Lunch Three

Butternut Squash Soup and Savory 'Cheddar' Biscuits

This lunch is a great example of making food with substitutions and variations.   I made this lunch at the home of one of the people in my social bubble who didn't have all the the tools and ingredients I'm used to having on hand.    It was absolutely delicious, even if the biscuits were flat!  Who cares, really, if they taste good?  

Biscuits:

I used this recipe, with the following variations.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Baking Flour
• 3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum [didn't have it, so I didn't use it]
• 1/4 cup cornstarch (or try potato starch or arrowroot) [I would have preferred to use arrowroot, which I keep in my pantry, but I used cornstarch today]
• 1 tablespoon baking powder [as you can tell from the flat biscuits, this was way too old to work properly!]
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt [sea salt worked just fine]
• 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into a 1/4-inch dice or grated and chilled [I just used Vegan Becel straight out of the fridge]
• 1 cup buttermilk, chilled [I followed the substitution suggestion in the recipe and combined one tablespoon of white vinegar with one cup of oat milk made with this recipe.  I didn't know that slimy oat milk was a going concern, but apparently I managed to avoid it with a successful Google search.]
• 1/2 cup of Earth Island Shredded Cheddar (non-dairy) cheese
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 1 tablespoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

• Preheat your oven to 425°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with unbleached parchment paper and set it aside.
• I mixed up the dry stuff in a large bowl, added the margarine, then the liquid, and then the cheese.    I just dumped globs of it onto the parchment paper.  
• Place the baking sheet in the center of the preheated oven and bake until lightly golden brown all over (about 15 minutes). Remove from the oven and allow to set briefly before serving

Soup

Soups in a Vitamix are so easy!   I fried two yellow onions until they became translucent, and started to brown.   I dumped some  leftover turkey broth (from the holidays), the onions, roasted butternut squash (peeled, although I recently heard you can eat the skin), a drained can of black eyes peas (for protein, I would have used white beans if I had some), and about a teaspoon of dried ginger.   I then added enough water for the Vitamix to be able to do its thing.    I left it running at high speed long enough for the soup to become hot (less than 10 minutes).   SO GOOD!