Of Houses and Hurricanes

I was going to offer up more pictures of the new kitchen and also the garden, but weather, work, and a whole lot of chaos relating to our upstairs remodeling project got in the way, so that will have to wait.  In the meantime, in order not to fall back on my blog-procrastinating ways, I’ll dish a little bit about the house and share the recipe for the black bean soup I also made in anticipation of the hurricane.

When we went looking for a house, there were many criteria on our very long list of needs, but of paramount importance were a big yard for the Monster, who clearly missed the grassy kingdom she ruled in Seattle, and of course a well-appointed kitchen, or at least a kitchen space large enough to be made well-appointed with a reasonable amount of renovating.  After much searching and a fair amount of nail biting, we landed Chez Disdain, which, while it has its downsides like any old house, has both yard and kitchen in spades.

The plot is mind-bogglingly large for being still within city limits, and since it has both expanses of lawn and trees and shrubs around the fence line, it’s like her very own dog park (with the corresponding downside for His Lordship of that much more ground to cover with his push mower).  There is also plenty of room for gardening in containers on the patio and even in numerous sunny spots on the ground, so my dad, who came with my mother to help with the move and settling in, planted a stunning variety of things that are now, despite the ridiculous weather, yielding up some great dividends.  We have three varieties of tomatoes currently producing enough for a little bit of salad or salsa every week or so, both bell and long twisty peppers turning a nice deep red, a ton of different herbs I’ve been using pretty much daily, and in about a month we’re going to have as much winter squash as anyone can handle, by the looks of the rapidly-swelling vines. Our two failures so far were the watermelons, which just got into the ground too late and won’t have time to turn those flowers into fruit before summer truly ends, and a summer squash that didn’t survive the tipping over of its pot while we were moving it.

The kitchen, as I hinted in the previous post, is the best I’ve ever had by a mile.  Since it’s the one place the prior owner actually seems to have put a large investment into (don’t get me started about where she should have and didn’t), it reads like the househunter’s impossible wishlist.  It’s gigantic, has acres of counters even before you factor in the big island/breakfast bar, contains so much cabinetry that even I haven’t been able to fill it all yet, and let’s not forget the aforementioned six-burner Viking range.  For the first time ever, I’m able to have pretty much every appliance out and ready for use at all times, from the Kitchenaid to the rice cooker, and I could cook about six different things at once if I thought I could keep it all under control.

The only things that I don’t so much love are the lack of plugs in the island, the slightly smaller than ideal sink, the lack of window in the oven, and most irritatingly, the fridge. It’s one of the French door side-by side models with built-in ice and water dispenser, so I’m sure it was pricey, but the configuration makes no sense at all for anyone who actually wants to cook.  The refrigerator side is much too narrow, unable to hold a cookie sheet or an average sized turkey for the holidays, and a frosted cake would require major reorganizing of the bazillion jars of jam, pickles, condiments, etc. that we can’t live without.  The capacity is so low that we have to think carefully about what we buy on the weekend shopping trips, and it would probably be better if I adopted the European style of buying produce a couple of times a week, because the vegetable bins aren’t very big either.  We’ll eventually replace it with something better but right now there are just too many things ahead in the queue of our thrilling adventure in home ownership, starting with every single bathroom.

But since this is a food and snark blog rather than a This-Old-House-cum-Money-Pit blog, and I promised a certain person the recipe for black bean soup, let’s get back to what you can do when facing a preposterous weather event.  This soup is adapted from a recipe from Millennium, the schmancy San Francisco vegan restaurant, which His Lordship took me to one birthday when we lived on the other coast.  I find the cookbook overly fussy in some ways, but if you cut out the garnish components and pare the recipes down to the essential parts, many of them can be made deliciously reasonable for everyday use.  Apart from the extra time of cooking the beans from scratch, this soup is easy and yummy and comforting, whether you’re staring down a hurricane or just a drippy early-fall day.

What makes it “Brazilian” is the combination of orange and coffee added to the basic aromatic vegetables and generally Latin spicing of cumin and chile.  You might think that adding orange juice would make it weirdly sweet, and putting ground coffee straight into soup would leave it gritty, but both just dissolve completely into the broth and create a lovely complex, smooth base in which the beans can shine.  While I adore black beans in pretty much any form, this is one of my absolute favorite applications for them.  It’s a meal in itself, especially rounded out with some fried plaintains, but it would also be a great first course for a pan-American feast.

