Cabbage roll soup

It's snowing again. Of course it is. We're having the snowiest winter in the history of the universe of Philadelphia, so I don't think the snow will let up/melt anytime soon. When it snows, I don't really leave the house unless it's an emergency, so I had to cook dinner with things we had in the fridge/freezer, which led to this soup. It's delicious, hearty, easy, and delicious. This soup has all the ingredients of Hungarian stuffed cabbages, which are delicious but a little time consuming. Here is a good, quick alternative.

Cabbage roll soup

3/4 pound ground beef

salt and pepper

1 T paprika

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, cut into half moons

2 stalks of celery, diced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 can diced tomatoes (or of tomato sauce, I didn't have any but that's what I wanted to use)

1 quart chicken or beef broth

1/2 head of cabbage, core removed and the rest sliced into thin strips

1/2 c rice

Salt and pepper the beef, add the paprika, and mush in. Brown the beef in a small amount of olive oil, then remove to a bowl. Cook the onion, carrots, celery and garlic until starting to soften, then add the tomatoes, broth, and cabbage. Add the beef back in, and enough water to cover. Cook 15 minutes, then add the rice. Cook another 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is done and the cabbage is cooked to your liking. Add salt and pepper if necessary. Serves 4.

Chicken and dumplings from Cook's Illustrated

I get free magazines from work. It's pretty cool, I love magazines. It takes me forever to get through them all, though. I just finished last months Cook's Illustrated and decided to make this for dinner, and Alex was soooo happy. He loves soups and I love dumplings, we're a good pair.

Chicken and Dumplings

From Cook's Illustrated, kind of.

6 bone-in, skin on chicken thighs

salt and pepper

2 t olive oil

2 small onions, diced

3 carrots, peeled and chopped

3 ribs celery, chopped

1/2 bulb fennel, chopped

3-4 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped

1 c quartered mushrooms

1/2 c white wine

1 t thyme

6 c chicken broth

1 pound chicken wings

Sprinkle the chicken thighs with the salt and pepper. Heat up the oil in a Dutch oven until it shimmers, then sear the chicken on both sides to brown. Remove the chicken, pour out all but a tablespoon of the oil, and stir in all the veggies. Cook slowly until they start to caramelize, then stir in the wine and thyme, scraping the brown bits off the bottom. Add the thighs back to the pan, along with the broth and chicken wings. Cover and simmer 45-55 minutes, until the chicken is almost falling off the bones. Remove the meat from the pan and let cool. Skim the fat off the top, and shred the chicken back into the pot. Bring to a slow simmer while you make the dumplings.

Dumplings:

2 c rice flour mix

1/2 t baking soda

1/4 t xanthan gum

1 t sugar

1 t salt

3/4 c buttermilk (or 1/2 c milk and 1/4 c sour cream or yogurt)

4 T butter, melted and cooled

1 egg white

Whisk the dry ingredients together. Stir the butter into the buttermilk, then stir in the egg white. Pour into the flour mixture, and stir slowly until just incorporated. Don't over mix! Drop by large teaspoonfuls into the simmering broth. Cover with a dish towel and then a lid, and cook for about 15 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean and the dumplings have doubled in size.

"Things I find in the refrigerator" soup

As I've said before, Alex loves it when I make soup. The other night when it was raining and crappy and miserable out, I made soup to go with the sweet corn pudding I made. When I make soup, I follow this process, instead of following recipes, because usually when I make soup I make it with a tub of stock fron the freezer plus things I find in the fridge, like leftover meat, veggies that needed to be eaten yesterday, and other stuff I find. Things-from-the-fridge soup always turns out delicious, and often can be a whole meal - you have plenty of veggies, a meat, and often a starch, maybe even some dairy. 

Things from the fridge soup

This is not a recipe but a process. Use whatever you have left in your fridge!

1. First things first. If you are using frozen stock, microwave it or thaw it in a pan on the stove. 

2. Chop all your vegetables. I always use onion and garlic, this time I added carrots, celery, a parsnip, and Chinese broccoli. If your vegetables have leafy greens, like bok choy or Chinese broccoli, slice the stems and use them now. Set aside the leafy greens to be added in at the end. 

3. If you are using raw meat, cook it now, then remove from the pan and set aside. 

4. Heat a bit of butter or olive oil in your soup pot. Add your chopped veggies, and cook 5-10 minutes until softened and starting to brown. I know all these vegetables cook for different amounts of time, but they're going to keep cooking in the soup so it will be ok. 

