Food & Laughter

Potato Soup

MsPurplePearl — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:41:56 +0000

Mirella and I were making a large dinner with accompanying potatoes. We peeled, chopped, and boiled the potatoes, but got a bit distracted toward the end. We returned to the stockpot to discover that our potatoes were overdone, resulting in about half of the potatoes being transformed into a gruel-like texture. So, we scooped out the remaining solid pieces and turned our water-potato mixture into potato soup!

4 cups water
12 medium potatoes
1 onion
¼ cup butter
3 thick slices deli ham
1 tbsp. crushed garlic
3 chicken bullion cubes
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. red chili powder
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup heavy cream
½ cup sour cream

Peel and rinse the potatoes. Chop into small pieces. Immerse in water in a large stockpot. Boil until the potatoes begin to disintegrate. (I dunno how long we did it.) We scooped out the larger chunks to use for our other dinner, but they can just as easily be left in for a bit more texture in your soup.

While that’s boiling, peel your onion and then put it into a blender or food processor so that it becomes tiny pieces. Sautee the onion in the butter until clear, then add the garlic and ham and fry it all up for another 5 minutes. You want the onions to be well done, and the ham to get a bit crispy.

Once the potatoes in your stockpot have turned the water into a gruel, skim off any plain water on top. Crumble in the bullion cubes, salt, pepper, and chili powder. Pour the onion, butter, and ham mixture into your stockpot, making sure you get that yummy butter/garlic mix from the sautee pan.

Turn your stockpot to medium and simmer a bit to ensure the flavors all meld. (Feel free to adjust how much seasoning you use.) Once your sure it’s all mixed well, add the dairy products, stir, and cook until the cheese is melted. Remove from heat, as you don’t want the cream to break!

Enjoy!

Recipes Tico-Style: Tres Leches

Sika — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:03:21 +0000

Tres leches is a magically decadent dessert. It’s not healthy, and it has no chocolate in it (although I bet, if you wanted to be a heathen, you could add chocolate), and that’s the sum total of what’s wrong with it.

What’s right with it is everything else. It’s sweet and rich and decadent, with this simple, but not too simple, caramelly flavor. It makes a great birthday cake and a great anything else cake, too.

At the PERLA symposium a while ago, there was this amazing buffet that ended with these two rectangular cakes no one had touched (tres leches is pretty unassuming to look at). Then Daren told me that they were tres leches, and I considered throwing myself on the cakes. You know, to save everyone else from the delicousness–er, horror–that is tres leches.

In order to not appear to be cake crazy, I offered to help hand out the pieces of cake. Half of the people who refused and said they were full, when I told them what it was, changed their minds. Several of the others who held on to their self-control (I don’t know how), still got bright, excited looks before they said no, and stared longingly at the cake as I took it away. You know why? Because tres leches is a miracle in cake form.

This recipe is from my mama tica Maria, and she makes it for all kinds of special occasions.

Tres Leches

Ingredients:
Pan (Cake):
1 1/2 cups sugar, divided
6 large eggs, separated and at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
5 Tbl juice or milk
2 heaping tsp baking powder
2 pinches salt, divided
2 cups flour

Liquid:
2 cans condensed milk
2 cans evaporated milk
2 cups whipping cream, divided
Rum to taste (theoretically optional. If you’re giving the cake to children, try not to put in enough rum that they wobble any more than normal)

Preparation:

Beat the egg whites on a medium speed with 1/2 cup sugar and a pinch of salt until soft peaks form. Transfer to a clean, dry bowl.
Put the egg yolks in the mixer bowl without cleaning it first. Add vanilla, the remaining cup of sugar, and the juice or milk. Beat at a medium speed in a mixer for 5 minutes.
Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt (I guess you could sift here, but I hate sifting). Lower the speed on the mixer, and slowly add the flour mixture until just combined.
Fold in the egg whites until just combined.
Pour the batter into two 8 or 9 inch round cake pans, greased and lightly floured.
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees for 10 minutes, then put the cake in the middle rack, with only the bottom heat on.
Cook for 40 minutes, until cooked through.
In the meantime, mix in a blender condensed milk, evaporated milk, half of the whipping cream, and rum, if desired.
Beat the remaining cream with sugar to taste.
Let the cake cool for ten minutes before turning it out of the pan.
Let it finish cooling, put in a larger container, and pour the liquid over it. Cover with whipped cream. Ideally, chill in the fridge for several hours before serving, although you can chill it in the freezer instead if you’re short on time.

