Curried Coconut & Pumpkin Soup, and Fritatta

Fritattas are great!  They are easy to make and just about anything can be mixed in with the eggs.  The one I made today used  up some leftover veggies from last night.  Adding bacon helped with that "Ewww, leftovers" feeling.  Almost any combination of meat, vegetable, and cheese would be good as long as the flavors mix well.

Ingredients (approximate)
1-2 cups cooked chopped vegetables
4-5 strips of bacon - doesn't really matter how much
8 eggs

First chop and brown the bacon in a nonstick skillet.  Drain most of the grease out of the pan and spread out an even layer of vegetables.  Sprinkle the bacon evenly on top.  Crack the eggs into a bowl, whisk, and pour over the other ingredients.  Cook on the burner until the bottom is pretty well set, and then put into the oven at 425 to finish cooking.  This one took about 10-15 minutes.  When it's done just slice and serve.  Or if you feel fancy, invert onto a serving plate and slice.

Uncooked Fritatta

Finished!

Curried Coconut Pumpkin Soup

The soup is really easy.  Pumpkin is good for you too!

1 can coconut milk, unsweetened NOT the 'light' kind, it just has extra water

1 can pumpkin, plain (no added sugar or spices)

1 TBSP chicken bouillon paste + a little extra water to thin (or chicken or veggie broth)

1 med finely diced onion

coconut oil or olive oil

The spices are really flexible, depending on your personal taste.  I used:

2 tsp hot curry powder

2 tsp ginger (from a tube.  Fresh would be awesome, and powdered is okay)

2 tsp garlic (also from a tube, but use fresh if you have it.  I didn't.)

a couple of squirts Sriracha hot sauce - thats the red bottle with green cap in the picture above.

This stuff is so good and I add it into recipes all the time.  Any hot sauce or cayenne pepper would work to make it extra spicy.

Saute the onion in oil until soft.  Mix in pumpkin, coconut milk, and spices.  Heat through.

For a smooth soup just puree in the blender.  I didn't feel like it, and didn't mind the onion pieces.

Adding diced red and green pepper with the onion would've given it more color and extra vitamins.  A sprinkle of cilantro on top would be nice, too.

First Meal Sous Vide

A photo-blog of the first sous vide dinner I've cooked so far.  Looking forward to many more!

The Sous Vide Supreme "water bath" cooker.  It's looks prettier sitting on the counter than I expected.
Unfortunately with today being Thursday, the kitchen isn't quite as well-stocked with groceries as I would like.  But on-hand AND valid for the sous vide are apples and carrots.  Here are the results.

Carrots were peeled, sliced, and vacuum sealed into a pouch with butter, salt and pepper.

Apples chopped and vacuumed with butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar.

After a bit of experimenting, fiddling, and splashing water about, the packets were placed in the water at 183 degrees for about an hour.  While they cooked I started on some scrambled eggs with sausage and spinach, and whipped up some cream to go with dessert.

Cooked carrots, still bagged.  The thing about sous vide cooking is that after things are "done", they still need a bit of finishing off before serving.  That might be a sauce, or a quick sear in a pan to give them a nice brown finished look.  For the carrots I poured them into a very hot cast-iron skillet to caramelize.

Just barely saved from burning!  I actually liked the very dark spots of color they developed, and thought the smoky taste was nice with the concentrated sweetness of the cooked carrot.

The apples were treated in the same way...poured into a very hot skillet and browned while the liquid reduced. (Ha! The steam kept fogging up my lens :)

With the final results:

Verdict - I'm excited!  While the first try took longer than it should have, overall I'm happy with the way these two items turned out.  The carrots were intensely carroty, and the apples were (while a bit overcooked at 1 hour) pretty tasty too.