Lentil Soup
The snow has finally started to fall. The Blizzard of 2010 has officially begun. We have our fully-charged phones, Kindles, and battery-powered radio. If the power goes out, we're ready.
And we're ready in the kitchen, too. Blizzards mean soup, right?!? And a loaf of homemade bread.
The beauty of having a well-stocked larder is ya don't have to go out pre-blizzard and buy your French Toast fixin's...
Let it snow. We're set for days.
I had a nice, meaty ham bone in the freezer, so that was the "inspiration piece" for the meal. I also had the no-knead bread dough in the 'fridge.
Ready. Set. Go.
Lentil Soup
- 1 meaty ham bone
- 4 quarts water
- 3 cups lentils
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 3 stalks celery, diced
- 3 carrots, diced
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- Tabasco
- Salt and pepper
Chop and saute onion in soup pot. When translucent, add water, bay leaves, and ham bone. Bring to boil and then simmer, uncovered, about an hour or so.
Remove bone and let cool. Cut or pull meat from bone and set aside to add to soup.
Add lentils, carrots, and celery. Cook about 20 minutes or until lentils and vegetables are tender. Add ham and simmer another 10 minutes, or so.
Add cayenne, Tabasco, and salt and pepper, to taste.
Serve with crusty bread and butter.
It's a really easy and very basic. The cayenne and Tabasco add just the slightest bit of heat. It's not supposed to overpower or be pronounced. Just a bit.
And a loaf of bread always makes the meal complete.
The weather has really started blowing out there. It may be time to make another loaf before the power goes out...
Lentil Soup with Ham
Like a turkey, the biggest reason to cook a ham is for the bone. I love making soup. Leftovers are great, sandwiches are great, all-the-other-things-you-can-make-with-leftover-turkey-or-ham are great. But The Soup is The Best. Especially when it's really cold outside.
For a ham bone, bean soup, split pea soup, or lentil soup come immediately to mind. It's almost a free meal. And soup is flat-out one of the easiest things in the world to make.
We chose lentil tonight. There are lots of lentils in the cabinet. Red, yellow, brown, and a few pounds of French green lentils (lentilles du Puy) I picked up at Atlantic Spice. I went with the French lentils tonight, although any will work. These hold their shape and don't disintegrate like some of the others do - both a plus and a minus when making soup.
Lentil Soup
- 1 ham bone
- 2 qts chicken broth
- 1 qt water
- 1 cup diced onion
- 3 stalks celery, diced
- 3 carrots, diced
- 2 1/2 cups lentils
- salt
- pepper
- 1/2 tsp herbs d'Provence
- 2 bay leaves
- splash of Tabasco or cayenne pepper
Saute onion, celery, and carrots in soup pot. Add broth, water, and bone. Simmer about an hour.
Remove bone. Add lentils and herbs.
Cut any remaining meat from bone and add to pot. Simmer until lentils are cooked through, 20-30 minutes, depending on type of lentils.
Add a splash or two of tabasco. Check for seasoning and add salt and pepper, as desired.
Hit the pot with an immersion blender for a few spins to thicken a bit.
Serve with warm, crusty bread.
There are a million-and-one variations on lentil soup. You can add tomatoes, you can add a bit of balsamic vinegar, it can be vegetarian, vegan, thick or thin. You should note that lentils take longer to cook in salty or acidic liquid, so add your salt and tomatoes, vinegars, etc., after they are cooked.
And not only are they good, but they're good for you, too. Lentils are high in fiber, protein, folate, amino acids, antioxidants, iron, magnesium and zinc. They are also low in fat.
Franca's Clam Chowder
When we were honeymooning on Cape Cod at our friend Dana's, her sister Franca made her famous Clam Chowder for us one night. Franca's chowder is the real thing. She starts with local clams in the shell and spends the day in the kitchen. The result is nothing short of spectacular.
