine my delight the first time I tried the hot and sour soup recipe. The kind you get in Chinese restaurants is typically heavy on the cornstarch and very light on the goodies - not so with this version.

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: posole

I’m not sure where I got my recipe for posole, but I know who introduced me to it. Jeremy is a native son of New Mexico (which is one of the 50 states and not a separate country as some US citizens might think). Despite being a white boy, he is particular about New Mexican food and scoffs at what Coloradoans try to pass off as Mexican food. I love Colorado, but damn it if these people don’t know how to cook…

Okay, so with the cooling temperatures and changing aspens comes my appetite for hot soups and stews - things I generally avoid during our warm months. Posole is incredibly simple and yet it produces such a satisfying and hearty meal. It is named for the star ingredient: hominy or posole. I use whole dried red New Mexican chile pods for this stew. I’ve substituted with other dried chiles before and I didn’t like them so much. So if you can get your hands on some New Mexican reds or bribe a friend in the state to send you some, it’s worth the trouble. I also like to add roasted Hatch green chiles (of New Mexico - see a pattern here?) at the end of the cooking.