5. Once vegetables are soft, add tomato if you are using tomatoes. 

6. Add some salt and pepper, and if you want to add some spices do it now. I often use cumin and coriander, or curry powder, and paprika and chili powder if you want a kick. Cook the spices for a minute, stirring. 

7. Add the stock (and some water if it's strong, or if you don't have a lot of stock) and stir to get anything stuck on the bottom of the pan into the liquid. Bring to a simmer. 

8. Add whatever starch you are using (unless you're using pasta). I usually use rice, but buckwheat is great, and quinoa is too. Simmer, stirring, for 15 minutes. 

9. Add cooked meat back to the pot. If using pasta, add it now. Cook about 5 minutes, until meat is hot and has taken in some of the soup juices. (You can add the meat earlier, of course, and let it cook further with the vegetables.) If you're using tofu instead of meat, add it now. 

10. Dump in all your greens, if using. Cook just until wilted. 

11. At this point, you are done. However, there are other optional things you can do, like crack in some eggs, stir in some cream or cheese or yogurt, add a sliced avocado and some tortilla chips, or stir in some miso (make sure it's gf!). 

Clam chowder, and potato chips

First, lets talk about potato chips. I grew up eating Cape Cod chips, which are so crunchy and perfect and indescribable. I’d go to school and buy a bag of Lay’s or some other brand and I’d eat them, but my heart was never in it. Those other chip brands were flimsy, or ruffled, too thin or too salty. No chips were perfect, except Cape Cods. Then, later on, I discovered (by discovered I mean my mom started buying) their russet chips. Dark, a little heavier in taste, I’d eat the whole bag in one sitting. Their chips never needed dip or weird flavors to make me want to eat them. They were just right how they were.

Fast forward a few years. I stopped eating chips, because Cape Cod chips stopped being everywhere. It wasn’t a conscious thing, they just faded from my life. I almost never bought potato chips. Why bother? I forgot I loved Cape Cod chips, and was totally uninterested in any other kind. Then something happened, I forget when or where, or why, but I bought a bag of chips. They weren’t Cape Cod, they were Utz. Utz brand chips do my favorite thing – they write “this is a gluten-free food” right there, underneath the ingredients. So when you go to read the ingredients, you see that. Potatoes, salt, oil. Gluten-free. Hooray! They also have a gluten-free list on their website. Utz, which is a local Pennsylvania company, makes a kettle-cooked chip that’s very close to Cape Cod. It’s not buttery and perfect, but it’s pretty damn good. Now chips are back in my life. I’ve tried other brands of “kettle-cooked” chips, none, except the Utz ones, compare to Cape Cod. Apparently kettle-cooked is how cape Cod makes their chips, and it’s the way of cooking them in small batches instead of huge scary vats of oil. It puts a better image in my mind. Finally I contacted Cape Cod to find out if their chips were gluten-free, even though I’ve eaten a few bags anyway. They got back to me promptly, which was nice since their website has almost no information on it except how to get to the factory. All their chips are gluten-free except their Beachside BBQ ones, hooray! Cape Cod, how I love you.

Now on to another Cape Cod/New England thing- clam chowder. I don’t eat much seafood, because (I’m sure I’ve said it before) when I was tested for food allergies a few years ago, I tested positive for all seafood. Fish, shellfish, the works. But it was never a problem because I never liked seafood, ever. As a kid, the only seafood I’d ever eat was tuna salad and crab cakes, which were mostly filler anyway. But the last couple of years I’ve been wanting to eat seafood. So I’ve been trying it, carefully. When we went to Maine on vacation last year, I licked a few pieces of lobster. Then I had a few little bites. I didn’t love it, but I wasn’t allergic to it. A few months ago I made crabcakes. Same thing. I tasted a little, then a little more, and I was fine. And fish sticks. Meaning Pollack is safe, and tuna. I accidentally ate Yellowtail a few times, that was ok. I tried oysters at Thanksgiving. They were good. I tried mussels recently too. Yum. Alex LOVES seafood, but doesn’t eat it much, since I cook dinner almost every night and I hardly ever have seafood. I feel bad because every so often he talks about how he wants to eat seafood.

