All the Orange Things Soup

Thanksgiving dinner was a hoot!  We had family and old friends and new friends, and loads of good food!  So much good food, in fact that we left the sweet potatoes in the oven because ... who needs that when you have the sweet potato mini-marshmallow concoction your niece brought over.  Right?

So a week after Thanksgiving, I am faced with food re-organization.

The turkey carcass, left over carrots, celery, onions, and leeks was re-organized into turkey soup with dumplings. That's been parceled out to everyone who even looked like they were getting a cold.  And about 8 more portions frozen and in the garage freezer (if you're in the neighborhood and hungry, start with the garage freezer).

We delayed re-org of all the orange things until today, when we began to contemplate Christmas...

All the Orange Things Soup

Ingredients

5.5 baked sweet potatoes, mashed (no marshmallows)
6 medium cooked carrots, diced or chopped
2 cans of Trader Joe's pumpkin puree left over from unfulfilled dreams of homemade pumpkin pie
1 can of Trader Joe's coconut milk
1/2 box vegetable broth
2 coconut milk cans of water
2 tablespoons (vegetable) Better than Bullion
one medium onion, diced
half a large leek, thinly sliced to make leeky half-moons
2 tbsp ground cumin
4 tbsp ground curry
1 tbsp dried / ground ginger
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp red pepper

Directions

In a large soup pot, everything.  Bring to a boil, stir well.  Simmer about 20 minutes.  Eat.

I think it'd be good with a garnish... sour cream, creme fraiche, yougurt, sriacha, sage, parsley, green onion...

Liberal Bourgeois Election Comfort Food

Ingredients

2 bottles of Two Buck Chuck 
Gluten-free noodles of your choice
1 cup (half a can) Trader Joe's coconut cream
1/2 cup Trader Joe'chevre
1 cup Better than Bullion vegetarian (prepared)
1 tbsp to 1/4 instant mashed potatoes (to add thickness)
1 tbsp to 1/4 cup sherry
freshly grated nutmeg
fresh rosemary 
fresh ground pepper

Directions

Open Two Buck Chuck.

Drink wine while you boil the noodles to your favorite texture.  Check election results.

Pour another glass of wine and use your white board to keep track of the electoral college votes. Check noodles. Add New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Delaware to the Blue column.

Drain noodles, check polls. Return noodles to pot.  Add the South to the Red column. Take valium.

Add in coconut cream, chevre and bullion. Pour another glass of wine. Check pot to see if you added chevre. Check polls. Check pot to make sure you added the coconut cream. 

Go outside and clip the fresh rosemary off the rosemary plant. Stand outside until the spins go away.

Come back inside and check polls. Add in nutmeg, rosemary and pepper... Open another bottle of Two Buck Chuck. Pour a glass and stir the noodles.

Serves 6.

Hey, Julia, whazzup chickie? Chicken

Take a look at Julia's recipe and then if you feel daunted, simple it up a bit this way...

Ingredients

One smallish chicken
One lemon
2 tablespoons oil or butter
2 tablespoons thyme
salt and pepper


Directions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees (F). 

Zest one lemon. Add lemon zest, lemon juice, thyme and oil to a small bowl and mix well.

Wash and dry the chicken inside and out, make sure you remove the neck and other innerds. Place in a pan set up so you can collect the drippings. Stuff with lemon halves or quarters.

Brush the chicken with the oil mixture, sprinkle with salt and pepper to your taste.

Cook chicken for 20 minutes on 450, baste or not as you have time. At 20 minutes, lower your temperature to 375 degrees (F) and continue roasting for about an hour. Or until a meat thermometer in the meatiest part of the chicken reads 180 degrees (F).

Pour the drippings into a jar and keep in the fridge until you're ready to make soup.


Eat the chicken until you're bored with it.Then turn it into soup.

Lemon Moon Chicken Soup

This soup owes everything to Julia Child and my sister-in-law... the other one.

You can start anywhere you want, but I started with the raw chicken and a handful of herbs. We made the simple version of Julia Child's Roast Lemon and Thyme Chicken and ate the chicken until we were bored with it.