We received a large container of the base to bring home with us. The base merely needs cream and a check for seasoning to finish it off. It has been sitting in the freezer awaiting the proper time to come forth. Tonight was that time.
The Eilers clan prefers a thin chowder, and while I adored every drop we ate that night on The Cape, when I make chowder, I tend to thicken it a bit. I understand this is sacrilege, but we're 300 miles away. They can't get us tonight.
And the chowder was perfect. Delicious. Wonderful. Thick or thin, this chowder rocks! It has a rich clam flavor that you just can't get from bottled clam juice or canned clams. It really is stellar.
Just the dish to start off the first night of Hanukkah. (ooops!)
Which reminds me of a story from a few years back...
When I worked at UCSF, one of my jobs was to answer the comments and suggestions from the "Suggestion Box" in the Moffitt Cafe. I posted about 20 questions and my responses in a bulletin board by the Nutrition Services office down the hall from the cafe. For the most part I ignored the %$#@# comments but I always included at least one snarky comment - and gave it a professionally-snarky response. It was always fun to watch the crowds gather around the board and see their reaction to my latest epistles...
So one day I receive a comment from a woman who was incensed that we put salt pork in our New England Clam Chowder. She went on at great length about how we were deceiving our Jewish customers who can't eat pork and that we were pretty much condemning them to hell because of our insensitivity. She was extremely rude to put it mildly.
I was just so sweet in my response. I explained to her that salt pork or bacon was an integral ingredient in clam chowder dating back to the beginning of time. It was used in the original Fannie Farmer cook book of 1896 and was a completely traditional ingredient. Every recipe called for it and while it was true we did not have a huge sign stating it contained pork, we generally did not alert people to ingredients that were supposed to be in a dish.
I thanked her for caring so much for our Jewish customers that she would take us to task for including pork in our clam chowder. I then informed her that in all probability having pork in a clam chowder probably wouldn't be an issue to most Jews as they would most likely not be eating a soup make from shellfish in the first place.
It was the most fun job I have ever had.
Turkey Soup
This has to be the best part of Thanksgiving... well... besides all the other best parts, that is... It's hard to top a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce and stuffing on squishy white bread, but the turkey soup is something I look forward to the minute I start thinking about a turkey.
It's a childhood-memory-thing. Soups were definitely a mainstay growing up and I can see that big oval pot my mother used to cook down the carcass and make her soup. Everything went in it. Just as I make it, today...
I started by simmering the carcass all day yesterday. I threw in a couple of bay leaves, a quartered onion, skin and all (the onion skins help make a nice, deep-colored broth) and the ends of celery and carrots, and a bit of sage. Those trimmings you'd probably toss make for great soup stock.
After straining it, it went into the 'fridge. Today, I scraped off the thin layer of fat and started heating it.
To the pot I added about 3 cups of turkey gravy and then chopped carrots, celery, potatoes, a lot of turkey meat, and all those partial bags of frozen vegetables... peas, corn, green beans, and spinach.
A bit of salt and pepper was the only seasoning it needed.
Soup really may be the easiest food to make - and in our house, at least - the perfect comfort-food when the weather starts turning cold.
I froze half the broth for another soup, another day. I haven't made Mulligatawny in quite a while.....
Sweet Potato Casserole
This is a perfect example of how thought-process-to-meal actually works, sometimes...
I was going to make a cassoulet of sorts for dinner. A quick version. We were decorating and I just wanted to get something in the oven I didn't have to think about. I had a pork tenderloin and a couple of Hungarian sausages that were thawing, pulled down the beans, crumbs at the ready...
And then I opened the 'fridge for butter. And saw the leftover dressing.
The cassoulet started morphing into something completely different. ::: insert Monty Python tagline here :::
There were two big sweet potatoes in the potato basket. I started thinking of layering things...
Into the casserole dish went a layer of stuffing. A bit of gravy went on top just to keep it moist. Atop that went the sliced Hungarian sausages. The pork tenderloin went back into the 'fridge.