I was at work the other day, and on the TV in the breakroom, someone was watching Martha Stewart. She had some guy from Nantucket (island off the coast of Massachusetts) making clam chowder. I watched, thought “I can do that”, so I decided to. I bought a container of fresh-frozen chopped clams from the seafood department (I didn’t know how many clams I needed, and clams are rather expensive if you need a lot of them) and some potatoes. I stopped at the Italian Market on the way home and picked up a dozen littleneck clams, because I wanted fresh clams too.

I brought them home, cleaned them up, defrosted the frozen clams, and set to work. It was easy, made the house smell great, and was delicious. Plus, it made Alex super happy. He knows that when I make seafood it’s especially for him, and he likes it. You could skip the fresh clams, or use more fresh and omit the frozen. If you skip the fresh clams, buy clam juice. Clam Chowder
1 container frozen, chopped fresh clams, about 2 cups
1 dozen fresh clams in their shells
2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2” cubes (approx)
6 slices bacon, chopped up
1 T butter
2 T flour
1 medium onion, diced
4 ribs celery, diced
2 bay leaves
1 cup cream
water

Thaw your frozen clams, and clean your fresh ones. While you prep your vegetables, steam the clams. Put them in a pot with about 3/4 of a cup of water, bring to a boil, cover, and steam about 10 minutes. Let cool enough to handle. Remove the clams from their shells and chop, then add to the frozen clams. Line a strainer with a couple coffee filters, and strain the clam broth to remove any sand. Cook the bacon with the butter, when browned add the onions and celery and cook to soften. Stir in the flour, then whisk in the clam juice, add potatoes and bay, and enough water to cover. Cook until your potatoes are cooked, about 20 minutes. You have two choices now, you can either roughly mash some of them in the pot to make your chowder extra thick, or leave all the chunks whole for a chunkier chowder. Next, add in the clams, cook about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, then stir in the cream. Cook on low a few minutes more, then remove bay leaves, season with salt and pepper, and serve.

bison chili and mini cheesecakes

Alex and I had some friends over for dinner the other night, and I made falafel again. It was a hit, the friends were vegetarians and come on, who doesn't love falafel? For a quick and easy dessert I made cheesecake, but I did two things different this time: I made them into bite-sized cakes by using muffin tins, and I used some Mi-Del gingersnaps that I smashed up and mixed with a bit of melted butter for the crust, instead of making the crust myself. They were delicious, but one of the dinner guests was not eating sugar so they didn't get served (so, boo-hoo; Alex, Sarah and I had to eat them ourselves). The recipe I posted before makes one large cheesecake or 24 mini cakes.

At Wholefoods they have demos sometimes, to try to convince you to buy whatever product they're pushing that day. Usually I'm not that impressed, but last weekend there was a demo of bison chili, which I was skeptical about, but wow. It's pretty awesome. It's simple and easy to make and has only a few ingredients, but it's really good. Especially served with lots of cheese.

Bison Chili
Recipe from Wholefoods

2 T olive oil
1 lb bison meat (can sub beef/turkey/veg meat)
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1 can beans (red, black, your choice) drained and rinsed
2 T chili powder
1 t cumin
salt and pepper

Brown meat with peppers and garlic in olive oil in a soup pot. Add tomatoes, sauce, beans, chili powder and cumin. Boil, reduce heat and simmer at least 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper. Serve with lots of cheese.

Cranberry Beef Stew

It has been terrible and rainy lately. Yesterday morning Alex and I walked to work in the pouring rain, and I spent the day at work thinking about what to make for dinner. I decided on a beef stew, with cranberries, for this blog event:

So I bought all my supplies I needed at work, and headed out into the rain. Surprise to me, it had stopped raining, and was sunny and warm. (The picture was taken the day before). Not to be deterred, I set about to make my beef stew. It was delicious, but a little sweet, so I cut down the sugar in this recipe. I liked the mushrooms in it, but Alex didn't. So, up to you!
My tomato plant, by the way, is still flourishing. It's November in 3 days. I used these and some more that I found in the stew.

