Simple Sunday Supper (Soup, Salad, Tartines)

I had a pretty brutal tennis match Sunday afternoon (a few weeks ago) and didn’t have a lot of energy to focus on a complicated dinner. It was Rei’s last day of ski week and they had to focus on a Chem presentation with a classmate. Needless to say we weren’t terribly inspired.

But, we pulled off a pretty tasty and colorful meal of butternut squash soup, tartines, and salad.

Rei chose the choppy-choppy tasks and after cutting up a few onions, moved on to slicing mushrooms. We planned to sauté the mushrooms as a topping for one of the tartines.

I got the soup started by sautéing some chopped onions (yellow and white) in some olive oil and butter. I added some salt and pepper and once soft, added the butternut squash.

I found a recipe which I was loosely following, more to make sure I knew what ingredients to consider than anything else. I bought the pre-cut squash from our market because cutting them up terrifies me. I am terrified of chopping off a finger. Yes, Mom. We know. (She’s terrified of anyone using a mandolin, or cutting up a gourd, or anything remotely dangerous related to knives. Imagine the fit she would throw if she found my collection of knives and the respective limbs I’ve disembodied with them…

For legal purposes, that was a joke.)

(Don’t worry; the limbs aren’t from my flesh suit.)

We used about 3 pounds of squash and then I added enough chicken stock to cover up the squash. It was about 4 cups. I covered it, brought it to a boil, and then lowered to a simmer to soften the squash. One of the recipes I found called for roasting the squash before adding to the soup but I didn’t read that in time to still make a 6:30 dinner time. We probably didn’t make that deadline anyways — we’re shit at timing our meals.

We were roasting some tomatoes, garlic and rosemary in the oven for a tartine topping along with a Dutch oven with some beets. We’ve written about both of these before and they are two of our favorites.

We get cherry tomatoes and pour them out onto a baking sheet and then add some unpeeled garlic cloves and some rosemary from our garden. We put these into the oven at 350 degrees until they were soft.

Zeke cut the ends off the beets and put into a Dutch oven, covered it, and placed into the oven. No olive oil. No washing. When they were soft, I removed the skins by rubbing with a paper towel. So easy and so tasty.

We used the beets for both the salad and a tartine topping. As Rei was working on the mushrooms, I put some arugula and baby spinach into a bowl. Added some diced beets, craisins, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and some goat cheese. Rei made a simple dressing of Dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil that went onto the salad right before we sat down to eat. Easy spleezy.

Rei caramelized some yellow onions as we set aside the rest of the toppings for assembling the tartines once the cheese was melted.

There were four of us for dinner including my friend Kathy who was delighted to be a part of our simple Sunday meal.

Zeke used the immersion blender to smooth out the soup while I prepared the bread for the tartines. We used d’Affinois (like brie)(like butter) for three slices, goat cheese for three, and sliced Gruyere for two. We broiled for a hot second (and no longer) to melt the cheese and heat up the bread before adding the other toppings.

We had one extra brie slice so we added some fresh raspberries and drizzled with local honey. Yum!

We topped two with spinach, garlic and roasted tomatoes.

We topped two with sliced beets. I think we added spinach to one and pumpkin seeds to the other with a little crème fraiche for on top.

Our favorite was the one with brie, caramelized onions, craisins and walnuts. Oh my goodness…such rich goodness. Definitely the fav. The tomato ones were good too, though.

The soup was a bit bland so before we served it, I added some grated nutmeg, butter and a little more salt. After ladling it into bowls, I topped with crème fraiche, pumpkin seeds, and some thyme leaves from the garden. Zeke was kind enough to run out to the garden in the dark to get me a few stems.

The salad was overkill for me although Zeke and Kathy both ate some. I was full from the soup and a few slices of tartine.

I am really digging the yellows and greens these days, especially with flowers cut from our garden. The daffodils and freesias are blooming beautifully and smell so good in the house. We’ve moved on to some fancy tapers for added candlelight. It’s nice to shake things up.

We continued to sit around the table enjoying the conversation as we noshed on cuties, candied ginger, chocolate bites, some dried coconut, and some chocolate covered macaroons that Kathy brought. This is one of our favorite things to do and is an idea I stole from Laura Caulder.

I think that’s it from me. Rei? I know you are trying to plow through your homework but when you decide you want to be a little bit more creative and snarky, jump on in!

Weeeeeelllllllll fun fact: I’m a little behind on our posts (thanks, school. really super duper helpful there, buddy.) so this is going up about a week late (oops lol). These were lovely, and I was glad I got to help out a bit but also was super tired from doing whatever I was doing. I don’t remember. It was just one of those days, you feel me? You feel me.

Anyways, we tried something new with the raspberries (I will take full credit for that idea, thank you very much) and I actually only took a bite or two before I got full (this was after like three or four other pieces so I was hitting my limit) but it was pretty good! The thing about our d’Affinois is that it’s really rich, especially with things like caramelized onions or honey and raspberries, so even those few bites were plenty. They were my dessert (they were definitely sweet enough if you ask me).

I only ended up having one of the chocolate macaroons the day after when I got home from school. Not bad.

Alrighty! I’m tired, so I’m probably going to head to bed soon (even though it’s not even 8pm yet, don’t judge me). We’re just chilling over here.

Until next time, ciao, and have a lewsret day!

Rei and Terri :P