Tomato Soup

E-mail Food Chain

Most of my family is comprised of food lovers. I don't actually think I can name a family member who doesn't have a signature dish and a passion for food. Even my Grandma, who eats like a bird and always wants to split a meal at a restaurant, appreciates the true art of making a chocolate chip cookie.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that I often get emails from family members with "the best recipe!" that "you just have to try!" I trust their judgment and their taste buds, so I always rush to try these out. But this may be the biggest hit in awhile- and may also be the simplest of the e-mail food chain recipes, courtesy of my Aunt Britt:

It's an edamame salad where the edamame marries happily with tomatoes, celery, red onion, cannellini beans, and fresh basil. It may seem a bit summery, but once you try it, you won't really mind what season it's made for. It's flavorful, delicious, and makes a perfect filling side dish. Andy and I had it along with a beautiful filet of salmon, and my coworkers and I shared the leftovers for lunch the next day mixed with a bit of pasta. It's a versatile salad that is incredibly easy to whip up- and a very healthy lunch alternative.

I've passed it along already to a few people via email, but here it is for my blog readers!

Edamame Salad with Basil Vinaigrette

1 cup frozen shelled edamame

3 Tbsp red-wine vinegar

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 garlic clove, minced

¼ tsp salt

1 (15-15 ½) can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained

Mini-tomatoes quartered

1 celery stalk, diced

Red onion diced, about 1-2 Tbsp depending on preference

½ cup chopped FRESH bail leaves

Cook the edamame, drain, rinse under cold water and set aside.

Combine vinegar, oil, garlic, and salt in large bowl.  Add the edamame, beans, tomato, celery, onion, and basil; mix well.  Refrigerate for a couple of hours, or serve room temperature.

Basil Butter

I had a lot of summer food goodies sitting in my apartment that needed to be used. I had three tomatoes and a handful of basil from the garden at my preschool, two small yellow onions and a couple of cloves of garlic from the farmers market, and some shrimp. So I whipped this up:

I boiled some wheat pasta, cooked the tomatoes, onions, garlic, and shrimp in some olive oil, salt and pepper, and then made some basil butter to toss the hot pasta in. The basil butter was the best thing to come out of this dish, because it added the most flavor. Instead of just throwing some torn basil on top of the pasta, making basil butter is a great way to really infuse the flavor of the herb into the dish. Butter melts perfectly into hot pasta and clings to the spirals (I think using spirals is best in this sort of dish because then the basil butter can gather in the crevices of the noodles).

To make basil butter for two servings of pasta you need:

1 large handful of basil
2-3 tablespoons of butter (depending on how coated you like your pasta)
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Salt to taste (optional)

Process all ingredients in a food processor until smooth.

Make sure that right after the pasta is drained you add the herb-infused butter for best results. Any herb-infused butters (try cilantro and parsley) can be used on fish, chicken, and as a condiment for a sandwich as well!

First time with steak

This may seem strange, but I cooked steak for the first time last Friday. Asian Flank Steak to be exact, and I used my mom's highly lauded recipe. Unfortunately, seeing as I don't have a grill, or an outdoor space in which to place one, this steak suffered the fate of a George Forman Grill. This may seem utterly ridiculous to some, but it is a very real option for an urban dweller such as myself, and I must admit it works well. It doesn't give you the true grill flavor, but it cooks your food and helps it maintain its own flavor.

Here is my flank steak:

Before hitting the grill, I marinated 2 pounds of flank steak overnight in this , my moms recipe:

l cup soy sauce

l cup sake (cheapest is fine)

l/2 cup sugar

l large bunch cilantro chopped

l 2" piece ginger, peeled and minced

4 garlic cloves crushed

l l/4 tsp red pepper flakes

Then I grilled it for about 7 minutes.

I served it with Otsu, from Heidi Swanson's absolutely fantastic I-can't-say-enough-about-this-cookbook, Super Natural Cooking:



The Asian Flank Steak was incredible, and the Otsu met the flank perfectly to create a wonderful marriage of flavors. The Otsu, a mix of soba noodles, cucumber, cilantro, sesame seeds and a ginger soy dressing, was light and refreshing (I served it cold) and left room for the dense flank that was suffused with a spicy, salty Asian flavor from the marinade. I had enough food for probably 6-7 people, and there were only 5 of us- and we ate it all!