Ingredients

Roast chicken, as much as you have left + whatever drippings you have.

Handful of fresh thyme, rosemary, basil or several tablespoons of the same, dried. 3 - 4 Bay leaves all in a little cheesecloth bag.

Juice of one lemon, plus lemon zest if you want to go there.
15 - 20 Peppercorns, crushed, or two tablespoons of ground pepper
2 - 3 tablespoons salt
2- 3 slices of ginger
Chopped onion, carrots, celery. A cup or three of each.
Chopped kale and/or collards. Several leaves of each.

Directions

In a soup pot, your chicken carcass*, the reserved drippings from when you made roasted chicken, lemon juice from a whole lemon, herbs, zest, ginger, salt and pepper. Then all veggies. Cover with water and simmer.

If you boil this, your soup will be cloudy. No boil equals clear broth. It really doesn't matter because it'll taste just as good either way.

Simmer at least an hour. You can simmer as long as you like, so figure your schedule. Once you're ready, turn the heat off and remove the chicken from the pot. Reserve the liquid.

Let the chicken cool and commence a-picking. Pick all the meat off the bones, white and dark. Pinch or cut into bite-sized pieces and toss back into the pot.

Be nice and make sure the dog and cat get a small piece each (NO BONES!) 

Test your broth for saltiness, if it's a bit bland, add salt until it's savory. You can also add more pepper and/or ginger at this step. When you taste for salt, also check to see how lemony the broth tastes. Add more if you feel like it needs it.

Take out the bouquet garni and it's essentially ready to eat at this point.


Martha Stewart says you can make a richer broth by "two large egg yolks and the juice of one lemon" just before you serve it.

This is a nice basic soup, you can add noodles, potato, sweet potato, squash or rice or beans, or anything really. Experiment!

As a tip, if your soup is too salty, add a potato, quartered. It'll take up a lot of the salt and mellow things out.



*Some relatives may be squeamish about "chicken carcass" as a cooking term, use "leftovers" instead.  Unless they're vegan or vegetarian.  In these cases, be nice and let them know what's in the soup.

Apples!

Here in the Westside neighborhood, we slyly leave apples on our neighbors' doorsteps and run... just like people do with zucchinis.  There are so many and what do you do with them all?

We share. We call Mo and see if he's making cider and wants more apples. We do crock pot apple butter, which is the most "wasteful" in terms of apple-to-product ratio.  A full crock pot of apples will return about a quart of apple butter.  When you have two apple trees, it's a fair exchange.

This week, Jamie gave me a bucket of beautiful, crisp little yellow apples in exchange for a bucket of grapes.  They're good enough to eat on their own. They have a nice tart, mountain apple flavor and firm flesh. 

We decided to eat as many whole and raw as we can, so reserved about half the bucket for the garage-fridge.  Leaving about two and a half gallons of apples... so I started peeling and coring.  I got a lovely little peeler-corer-slicer machine a couple years ago for Christmas, makes the whole thing so much easier!

We're going non-gluten, so I've been re-learning to cook.  No apple pie, no apple crumble.  Maybe one day, when I learn how to use the Bob's flours properly ... and have them in my pantry!

But I do have some yummy spicy Texas pecans, butter, honey, raisins, coconut flakes, and all sorts of spices.

I've seen at least three really interesting looking recipes lately... one with beautiful apple slices curled around each other to make a rose, another with apples simply cored, old-style, and stuffed.  And then this version, so yummy looking, and french!

Ingredients

5 apples
1/4 cup butter
handful of pecans
handful of golden raisins 
4 pinches of coconut flakes
1 tablespoon each - cinnamon, cloves, ginger
Sprinkle of nutmeg

Directions

Core-slice-peel apples and dunk in lemon and water to keep from browning. Keeping 4 intact, set aside.

Put the 5th apple in a bowl, with pecans, raisins, spices and chop coarsely.  Add softened butter and mix well.  

Stuff cored-peeled-sliced apples with mixture and place in ramekins.  If you have any left, stuff around the apples in the ramekins. Sprinkle with coconut and honey. Bake at 375 degrees (F) for about 30 - 45 minutes. 

