Steph Food

It’s great how the holidays can inspire you to cook. Maybe it’s the fear of judgement by the family that makes us strive for the best! The key is to find something that tastes impressive, without being too complicated and frustrating to make. This is one of those dishes…
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This dish was inspired by the combination of fennel and smokey, spicy sausage.

There’s something about the sweet licorice taste of the fennel, mixed with the salty, spicy, smokey, greasiness of the sausage.

Maybe I should have left out the greasiness part.

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Roasted Butternut Squash with Pecans and Blue Cheese

My mom and I disagree on how to prepare squash.

Over the years, every time I’d tell her I had made a curried squash soup, or a stuffed pumpkin, or anything involving spices, she would tell me I was crazy. Obviously (to her), the best preparation for squash is to bake until soft, and then mash with butter, salt and pepper. Simple and delicious!

We obviously have different motives, in addition to different tastes. So what happens when we need a dish that will satisfy us both?

Butternut Squash - and a tool of violence.

I chose a recipe that retains the spirit of the ‘natural squash’ by not overwhelming it with spices. A simple addition of some Herbes de Provence (a favourite of Mom’s AND mine), along with the s&p, are all it needs… because, for those who need a punch, there is Danish blue cheese!

I’m obsessed with Danish blue cheese this year. I’m not sure how it took me so long… I’ve liked Gorgonzola for a long time, and enjoy the odd nip of Stilton, but never went out of my way to buy a chunk of Danish blue. I ate some at Thanksgiving and realized I’d been missing out… and have had some in my fridge at all times since.

Ready for the oven!

Back to the recipe… the squash is roasted in one-inch chunks. I was excited to play with the Mezzaluna my Mom has that cuts in a ridged pattern (see pic two above for a glimpse of the tool itself). Yeah, I like to snoop through other peoples’ kitchen stuff.

The pecans give the dish a fun crunch, and they get nice and toasty in the oven. The cheese gives it a crazy kick. The squash is creamy and mild, mellowing out the whole dish and bringing all of the different flavours and textures together.

Of course, I topped the whole thing with slices of green onion, like I usually do.

Alone in the snow...

I’ve tried this kind of dish before – I’ve winged it, I’ve followed some recipes. I seem to have found a combination of ingredients and steps that do what I need. As you’ll see in the recipe recap, my variation on the dish follows the variations of a number of others. No doubt the original dish was a variation. This is a fairly classic combination of ingredients, done in a way that everyone can enjoy!

Recipe after the jump!

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Insides, close-up

This is another in a series of recipes I made to try and use up some apples I had rolling off of my kitchen counter.

Why did I buy so many apples, you ask? Because I’m crazy! First, I bought a bag of MacIntosh apples, and then I heard that Cortlands were good, so I bought a bag of those… and then I bought a bag of my favourite kind, Granny Smith.

I am an applepotamus.

Cheddar Apple Bundles

This adorable dish is great for weekend brunch. It sounds like a weird combination to some people – apple and cheddar really isn’t that odd of a pairing! At the same time, it is hard to decide whether this tastes more like a savoury dish or a dessert.

Although sweet from the apple, the dough is not especially sweet, so it’s perfectly fine for a main course!

This sounds weird, but the apple and cheese melted together to make a sort of gravy inside the parcel. It was a tasty mix of sweet and salty, all oozy (but in a good way)!

Ready to eat...

Recipe after the jump!
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For years and years – as far back as I can remember (all the way to last week?), we went out for brunch on Christmas Day. It was something I always looked forward to as a kid, and we usually went to the same place. Things changed, the places to go were limited, our little group dwindled, and we decided it was time for a change.

Last year, we decided to make brunch at home, “just us” (meaning my parents, sister and myself… and sometimes Grandma).

LOTS of mushrooms, bread, spinach, green onions.

The key was that we didn’t really have time to make anything really involved or fancy – but it did have to be good. We decided to make a strata, only roughly following a recipe my mom found. It was our idea to add the drunken mushrooms.

We love drunken mushrooms. We love them so much that we decided to do it again this year.

The assembled strata, before it hit the oven.

The great thing about strata is that you can basically throw in anything you like. It’s a great way to use up some ingredients from the fridge – use up some ends of cheese, day old bread, veggies. Just layer it all into a baking dish, and pour some egg and milk mixture over top – kind of like a savoury french toast casserole. You could even make a sweet version – sans drunken mushrooms, of course!

Too hungry to take a pic of the completed dish... oops!

Add a mimosa, and some tea in my Kermit & Piggy Christmas mug, and our new Christmas Day tradition is perfect!

How was your holiday? Any memorable meals?

My view of Christmas brunch, with my Mimosa and my Piggy & Kermit mug

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