Winter Detox: Butternut Squash and Spinach Whatever

This is something I like to think of as a post-holiday detox dinner. It’s healthy enough for New Year’s resolutions, it has a comfort-food factor for cold winter nights and it’s easy to make.

Roast some butternut squash on a Sunday afternoon when you’re pottering around the house.* When you’re ready to eat, sauté some spinach in a bit of olive oil. Add cubed butternut squash and some cheese—almost anything works here, although I like whipped cream cheese because it makes a nice, creamy sauce and isn’t terribly caloric.

Or add a bit of butter—it’s okay, a pat won’t set you back too much.  Eat with rice, pasta or as is.

*To roast squash: Preheat the oven to 425 and line a large pan with foil. Cut up a butternut squash into 4-inch chunks. Don't bother peeling. Place squash in the pan; sprinkle with brown sugar, salt and black pepper. Add a splash of olive oil.

Roast 30-45 minutes, until the squash is easily pierced with a fork. Let cool and peel.

Thanksgiving in a Bowl Soup

Sorry for the long silence, guys. Oh, I’ve been cooking, but I haven’t made anything exciting in weeks. Nothing that’s inspired me to write a post that’s longer than 140 characters. (See my Twitter feed, at right, for the latest in Yulinka Cooks non-news.)

This soup is a rare exception. I thought of it while driving home from a post-Thanksgiving shopping trip, knowing I had various soup-friendly ingredients to use up. The ingredients were chicken stock, a bunch of spinach, butternut squash puree originally made for ravioli, the aforementioned ravioli, and leftover turkey.

This is how it all came together. I brought the chicken stock to simmer and added the butternut squash puree (roasted squash, a few tablespoons each of butter and whipped cream cheese, hint of sage and nutmeg--yum). In the meantime, in a skillet, I sautéed a diced onion in olive oil, and added a bunch of chopped spinach to the pan when the onion was almost cooked. The spinach was sautéed for a few minutes until it wilted. I added the vegetables to the chicken stock; then I added few handfuls of pre-frozen butternut squash ravioli to the soup pot.

I hesitate to share my ravioli recipe because a) it was something I created on a lark one Sunday night, b) I didn’t really follow a recipe and I didn’t use a pasta machine to roll out my dough, two steps usually recommended for fresh pasta-beginners, and c) I really overstuffed the ravioli and most of them didn’t seal properly. (I used this pasta dough recipe, but in the future I’ll follow this excellent, detailed guide to making fresh pasta.)

Anyway, when the ravioli were almost cooked—it only took about 2 minutes—I added some diced, roasted turkey to the soup pot. Some stirring, a bit of kosher salt, some black pepper, and the soup was done. It was creamy, slightly sweet, nourishing and filling. It was like a festive holiday meal with your family, assuming you like your family. It was Thanksgiving in a bowl, in short. I will be making this again and again.

Note: Keep in mind that you can substitute quite a lot of ingredients here—you don’t need butternut squash ravioli; just use a favorite pasta or diced, cooked potatoes (or forget the starch altogether). Instead of turkey, you could use leftover chicken, ham or diced sausage. But do make the butternut squash puree.

Not Quite Frozen Dinner

If there’s one thing I never eat, it’s frozen dinners. Neither Lean Cuisine nor Amy’s Kitchen grace my table. It’s not that I’m a fresh food snob. Some of my best friends eat frozen dinners. It’s just that I like to cook even when faced with an empty fridge. Sometimes I roast whatever vegetables I have on hand and eat them with cheese and crackers. Other times I cut up some carrots and make a yogurt dip. It's nearly as easy as nuking a plastic tray.

I do, however, keep a freezer well-stocked with odds and ends that might make a good meal. Throughout the winter, I had chicken stock, leftover pasta dough and boneless chicken breasts in the deep freeze. Are you thinking soup? I thought chicken meatball and noodle soup. This isn't exactly fast food, but the soup comes together pretty quickly if you remember to defrost everything four to six hours in advance.

I work with different ingredient amounts each time I make this, so I can't share exact proportions. Eye it. Bring the stock to a simmer in a big soup pot. In the meantime, make the chicken meatballs. (You could, of course, use pre-ground chicken, turkey, veal, pork or beef if you like. I've got an overstock of chicken breasts.)

