Delishytown
Cooking is fun. Eating is funner. I cook, photograph and write these recipes.
Everything I post on this blog I make from scratch using fresh wholesome ingredients. I've been cooking since I was a little kid.
My recipes are based on trial and error, along with studying cookbooks, family recipes, blogs and cooking shows.
Some of the veggies and herbs I use are grown in my garden.
I'm working on a Delishytown cookbook, what!? and I recently started working as a professional food photographer. Yay employment.
My other job is garden designer and I love it. I'm helping as many people as I can to plant edibles in their yards. Sustainability is delicious.
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I may have a problem. New seeds but no place to grow them.. I may have to make a new garden box.
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#lechuga #homegrown #goodeats #growtherevolution #growyourown...- WHAT I DID NOT SAY
I did one interview with The Times of London a few weeks ago, parts of which (including a headline that is not a quote) have been...
Happy Thanksgiving Tumblrs! I hope this day finds you happy and cooking, eating and drinking with your friends and family! Have fun!
Sweet Butternut Squash Lasagna
This is delicious and healthy. Well, somewhat healthy, besides the massive amounts of cheese I used. But cheese has calcium. We all need calcium for strong bones and flavor.
This delicious lasagna was made from the last of our Butternut Squash from the vine that took over the back yard. I’m amazed how colorful the inside of this one was, compared to the last one I cooked. You can see the color difference from a squash from the same vine, same harvest day, which I photographed a month ago, which was a lighter orangey yellow. This squash I used today has been sitting on the sideboard for a month. I didn’t realize it was ripening more and more each day. When I cut this one open it was an amazing, intense deep orange inside. I’m pretty sure all that color translates to sugars developing, which translates to delectable sweetness. I saved the seeds to plant again next spring.
Here’s how to make sweet butternut squash lasagna.
Cut a butternut squash in half. Scrape out the seeds with a spoon. Save the seeds, roast some of them, plant a few next spring. Season the cut halves with salt & pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil. Bake at 350, cut side down, 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Chop 1 small sweet onion and 1 shallot. Saute in 1 tsp butter and 2 tsp olive oil. Add a few cloves of fresh chopped garlic and cook for about 2 minutes more on low heat. Season with salt and pepper.
Boil salted water for lasagna noodles. Cook noodles, rinse with cold water, drain and set aside.
Make a bechamel sauce by melting 1 tablespoon butter with 1 tablespoon flour. Cook these two together until the flour is just cooked, about a minute. Deglaze and whisk with stock or milk, about 1 cup.
Scoop the cooked squash out of the shells. Discard shells. Chop the cooked squash. Mix in the onion, garlic and shallot, salt and pepper and a grating of fresh nutmeg. You could also season with a little smoked paprika here, if you want a bit of a smoky flavor.
Spread half of the squash mixture on the bottom of your buttered lasagna pan. Top that layer with some grated parmesan cheese and a little bit of the bechamel. Add a layer of noodles, a layer with fresh ricotta cheese mixed with a little fresh chopped parsley or basil, and some parmesan cheese. Add a little more of the bechamel, another layer of noodles, the other half of the cooked squash mixture, then for the very top layer as much cheese as you want and the last bit of the bechamel. I used a couple slices of provolone, about ½ cup of grated white cheddar and a big grating of parmesan.
Bake the lasagna at 350 for an hour until it’s all bubbly and melted and amazing. Yum!
This is my new favorite side dish for Thanksgiving, last year every bit of it was eaten, no leftovers. This is the sign of a good dish! Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
Thanksgiving Sides: My Dad’s Stuffing
Every year we have a big party on Thanksgiving and it’s a fun, massive, & delicious feast.
Why can’t it be Thanksgiving right now? Answer: it can. I got up early this morning and made this stuffing and baked this small dish for breakfast. It was so delicious! I put the rest in the freezer, in a large butter coated foil pan, dotted with butter, covered with foil. Weds night I’ll take it out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge, then pop it in the oven about an hour before serving.
This is the dressing my Dad taught me how to make when I was a little kid. This recipe is for both the carnivore version and the vegetarian version. My Dad’s recipe starts with browning Italian Sausage. If you eat meat, I would definitely use the sausage. If you’re vegetarian, you will love this side dish.
In a cast iron skillet, brown about 1 lb of Italian sausage, (ignore this step for the vegetarian version) Add 1 chopped onion, 2 chopped carrots and 3 or 4 chopped celery stalks, 1 peeled and chopped apple, and about 3 tblsp butter and 1 tblsp olive oil. Season with kosher salt and pepper, a sprinkle of onion powder, garlic powder, paprika and a pinch of dried tarragon. Add a small handful of fresh chopped parsley. Add 1 tsp poultry seasoning or dried sage, 3 or 4 minced garlic cloves and continue cooking 5-8 minutes. Add 3-4 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock, or broth and bring to a simmer. Add ½ cup chopped dried Apricots. Turn off the heat.
You can use stale bread for this, or bake a couple of cornbreads, or whatever you like. The easiest way is to use the boxes of bread cubes from the grocery store. I usually use any day old bread and combine it with the box bread cubes. Place two boxes of stuffing cubes in a large bowl. Pour the broth and vegetables over the dry bread cubes, a little bit at a time, tossing gently. Be careful not to overmix or it will turn into mush. Once the cubes are moistened, place in a butter coated baking dish, cover and bake at 350 until piping hot and delicious. Take the foil off the top for the last 10 minutes of baking. Yum! Happy Thanksgiving!
