Return of Soup Season...

I botched the recipe link in the previous post. Here is the correct one and it is a delight; we had it again tonight and it was wonderful.

Oh and Meg pointed out that I neglected to mention that it is balsamic vinegar that gives that delicious tang; don't use cider vinegar here. Enjoy!

Soup Season

It is officially soup season here in Vermont. It's been a cold winter for the most part but extremely dry resulting in almost no snow. The landscape is more brown than white which is very strange. The wind has been blowing all the time it seems and outside activities are just not that appealing to me. Combine that with the crappy economic times, crazy gun toting biology professors, and the ongoing struggle with both the Man and my waistline and it seems like a good time for some warm, comforting and healthy soup.

For some reason, I have very little history with soup so I'm happy that in recent times we've added to our vegetarian repertoire a simple delicious little recipe for Tomato and Lentil Soup. The bold helping of lentils gives the soup a heartiness that both satisfies your hunger and provides a great helping of protein and fiber at the same time. In fact googling lentils provides links with titles like "Worlds Healthiest Foods" so any delicious way to get them is OK with me.

The recipe is basic - lots of onions, carrots, celery, and garlic chopped finely and sautéed in a big cast iron dutch oven. The recipe urges you to use a food processor to save time but since we finally have some sharp knives around the house (Santa brought us a knife sharpener that really works), I enjoyed it the old fashioned way. Once the veggies are tender you add in a bunch of water, several cups of lentils (I used red though I read that the green lentils are higher in fiber), some tomato sauce along with a dash (actually a tablespoon or two) of vinegar which adds a nice tang to the project. A couple bay leaves and a deadly dried red chili or two and you're good to go. We simmer this for about a half hour or forty minutes and then serve with a couple black olives and some crumbled feta cheese for a delicious satisfying meal.

With this delicious and hearty soup and a nice warming brew, the soul and the body is nourished and the wind not quite so biting. Add in a dash of humanity from the Olympic Games and even the Man can be sent packing.

Buvez: The folks at Smuttynose rule our house this time of year. Their Wheat Wine Ale is a strong and reliable partner to this soup.
 

Pipérade with Poached Eggs

So due to my overzealous behavior at the Co-Op's deli counter Friday evening, we had a bit of pancetta left over after building the Pasta e Fagioli last night. Meg searched around for a good recipe to use it up as part of our Sunday Brunch program. She stumbled on this recipe for something called Pipérade. She also found that Julia had a similar recipe calling for ham. They both looked pretty standard with sautéed onions and peppers - you know - the standard stuff.

Boy were we wrong!

First I noted that the onions and peppers were to be sliced longways rather than being diced; not a big deal but this tells you something about what you're making. Next I find that instead of sautéing the vegetables, we are really slow cooking them until they are very soft and tender. By the time I added the sherry (a bit for the Pipérade, a bit for me!) and the red wine vinegar (we didn't have sherry vinegar), both Meg and I realized we were not in Kansas anymore.

So to back up, I started by sautéing the pancetta until crispy and then removing from the pan and reserving it for later. Next I added the onions, peppers and garlic to the same pan, sautéed briefly and then reduced the heat for 20 or 30 minutes cooking slowly without browning the vegetables.

Now the fun begins. We added chopped roma tomatoes, the vinegar & sherry, stock (we used good vegetable stock) and the reserved pancetta. I brought this to a boil and then strongly simmered the mixture to reduce and thicken a bit.

It's at this point that Meg and I realize we are not making an egg dish at all: we're making a delicious tangy stew with pancetta and vegetables into which we are going to drop a couple gently poached (OK, the first two were overdone) eggs. As Julia suggests, you really should read the recipe before you make it.

The result was unlike anything we'd ever had before; a tangy rich stew with precious prizes of pancetta combining with rich bits of poached egg. Oh and it was beautiful too; richly colored with green peppers and tomatoes. If we had our own food joint, this would definitely be on the brunch menu!

So it turns out this Basque food is often made with serrano ham (instead of pancetta) but otherwise is very similar to what we made. A bit of surfing reveals a restaurant of the same name in the Bay area which looks very tempting indeed.

Buvez: we had some delicious prosecco (operating from a number of white wine recommendations) but I think it was overmatched. This is beer food. Next time I might try indulging in the sweet maltiness of the Smuttynose Wheat Wine - a current cold Vermont winter warmer favorite of mine. Next time indeed...

Pasta e Fagioli

A couple of weeks ago, we had the Food Network on TV and Rachel Ray was making Pasta e Fagioli. She used several ingredients that we had in our cupboard, like canned cannellini beans, tomato, and pasta so I put it on my list of future meals. A couple weeks later, when the temperature dipped into the single digits, I thought it would be a good time to make a hearty soup and I remembered the Pasta e Fagioli. So I pulled out a few cookbooks to find a recipe that looked good to me. As usual, "The Joy of Cooking" was one of the first. Then I grabbed Barbara Kafka's "Soup - A Way of Life" and then "Trattoria" by Patricia Wells. Rachel Ray had mentioned that when she first made the soup on her show, she didn't include tomato and a bunch of people wrote in and told her that she should have. On her latest show, she did include tomato and she was pretty sure that she would get as many letters as before but now saying that she shouldn't include tomato. As Patricia Wells says, "There are about as many versions of pasta and bean soup as there are cooks".  I decided to go with Patricia's version, which did not include tomato.

