Biscuits and Gravy

When we go to Finland–Finland, Minnesota, that is–we always make sure that we have breakfast at Our Place, the restaurant in this town of 400+ people on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It is the local hang-out where people gather to watch football or baseball and where you get a good breakfast, lunch or dinner without feeling robbed. On Saturdays and Sundays only, the restaurants serves the best biscuits and sausage gravy you can find anywhere according to my husband. With the weather turning colder and our appetites increasing for more substantial fare, I gave making biscuits and gravy a first try today. I received a two-thumbs-up approval rating from my husband with the words that I can make that again. Be warned though: This is not a recipe to make if you're watching your waistline.

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

Ingredients:

12 oz. Jimmy Dean Sage breakfast sausage

4-6 Tbsp. butter*

4-6 Tbsp. all-purpose flour*

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1/4 tsp. black pepper

4 cups whole milk, warmed

Preparation:

Cook sausage in a large skillet over medium heat, breaking it up into small chunks, until it is no longer pink. Add butter and heat until melted. Add flour, salt and pepper and cook and stir for a few minutes until everything is blended well. Heat milk in the meantime. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly. Bring mixture to a boil, reduce heat and cook for a few minutes until the sauce is thickened. Serve sauce over bicuits. Makes 4-6 servings.

*Tip: If you like your sauce rather thin, use less butter and flour without changing the other measurements. If you like it a little thicker, go for the full 6 tablespoons of butter and flour!

A Potato-Fennel Gratin Fit Enough For Company

The best-tasting potatoes–obviously–can be had in fall when they're harvested and the stores are brimming with a large variety of different kinds and sizes. I made the following recipe for a potato-fennel gratin tonight for guests and it was a hit with everyone. The recipe is almost exactly taken from Ina Garten's The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.

Potato-Fennel Gratin

Ingredients:

2 fennel bulbs

1 yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced

2 Tbsp. pure olive oil

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

2 pounds potatoes (russet or Yukon Gold)

2 cups heavy cream

2 1/2 cups grated Gruyère cheese (1/2 lb.)

1 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350˚F and butter an 9x13-inch casserole dish. Remove the stalks from the fennel and cut the bulbs in half lengthwise. Remove the cores and thinly slice the bulbs crosswise. Sauté the fennel and the onions in the olive oil and butter on medium-low heat until tender.

Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly, about 1/8 inch thick. Mix the sliced potatoes in a large bowl with 2 cups of cream, 2 cups of Gruyère, salt and pepper. Add the sautéed fennel and onion and mix well.

Pour mixture into the prepared casserole dish. Press down to smooth the potatoes. Sprinkle the top with about 1/2 cup of grated Gruyère. Bake uncovered for 1 1/2 hours, until the potatoes are very tender and the top is browned nicely. Allow a few minutes to cool and set before serving.

The recipe makes about 10 servings and can be made days ahead of time and reheated at 350˚F for about 30 minutes. (Let the gratin come to room temperature before reheating. If not, the time for reheating needs to be increased.)

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Gratin

Oh boy! Here is an indulgence that I made for the dinner table tonight, and with something like this on the menu I say, "who cares about dessert? Let's have seconds instead!"

With plenty of butternut squash and sweet potatoes on hand and tired of making yet another pot of soup, I found a recipe for butternut squash and sweet potato casserole on the blog Pinch My Salt that I liked because of its simplicity, wonderful photography and great directions. The only changes I made from the original recipe were cutting the salt by one third, using dried instead of fresh thyme, and adding more garlic. Here's the decadent recipe that will fill your kitchen with great smells. Even my 13-year-old daughter, who was doing homework at the kitchen table while listening to her iPod, looked up at one point and said, "Mmh! Something smells good, mom!" Here's my slightly adjusted version of Pinch My Salt's recipe:

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Gratin

Ingredients:

1 lb. butternut squash, peeled and sliced about 1/8 inch thick

1 lb. sweet potato, peeled and sliced about 1/8 inch thick

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 generous tsp. kosher salt

fresh pepper to taste

2 cups shredded Manchego (or Gruyère–or even aged Gouda)

3 cloves garlic, pressed

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Butter a 9x13-inch casserole dish and set aside. Peel and slice butternut squash and sweet potatoes, grate cheese, and measure spices and heavy cream.

In the buttered casserole dish, spread half of the butternut squash out and sprinkle with 1/3 of the salt, pepper, thyme and 1/2 cup of cheese. Then spread half the sweet potatoes as the next layer, again sprinkling with 1/3 of the salt, pepper, thyme and 1/2 cup of cheese. Repeat layering with another layer of butternut and sweet potatoes. Finish by mixing 3 cloves of freshly pressed garlic with the heavy cream and pouring it over the dish. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese, cover the casserole and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove the cover and bake 20 minutes more until the top is nicely browned. Remove the gratin from the oven and let it cool for 15-20 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

Note: Supposedly, this recipe makes 12 servings, but we live in Minnesota and it's getting cold outside, so we only get 6-8 servings out of this recipe. Oink, oink. :)

Chicken Noodle Soup

Nothing feels better when you're under the weather than an nice, piping hot bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup. I'm not sure if there is any truth to chicken noodle soup speeding up recovery when suffering from a common cold, but folk wisdom has said for centuries that it does. All I know is that it tastes good and my mom was a master at making a very simple, tasty version entirely from scratch. Here is the recipe–it comes in two steps: the first step describes how to make the chicken stock and cook the chicken, the second step describes how to finish the soup.

