Butternut Squash Soup with Sauteed Radicchio

Still trying to play catch up with my blogging. This BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP with SAUTEED RADICCHIO I made a few weeks ago along with the Chicken Pot Pie that I made (which was a hit, by the way.

This is another recipe from the Best of Cooking Light cookbook. We really liked this soup, with the exception of the radicchio, which was very bitter. Even trying to eat it with the soup it was still way too bitter for us. We ended up tossing the radicchio and eating just the soup.

The soup itself, however, was delicious. It was a rich, creamy, and surprisingly hearty soup. The squash gave it a sweetness, which I'm guessing the radicchio was supposed to balance, but we loved the soup without the radicchio. The flavors in the soup blended very well. And it was pretty easy to make.

This is a soup I would definitely make again during the fall or winter months, skipping the radicchio, however. 

Yellow Pepper Soup with Cilantro Puree

Day 30 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT and I made a Yellow pepper Soup with Cilantro Puree for one of the courses for our dinner tonight. Here's our thoughts on this recipe...

YELLOW PEPPER SOUP WITH CILANTRO PUREE, not good...

While I was preparing this recipe, which took a lot of prep to do, I kept saying "interesting" with the flavor combinations. But I'm open minded and willing to try new things. However, when I did try the final product, I was not pleased. I could only eat a few bites of this soup and the rest ended up down the garbage disposal.

My son in law felt the same way I did, my hubby thought it was just ok, but didn't even manage to eat half of his. Our daughter, on the other hand, liked it. I'm not sure if that was because she's been sick and has a stuffed up nose and her taste buds are off, or if she really liked it; she'd have to try it again when her pallate is up to snuff.

This is the recipe my hubby also mocked the cookbook cover saying it had that "yum factor", in a sarcastic tone. Not much else to say about this soup, it just was not good and not one I'd recommend or make again.

57 recipes down, 490 more to go.

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough (Bufalina Pizza), Tomato Basil Soup, Field Green Salad

Today was day 13 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT. My parents are here visiting so I got to cook for them as well as my daughter and son in law. I had planned a 4-course dinner with dessert, but by the time we got back from picking them up from the airport and stopping at the grocery store we didn't get home until after 5:00 so I ended up skipping dessert for tonight. We'll save that for tomorrow.

Today I made a Field Salad with Roasted Leeks, Mushrooms, and Feta; Tomato Basil Soup; and Whole Wheat Pizza (Bufalina Pizza, more about that later on).

FIELD SALAD WITH ROASTED LEEKS, MUSHROOMS, AND FETA, a good salad...

This salad was easy to make. You actually roasted the sliced leeks in a tiny amount of olive oil in the oven to brown them. I had a problem with some of them burning and others not browning. Stirring them halfway through the roasting process would have been a good idea. However, they really added a good flavor to the salad. And my Dad, who is not a spinach fan, liked this salad, and didn't realize there was spinach in the salad until I told him. The salad has spinach and arugula in it, as well as mushrooms, leeks, and feta cheese (the picture shown here does not include the feta, I forgot to add it to the salad bowl, so we added it to our plates after we dished it up). I did have a problem finding the dressing the recipe called for. It called for light dill-mustard dressing, which I could not find anywhere. I ended up using a honey-mustard dressing and adding some dill weed to it. It more more heavy on the honey mustard and less of the dill. Wish I could have found the appropriate dressing so I could have tasted it how it was meant, but it was a good salad, and my daughter's favorite of the 3 dishes I served.

TOMATO-BASIL SOUP, a good homemade tomato soup with good flavors...

Almost everyone liked this soup. My daughter is not much of a tomato soup fan so this wasn't her favorite dish. My Dad, who says tomato soup is his favorite soup, liked it a lot. The recipe calls for low sodium tomato juice. I could find tomato juice butn ot low sodium tomato juice. The only thing I could find that was low sodium was V-8 juice. Since V-8 juice is more tomato than any over vegetable, that's what I ended up using. The flavor of the basil isn't overpowering. There is cream cheese in this, and try as I might, I could not get all the tiny little pieces to melt, so my picture is not as pretty as the picture in the cookbook. But this is a good tomato basil soup recipe.