My rule of thumb for most recipes is to follow it exactly the first time and then vary it as you wish after you have experienced the original, as intended by the author. Patricia Wells did not have any canned ingredients in her version so I prepared a grocery list for Tyler. We didn't have dried cranberry beans, tiny dried Italian pasta, like ditalini or stars, or pancetta (ours is a mostly vegetarian household), so those went on the list. I carefully specified two ounces of pancetta, exactly enough for the recipe so we didn't have an excuse to use meat again. I also added a bunch of celery with leaves to the list, which I usually buy except for last week when celery hearts were on sale. The soup recipe called for a rib of celery including the leaves as well as a bouquet garni that included celery leaves, so we'll just have to eat more celery in the next week or two.

Last night was the night. I am still recovering from hand surgery so Tyler pretty much made the whole thing. (I, of course, directed the show). Our local Coop did not have dried cranberry beans so we used dried cannellini beans, which we soaked in boiling water for about an hour before "we" started cooking. Tyler sautéed the pancetta with onion, carrots, garlic and celery (with leaves) in olive oil, and then added the beans, water and bouquet garni. After simmering for about a half hour, he added some salt and then simmered for another hour. He then removed a couple of ladles of the beans and veggies putting them in a bowl on the side. Using our awesome immersion blender, he pureed the remaining soup until almost creamy. He added the beans and veggies back in and brought the soup to a simmer and adding the pasta to cook for another ten minutes. (The Coop didn't have ditalini so "we" broke vermicelli into small pieces as a substitute, as Patricia Wells suggested). 

Time to eat! The soup was served in bowls with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil on the top. It was just wonderful! We are looking forward to trying other versions of the soup at some of our local Italian restaurants, but it couldn't possibly be better than this!

By the way, Tyler didn't get two ounces of pancetta (surprise!). He got about five ounces. Whatever will we do with the rest? Check in again to find out...

One more footnote: play Dean Martin's version of "That's Amore" while you cook.

Sunday Brunch: Julie Sahni's Indian Eggs

Our Sunday Brunch this week was a new twist on a favorite of ours: Indian Eggs or to be more specific Scrambled Eggs with Cumin and Fragrant Herbs from our new Indian cookbook Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni. 

Meg has made variations on a Madhur Jaffrey egg recipe for some time and it is one of my favorites - especially when she goes heavy on the chilies! This recipe, though simpler, was a real wake up call. It is basically chunks of onions lightly sautéed with scrambled eggs and then topped with freshly roasted/crushed cumin, fresh cilantro and fresh chopped (seeded) chilies. 

Meg and I have become huge fans of gently toasting whole cumin seeds and then crushing them in a mortar and pestle to release their fragrant goodness. The crushed toasted cumin in this recipe, combined with the fragrant cilantro and burning chilies, transforms this simple crunchy egg dish into something really special. We will definitely be making this again and again! Thanks Julie!

Tuna Melt

I'm feeling a bit under the weather this weekend, probably the result of a long work week and a bit of sinus trouble. As lunchtime rolled around today, I was feeling a bit whiny and begged Meg to make me one of my favorite lunchtime comfort foods: a good tuna melt.

In response I got a masterpiece.

Her "tuna melt" included chopped onion, diced hot chilies, roasted red pepper with smoked swiss cheese and tuna on a single slice of Jewish Rye. There may have been some other kind of magic in there because it was an entirely new thing. The smoked swiss and the roasted red pepper combined with the tuna to create a very savory experience. The diced chili asserted itself, adding flavor and heat, without overwhelming. The result was like nothing I've ever had before. 

Followed up with a few gingersnaps, it was just what the doctor ordered!

Latkes

I have great memories of potato pancakes that my Dad would make when we were kids. Most of the time, my Mom did the cooking but there were a few items that were my Dad's specialty. Western omelettes, breakfast pancakes and potato pancakes quickly jump to mind. I had been meaning to make latkes before Christmas but just didn't get to it. We still had all the ingredients, including sour cream and homemade applesauce, so we went for it.

We followed a Mark Bittman recipe which started by grating about 2 lbs. of starchy potatoes and one medium onion. We usually hand grate them, as my Dad did, but that's pretty hard work and we were not so inclined, so we grated them in the food processor. It sure goes fast but I think you end up with a better texture if you do it by hand. Next, Tyler squeezed as much water as he could out of the grated vegetables. It's surprising how much comes out. Then we combined the veggies with 2 beaten eggs, salt, pepper and enough bread crumbs to bind the batter. We cooked them in Tyler's heirloom cast iron skillet, in a small amount of hot corn oil. It took about 15 minutes per side and we cooked up the entire batch, keeping them warm under the heat lamp, drying on paper towel.

 

This is not really health food but it sure was tasty! We served them with light sour cream and applesauce on the side. When we heated up some leftovers the next day for lunch, we also added a dollop of Patak's Hot Mango Chutney for some zing. Really good.

We very rarely cook anything in oil and the house smelled a bit like a greasy spoon - it was great coming back into the house after being outside!

These were wonderful - especially with the hot mango chutney. They are pretty fun to make too - we sweat whether they would hold together and learned not to worry: the heat and the eggs do the trick.

I'm also completely psyched to learn that we have at least one heirloom pan in the house! 

Buvez: Sadly the last of the case of Big-A IPA we purchased a while ago at the Co-Op. A great fit as always.