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup (Hühnersuppe)

STEP I

Ingredients for making chicken stock and cooking chicken:

1 4-lb. chicken, rinsed well, innards removed

10 cups water

1-2 stalks celery, cut in large chunks

1-2 carrots, cut in large chunks

1 large onion, cut in large chunks

2 bay leaves

1 tsp. salt

Preparation:

Put the chicken and all other ingredients in an 8-qt. stockpot, fill with water to cover the chicken (approximately 10 cups), and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer on very low for about 1 1/2 hours.

Remove the chicken and let it cool slightly before deboning. Strain broth and discard all of the vegetables. Return the strained broth to the pot. You now have the clear chicken stock and cooked chicken to make the chicken soup you will actually eat.

STEP II

Ingredients for finishing chicken soup:

all the chicken stock from the first step

2 stalks celery, sliced

2 carrots, sliced or diced

1 tsp. salt (or a little more to taste)

pepper to taste

To the chicken broth add celery, carrots, diced chicken meat, salt and pepper. Bring everything to a boil and simmer on low heat for approximately 20 minutes until the fresh vegetables are tender.

Meanwhile bring a pot of water to a boil and cook egg noodles according to package directions. Serve a scoop of egg noodles with each bowl of chicken soup. Makes about 10-12 generous servings.

Tip: Keep noodles and soup separate, so the noodles don't get soggy but stay al dente. Occasionally, my mom served the soup with rice (buttered rice… she always used butter for cooking…) which is very good, too.

Hello Snow!

Big surprise when waking up this morning: it had snowed! Not a huge accumulation, of course, it is after all only October 10, but enough to cover all the roofs and lawns in a thin blanket of white. Our dogs, Lenny and Louie, had a very surprised look on their faces when I let them out the door into the yard. I think they had forgotten what snow was!

Now they're back in the house, everyone is still asleep, but the first pot of coffee is brewing and I'm thinking about making some nice cauliflower-cheese soup. My favorite recipe for this soup comes from Molly Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook. The only ingredient in it that I don't use is caraway because my husband doesn't care for it. Other than that, the recipe is just to our liking. Try it for yourself!

Cauliflower-Cheese Soup

Ingredients:

1 large potato, peeled and diced (about 2-3 cups diced)

1 large cauliflower, cut or broken into florets (put aside 2 cups of florets)

1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped

3 medium cloves garlic, peeled

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

1 1/2 tsp. salt (I like kosher or sea salt)

4 cups water

2 cups (packed) grated cheddar (plus extra for garnishing each serving)

3/4 cup milk (I find whole milk tastes better, though lowfat is okay)

1 tsp. dill

1/2 tsp. caraway seeds (I always leave them out…, but instead a sprinkling of freshly cut parsley for garnish is nice)

black pepper to taste

Preparation:

Place potato, cauliflower (except for the 2 cups reserved), carrot, garlic, onion, salt, and water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer until all vegetables are very tender. Purée in a blender or food processor, and transfer to a kettle or Dutch oven.

If you like a little texture in your soup, set aside 2 cups of the cauliflower florets and steam them reserved until just tender. Add these to the purée along with all remaining ingredients. Heat gently, and serve topped with a little extra cheese.

Fish Stew

An Italian restaurant we visit occasionally serves a delicious fish stew called zuppa di pesce. It's chockful of salmon, shrimp and scallops that swim in a sea of flavorful broth that beckons to be soaked up with crusty bread. Since I've been spending a major part of this week serving leftovers from last weekends party and I still had more than a pound of already poached salmon in the refrigerator, I decided to make my own version of fish stew to use the fish before it turned bad. I added a bag of frozen shrimp and a bag of frozen scallops that I had in the freezer and, even though fresh always tastes better, I thought a stew would be a tasty way to prepare the frozen and the already poached seafood.

My brother-in-law Tim recreated his own version of the restaurant's fish stew a few years ago and it is delicious. I had his recipe and another one from a cookbook to get me started, but ultimately I had to use what I had on hand. The resultat: really good! So here's the recipe:

Fish Stew

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 lb. mushrooms, sliced

1 cup onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1-1 1/2 lbs. salmon, poached

8-oz. bag of frozen shrimp

12-oz. bag of frozen scallops

1 14-oz. can diced tomatoes

2 14-oz cans chicken broth

1 cup dry white wine

1 tsp. dried oregano

1 tsp. dried basil

salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

Heat butter and oil in a 4-6 qt. large pot over medium high eat. Add mushrooms, sprinkle several pinches of salt on top of mushrooms, and sauté for a few minutes. When the mushrooms start drawing water, add onions and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are tender. Add salmon, shrimp and scallops and stir. Add diced tomatoes with juices, chicken broth, wine, oregano, basil and pepper. A couple of good cranks with the peppermill will be fine. Bring mixture to a boil and immediately turn down heat to a low simmer. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, until flavors have blended. If using fresh fish, simmering the stew may be increased to 30 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed.

Suggestion: Our Italian restaurant–and my brother-in-law Tim–also add fresh chopped asparagus to the soup. That is really good. If you choose to add asparagus, just cut fresh spears into 1 1/2-inch chunks and add to the soup during the last 10 minutes of simmering.