Brazilian Black Bean Soup
(Adapted from Erick Tucker & John Westerdahl, The Millennium Cookbook)
Serves 6-8

3 tablespoons olive oil
2 large yellow onions, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 small serrano chiles, minced
1 ½ tablespoons ground cumin
1 ½ teaspoons dried marjoram
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
½ teaspoon ground chipotle
1 large bay leaf
1 tablespoon finely ground coffee
1 pound black beans, cooked, with their cooking liquid (about 6 cups beans and liquid)
1 cup orange juice
3 cups vegetable broth
Salt or soy sauce to taste
Sour cream or creme fraiche and lime wedges for serving

In a large, heavy pot, saute the vegetables in the olive oil over medium heat until beginning to turn soft and translucent. Add the spices and coffee and cook a minute longer, stirring constantly.

Add the beans with their liquid, juice and enough broth to cover and season with several pinches of salt or a few shots of soy sauce.  Bring to a boil, lower heat enough to maintain a strong simmer, and cook uncovered 24-30 minutes, until the broth has thickened a bit and all the flavors have blended well.  Taste and add more salt or soy as needed.

Serve with a spoonful of sour cream on top and lime wedges on the side.

Notes:

The original recipe cooked the beans in the soup straight from a pre-soaked condition, which made the total cooking time 1 ½-2 hours.  I prefer to cook the beans separately the night before in the slow cooker, so I can have the option of making half the recipe and freezing the rest of the beans for later.  If you want to cook the beans in the soup, omit the salt until the last minute and keep the soup covered while it cooks.

If you get sick of the leftovers, the soup freezes very well, but it can also be transmogrified into really easy and tasty burgers.  Pulse the soup with an equal amount of cooked rice, some additional cumin, salt and pepper in a food processor just until it starts to form a chunky paste.  Turn out into a bowl and stir in enough fresh breadcrumbs or panko to create a moldable mixture. Shape golfball sized amounts into patties and pan fry in a bit of olive or canola oil until crisp on both sides.  I served it with a quick ranch-type sauce of mayonnaise, creme fraiche, a little buttermilk to thin it, and a lot of freshly cracked pepper, plus some cherry tomato salad.  It’d do just as well on a toasted bun with the usual fixings.

/

Read Full Post »

Cue Up the Gypsy Kings

There were some optimistic souls who assumed we were due for a mild summer to make up for the horrific winter we had, followed by a spring with a terminal identity crisis, which it tried to resolve by experimenting with 40s and rainy and 80s and humid in 72-hour rotations for the past two months. Said well-meaning souls do not have my hard-earned and deep-seated cynicism, which is why they might have been disappointed when the weather gods decided Memorial Day weekend was as good as any time to go from zero to July, and to hell with June.

Some might say that my reality-based view of the universe makes me less shiny-happy-whatever, but I say there is a certain grim satisfaction to be derived from being right, to say nothing of being better prepared when the inevitable happens. When the 90s-and-humid hit, I already had a pitcher of cold-brewed coffee ready in the fridge, and I was also raring to make my favorite heat-busting celebration of summer, even if it had to be made with supermarket tomatoes because it isn’t actually July and the Jersey tomatoes are still weeks away.

Gazpacho, like flamenco music, is one of those things I fell so hard in love with at first exposure that I have to attribute it to genetic memory. After all, some part of my cross-Mediterranean mix does come from Andalusia, the ancestral home of both. I’m still trying to find the time and discipline to learn guitar, but regularly making gazpacho during the sauna season honors my forebearers with almost no time or effort, and consistently helps me keep my cool.

Gazpacho is infinitely forgiving and you can vary the amounts and ingredients according to what you have and like. For example, this version comes from Jose Andres, my favorite Spanish chef and the source of the best flan ever. His (actually his Andalusian wife’s) recipe uses half a green pepper rather than one whole red one, but I almost never buy green anymore since red is so much sweeter and more versatile, so I used that. Of course, the better tomatoes you use the more deeply flavorful this will be. When the heirlooms hit the farmers markets, go nuts with any variety you can find.

Gazpacho
(Adapted from Jose Andres’ Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America)
Serves 4, if I feel especially self-sacrificing

2 pounds ripe tomatoes (around 5-6 medium ones)
1 large cucumber, peeled
1 small red pepper
1 garlic clove, peeled
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, preferably Spanish
2 teaspoons sea salt

Core the tomatoes, chop roughly into eighths, and place in a blender. Roughly chop the cucumber and pepper and add to the carafe on top of the tomatoes. Add the garlic, vinegar and water, and blend until the mixture is uniform and no visible chunks of vegetable remain. Taste and add more vinegar to balance the tomatoes and pepper if they’re especially sweet.

Add the oil and salt and blend again briefly. Don’t blend too long or the gazpacho will start to heat up and you’ll lose the fruitiness of the olive oil. Chill in the carafe until very cold, at least 30 minutes.

