J'ai vaincu le pâtisson !

Si vous êtes un lecteur assidu de ce blog, vous avez pu remarquer une vague tendance à user et abuser des cucurbitacées. Et encore, je vous ai épargné la purée de patidoux (pour cette fois).

Mais la pâtisson et moi, notre histoire n'a pas commencé sous les meilleurs auspices. Pourtant, je l'adore, le pâtisson, sa blancheur impeccable, sa forme de brioche, il a une tête de truc bon. Mais la pâtisson, c'est une tannée à peler - contrairement à ses copains le patidoux et la potimarron, il a la peau dure ! Et puis, après des essais plus ou moins foireux, j'avais trouvée une recette sympa... au roquefort et au vin blanc. Pas enfant-proof. Pas maman-proof. Retour à la case départ pour Monsieur Pâtisson.

Ensuite j'ai tenté une poêllée, avec plein de choses dedans pour rajouter du goût. Peu apprécié des enfants, encore moins de la maman - le pâtisson, en morceaux, ça passe pas, ne me demandez pas pourquoi. Et puis comme j'en avais fait une GROSSE poêllée et que j’aime pas gâcher, j'ai tenter de le mixer... et là ! Miracle ! La pâtisson, c'est BON !

So yay ! I defeated the pattypan squash ! If you have been following this blog, you might have noticed how much I love all types of squashes and pumpkins. This one... as much as I loved it visually, it took me some time to find a recipe I liked. There was one keeper for some time, but it involved blue cheese (now bad for me) and white wine (bad for the wee ones). Next I tried to sauté it, and I hated it. But I had cooked a rather large batch and didn't want to waste, so I  grabbed the immersion blender, and lo and behold, a wonderful soup was born !

Velouté de pâtisson au jambon - Pattypan squash and ham soup
3 pâtissons - 3 pattypan squashes
4 tranches de jambon cuit - 4 slices ham
1 cc 1/2 de pâte miso - 1 teasp miso paste
1cc de paprika - 1 teasp paprika
1 brick de crème d'amande - 1 cup almond cream

Passez une heure à épépiner et peler le pâtisson. Courage, cela en vaut le coup.
Faites chauffer un peu d'huile dans une sauteuse et ajoutez le pâtisson et le jambon coupés en dés. Laissez mijoter à couvert à feu très doux pendant une heure en touillant de temps en temps pour éviter que cela n'attache, jusqu'à ce que le pâtisson soit fondant et translucide. Ajoutez la crème, le miso et le paprika. Transférez dans une soupière ou apparenté et mixez avec votre fidèle mixeur plongeant.

First and foremost, spend one solid hour prepping the pattypan squash. But it's all worth it in the end. Peel it, take the seeds out and cut it into small dices.

In a pan, heat one glob of oil, add the squash and the ham (cut into small squares). Cover and let it simmer on low heat for a good hour, stirring regularly. When the squash is tender and translucent, add the spices and almond cream. Stir, transfer into a more adequate container and mix until creamy. There, finally a pattypan squash recipe I LOVE !

Potée - cabbage soup with sausages

I'm cheating - my husband made this one. But since it's not technically one of his devoted areas of competence (like cream puffs, for example), I'm still going to post it on my blog.

Potée basically means "that you put in a pot". You take vegetables and meat, and cook them together in water, et voilà ! The basics for this one are cabbage, and sausages. All kinds of sausages, we like to mix different ones, smoked and not smoked, and a few bacon strips. Now I know I said I'm not a big fan of cabbage - and here I am typing two cabbage recipes in a row - the good part about theses two recipes is : they don't taste too cabbage-y for me. The dear home geek achieved this by balancing the cabbage with other vegetables. It was perfect. We don’t usually put potato in our potée, and from now on I think we will. He used potatoes that we normally keep for fries and sauté-ing, of the firmer kind, and it was a good choice as they kept some of their shape even after cooking.