Notes: If the cake is too sweet for you, you can cut some (not all) of the sugar in the cake. Normally, cutting sugar in cake is bad news bears because sugar’s secondary function is to add moisture to baked goods, but with all the liquid the cake will soak in, no one will ever notice if the cake is a little dry.

If you only have a rectangular cake pan, just hack up the cake any old way to fit it into the new tin. This also means, blissfully, that if the bottom of the cake gets stuck to the cake tin, it doesn’t matter. All errors will be covered up (literally) by pillows of whipping cream–which surely is a metaphor for life somehow.

Peach cake variation: Pour peach juice over one layer of the cake. Whip all the cream. If using canned peaches, use some of the syrup to sweeten the whip cream. Mix 1/3-1/2 with chopped peaches, and use as filling. Place the second layer on top and pour peach juice over. Ice with the remaining whipped cream. Store in the fridge.

Savory Crepes

MsPurplePearl — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:22:32 +0000

I’ve been making an effort to create meals out of what we already have on hand. It isn’t so much trying to use leftovers, because my husband is very good at taking those to work. It’s more about using up the supplies in my rather large and well-stocked larder.

Today’s idea actually came from my daughter, Mirella. We had made sweet crepes for her friend the day before, and we had quite a few empty crepe shells left to use.

Tablespoon butter or olive oil

4 chicken tenderloins

Salt and pepper to taste

1/4 cup caramelized onions

1/2 cup artichoke hearts

6 Crepes (we had premade ones leftover)

1/4 cup crumbled Feta cheese

1 cup hollandaise sauce (we used a packet/mix)

We chopped the chicken into tiny pieces, then fried them in the butter, salt, and pepper over medium-high heat. Add in the artichoke hearts and caramelized onion and turn the stove down to medium-low. In a large pan rewarm the crepes, then place each on a large flat plate. Scoop a thin line of the chicken mixture onto one side of a crepe, sprinkle with crumbled Feta, then roll up. Once you have three on a plate, drizzle with hollandaise.

We got two sets of three crepes each out of these measurements.

Acorn Squash and Almond Milk Macaroni and Cheese

Shannon — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:00:47 +0000

Last night when I was gathering supplies to make macaroni and cheese, I seriously considered using egg nog in place of the milk. I managed to convince myself that was a horrible idea, but the combination of almond milk, acorn squash puree and white cheddar came out tasting a little like egg nog anyway. In a good way. I decided to go with it and add nutmeg. That seems to be a common spice in mac and cheese but usually I use mustard instead.
My daughter claimed she didn’t like this after hearing there was squash in it. She ate it anyway, so it obviously wasn’t too bad. She requested kale to go with it, which I sauteed with olive oil, salt and pepper. She ate that all up and each bite she exclaiming, “Mmmm!”

Acorn Squash Macaroni and Cheese

1 package of penne pasta
2 cups grated white cheddar
1 cup almond milk
2 T butter
1 1/2 cups acorn squash puree
1 t nutmeg
salt and pepper too taste

Preheat oven to 350.
Cook the pasta to slightly less then al dente. Drain pasta and put in in an oiled 9×13 casserole dish.
Melt butter in saucepan on medium low. Add squash and milk and stir until they are combined. Add cheese in small batches and stir until melted. Stir spices in. The sauce should be thick and creamy. Pour on top of pasta.
At this point, if you prefer creamy non baked mac and cheese, you can serve it. I like it baked, so I pop it in the oven for 20-30 minutes, depending how patient I am. I usually sprinkle grated cheese on top before I bake it, but I didn’t feel like grating more cheese last night.

Green Pepper Chicken

Shannon — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 01:37:44 +0000

This doesn’t look terribly appetizing, especially when I photograph it in a green bowl, but I promise it is as delicious as it is ugly. I made very few changes to the original recipe, mostly it called to slice the chicken, but I just cook it long enough that it can be shredded. I’m not a huge fan of chicken, but I love it shredded. I also added the sauteed peppers and onions, because I tend to throw extra veggies in everything. Usually we just eat this over rice with cheese. Sometimes we eat it with tortilla chips, because I also love tortilla chips.