Remove from oven, let cool a few minutes. Sprinkle with nutmeg and serve.  Top with ice cream, yogurt, creme fraiche, or ...

Braised Vegetables

So braising... what?

 
Webster's says it's to "fry (food) lightly and then stew it slowly in a closed container".  

I proposed that you could also braise a hat, if you find yourself on the wrong end of a "I'll eat my hat if.." deal.  

I do not, however, propose that it will taste good unless you braise it in good butter.

Then there's this great recipe for braised celery, which was fabulous.  I recommend farm stand celery or the darkest, leafiest celery you can find in the store. 

Then the farm share had these amazing carrots... so, I just added them and followed the same recipe.

Ingredients 

Bunch celery
6 - 8 carrots
1 onion, chopped
Several tablespoons of butter, I leave that to your conscience Pepper and thyme to taste. 
Tablespoon(ish) of Better than Bullion. I like the Veggie version.

Directions

Cut celery and carrots on the diagonal, because it's so much cooler that way. Cut as thinly as your patience allows. Reserve some celery leaves for garnish.

Heat butter in a large skillet over medium heat. 

Toss in onion, go for the slightly caramelized approach.

Add celery and carrots and pepper.  

Sauté lightly, then cover. Wait about 10 minutes. The veggies will steam themselves and you can pick up the yummy caramelized bits off the bottom of the pan.  and cook until it starts to become tender. 

To make the broth, add your Better than Bullion to the veggie liquid. Spike the heat a bit and mix well, while reducing the liquid.  
Taste for seasoning and serve immediately, garnished with reserved chopped leaves.

We tried it again and added chopped cabbage, extra-yum!

Cat's Breakfast Salad

When I travel back home, I usually end up feeling completely food-overloaded. It's not my regular diet, the food is heavy, starchy, and I just end up feeling weird... 

My sister-in-law and I were standing in the kitchen on one such visit and she said "Breakfast Salad"

To which I said "huh?"

So came instruction in something that has become my favorite breakfast go-to.

It's so simple, a salad with an egg on top. Easy, done!  As usual, the devil's in the details.

After experimenting, I resolved that the heavier greens work better for me... collards, kale, spinach, arugula and so on.  That chop salad mix at Trader Joe's is a good one too, and easy to replicate from a farmshare box. 

My favorite mix so far is collards and spinach, with some sunflower seeds or pecans, tossed with a little bit of avocado oil and balsamic vinegar, topped with an egg over easy. 

This is good too... leftover veggies tossed with wilted collards

 

Whatever, Edward, I'll break my fast with last night's repast...

For a long time, when I was a kid, we had proper hot breakfast every morning.  Or at least what seemed like every morning.  With proper breakfast foods... and combination of toast, juice, milk, eggs, grits, bacon, sausage, ham... I don't recall any cold cereal in the early years, though it may have existed, it was definitely in the house by the time I hit high school.  Rice Chex and Cheerios for sure... maybe Grapenuts too?

After a couple years of one no-allergy, cast-iron stomach kid, along came a younger sib with a lot of allergies and strong opinions and Mom adapted... because really, what's important is a couple good proteins, some fats, and some fiber to get the kid through the first half of school without a blood sugar meltdown, right?  
 
So, homemade breakfast pizzas or breakfast burritos and so on... things kids can join in and help cook themselves, things you can whip together with some in-expert sous cheffies before everyone leaves in a whirlwind for work and school. 

Then proper breakfast becomes a thing for weekends and holidays.  And supper.

So trained, one of my favorite breakfasts remains The-Good-Thing-Left-Over-From-Last-Night, either served up as a muddle in a bowl, or wrapped up in an omelette. Second only to Cat's Breakfast Salad.

Last night we had a feast of steak, a curried veggie roast (yay! farmshare!), and fresh green beans... this morning, omelette of paradise!

Left-leaning, politically correct, elitist, over-educated, bourgeois radical pinko commie muskrat Alexanders

Dad's recipe... so simple, so easy, so good

Ingredients
2 oz Cognac or other fine aged brandy
1 oz Dark crème de cacao
1 oz Cream*

Add all the ingredients to a cocktail shaker and fill with ice.
Shake, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg

*Coconut cream subs well in this drink for the dairy as does almond milk

More fun with morels!

