Cooking Tips for Bachelors: Hurricane Sandy Edition

Listen, I hate to brag, but I invented this entirely ass-whoopin' butternut squash soup recipe the other night, and -- no -kidding -- it just might be the best soup I ever tasted. So here you go. In honor of the storm of the century (um, we're only 12 years into the century, kids), I present to you Dave's Entirely Accidental and Amazingly Tasty Butternut Squash Soup. Whip up a pot, fire up the propane stove, and enjoy the blackout.

INGREDIENTS:

2 onions

2 cloves elephant garlic
2 small golden potatoes
Bulb of anise
Butternut squash
7 cups veggie stock
Salt + pepper
Cinnamon stick
1 Tbsp butter
Chopped up cilantro, rosemary
Red pepper
More salt + pepper

Fry the onions on highish heat till pretty brown. Chop the garlic into chunks and throw it in there, along with the peeled and cubed potatoes. While the potatoes are cooking, chop up the anise bulb and mix it in. While that’s cooking, peel and cube the squash and throw that in. Add maybe a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper and mix everything up.  After the squash has cooked a bit and absorbed some of the other flavors, add 7 cups of water and bouillion cubes/stock powder. Bring everything to a boil and let it simmer a while until the veggies get soft, then take it  off the heat and let it cool a little. As it’s cooling, drop a cinnamon stick in the mix for 10-15 minutes.

Take out the cinnamon stick, then puree the soup in the blender bit by bit. It will be quite soft and should smoothen right down. Put it back in the big pot and add some more salt + pepper along with the butter, then the chopped rosemary and cilantro and the red pepper. Don’t heat it but let it sit a little so the pepper warms through.

Serve with crusty garlic bread. Yowza.

 

This is not my dog. This is my co-worker's dog. He is named Rocky. He looks like a bat, or perhaps a fennec fox. He has never tasted my butternut squash soup, but all evidence points to the likelihood that he would devour it as he devours everything else.

He is about the size of my hand and is willing to eat or hump pretty much anything he sees.

He is a small rodentlike creature but he is also, I  have to admit now after many days of resisting, quite cute. I fought this realization for several weeks but I must now admit defeat. He is very cute. The batlike ears have a lot to do with this. I do not call him Rocky, however; I call him Yoda. He is starting to recognize this name, and respond to it, much to my delight.

Tonight we are awaiting the arrival of hurricane Sandy together.