It was a great summer entree, but it was not to be outdone by this:



The blueberry cobbler I made using Mark Bittman's recipe from How To Cook Everything. I am not much of a baker, but I do truly appreciate a wonderful, homemade dessert. So I really appreciate when I can achieve something great with just a little effort. This took me about 10 minutes to make, and 45 minutes to bake, and 5 seconds to gobble up and go for seconds. It was simple, with the blueberries making the star appearance. The small scoop of vanilla ice cream made this dessert irresistible!

Childhood Food Revamp

There were two posts on Serious Eats recently that led me to make the following recipe. One was about your favorite childhood foods and the other was about manufactured vs. homemade dishes.

These posts reminded me of one of my favorite childhood meals: Sloppy Joes. And I only ever had, and so largely preferred, the manufactured Manwich version. I also thought my mom was making them with fake meat since I was a vegetarian, but she lied to me because she was concerned that I was such a gangly kid and served me beef. Anyway, the days of vegetarianism are over, and so I've decided are my days of canned Sloppy Joe sauce. But that doesn't mean I don't still crave this "fun piled on a bun" (a slogan actually used by Hunt's, the makers of Manwich).

So I made my own from scratch, combining bits and pieces from various recipes I found:

 

It is actually much more photogenic than the Sloppy Joe's of my time, because this recipe includes fresh chopped veggies (serves 2-3).

1 pound dark ground turkey meat
1/2 red onion, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
1/2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
8 oz. tomato sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon hot sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive Oil

Coat a large skillet with olive oil and put turkey, brown sugar and poultry seasoning in and cook until browned on medium-high heat. Once the meat is browned, reduce heat to medium and add the red pepper and red onion, red wine vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce and cook for 5 minutes. Then add tomato sauce and tomato paste and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and serve on toasted sprouted grain buns.

This is a really easy recipe that uses things that you usually have stocked in your kitchen. It's also a good summer meal because your time around the stove is minimal. Plus, it might just bring you back to those childhood days!

 

Weather-Friendly Cooking

When it is about 90 degrees, the last place I want to be in my non air-conditioned apartment is near the oven or stove. It is too hot to even think about turning those furnaces on! So that means it's time to get creative with meals that don't require any open flame.

This is my current favorite:

Whole wheat pitas stuffed with shrimp and avocado salad, with a chickpea salad on the side. For the shrimp salad you'll need (serves 2):

10 frozen, cooked, peeled, and deveined shrimp (thawed)
1 avocado, chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Remove heads from the shrimp and chop into small pieces. Add chopped avocado and salt and pepper. Stuff into pita halves, and serve with hummus tahini.

For chickpea salad:

1 15 oz. can garbanzo beans
2 small tomatoes
1 medium cucumber (skin removed)
1 small red onion
1 small anaheim pepper (seeds and membrane removed)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 lemon
Handful of torn basil
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Drain garbanzo beans and add them to a bowl. Chop all the vegetables (and peel the cucumber) and add to the bowl as well. Drizzle with olive oil, the juice of one lemon, and add the basil and salt and pepper to taste. Toss and serve!

During the heat wave this week, I may have to make this dinner every night. The chickpea salad also tastes great with cottage cheese for a really filling lunch!

Fish Tacos

Apparently, some people find the idea of fish tacos unappealing. That the mixture of seafood and Mexican flavors is gross is very untrue. I promise, after trying this Bon Appetit recipe from their new cookbook (see sidebar), you will think differently about this combination. Because, in fact, fish is a fantastic compliment to the taco and its counterparts. It is light but flavorful and helps change up the quick and easy dinner staple.

I beer battered three lime-spritzed tilapia filets in a whisked mixture of:

1/2 cup dark beer (I used Harpoon Winter Warmer, because I had it in the fridge)

1/2 cup flour

Salt and pepper

Then I fried them on high heat for about 2-3 minutes on each side in a skillet coated with peanut oil. After they were done sizzling I turned the heat down to low and broke them up into smaller bite-sized bits.

I warmed several sprouted grain tortillas and topped them with the fish. On the table I placed homemade salsa, slices of guacamole, and hot sauce.

Here is my layered mess of a taco:

These were really fantastic. The batter was so light and crispy and it took the simple taco to a whole new level. Next time I make these I am going to use a darker porter beer, because I think the Harpoon Winter Warmer was a little too sweet for the batter, but the hot sauce helped to correct some of that imbalance. I think for my next taco reinvention, I'm going to try spicy Cajun shrimp!