At the risk of adding a double dollop of pretention to an already pretentious activity (I mean a GenXer blog about food? Raaaaalllly, darling? How utterly outré!) ... I'll have to confess that I became fascinated with the omelette in Paris. I know, right?  But seriously, it's true.  

I went on a student trip, one of those "If it's Tuesday, we're probably at Bordeaux" things.  There was a little bit of a flair to it, Mesdames Grade and Sprout invited only second year students who had studied both French and Art for two years. Maybe the German students were invited also? Can't remember...

I do remember the trip was incredibly structured. 

We had meetings with family leading up to the trip. We each were assigned a research topic (I had Chateau Royal de Blois ... and something gothic, maybe the Notre-Dame de Reims? Then we were expected to present our research to the assembled families and also act as tour guide for our fellow students when we were at our specific tourist destinations. 

We were expected to speak French all day, but could speak English at night in the pension.

We expected to dress like modest French kids, no jeans or shorts. Girls wore skirts or dresses, boys wore slacks. We dressed for dinner.

We stayed in family pensions, generally owned by someone connected to Madame Grade's family in some way, or at least that's what my tiny adolescent brain understood. The hotels were small and somewhat spartan.  Breakfasts were usually communal and fabulous.  Lovely crispy bread and fresh butter or homemade jam.  Cafe au lait or chocolat. 

I remember Blois, Chambord, Versailles,  a Roman tower and gelato in Italy, miles of vineyards, cemeteries, the tunnel at Mont Blanc, Swiss cows and those astonishing mountains. Paris, in my memory, is a blur of museums, churches, markets, and coffee on the Boulevard Saint-Germain on La Rive Gauche where my favorite artists and writers hung out and smoked gauloises a long time ago.

We were in Paris for the better part of a week.  We ate breakfast together and then we set loose in pairs or groups (never alone!) to wander and soak it all in. I think a couple days we ate together, group picnics in the park. Maybe at the Jardin des Tuileries?

As I write this, I am taken aback at how times have changed. How would this trip be structured today. We were 12 and 13 year olds. Maybe our dress requirements let us fly under the radar? 

We had an allowance of 21 francs a day*.   My friends and I scrimped for a couple days, smuggling out bread and butter from breakfast to eat for lunch,  in order to raise enough stake to go to Maxim's. We each had enough to buy a cup of coffee and a small bowl of potage (which came with a slice of bread). A small price, we thought, for a pass to sit in the place where so much history had happened. 

So omelettes? Right, omelettes...

At one of the open markets, there was an old lady making omelettes and crepes to order.  I watched her for at least an hour, just amazed (and amazed in that open-mouthed kind of way) at how fast she was turning them out. She talked to me in between customers, patiently answering my questions... I remember her saying that the pan and the fire do the work for you, so you should have a good pan and a hot fire. So there you go... 

My second lesson in omelettes came years and years later, when I watched my brother make omelettes at one of our Sunday get-togethers.  He said he had the opportunity to work with a chef, who took the time to walk him through all the steps and then made him do it over and over. 

So you want to do good omelettes? Get a good pan. Seriously. Either a really well seasoned cast iron shallow sided pan... or one of these newfangled no stick miracle pans. Now practice, mix up some eggs. Get your pan hot (add oil or butter if needed) pour the beaten eggs into the pan, swirl around. Pay attention. Practice flipping the eggs. Practice practice practice.

Ingredients for filling for two two-egg omelettes

Handful of morels and/or any other mushroom, chopped
4 inches of leeks, sliced fine
2 slices of ham, small cubes
A couple stalks of asparagus, chopped into bite-sized lengths
A medallion of chevre (about 1 ounce) 
Dollop of sour cream or crème fraîche (optional)
A pat or two of butter
Salt, pepper, and thyme 
1/4 - 1/2 cup of white wine

Sauté mushrooms, ham, and leek in butter. Add spices to taste.  When leeks are translucent and asparagus stalks are soft, add chevre and reduce heat to medium-low. Stir well to soften cheese and mix well with sauteed vegetables. Remove mushroom mix and set pan aside.