I peeled and sliced one of the sweet potatoes and layered it on top. I drizzled it with about a quarter-cup of maple syrup, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, covered it, and put it in the oven at 350° for about an hour and fifteen minutes.
I purposely used the sausage instead of turkey (or the pork tenderloin) to make it seem less a Thanksgiving leftover and more a stand-alone casserole. It had the flavors of fall - with just enough of a twist to make it unique.
I can see a lot of variations on this theme.....
French Onion Soup
It's fall. daylight savings time os over. It's been really cold. I decided it was time to make a big batch of French Onion Soup.
Sunshine, blue skies, and otherwise glorious weather.
Go figure.
But I made the soup, anyway. I like onion soup. Besides, I had almost 10 pounds of onions.
It's a rather easy soup to make. I make it as a beef and onion soup. Very non-traditional. I'm not sure why or when that happened, but it's been going on for years.
First, you start with the onions. This batch was the aforementioned 9 1/2 pounds of onions.
Slice them and put them in a big pot with a stick of butter.
Cook, stirring occasionally, until they brown and caramelize. This batch took about 1 1/2 hours to reach the right color.
At this point you need to be stirring a lot more often and really scraping the bottom of the pot to get all that good caramelized flavor.
Meanwhile - and this is where I defy tradition - I brown beef cubes (today I used about 1 1/2 pounds of tri-tip I cut up) and after it was browned, deglazed the pan with about a half-cup of sherry.
All of that went into the pot with the onions.
I then added 2 quarts of beef stock.
I added a bay leaf, about a teaspoon of French herbs, salt and pepper. I then brought it to a boil and covered and simmered it for about 45 minutes.
Neither of us are crazy about cheese-encrusted croutons floating (or glued) to our soup bowls, so I just added some grated cheese to the top. They are really a pain-in-the-ass to eat. I'd rather just dunk some french bread.
I used a blend of onions; 6 pounds of Mayan sweet onions and 3 1/2 pounds of white onions. The soup was definitely on the sweet side. In a good way, though.
And there's lots of leftovers. A bunch for us and a big container to bring over to Victor's mom tomorrow.
She really likes my onion soup!
Cauliflower and Bean Soup
I was at the store yesterday shopping for Victor's mom when I espied a display of cauliflower. Humongous heads of cauliflower. Cauliflower on steroids heads of cauliflower. For 2 bucks. I had to get one.
A head of cauliflower this size is like those huge stalks of brussels sprouts - a serious commitment for two people.
Not being commitment-shy, I grabbed one.
I think when I first saw it I thought "soup" although a dozen or two recipe ideas have filtered through the little gray cells. Au gratin to cheese sauce and everything in between...
Soup won.
But I did do a slightly different spin on it. I soaked a pound of cannelini beans last night to make a bean and cauliflower soup, because, well... gee... that 900 pound head of cauliflower definitely wouldn't feed the two of us... (I do wonder about myself, sometimes...)
But I digress...
I actually wanted a bit more substance than mere cauliflower and I didn't want to add a ton of cheese or cream - my two normal go-to ingredients for cauliflower soup. And that bag of cannelini beans was right there sitting on the shelf...
Cauliflower and Cannelini Bean Soup
- 1 small onion, diced
- 2 links good-quality andouille sausage, diced
- 1 pound cannelini beans, cooked and drained
- 2 quarts chicken stock
- 1 huge head cauliflower
- 1 8 oz brick light cream cheese
- salt and pepper, to taste
Saute onion and diced andouille until onion is translucent. Add stock and bring to boil. Add cauliflower florettes.
Cover and simmer until cauliflower is cooked and mushy.
Add drained beand and coarsely puree using an immersion blender. Make it as smooth or chunky as you like.
Add cream cheese and mix until smooth and cheese is melted.
Check for seasoning and add salt and pepper, if deseired.