Serve in glasses, drizzled with a tiny bit more olive oil and vinegar. If you like, you can also garnish with cherry tomatoes and additional diced cucumber.

Notes:

The recipe calls for straining the gazpacho after the initial blending and before the refrigeration step, but I never bother because unless I’m paying big bucks for it at Jaleo, when perfection is to be expected, I prefer gazpacho to be a little rustic. You can strain if you like, but the extra fiber is good for you, and shouldn’t life have a little texture?

Read Full Post »

In Lieu of Sunday Baking

I think I’ve made clear my feelings about New Year’s rituals, particularly the odious habit of encouraging the making of doomed-to-failure resolutions. Without doing any such thing, I can still understand the impulse to consciously dial things back for the next couple of weeks, just to balance your system back out after all the holiday crapulence. That’s always how I feel come January 2nd, which is why our first homemade meal on coming home from our travels was a very simple, gentle and nurturing soup of mushrooms and barley.

His Lordship and I both come from food-loving families and cultural traditions, so you can well imagine the levels of excess that were reached during the ten days we were among them for the holidays. At several points, one or both of us swore we were going to fast for a week from the minute we got on the plane. On top of that, we came home to temperatures that can be described with sincerity as arctic. It was (and still is) painfully freezing, with the kind of windchill-enhanced lows that suck all the moisture from every inch of exposed skin the minute you step out the door and make your lungs hurt with the very first breath you take.

This soup is easy to pull together from a mostly-bare cupboard, and will do your overloaded digestive system and your chilled limbs good. It should also serve as a competent place-holder until I put up a new lentil recipe, in keeping with the one start-of-the-year tradition I seem to have established.

Mushroom Barley Soup
Serves 4 as a main course, or 6 as a first course

1/4 ounce dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted in 1 cup boiling water
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
3 ribs celery, diced
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced in thin half-moons
8 ounces button mushrooms, quartered and sliced
1 cup pearl barley
5 cups vegetable stock
1 rind from a smallish piece of parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot over medium-high heat and add the onion, celery and carrots, plus a pinch of salt, and cook until the vegetables begin to wilt. Lift the porcini out of their soaking liquid and roughly chop, reserving the liquid. Add the porcini and button mushrooms and continue cooking until everything begins to caramelize. Add the barley to the mixture and cook for several more minutes to toast it.

Deglaze the pan with the porcini soaking liquid, thoroughly scraping up the brown bits from the bottom. Add the stock, parmesan rind, thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then cover the pot and reduce the heat to maintain a simmer. Cook until the barley is tender, 30-45 minutes.

Taste and correct for salt and pepper as needed. Discard the bay leaf and parmesan rind before serving the soup.

Notes:

The barley will continue soaking up liquid in the fridge, so you will probably have to add a bit of hot water to the leftovers before reheating the next day.

The cheese rind might seem a strange choice, but it adds depth of flavor and makes full use out of a pricey ingredient.

Read Full Post »

Defying the Conventional Wisdom

Onion soup is one of the supposed betes noires of vegetarianism. They will tell you that it can’t be done without meat stock, and more specifically without beef stock — homemade from roasted beef bones, of course. They will tell you to give it up, because a vegetarian-friendly onion soup by definition will be bland, feeble, and worse than nothing.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It’s just a matter of expanding your definitions a bit and being a little more creative. While this version is not identical to the beef-based original, it is no less deep, dark, and wonderful. Even better, it’s fast and easy enough for even your most harried mid-week dinner, especially if the weather is as miserably damp and grey as it has been around here lately. The only downside is that slicing this many onions will make you weep quantities of tears Ron Howard would sell his last remaining hairs to evoke and quite likely will stink up your house. It’s a small price to pay for this level of heartstring-plucking warmth (which, again, Opie would kill for).

You could go whole hog and gratin the tops of individual portions with shredded Gruyere, or serve alongside a grown-up grilled cheese made with artisan bread and the fancy cheese of your choice. It would also meet with my full approval were you to be moved to whip up a batch of these:

Cheese Biscotti

Vegetarian Onion Soup
Serves 2-3 as a main course, 4 as a first course

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
8 cups thinly sliced onions (see note below)
1 cup apple cider
4 cups vegetable stock
2 teaspoons dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the butter and oil in a large heavy pot over medium-high heat until the butter is barely starting to brown. Add the onions, tossing to coat with the fat, and cook, stirring intermittently, until the onions are seriously browned and caramelized, around 15 minutes.

Deglaze the pan with the cider, scraping the bottom thoroughly to pick up all the yummy solids. Add the stock, thyme, salt and pepper, partially cover the pot, and simmer until the onions are meltingly soft, 20-30 more minutes.