Potée

1/2 white cabbage

8 carrots

5 potatoes

8 sausages (or more)

Dijon mustard

Preheat a large steel pot and cook the sausages until golden.

Peel and chop your vegetables - like, really thinly. Add them to the pot and generously cover with water. Let the potée simmer for at least an hour.

Serve hot, adding just a little touch of mustard to the plate.

Now, to make this post funnier, I thought we would reheat leftovers, cook some more sausages, just add a little more water and small soup noodles. Except our soup noodles had been invaded by some unwanted guests and got thrown out right after I added the new sausages and the water. I tried to add rice, but realized, again, after adding it, there was not enough for all of us. So I added rice and green peas. It took ages to cook instead of the quick reheating I had originally envisioned but it was delicious. I think I need to experiment with rice and soups some more. But that requires buying a new bag of rice, right ?

Knob celery and Chinese cabbage soup

Winter is for soups. It's cheap, it's easy to make, it reheats well and it works fabulously with most winter vegetables. And the kids love it. Yes, they even loved this one, although getting them to eat cabbage or knob celery in another preparation can be... tricky.

As I previously mentioned, I tend to add some potatoes to any soup, just for the texture, and a little stock (beef or chicken) instead of salt. I don't make my stock from scratch, I'm mostly using stock powder, about 1 tablespoon at a time.

And yes, this is one of my pressure cooker recipes. Because pressure cookers make everything sooo much quicker. Prep time was 15 minutes, with 20 minutes cooking after that.

Knob celery and Chinese cabbage soup

1 medium knob celery

1 Chinese cabbage
2 onions

6 medium sized potatoes

chicken or beek stock powder

In your pressure cooker, preheat one small splash of your oil of choice. Peel and thinly slice the onions and sauté them with the oil. Rinse and chop the cabbage, leaving out the hard core, and add it into the cooker. Peel and dice the celery and the potatoes and add them too. Almost cover with water, add the stock powder. Cook for (about) 20 minutes. Blend into a creamy mixture with your immersion blender.

You will get a fairly thick soup, just add water (or milk, see below) to make it more liquid... and cool it down some.

Now "someone" (looks at her parents) has taught my kids that all soups need an addition of milk and cheese to be edible. Milk is a big no-no for me, so we used oat milk instead as usual. As for the cheese... sometimes, I do eat a little bit of it. This was Maasdam, and it was delicious with the soup.

Lastly, I just discovered this food blog, and oooh ! yummy ! I'm not at all into paleo eating, or losing weight, but the recipes look really, really yummy. I need to try the cacao and roasted hazelnut butter...

All orange spiced carrot soup

I bought carrots last week, and when I looked at them this morning... ewww, not good. They weren't rotten or anything, just extremely dry and hard and definitely not looking like they'd do a great job as carrots. So into a soup they went ! In the summer I put tomatoes in it as well, but I've learned to NOT buy tomato when it's not the season, because they taste like cardboard - or worse. You could add canned tomatoes if you want.

All orange spiced carrot soup

10-15 carrots

5 oranges

3 potatoes (for a creamier texture)

1 cup almond cream -or almond milk

1 cube chicken stock

cinnamon, black pepper, ground chili pepper

Peel and sorta slice the carrots - you don't have to make thin slices, it will all get puréed in the end.  Put them in a pressure cooker. Peel the oranges and add the quarters to the carrots. Peel the potatoes, dice them, add them to the rest. Add 4-5 cups of water and the chicken broth, close the pressure cooker, cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Add spices to taste and the almond cream. Mix using a hand mixer (or something else, you choose your weapon). Serve.

Prep time : 30 minutes. Cooking time : by the time the older has finished his sausage, the vegetables were ready to be mixed. The baby loooved the soup. That's the neat thing about soups, I can serve the exact same thing to everyone in the family, them being 9 months or 32 years old.

ETA : that was a LOT of soup ! It serves at least 6, more likely 8 people.