Sauce

Now, look at the bottom of your pan, see all those bits and stuck on stuff? That's "sucs" aka "the Good Stuff".  

Sucs form from the deposit of browned sugars, carbohydrates, and/or proteins that form on the bottom of the pan, along with any rendered fat. To turn the sucs into a basic gravy, you just need a solvent. For this recipe, you'll use white wine. When your pan is hot, pour a little white wine into your pan, and scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon or spatula.  This is deglazing. Your goal is to get all those little pieces and caramelized goodness up and mixed in with the wine to make a delicious, thin, sauce which is called fond.

Omelettes



Four eggs, well beaten
Salt, pepper

In your favorite pan, pour half the egg mixture and cook.  

Putting it together... 

After the omelette flip, wait a few seconds and then plate the omelette. Scoop out half the sauteed mushroom and cheese mixture onto the omelette. Fold over and add a dollop of sour cream and pour half the fond over the egg and sour cream.  We like this with sour dough bread, but really any bread would do ... or none at all, if you roll that way.

* historical exchange rate info tells me this is about 3.50 dollars.  Wow.

Morel Risotto

Morchella, the true morel, is a genus of edible mushrooms closely related to anatomically simpler cup fungi in the order Pezizales.

Morel hunting is a big deal here in the Pacific Northwest. According to my favorite forester, the morel is pyrophilic, which means it grows really well in forests which have been recently burned by a forest fire.

Morels have a lovely flavor, often described as nutty. And they love butter as much as I do.  Since they respond fairly well to long slow cooking times, I thought I'd sub in morels this season in my favorite rice dish ... risotto. This is a long cooking experience... go full Julia Child as you cook this, pour yourself a glass of wine, line up a jazzy playlist and stir and stir... 

Ingredients

1.5 cups of arborio rice
Handful of morels (or other mushroom) 
One large, sweet onion, chopped and caramelized
One leek, finely sliced
Veggie broth
Lemon
Butter
Olive oil

Caramelize your onion in butter and olive oil. Do not be fooled, this takes a loooooong time.  But so does risotto. You can either start these processes simultaneously or do the onion ahead of time. I like caramelized onion as a condiment or in small doses in other dishes, so I make it ahead of time and just add whatever's left into the risotto.  Here's a good guide with some recipes attached. Just go slow.  Sip your wine. 
 
The rice... risotto is arborio rice cooked very slowly.  The end product is a lovely, creamy mixture that will remind you (slightly) of rice pudding. Here's my favorite guide to cooking risotto, though I have never been able to beat a 45 minute cooking time. This may be why I don't have my own restaurant!  I also don't ever add the cheese, I think the rice is creamy enough without it.  But again, why not add cheese if you can tolerate it. Parmesan or any hard cheese is good. And so is cheve!

If you're using the recipe linked above, your soffrito is sauteed morels and leeks, with caramelized onions stirred in. I used zero spices, because I figured the broth had enough salt to make the morel and leek flavor pop... and I really wanted to taste the mushrooms... but go crazy with the spices if you're feeling it! 

I add a squirt of lemon at the end, to add some brightness to the flavor.

Serve with roasted asparagus and a side of weird slaw.

Cat's Ch-ch-chia Seed Pudding

She's adorable and all the things you could only hope a sibling manages to bring home to join the family, but my sister-in-law really solidified her place in my heart by teaching me this super simple recipe.  

Add ingredients into a canning jar and slide in the fridge, next day... PUDDING! 


Ingredients

9 parts Chocolate Almond Milk (or coconut cream or anything really) 
1 part chia seeds

Any spice.  We've tried both plain almond milk and coconut cream with nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla. 

If you use sweetened milk substitute, it's super yummy, but you can't control the sweetness. If you use unsweetened any of your favorite sweeteners work. I really like honey. 