Run the chicken breasts through a food processor until ground but not pureed; mix with some bread crumbs, an egg, a few tablespoons of chopped parsley; add a good shake of salt and black groundpepper. I also like to add crumpled feta cheese.

Shape the meat mixture into meatballs that are about 1 inch in diameter, place them on a foil-lined tray and refrigerate. Roll out the pasta dough as described here. Finely chop and then sauté a carrot and a small onion in olive oil in a skillet for about 10 minutes until soft. Add the carrots and onions to the simmering stock.

Add the noodles to the stock and cook about 2 minutes, stirring to make sure they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot. Carefully add the meatballs and simmer until the chicken is just cooked, 3 to 4 minutes. Adjust the seasonings. Serve the soup in big bowls. I like it topped with chopped parsley, dill or scallions, and sour cream.

Lagman (Uzbek lamb stew)

I originally started this blog so I could explore Russian food that I don’t know much about—food like plov, lagman and hachepuri. That is, food from the former Soviet republics that’s often made in Russia, but that isn’t Russian (Slavic) at all. Prov and lagman are Uzbek dishes; hachepuri is Georgian. The foods of former USSR satellites such as Georgia, Armenia and Uzbekistan are fascinating and overlooked.

This weekend I made shurpa lagman. Shurpa and lagman are actually two different Uzbek dishes, but both are variations on lamb and vegetable stew or soup, spiced with cumin and coriander. Lagman is typically served with thick, handmade noodles. I studied three different versions of the recipe—one from an Uzbek immigrant, as published in the New York Times, the other from Anya von Bremzen’s Russian/Soviet cookbook Please to the Table, and the third from my Uzbekistan-born friend Anna.

My shurpa lagman wasn’t exactly authentic—I left out some common ingredients, like eggplant and daikon—but it was still a great success. It turned out like a cross between stew and soup, with thick chunks of carrots, peppers and lamb in a spicy, rich broth. I even served it with homemade noodles (although dried pasta like fettuccine would work fine).

Method:

Heat some oil in a heavy skillet. Salt, pepper and brown 1 pound boneless lamb, cut into 1-inch chunks, for about 10 minutes. Place in a bowl and put aside. Drain the fat from the skillet; heat some more oil and sauté a large, chopped onion until it’s soft and golden. Add to the lamb; then sauté 2 large chopped bell peppers (I used green and red) and 1 large, diced carrot. Add 1 tsp. each freshly-ground cumin and coriander, ¼ tsp. red pepper flakes, a couple of bay leaves, 1-2 dried, hot chili peppers, and a healthy shake of kosher salt and ground pepper.

Place the lamb and vegetables in a Dutch oven, add 4 cups beef (or chicken) stock and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to a simmer and cook 1-1.5 hours, until the lamb is soft. Toward the end of cooking time, add 1 cup chopped tomatoes, 1.5 cups cooked chickpeas, and ½ tbs. white vinegar. Taste for seasonings (I needed to add a bit of sugar). Add a minced garlic clove and a couple of handfuls chopped parsley and cilantro

Serve with noodles. I decided to make my own on a lark, and they turned out surprisingly well. I’ve never made fresh pasta before, and I half-expected a disaster in which the pasta dough falls apart or tears into useless bits. I used an okay recipe from the Please to the Table book—the noodles were a little bland. Next time I’d go to the experts (like Marcella Hazan’s cookbooks) for instructions on making fresh pasta.

For the noodles, my recipe had you put 1.75 cups flour and ½ tsp. kosher salt in a large bowl. Then you make a well, and add 1 slightly beaten egg, ¼ cup water and 1 tbs. oil. Mix with your hands until the flour and liquids are combined. On a floured surface, knead the dough with the backs of your hands for at least five minutes.

Divide the dough in two rounds. Cover with a moist towel and let rest 30 minutes. Flour a rolling pin and roll out one of the rounds to a 1/8-inch thickness. Carefully roll up the dough like a jellyroll; check to make sure the layers doesn’t stick. With a sharp knife, slice the roll into ¼-inch strips; unravel them; and let dry 10 minutes or so. (I froze the other dough round for future use.) Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the noodles 5 minutes. Serve the lagman over the noodles.