The soup was t-h-i-c-k and really filling. Perfect cold-weather fare. Bread still warm from the oven finished the meal - and me.
The andouille added all the spices the soup needed. The main reason I recommend a good-quality andouille. You don't need to add anything else. The beans (and the cream cheese) added the silkiness a plain cauliflower soup would lack, but the cauliflower flavor still came through loud and clear.
It was the best of all worlds.
So we now have soup to last us for days/weeks/months. I'm glad the freezer has been getting emptied.
Time to add a few more containers.....
Sweet Potato Latkes and Portobello Mushroom Gravy
It's amazing that dinner ever made it from concept to reality tonight. I had too many concepts.
Sunday tends to be a bit of a clean out the refrigerator day in preparation for the Monday Shopping Trek. I had a lot of choices and a lot of ideas today. I have a single pie crust left from making the pumpkin pie the other night that would have gone great on my Mom's Steak Pie. But I needed to use brussels sprouts. And that yam. And those last few mushrooms.
There is chicken in the freezer - and several varieties of sausage. A pork tenderloin...
Leafing through the latest copy of Wegmans magazine, I saw a recipe for Apple Almond Yam Cakes. A sweet potato latke by any other name... That set the tone for dinner. Sweet potatoes go great with brussels sprouts, and tri-tip roasts and mushroom gravy go with everything.
A dinner was born.
The tri-tip went into the oven at 425° along side the brussels sprouts. I halved the sprouts, put them into a casserole dish with about a half-cup of chicken stock and just let 'em cook down. About 5 minutes before they came out of the oven I added dried cranberries and pine nuts.
While the roast was resting, I made a pan gravy using the drippings, a handful of sliced baby bella mushrooms, a splash of brandy and a carton of condensed portobello mushroom soup. Really. Condensed soup. Me.
It was something new and I thought I'd give it a try. I have to admit that the last time I used condensed soups in anything was back in the '70s when I lived at Lake Tahoe. I used to make a stuffed chicken breast dish with a champagne mushroom sauce for crowds (we always had crowds at that house!) but over the years just stopped using them. Since Victor just said my gravy is better, I probably will continue to stop using them.
The sweet potato latkes were good. Nice balance of potato with apple and onion. I used sliced almonds as the recipe stated, but will use probably use slivered almonds next time I make them for a bit more pronounced crunch. The recipe makes a dozen large potato cakes, so be forewarned. We'll have a couple for breakfast tomorrow and more are going into the freezer.
Apple Almond Yam Cakes
- 1 1/4 lbs yams, peeled, coarsely grated (about 7 cups)
- 1 medium Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, coarsely grated
- 4 oz Chopped Onions
- 1 1/2 Tbsp Sour Cream
- 4 large Eggs, lightly beaten
- Salt and ground white pepper to taste
- 1 1/4 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1/2 cup sliced almonds
- 1/2 cup Vegetable Oil
Directions:
- Combine yam, apple, and onion in a large mixing bowl. Add sour cream and eggs; season to taste with salt and white pepper. Stir to combine. Slowly fold in flour. Stir in almonds. Mix well. Form yam mixture into patties by scooping up portions with ice cream scoop (about 1/2 cup) and pressing firmly with hands. Set aside.
- Heat oil in large skillet on medium-high, 1-2 min, not allowing oil to reach smoking point. Reduce heat to medium.
- Add yam patties to pan (pan should hold 5 patties). Cook, 7-8 min until edges begin to brown. Gently turn patties over. Cook 5-6 min until browned and tender. Drain on double thickness of paper towels.
- Repeat with remaining yam patties, heating additional vegetable oil if necessary.
Can be made a few hours ahead and reheated in a 350 degree oven for 20 min.
It was an easy dinner to put together, but I did seen to dirty an awful lot of stuff. Fortunately, we have a great system. When I cook, Victor cleans and when Victor cooks, Victor cleans.