Notes:

I favor a combination of yellow onions, red onions and shallots. I think this gives the soup a little more nuance, but if plain old yellow is all you have, go right ahead and use those. I would not use very sweet varieties like Walla Walla or Vidalia, since as lovely as they are for other things, they tend to make an insipid soup, and you’re already getting sweetness from the cider.

I use the “chicken” flavor bouillon concentrate, but if you have good homemade veggie broth, by all means use that.

Read Full Post »

Soup for a Blustery Day

Despite my love of fall produce, especially cranberries, for some reason I’m not quite ready for autumn just yet.  Ready or not, the temperatures are dropping, the rain and wind have definitely arrived, and so have the seasonal offerings at the market.

Since I can’t hold it back, this rich, just barely gingery bisque of kabocha squash is a great start toward embracing the inevitable.  I roasted the diced squash first for extra depth, and separately toasted the seeds with butter and five-spice powder for a crunchy garnish.  Apple cider mixed with the vegetable stock and diced apples in the garnish added a hint of sweetness and brought out even more of the squash flavor.

Although it was the backbone of a very casual rainy-day dinner tonight, the smooth simplicity and seasonally-appropriate colors of this soup would make it a great first course for your Thanksgiving dinner.

Roasted Kabocha Squash Soup with Apple and Five-Spice Seeds
Serves 4

1 small (2-lb) kabocha squash
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 tablespoon each unsalted butter and olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 cups vegetable stock
1 cup apple cider
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
Salt and pepper
1 eating apple (preferably Honeycrisp or Fuji)
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 400 F.  Line two baking sheets with foil.

Peel and empty out the squash, reserving the seeds.  Chop the peeled squash into 1-inch dice and toss with canola oil, then spread onto sheet in single layer.  Bake until tender and beginning to brown at the edges, 30-35 minutes, stirring once or twice.  Remove from oven and reduce oven temperature to 375 F.

Remove the seeds from the squash pulp, clean well in a bowl of water, and pat dry between paper towels.  Stir the salt and five-spice powder into the melted butter, add to the cleaned seeds, and toss to combine.  Spread onto the second sheet and roast until golden and crisp.  Set aside to cool.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a heavy stock pot over medium heat.  Saute the onion and celery until translucent, then add roasted squash and ginger cook a few minutes more.  Add stock, cider, salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, then cover and lower heat, simmering for 30 minutes.

Using an immersion or regular blender, puree the soup until smooth. Taste and correct with additional salt and pepper as needed.

Peel and dice the apple, tossing with the lemon juice, then mix with the roasted seeds. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with the seed and apple garnish.

Notes:

Any orange squash, from butternut to pumpkin, could be substituted here, although pumpkin seeds are tougher and more fibrous than kabocha.  In that case, I would use toasted pecans in the garnish instead, as I did when I first made this soup with sweet potatoes, which was also great.

Read Full Post »

Cooler Weather Fare: Lima Bean and Corn Chowder

As the weather turns inexorably cooler and wetter, I begin to crave soup. Later in the year, this will mean heavier soups made primarily from pantry staples, but fortunately, in the transition between summer and true autumn there’s a merciful period during which there is still a good variety of end-of-summer produce, like the wonderful fresh limas I got from the farmer’s market yesterday. I was originally planning on using them for a salad, but as it was a horrible rainy day, I threw together this pretty chowder on a whim instead.

It’s a satisfying blend of fresh and rich, with the sweetness of the corn and the bite of the chile flakes and black pepper cutting through the creaminess of the broth, and the potatoes and limas providing a smooth and substantial mouthfeel. It’s also a snap to put together, but tastes like you went to a considerable amount of trouble.

Lima Bean and Corn Chowder
Serves 4-6

2 tablespoons each butter and olive oil
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes
1 large onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
1 orange (or red) pepper, diced
6 cups vegetable stock
4 small potatoes, peeled and diced
1 dry quart fresh lima beans
16 oz frozen corn kernels
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and pepper
1/2 to 1 cup heavy cream

Heat butter and oil in a heavy pot. Add chile flakes, onions, celery and pepper and sweat until softened. Add stock, potatoes, lima beans, corn and seasonings.

Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer until potatoes and lima beans are tender, approximately 20 minutes.

Take off heat and stir in as much cream as desired. Taste and correct salt and pepper, if necessary.

Notes: You could use frozen limas if fresh aren’t available, which would make it a great dinner option in the middle of winter, when your vegetable drawer is pathetically bare.