Cranberry Beef Stew
1 1/4 lb stew beef, cubed
1/4 c rice flour
salt and pepper
2 T butter
2 T sugar
1/2 c water/juice
1 c cranberries
1 onion, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 c crimini mushrooms (optional)
1 t rosemary, chopped
1 c water
1 T tomato paste
Preheat the oven to 275. Combine flour with salt and pepper, dredge beef. Melt butter on medium high heat, then add beef, cooking on all sides until golden. Meanwhile, combine sugar and juice, and heat to dissolve sugar. Add cranberries, cook until they start to pop. Put beef and cranberry sauce in a casserole pan. Deglaze beef pan with other cup of water and rosemary, stirring to get the chunks off the bottom. Mix in the tomato paste, pour over beef in pan. Add onions,tomato and mushrooms, cover, and cook 2-3 hours until beef is tender.

killer chicken salad, gingerbread cake, sandwich wrap breads, and tomato buckwheat stew

Going to coffee shops the other day went eh, ok. I had one place probably interested, one place tell me "they don't sell vegan things" (I didn't bother to correct her) and everywhere else say "maybe". I didn't bake my best batch of stuff to bring around, and I lost all the pictures I took, so let's not talk about it.
Instead, let's talk about dinner. I finally made the GF wrap sandwich bread from Kate over at Gluten free Gobsmacked that I'd been eying for a while. And oh man, I wish I'd tried it earlier. It was AWESOME. I nibbled at a corner while it was cooling and while I was making the rest of dinner, it reminds me of naan. I also made the best chicken salad EVER, with homemade mayonnaise, and tomato buckwheat stew. I also made a gingerbread cake to bring with me to New York tomorrow to see my family. Recipes? Yes!

If you want the recipe for the sandwich bread, go here. I'm not going to steal it! Although I will say that I used half sorghum and half rice flour for the dough.


Killer Chicken Salad
pulled chicken from one chicken
half an onion, diced
1 or 2 stalks of celery, diced
a generous handful of parsley, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
homemade mayo with smoked paprika, recipe below

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Refrigerate for about an hour to let the flavors come together. Serve with tomato on sandwich wrap bread.

Homemade Smoked Paprika Mayonnaise
Adapted from the Joy of Cooking 1970 ed
1 egg
1 tsp ground mustard
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp chili powder
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup vegetable oil, divided into two
2 T lemon juice
1 T cider vinegar

Combine the first 8 ingredients in the blender, and blend until combined. With blender running, add 1/2 cup vegetable oil, and then lemon juice and vinegar. Add last 1/2 cup oil with blender still on.

Tomato buckwheat stew3 or 4 tomatoes
sea salt
fresh ground pepper
2 T olive oil
4 cups vegetable broth
half an onion, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
3 cloves of garlic
1 cup of buckwheat groats

Preheat oven to 350. Quarter tomatoes, toss with 1 T olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, sautee the onions, celery and garlic until soft in other 1 T of olive oil. Add the stock. When the tomatoes are done, toss them into the soup pot. Cook about 15 minutes, then scoop out tomatoes with a slotted spoon and puree in food processor with a little of the broth. Mix back into the broth, bring to a boil. Add groats, turn heat down to low, cover, and cook 15-20 minutes until the groats are done. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Gingerbread Cake
Also adapted from the Joy of Cooking. I was looking for a gingerbread recipe, and came across this "Wheatless Gingerbread" recipe. I changed it, using less cornstarch and adding xanthan gum and more sugar. The picture doesn't show it, but its a gorgeous dark, dark brown.
2 cups rice flour mix
3/4 cup cornstarch
1 t xanthan gum
2 t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t ginger
1/4 t allspice
3/4 c sugar
1 cup molasses
1/3 cup butter
3 T canola oil
1 cup boiling water
2 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 325, and grease a 9 inch round pan. Mix together first seven ingredients in one bowl. In another, mix the sugar, butter, oil, and molasses. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and combine. Add eggs, beat for about a minute. Bake about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes.
Look at this happy dog!

oxtail stew!

oxtail stew.

i left the recipes i was going to use at work, so i made up one. last time i used elise's recipe and kind of based mine on that.
preheat oven to 350. rinse oxtail, squeeze on some lime juice and rub with salt and pepper. melt 1 T butter in a pan, sear the oxtail on all sides. remove the meat from the pan and place in a casserole or something with a tight fitting lid, add 1 large white onion (diced) and a nub of ginger, about half the length of your thumb (minced). cook those until the onion is golden. dump those on top of the oxtail. return the pan to the heat, melt in 3 or 4 T of butter, and slowly stir in enough rice flour to make a roux. add 1 c stock (i used garlic soup i had in the freezer) and cook until sauce thickens. pour in another 1 c of stock and pour on top of onions and oxtail. sprinkle on some spice (i used 1 t of jerk seasoning i found) and cover tightly. cook for 3 hours or so, until meat is falling off the bone. skim fat off. while the meat is cooking, I turn the meat over every hour or so since there isnt enough liquid to cover the oxtails.