It really is a great system!
Pork Tenderloin and Brussels Sprouts
Brussels Sprouts. The greatest little vegetable in the whole wide world.
Really.
I loved brussels sprouts back when the only way I ever saw them was from a frozen square box. Even over-cooked and mushy they were great.
And then one day I found them fresh. Brussels sprouts could actually have a crunch when cooked! What a revelation! My love affair deepened. I tried them any number of different ways. And I liked them all.
Boiled, broiled, roasted, steamed, or fried... no matter how you do 'em, I'm there. For years, I was hooked on brussels sprouts in a mustard sauce. Then I went into a rut with balsamic vinegar. Lately, I've been slicing them really thin and sauteing them.
Tonight, I cut two slices of bacon into matchsticks and fried the shredded/sliced brussels sprouts with the bacon - and a pinch of salt and pepper. They were outrageously good.
For folks who aren't huge brussels sprouts fans, slicing/shredding the sprouts turns them into a much sweeter vegetable. They lose a lot of that bitter cabbagy taste that many dislike.
And, of course, the fresher the better...
And speaking of fresh... Did you know that brussels sprouts grow on stalks?!? The picture above is about half the stalk I started with. With easily 3 1/2 pounds of sprouts on a stalk, it's a bit of a commitment for two people. I may just blanch and freeze some.
And here's what a cup of Brussels Sprouts will give you:
Only 60 calories without anything on them. Bacon does add calories and fat. Go figure.
Nutrient |
Amount |
% RDV |
Nutrient Density |
| vitamin K | 218.80 mcg | 273.5 | 80.9 |
| vitamin C | 96.72 mg | 161.2 | 47.7 |
| folate | 93.60 mcg | 23.4 | 6.9 |
| vitamin A | 1121.64 IU | 22.4 | 6.6 |
| manganese | 0.35 mg | 17.5 | 5.2 |
| dietary fiber | 4.06 g | 16.2 | 4.8 |
| potassium | 494.52 mg | 14.1 | 4.2 |
| vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) | 0.28 mg | 14 | 4.1 |
| tryptophan | 0.04 g | 12.5 | 3.7 |
| vitamin B1 (thiamin) | 0.17 mg | 11.3 | 3.4 |
| omega 3 fatty acids | 0.26 g | 10.8 | 3.2 |
| iron | 1.87 mg | 10.4 | 3.1 |
| phosphorus | 87.36 mg | 8.7 | 2.6 |
| protein | 3.98 g | 8 | 2.4 |
| magnesium | 31.20 mg | 7.8 | 2.3 |
| vitamin B2 (riboflavin) | 0.12 mg | 7.1 | 2.1 |
| vitamin E | 1.33 mg | 6.7 | 2 |
| copper | 0.13 mg | 6.5 | 1.9 |
| calcium | 56.16 mg | 5.6 | 1.7 |
As for the rest of dinner...
I took a small pork tenderloin and cut it into six pieces. I dipped them in an egg and then rolled them in chopped pecans. Into a skillet they went and I browned one side, flipped them, browned the other a bit, and then put thye skillet into a hot oven for about 10 minutes.
Perfectly cooked.
The potato was a yellow sweet potato mixed with a bit of melted butter, brown sugar, and a pinch of allspice. Into a hot oven for about 25 minutes.
No baseball tonight. It's a travel day to Texas.
Maybe I'll get to bed at a decent hour, tonight. But not before the peanut butter cookies Victor made for dessert.
More on those later.....
Lamb Chops, Pears, and Potato Risotto
When our friends Ann and Julie were in Paris a few weeks ago, Ann sent me an email describing a potato dish she had had for dinner one night... a creamy pureed potato with chunks of potato. She raved about it! I don't mind living vicariously through anothers culinary adventures thousands of miles away. Really. I was extremely only slightly jealous as she was describing the dish... I thought it sounded close enough to a potato risotto that I just made a potato risotto! At the risk of sounding like I'm bragging (and of course, I am!) the dish came out fantastic!