Reblogging my own post, in case you want to try my stuffing recipe. Happy Thanksgiving Tumblrs!
Smokey Turkey y’all. Merry Christmas! #food
This is a delicious Turkey we smoked last Christmas. We first brined the turkey in a solution of ice cold salt water, mixed with garlic, brown sugar and honey, soak for at least 4 hours up to overnight, then rinsed it off and added lemon, garlic and herbs inside, and started smoking it early in the day. We smoked in an electric smoker for about 7 to 8 hours until the temp in the thickest part of the thighs read 160 or higher. Don’t go too much higher or it dries out.
I will be doing smoked turkey pieces tomorrow, and finishing them on the grill with BBQ sauce. It’s my favorite way to make it, I also always make a traditional turkey in the oven, with butter and garlic and herbs.
I will post all my Thanksgiving food from past Delishytown posts, in case anyone needs ideas for sides and such tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving Tumblrs! I know this country is wonderful because I have so many wonderful friends and family here. Stay strong in this very difficult time where we now have Nazis being appointed positions in the White House. What the absolute hell? This is not normal. These past 2 weeks have been so hard, watching all of this nonsense. Hoping for a Christmas Miracle.
California voters, please be aware that Prop 64 seems like a no brainer, to legalize pot, but it’s got a corporate agenda. They will try to corporatize it in just a few short years. And they propose some high tech “seed to sale” tracking system, that’s not too scary! Happy Halloween indeed. You know they want to restrict people from being able to freely grow it because there are billions to be made. I find this very frightening. Be very wary of Govt. in your garden everybody. This is not good, we already know what Big Pharma did with Epi Pen prices. They are greedy assholes. No on 64. You can already buy as much medical marijuana as you need or want under current law. And that law would go completely away if 64 passes. No on 64. Please spread the word CA voters!
Here’s a quote from this article about it here: “That’s why the big corporations are coming in and trying to get people to vote for this because it creates a for-profit system. If we wanna keep California a place that’s good for people to live, where people can support their families, we need to keep work and farming here.”
SEED: The Untold Story (Official Theatrical Trailer) from Collective Eye Films on Vimeo.
This is a new documentary that a film school friend of mine, Taggart Siegel, made. This looks like it’s going to be amazing. I can’t wait to see it. It’s coming to theaters across the country.
I love seeds! They’re fascinating and are the most basic part of all of life. Please check it out if you can. This is a very important film because there are greedy bastage corporations, who, for the past several years have been trying to patent the entirety of seeds. They’re doing it so they can control the food supply. If you control the food supply, you control the people. Fuck that. Check out this very important and amazing looking film at a theatre near you!
Potato and Squash Terrine
Yum, this is so good and so easy. This is like a potato lasagna. I’ve made this and posted the recipe before, but was not happy with the pictures. So I remade it this week and took this photo. I might photograph it one more time with a different lighting situation.
This is an easy vegetarian main dish or a yummy side dish to go with fish or chicken or whatever protein you are into. It would be so good with ham. Potatoes and ham always go great together. I like this casserole because it’s mostly healthy, and uses end of summer veggies and herbs. And cheese! It has cheese! Yum, but it doesn’t have to. This could easily be a vegan dish if you don’t eat cheese, or you could use almond or cashew chz. I love cheese.
Here’s how to make this easy and delicious dish.
Heat oven to 400
Slice 2 -3 large portabella mushrooms, 1 golden squash, 1 eggplant, 3 or 4 tomatoes, 1 sweet onion, 2 shallots, and 4 or 5 red potatoes. Grill the eggplant and portabella mushrooms in a grill pan or just sear in a hot skillet. These are the only vegetables I pre-cook for this. I do it to sweeten the eggplant, and I sear the mushrooms because it takes a bit of the moisture from them, so the casserole doesn’t come out watery. It also gives them a nice texture. Wash basil. We have a ton of basil growing in our garden right now. It’s so good on so many things. I scrambled some into eggs the other day with a little parmesan and they were the best scrambled eggs ever.
Here’s how to make this potato veggie lasagna thingy:
Crush 4 garlic cloves. Whisk crushed garlic in a dish with a few tablespoons olive oil, salt and pepper, and ½ cup white wine.
Grate your favorite cheeses. I used parmesan, cheddar and a little mozzarella.
Layer the veggies one vegetable at a time, adding cheese, basil leaves and a tablespoon of the white wine dressing between layers. Season with an extra pinch of salt and pepper between potato layers. I use about 2 to 3 layers of potatoes in between the other veggies. It’s good to have an extra tomato layer in the middle too.
I try to make the top layer tomato with little onion on top and then a bit of cheese, that way you get a really flavorful crust. Make sure to save a little of the dressing for the very top layer.
Cover with parchment for the first 25 minutes or so of cooking so the cheese on top doesn’t cook faster than all those veggies. Bake for about 45 minutes total, uncovered at the end. Dress with a drizzle of good quality balsamic dressing. Yum!