In Which I Return to this Blog and also to Curried Squash Soup

Hello folks!

I find that I miss writing on this food blog, much as I love writing about choral music on my Behind the Music site. (Be sure to subscribe on the sidebar, and make plans to attend the concert that my choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is performing this coming weekend, October 15 & 16. If you do miss this one, our Christmas concert will be the next one. I will say that normally I’d be in the throes of planning the Friday-night post-conert reception this week, but we’re not having a reception for this concert. I have high hopes for Christmas, though) As the world is s-l-o-w-l-y opens up again I’m getting back into food events. There have been two recently that haven’t shown up on this blog; let me tell you about the one that took place just this past weekend, and I’ll save the other one for later.

This occasion was a women’s retreat at my church. There were about 35 attendees, so not a huge crowd—but not trivial, either. Let me give you the menu and my thought processes involved, as well as the hits and misses, plus a recipe:

Homemade Hummus—made from the recipe in the chapter on “A Few More Appetizers” in my cookbook (yes, I do use my own recipes) and topped with pine nuts, olive oil, and ground sumac, a pretty, citrusy spice from the Middle East. I made a double recipe, and not a whole lot of it was left over. This item was vegan and gluten-free.

An assortment of crackers, regular and gluten-free, plus cheese—provided by my lovely co-worker.

Fruit—the easiest possible way to serve it, which is grapes, washed and cut into clusters of 3-4 and set out on a platter with a pile of clementines in the middle. You can get as fancy as you like with alternating colors of the grapes.

The above three items were set out for the mid-morning break and then put out again at lunch, which consisted of:

Curried Squash Soup—totally thrown together at the last minute. I give the recipe below, as it would ideally be made as opposed to how I actually made it, which was without the ginger, garlic and onion and also sans the toppings. In spite of those (perceived on my part) lacks, I had a number of people say, “I don’t even like squash, and I loved this soup!” Made with coconut milk and so vegan, also gluten-free.

Shredded chicken to add as desired to the soup or to put in a tortilla with the veggies below. This item was w-a-a-y more labor-intensive than it needed to be. I should have just used the nice cooked deli chicken breast meat sold at Costco (you can read all about this item in the “Perfectly Acceptable Substitutes” chapter of my cookbook). I had just watched a cooking video about how great chicken thighs are as opposed to chicken breasts, and what the guy said was perfectly true (the great Adam Ragusea), but I didn’t think the whole thing through at all. In my zeal to make sure that the chicken was moist I set myself up for roasting, shredding, refrigerating, and reheating three big packages of boneless, skinless thighs. It took forever! I could have instead just opened a couple of the deli chicken packages, cut up any too-big pieces and removed any stray tendons, piled the meat into a pan, poured on a little chicken broth, sprinkled with salt, pepper and curry powder, and covered the whole thing with aluminum foil. Reheating it in the oven wouldn’t have dried it out to speak of at all. What was I thinking? Oh well. All of it was eaten up.

Buckwheat/veggie salad—This was a sort-of-okay item, made with buckwheat instead of wheat bulgur so that I could label it as gluten free. I love buckwheat groats as a rice or potatoes substitute, and I had a bunch of it in the freezer. But it isn’t really chewy like bulgur is, and the salad was a bit soggy. I used up some of my Kalamata olives and marinated artichoke hearts, adding chopped green onions, and dressed it with olive oil, garlic, lemon pepper and olive oil. I have a lot of it left over and don’t really expect to eat it all up, but there it is. It was . . . an interesting experiment.

Veggies for dipping into the hummus, making wraps, or just eating—sliced cucumbers and assorted peppers. Most of these were eaten.

Flour tortillas for anyone who wanted them—could just be eaten as a side or used for making a wrap. I’m not sure what people did with them. Only about a dozen were eaten.

Mini cheesecakes—oh man! These started out as gluten-free brownies made with almond flour, of which I had a ton on hand. They would have been great, but I overfilled the little muffin liners and they overflowed and looked terrible. My dear husband helped me scrape them out, and I ended up making them into crumbs in the food processor, pressing said crumbs into muffin liners, and then making a no-bake cheesecake filling for them. I had to make a special run to the grocery store to get cream cheese and whipping cream. What a total pain. I have to say, though, that they were very good. I used the filling recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction and the almond-flour brownies from the King Arthur Flour website (but supposed to be made as mini-brownies.) All of them are now gone. Needless to say, my second planned brownies, the butterscotch-pecan ones, didn’t get made. But all was well.

So there it is. The retreat has now receded into the past, much as I doubted that would happen when I was frantically shredding chicken on Friday night. Even after all my years of doing food for events I need to ask myself before each one the questions, “How can I reduce my stress, plan ahead, and take permissible shortcuts?” I’ve done better over time but I’m still setting myself up for a last-minute nervous breakdown way more than is necessary.

Here’s the gussied-up soup recipe, which I realized that I also posted and served a year ago, but with a slightly-different menu and with a different group of attendees for the most part. It’s definitely a keeper! I was pleased to see that I made it just about the same way this year.

CURRIED SQUASH-COCONUT SOUP

Yield: For each batch of the basic mix below, about seven 6-oz. servings (which aren’t very big, but this soup is pretty filling especially with the garnishes)

Basic Mix:

1 – 28-oz. can pumpkin puree (plain pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling) or equivalent amount of roasted, puréed acorn or butternut squash
1 – 14-oz. can coconut milk
1 tablespoon red Thai chili paste (or more to taste)
1 tablespoon vegetable broth base (“Better than Bouillon”)
1-2 tablespoons finely-grated fresh ginger

Mix together and heat, making sure that the chili paste and bouillon base are fully dissolved and incorporated. Taste and add more chili paste or broth base if you think spice/saltiness levels need adjusting. Add water if you think the soup is too thick and additional salt to taste if needed..

Optional Additions/Adjustments:

Add some regular curry powder or some other powdered spice mix that you have on hand. I have something called “Tandoori Spice” that’s a little spicier than regular curry powder, but anything in that family of spices is fine. Add 1/2 teaspoon at a time, tasting as you go.

You can also sauté and add half of a finely-chopped onion and/or a clove of garlic, pressed. I was pressed (ha) for time and didn’t do this, but I think I’d do it when I make it again. Or you could just add a tablespoon of dried onion flakes if you’d like. If you do add the onion and you want your soup to be completely smooth, you’ll need to use an immersion blender to do that, but some little chunks of onion won’t come amiss.

Possible Garnishes:

Roasted pumpkin seeds—You can buy the shelled raw ones in the bulk foods aisle at a natural foods grocery store or online and roast with neutral-flavored oil, salt and cumin or curry powder in a 400⁰ oven for about 5 minutes, or until you can smell them, or you can just buy roasted/salted seeds and sprinkle with additional spices if you want to. (If by any chance you decided to use your own cooked pumpkin, in theory you can roast the seeds from it and use them. They’ll have shells, though, which are technically edible but which your guests may find confusing. I’d skip that idea unless you’ve gotten a “Lady Godiva” pumpkin, which has “naked” seeds that don’t have hulls. Up to you!)

Croutons: Homemade or store-bought. If you make your own, be sure to add some cumin or curry powder to them.

Roasted pumpkin-seed oil: To drizzle over the top. This is a fairly expensive item and quite strongly flavored. I love it!

Coconut cream: Not sweetened, but thicker than coconut milk. You should be able to find it in the same aisle as the coconut milk. That’s what is on top of the soup in the picture, if I’m not mistaken.