Homemade Vegan Mayonnaise

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons liquid from a can of chickpeas or white beans (at room temperature)
• 3/4-1 cup neutral tasting oil ("Peanut Butter and Vegan" recipe calls for grapeseed; "Whole30" uses olive oil)

Directions:

Combine vinegar, ground mustard, salt, and chickpea liquid in a canning jar with an immersion blender. No immersion blender, use a small steep-sided bowl and a handheld mixer.  Mix for just a second, just combining ingredients. 

While the blender is runner, slowly drizzle in the oil 1/4 cup at a time. The mixture will start to become very thick. Once the mixture is nice and thick (i.e. it doesn’t run/pour off the immersion blender when lifted out of the mixture), stop adding the oil. 

Transfer mayo to a jar if you went the bowl route, just cover if you mixed in your canning jar. Store in the fridge. The mayo will thicken up upon refrigeration. 

Use in place of mayonnaise in any recipe.

Makes about 3/4-1 cup

Mayonnaise Recipes 
 Peanut Butter & Vegan 
 Whole30 

Floating Island

Sometimes Writers' Group is not just about writing... sometimes it's about film and literature and the desserts therein.

In Desk Set, Katharine Hepburn's Bunny serves Spencer Tracy's Richard a delicate little dessert called  Floating Island.They eat it in their bathrobes and wonder a lot about a strange smell coming from the kitchen.  "You need a new ventilator," says Richard, "but this dessert is terrif!"

I was certain that Marmee's four daughters made Floating Island, but it looks like Jo's disastrous dessert was berries and cream (and salt!) and Blanc Mange for poor Beth.  

And I was equally certain and equally wrong, that Anne and Diana ate Floating Island dessert.  

So now I'm left wondering where else I read it... maybe Rose served her Uncle and rowdy cousins plates of custard and meringue?  Or was it sisters Katy and clever Clover?  

Can anyone remember? 

All literary references aside, Beth made Floating Island following Ina Garten's recipe, for Writers' Group today... 

Amazing!  Give it a go!  

Heads-up vegans!  There's a good (=tasty) sub for eggs... bean juice (aka aquafaba). So yes, you can make vegan islands for your floating dessert and "what about the custard?" you ask. "Try this custard recipe," I say.  

And there's always the tried and true... chia custard! which can be as fabulous as this and this or as simple as this.

Happy May Day!

It's the first of May, the sun is shining, the birds are... well, singing. And the farmshare starts up next week. 

To get warmed up, I tried that Egg & Avocado thing that's been floating around the internet for months.

Ingredients

2 Eggs  (medium or small) 
1 Avocado
Chives
Sweet Potato
Sour Cream
Spinach 
Field Roast (your favorite)
Lime
Salt 
Pepper
Thyme

Instructions for Egg-thing

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Make some sort of support to keep your egg-filled avocado level. I used some crinkled-up tin foil.  On the internet, the cooking gurus have avocado-shaped ramekins. Whatever. 

Halve the avocado, remove seed.  You may need to take a scoop or two out to make room for the egg. Just eyeball it, it'll be fine.

Set the avocado halves on a cookie sheet, with their supports.  Crack the eggs, put one each in the center of the avocado.  Season with salt, pepper, and thyme to taste. Squeeze a bit of lime juice on top.

Pop in the oven for about 20 minutes.  Maybe longer. It'll depend entirely on how you like your eggs. I put the field roast in the same pan and cooked 'em alongside each other.

Instructions for Sweet Potato Garnish

I used half a leftover sweet potato.  I think it was roughly a cup.  Drop in a tablespoon of sour cream (yogurt might work too) and mix well. 

Serve with whatever garnish you like, we had some spinach left over, so I scattered that on the plate.  Picked some chives from the pot on the front porch (that purple flower). Nasturtiums or violets would be pretty... or glacier lily, if you have any.

Then a dollop of that mashed sweet potato, with a slice of lime. 

Super yummy!

Oh, and I figured out calories, if you're into that. 

Without field roast - 375 calories

With field roast - looks like most single sausages are in the 250 calorie range, so just add in whatever you had.

mid-Winter Feast

The last of the onions, some store-bought peppers, apples from Jeanne's house and a few cups of Mo's hard apple cider together with the amazing Chris' Own beer and hard apple cider brats from the Methow Valley.  Wow!