 

         

Food Fears

When I was younger I would watch my mom in the kitchen and my dad at the grill and be horrified at how difficult cooking looked. I was convinced that if, when I had children, they didn't like macaroni and cheese or Campbell's tomato soup, I would be in serious trouble. Not until I was older did my mom stop her kitchen theatrics to assuage my fears by buying me cookbooks and encouraging me to try. And by older, I mean only a year ago. I survived in college by learning to cook basics like boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pasta, and chicken soup.

Now that I am out of college and have collected a bevy of recipes from cookbooks, family, and friends, I have learned that cooking is not that difficult at all. Most dishes I considered unapproachable have become easy favorites in my kitchen: chili, sea bass, tuna steaks, breads, oven-roasted turkey breast. I was even scared of mashed potatoes until I learned from Mark Bittman that I was not alone in believing they were difficult to make but that they are, in fact, one of the easiest things to make.

However, there are still some dishes that mystify me, that I am convinced are so difficult and/or time consuming that the effort is too daunting. Things that are on this list are: cakes, ice cream, tagines, steak, lobster, crepes, and pot pie. Some of these recipe fears may be warranted, some (like steak, I assume) are not. Therefore, this blog exists to free me of my fears and force me to face them (alliteration unintended). And the fear that this post addresses? MEATBALLS.

I truly have no idea why I assumed these were so difficult. Possibly because I've heard people complain about tasteless, dry meatballs or seen people spend hours in the kitchen perfecting them and making sure they didn't fall apart when cooked in a wonderfully homemade sauce. But then I decided to get over it, and read several recipes that said to bake the meatballs in the oven. So I heated up my oven, decided on some ingredients, and baked a batch:

I also made a red sauce to go over the top to enhance flavor, texture, and moisture. But the meatballs stood alone fantastically.. They were juicy, flavorful, hearty, and made my whole apartment smell like a treasured Italian kitchen.

Here is my recipe:

2 pounds dark ground turkey meat

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

3 teaspoons dried oregano

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup Italian breadcrumbs

2 eggs

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper

Place them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, or until firm. What are you afraid to try?

Quinoa Pilaf

I think I got a little ahead of myself last week, and actually thought it might be spring! Alas, the nice weather only lasted a couple of days, but I did manage to make a nice spring side-dish to go with some roasted chicken:

It's a colorful quinoa pilaf! When the quinoa was done cooking, I threw in:

a generous handful of toasted pine nuts

half of a chopped red onion (raw)

a handful of julienned basil

2 tablespoons of olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

It was very light, and a nice compliment to the chicken. Once spring really gets here, I'll be making it often, possibly with the addition of some more spring veggies, like heirloom tomatoes!

A Juicy Burger

I like to substitute ground turkey wherever ground meat is suggested in a recipe. Especially when it comes to burgers. There are instances where all white turkey works- like in a quinoa casserole, stuffed peppers, sloppy joes...But white meat is much more expensive, and much less flavorful than dark meat- making it the perfect burger meat. It is juicier and tastes more like the real beefy thing.

It even kinda looks like a real burger!

This turkey burger is the best turkey burger I have ever had. Better than any restaurant or frozen variety! My recipe makes two half-pound juicy burgers:

1 pound dark ground turkey meat

3 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons hot sauce

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Salt and pepper

Mash the garlic cloves with some salt, working them into a paste with the back of a wide knife. Then throw the garlic and all the rest of the ingredients into a bowl and mix. Then throw the meat into the bowl and work the sauce into the turkey with your hands. Form into two patties, and grill.

It is very, very simple. I serve my turkey burgers on a sprouted grain bun with some cheese and either caramelized onions or thick slices of red onion.

Spinach Tortellini Soup

Before I tasted the challah from the previous post, but after I bought it, I decided I wanted to make a soup to accompany it. The soup had to have a lot of broth, so I could do a lot of bread dunking, but be hearty enough to act as my full dinner.

I decided to make spinach tortellini soup, one of my mom's dinner staples when I was little:

This is probably the easiest soup you'll ever make. First, boil some good chicken stock (how ever much you need for a nice bowl- I used between 2-3). Once the stock is boiling, add in your tortellini. Any flavor works but I always use three-cheese. Cook the tortellini according to directions, then bring the stock down to a simmer. Add salt, pepper, and a couple good handfuls of spinach. Stir well, until spinach is just wilted. Then serve! I love the way the tortellini burst in your mouth. They soak up a lot of the chicken stock and it makes them that much more flavorful. I wasn't too thrilled with the chicken stock I used (a brand from whole foods) because it was fairly flavorless, so I would use a brand you know and trust!