Read Full Post »

Impromptu Autumnal Celebration Feast

I really do love fall produce. Yesterday, I snatched up two pounds of quinces, two pints of fresh chestnuts, a large knobby celery root (celeriac) and a half-dozen Yukon Gold potatoes. Today I added one of my favorite varieties of apples, the newly-available Honeycrisp hybrid. I may use the quinces to make jam, since I’m getting perilously close to the end of last year’s batch, but I’ll probably keep them around for a while to perfume the house and look festive.The rest of my haul got used in tonight’s dinner. All I had planned to make was a simple and comforting dinner of soup and bread, but I found aged Mahon cheese on sale when I bought the apples, which added a first course. The chestnuts I had roasted and peeled last night had to get used for something pretty quickly, and I remembered that the chestnut paste I had made for the chestnut risotto in The Olives Table had been much tastier on its own than in the risotto, so I thought I’d experiment with making it into a spread to have with the soup. I also remembered while roasting the chestnuts that I had two unused roasted sweet potatoes in the fridge, and, having been tempted by a pumpkin pie while buying bread, I decided to throw together a brulee-like sweet potato custard baked in ramekins (because I was too lazy to bother with pastry).

Bit by bit, without even intending to, I managed to put together a meal so full of fall flavors and so unpretentiously grand that it could easily count as a feast. I’ve spent three times as long on Thanksgiving menus less well-rounded than this. As a matter of fact, I may use some of these elements for Thanksgiving this year. This dinner was a lovely way to wind down the weekend and ring in the season, and I didn’t even break a sweat. Don’t you just love it when things work out this well?

A Celebration of Autumn

First Course
Honeycrisp Apples and Aged Mahon Cheese

Main Course
Celeriac and Yukon Gold Potato Soup
Thyme-scented Chestnut Pate on Toasts

Dessert
Sweet Potato Brulees

——

Celeriac and Yukon Gold Potato Soup
Serves 6-8

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
2 large shallots, finely chopped
4 ribs celery, roughly chopped
1 large celery root, peeled and diced
4 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
6 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, or to taste (depending on saltiness of stock)
Half a dozen grinds black pepper, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon ground celery seed
1/2 cup to 1 cup half & half

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large pot until the butter is melted. Add the onions and shallots, and saute until softened. Add the celery and continue cooking for two minutes. Add the celery root, potatoes, stock, salt, pepper, and celery seed, and bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to maintain a simmer until the celery root and potatoes are soft, approximately 30-40 minutes.

Puree the soup with an immersion blender or food mill until smooth. Stir in enough half & half to thin to desired consistency, correct the seasonings, and serve.

Notes: Leeks would certainly work well here, but I only had onions and shallots on hand.

Thyme-Scented Chestnut Pate
Makes 2 cups

1 1/2 cups chestnuts, roasted and peeled
1 onion, minced
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup vegetable broth
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all the above in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer gently until the chestnuts are tender, approximately 20 minutes. Puree in a food processor until smooth, adding additional cream if necessary. Season to taste and serve with good bread, preferably toasted.

Notes: Since this made way more than the Lord and I can reasonably finish in the next few days, I’m thinking of freezing it and using it later as a filling for ravioli, as suggested in the recipe notes.

Sweet Potato Brulees
Makes 4 large brulees or 6-8 in ramekins

2 large sweet potatoes, baked and mashed (approx. 14 oz)
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground mace
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3 large eggs
1 cup plus two tablespoons half & half
2 tablespoons rum
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Coarse sugar for bruleeing

Preheat oven to 375F.

Whisk together the sweet potatoes, sugar, and dry ingredients until smooth. Whisk in the eggs, half & half, rum and vanilla, then pour into brulee molds or ramekins. Place on a baking sheet lined with a towel, and pour in enough hot water to thoroughly soak the towel, being careful not to splash into the custards.

Bake the custards until no longer jiggly in the center when shaken gently, approximately 20 minutes. Cool completely.

Just before serving, sprinkle the tops of the custards with a thin, even layer of sugar, and brulee with a kitchen torch or under the broiler until bubbling and caramelized. Once the sugar hardens, serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Notes: The spices were a tiny bit heavy in this recipe, which I modified from last year’s pumpkin pie. While you don’t really expect to taste much pumpkin flavor in pumpkin pie, I do like the taste of sweet potatoes and I would have preferred that their flavor had been a little more prominent here. Next time, I’ll probably cut the spices by at least a third, and use bourbon instead of rum for a more Southern note.

I didn’t actually brulee them, since my torch is out of butane, but I definitely would have if I’d had the gas. Besides the fact that I just love playing with the torch, I think the crunch of the sugar would make a nice contrast with the smoothness of the custard.

Read Full Post »