WHOLE WHEAT PIZZA DOUGH (Bufalina Pizza, as I made), a hit with everyone!

The recipe in the cookbook is for Whole Wheat Pizza Dough, just the dough. You can make whatever you want for the pizza itself. There are not instructions in the cookbook on what to do with the dough, how to cook it, what to top it with, etc. There is another recipe in the cookbook for Caramelized Onion Pizza with Gorgonzola and Arugula, which uses this dough, and I'll make that another day in the future.

I made the Bufalina pizza for my husband. We went to Italy this past summer and when we were in Venice we ordered Bufalina pizza (Buffalo pizza). It was the best pizza and best mozzarella cheese we'd ever had. We liked it so much we went back the next day to get it again for lunch. It didn't turn out so well the 2nd time. Long story short... different cook, different pizza. Same ingredients, but you're going to get it however that particular cook decides it should be served, and it was not the same as the previous day. It was good, but not nearly as good since it was prepared completely different.

A little information on what Buffalo mozzarella is... it is mozzarella cheese made from water buffalo milk rather than cow milk, and is officially called Mozzarella di Bufala. It is pictured here, and is softer than regular mozzarella that we've had here in America. When the pizza was cooking the mozzarella was oozing a bit of juices and making the top seem watery, but it ended up evaporating through the cooking process.

Anyway, when my hubby was at Costco the other day he found the Buffalo Mozzarella cheese, imported from Italy, and bought it. I tried to replicate the pizza like we had it in Venice. It had the crust, tomato sauce, whole basil leaves, sliced tomato and the buffalo mozzarella. It was good. We really liked the flavor of the mozzarella, and it is by far the best mozzarella you can ever get. Everyone liked it, and it was a big hit with everyone.

As for the whole wheat pizza dough recipe in the cookbook, it was good. I have another pizza dough recipe that I usually make that we really like (not whole wheat, however), so I was interested to try this one. The crust is more of a medium crust, not thin, but not really thick either. I think I'd make it a little more on the thin side next time. But it was good, definitely worth the little effort it took to make it.

Overall, it was a good dinner, with great company!

26 recipes down, 521 more to go.

Baked Potato Soup, Beer Cheese Bread

Today was Day 5 of cooking from "THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT". My daughter asked what I was making for dinner tonight, and when I told her the recipes I was going to make she said "no, not that, what else?" So I told her what I'd be making tomorrow and she wanted me to make that instead, so I switched today & tomorrow's dinners for her. Then to top it off, my son, who lives an hour and a half away in college showed up to surprise me for the afternoon and evening, so he was home for dinner too. Instead of 2 of us at the table for dinner we had 5, which was wonderful. I love having my family around and miss those times when the kids were growing up when we always had dinner together and had many lively conversations around the table together. When we get together now we still have those conversations where we talk about anything and everything, laugh, and share joys and trials of life. I think dinners together are SO very important, and no matter how busy we are we should always take time to share meals together. Anyway, on to the food... today's dinner was Baked Potato Soup and Beer Cheese Bread. I was looking forward to trying both of these recipes since I absolutely love carbs, potatoes, cheese, and bread.

BAKED POTATO SOUP, a good, hardy meal with lots of flavor...

We all liked this dish, though it was a bit heavy, even though it was "lighter" than a typical baked potato soup recipe. I ended up adding an extra potato to the recipe because I didn't think it had enough potato flavor for me. The toppings really made a huge difference in making it really taste like "baked potato". I have another potato-cheese soup recipe that I make that I think the family likes better than this one. But it's a tasty recipe and quite filling.

BEER CHEESE BREAD, a hit with everyone...