I am reasonably certain it's nothing like Ann's Parisian Potatoes (I added cheese and didn't top with almonds, for one...) but it's something that will be going into the winter rotation at our house! Yumlicious!!!
Potato Risotto
- 2 cups 1/4" cubed potatoes
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1/4 cup chopped onion
- 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese
Saute onion in butter in small frying pan. Add potatoes and mix well with onions. Add about 1 cup broth and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until most of broth is absorbed. Add another half-cup and continue cooking until potatoes are tender. Add a bit more broth as needed to keep potatoes moist. You do not want them to dry out.
When potatoes are fairly tender, add cream and continue cooking until sauce thickens a bit. Stir in cheese.
These were definitely a hit. A bit of a stove-top take on scalloped potatoes.
The lamb was an impulse-buy at the grocers today. It just looked good.
I marinated the chops in olive oil, garlic, and rosemary, and quickly browned them in a hot skillet. I took them out and added about a half-cup of fresh apple juice and let that cook down for a minute. I then added 1 red pear that I had peeled and cut up.
When they were hot-through, I drizzled on some balsamic vinegar and then cooked it all down to a saucy consistency.
I'm now in a fall-cooking mindset and the weather is supposed to be mid-to-high 70's most of the week.
We need another good BBQ. Maybe Tuesday.
We have Pasta Monday tomorrow!
Turkey Soup
It was sunny and mid-70's today.
I made soup.
Even though it wasn't totally weather-relevant, it tasted great.
The broth was the boiled-down carcass with everything in the kitchen I wanted to get rid of. There was part of an onion, onion skins, garlic, part of a head of lettuce, celery bulb, carrot ends and peels... Odds-and-ends from containers of this-and-that. Seriously clean-out-the-refrigerator.
It made a damned good base! This is the kind of stuff you really can't screw up. It's what every decent restaurant in the world does - boils down that stuff that would otherwise go down the garbage disposal. Other than a little salt and pepper, I don't add any herbs or spices at this point...
The soup itself was chopped carrot, chopped celery, chopped swiss chard, Italian green beans, peas, a can of hominy, and two pastas - pastina and 0's. herb-wise I added a bit more garlic and some dill. And salt and pepper.
And we had a half-loaf of bread from last night.
Good stuff.
Another Road to Morocco
Once upon a time I subscribed to a diet and nutrition magazine. I got the subscription because I read a copy in a Dr's office and it had a recipe for Pumpkin Polenta! (It was a hit. I've made it a couple of times.) But the magazine went totally digital and I lost interest - and kept a few of the printed recipes.
The recipe for the rice is a variation on a stuffed portobello mushroom recipe.
Moroccan Rice
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tomato, diced
- 1/2 cup chickpeas
- 1/2 cup raisins
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 cups cooked rice
In skillet, heat 1 tsp oil. Add spices and cook about 1 minute to get rid of the raw taste. Add the tomatoes and stir well. Add the remainder of the ingredients and mix well. Heat through.
The chicken was a variation on a recipe from an old Gourmet magazine.
Moroccan Lemon Chicken
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 2 chicken breasts
- 1 small onion, sliced thin
- 3/4 tsp cumin
- 1/4 tsp paprika
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon
- pinch cayenne pepper
- grated lemon zest and juice from 1 lemon
- 2 tsp all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
- 1/3 cup sliced olives
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1 cup chick peas
Cook chicken in skillet until browned on both sides. Transfer chicken to a plate and reduce heat to moderate. Add onion to pan and cook, stirring, until softened. Add cumin, paprika, cinnamon, cayenne, and flour and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Stir in broth, lemon juice and zest, olives, chickpeas, and honey.
Return chicken to pan and simmer, uncovered, until cooked through.
I think the locals would approve...