Autumn Nostalgia

Soup is something that has always been in the household.  We may not always have a main course prepared, but there is always soup in the fridge, and bread in the pantry.  Inspired by the beautiful colours of autumn and my nostalgia for warmer weather, I prepared this Roasted Autumn Vegetable Soup, and Classic French Bread to start off the weekend.

When it comes to soup, I never use or follow formally written recipes, or measure/weigh any of the ingredients.  After all, you can't go wrong with throwing a bunch of beautiful, fresh ingredients into a pot ! 

 In case you aren't familiar with how to oven roast these vegetables:

To prepare the squash for roasting, I cut it in half, removed the seeds, oiled it generously and placed it in, threw in a few herbs (thyme & rosemary) and put it in a 375°F (190°C) oven for about 50 minutes or so.  I then wrapped my carrots and parsnips in foil and roasted them in a separate pan for 50 minutes, at the same temperature as the squash.

Because there's always lots of room for improvisation when you're preparing soup, I'll keep the proportions simple to remember, and the recipe quite brief.  Enjoy your weekend, readers !

Put the Crunch In It

 

Today we had a snow day here in Toronto, and that meant that I was excused from school - a rare occasion I couldn't not take advantage of. ; ) In the morning I flipped open my recipe organizer to find these caramel crunch bars from Dorie Greenspan.





Because we had little dessert left in our house, I took the oportunity to bake these - but tweaked the recipe a little to suit my mom's craving for nuts.  Since there was already so much chocolate required and we had no toffee in the house, I used nuts to top off these Crunchy Caramel Bars, renamed Crunchy Hazelnut Bars. 



I was surprised at how quickly the chocolate melted and set, and how unfragile they were when cut.  In other words, these were perfection.  Enjoy.

Almond Orange Rosemary Biscotti

It just wouldn't feel right to start a new blog without a proper introduction. : )   To anyone who's reading this, though there are very few (if any) of you out there, I'm Mary and I am 15 years old.  I'm an aspiring chef, and a photography fan (my flickr account can be found here).  A friend of mine suggested I start a food blog and post photos and recipes of my weekly culinary creations, so here I am, sharing with you a favourite of mine: biscotti.  

Biscotti is one of the few things I make every week - normally on a Monday, or Tuesday.  Though I use various nuts and dried fruits, my secret ingredients are rosemary and orange zest.  I guess it's because they are two very homey, familiar flavours to me, and they taste great in combination with the sweetness or the biscotti.  Oh, and, I'm sorry to rant, but I'm sure you foodies out there will understand what I mean - I get very irritated when I see a biscotti recipe with butter in the ingredient recipe.  The biscotti that is served at Starbucks is merely an americanized version of the traditional italian classic.  A traditional biscotti must be firm, hard, and strong enough to dip into coffee or tea - not cakey,  fragile and overly sweet.

This recipe is one that I have come up with after trying and combining various versions of biscotti recipes in the past week after week.