I had a little trouble with the bread at the beginning, which I will probably tweak on a bit when I make it again in the future (I WILL make this recipe again and tweak on it since everyone liked it so much). I make breads and cinnamon rolls and can tell by the feel and texture of the dough if it's going to work or not, and when I added the 2nd amount of flour as described in the recipe, it was too tough and I knew it wouldn't turn out right. It didn't rise quite as much as it should have and was a bit more dense, rather than lighter. Next time I make it I will only add 1 cup of flour in the second addition of flour instead of the 1 1/2 cups of flour the recipe calls for, and gradually add in more if I need it. Too much flour made the bread a little denser than it should have been. The recipe called for it being light and it wasn't. But I think that can be an easy fix next time around by decreasing the flour a little bit. However, the family didn't care about the density and loved the flavor and ate 2/3 of the loaf of bread (that says it will serve 16!). This is a keeper recipe and I'm sure will be fantastic with just a little tweaking.

12 recipes down, 535 more to go!

If you're wondering about the recipes, I can't post them all because of copyright laws, but I will share 1 recipe a month as our favorite of the month. However, you can buy the cookbook here.

Carrot Ginger Soup, Onion Bread Pudding, Spinach Pear Salad

So, today was my first day cooking out of "THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT". I made 3 recipes tonight... Spinach-Pear Salad, Carrot-Ginger Soup, and Onion Bread Pudding (a meatless main dish according to the cookbook category). Since I was just cooking for 2 of us, I cut all the recipes in half. Here are my comments on all of the recipes...

The SPINACH PEAR SALAD was my favorite...

This was super easy to make, and took less than 10 minutes from start to finish, including making the dressing. I made the dressing while the other dishes were cooking and let it rest to allow the flavors to blend. I thought it had too much dressing so when I plated the salad I didn't add the rest of the dressing from bowl. I loved the flavors of the pears when you ate them with the salad, and they went well with the dressing. But, the recipe was supposed to include red onion pieces and I forgot to add them at the end. Since I'm not a big fan of raw onions I was ok with forgetting them, but it make the recipe not 100% accurate. I would definitely  make this recipe again, and Brian like it as well.

The CARROT-GINGER SOUP, it was good, but a LOT of work...

This soup took an hour of prep work, and then an hour of simmer time, and then a few more minutes at the end to add the final ingredients and puree the soup. The thing I hated the most was having to make ginger juice from ginger root... a total pain... peel the ginger, dice it up, put it in the food processor with some water and puree it. Because it was such a small amount you had to keep stopping every couple pulses and scrape down the sides. Then once you got it pureed you had to put it in a cheesecloth and squeeze out the juices to get ginger juice. The results, however, were absolutely tremendous and the flavors were delicious. It was very good and we liked it quite a bit, but I'm not sure it was worth all the work and effort. But, I guess all good things come at a price, right?

ONION BREAD PUDDING, Brian's favorite...

This was a really easy recipe to make, it only took about 15 minutes of prep time and 25 minutes to bake.

I made these in 2 small individual pie dishes and thought the portions were still a little big, even though according to the recipe this amount would serve two. Brian ate all of his and I ate about two thirds of mine. I really liked the onion flavor on this and thought a little more onion on top would have been nicer. The onions were sweet onions so the flavor was really nice. And there was also some Gruyere cheese in it as well, which I really love. I would definitely make this again, and add a little more onion to it.

We also had some Beringer Chenin Blanc white wine with this meal. We are not wine connoisseurs by any means, and really don't know how to pair wines with our foods, but hopefully we'll learn a little bit. We can usually tell if it should be a red or white wine, but that's about as far as our expertise goes. When we go to our favorite Restaurant, the Black Bear Restaurant in Green Mountain Falls, we usually split a wine pairing with our Chef's Table and we love it when a good glass of wine compliments a meal, but we just don't know how to do that. This was probably the first time we actually 'guessed' right! The Chenin Blanc went perfectly with this meal, we were pleasantly surprised.

So, 3 recipes down, 544 more to go. Will be back tomorrow night with results from tomorrow's dinner.

Bon Appetit!