Adapted from A Year of Slow Cooking

Green Pepper Chicken

3 chicken breast halves
4 large green bell peppers or 2 green and 2 other colored peppers
1 (7-ounce) can whole or diced green chiles or 2-3 fresh or dried chilies, chopped.
1/2 teaspoon basil
2 large yellow onions
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup water

The Directions.
Put the 2 bell peppers, 1 onion chopped in large pieces and the all the chiles in the crockpot. Put chicken on top. Add basil, salt, and pepper. Pour in the 1/4 cup of water. Cover and cook on low for about 6 hours, or on high for 3-4.
Remove the chicken, and put in the fridge to cool. Blend the peppers and sauce left at the bottom of the slow cooker. I have an immersion blender now, so I use that, but I used to do it in batches in my blender. I also cleaned the crockpot out before I put the sauce back in there, since chunky bits would get left behind this way.
Pull chicken apart, and return to the cooker. Slice and saute the remaining peppers and onion and throw them in for extra veggie content. Stir and cook on low for another 30 minutes or so until warmed. Or, for over an hour on the “keep warm” setting.

Chili

Shannon — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 05:07:04 +0000

Chili is one of my favorite meals when I’m tired or stressed out. I eat it with cheese and chips so it’s as unhealthy as possible. Of course, I had to go and ruin that by using better and better ingredients. This time, instead of using commercial sauce and water, I used some of my home canned tomato sauce, and I am officially a convert. It no longer matters me how long it took, or how hard it was. I would even push it through the sieve by hand if I had to. Note to Sika and Pearl, next year you want in on the canning action with me. Don’t argue.

Chili

1 lb ground beef
1 small onion, diced
2 ribs celery, chopped (not this time)
5 small sliced carrots
2 cans tomato sauce
3/4 c water
3 t Worcestershire sauce
1/8 c chili powder
3 t cumin
1 T salt
2 T garlic
1 t red pepper sauce (like tabasco)
1 can beans (black or kidney)
2 diced dried chilis (or 1 can diced chilis)

Brown ground beef. Put all ingredients in a slow cooker and cook on high for 3-4 hours or low for 5-6 hours. Or you could put them all in a big heavy bottomed pot, put the lid on and cook on low for 1-2 hours. Stir two or three times either way. Maybe a few more times if you are cooking it on the stove.
Near the end of the cooking time I taste and readjust the spices. Every time I make it, I make new notes on this recipe, but I haven’t figured out exactly what I’m using yet.

Enjoy!

Chicken (or Veggie) stock

Shannon — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 04:41:18 +0000

This is definitely more of a process then a recipe, but since I’ve posted two recipes recently that call for chicken stock, I figured I would write up how I make my own here.
I have two gallon bags in the freezer at all times. One for leftover poultry bits, mostly bones from roasts, but occasionally uncooked bones as well. You get different flavors from cooked and uncooked bones, but I don’t think it matters that much in the end result, at least not for cooking other things with. I don’t put much meat or skin in, because they don’t add much to the flavor. The other bag is for veggie bits. Basically, everything I cut off of veggies that I’m chopping for our meals ends up in here, except for soft spots and the like. Onion skins, carrot tops, celery leaves, broccoli stems, the green parts of leeks, the stem and seeds from bell peppers, peels from most root vegetable, fresh herbs that are going to go bad before I can use them. I don’t put in potato peels, because I think it makes the stock too starchy. I also don’t put in whole veggies, because they have a higher water content to flavor ratio then just the leftover bits.
When both those bags are full, I stuff them in my stock pot and cover with water. I stick the lid on and simmer it for a couple of hours, until everything in there is falling apart. I let it cool a little and strain it through a mesh sieve.
If you want to keep your stock in your freezer, I recommend you reduce it by half and pour into ice cube trays. These I store in yet another gallon sized ziplock bag. I like to throw them in rice, and use in place of the small amounts of chicken stock called for in some recipes. You can also freeze it in quart sized containers to use for batches of soup.
A friend recently told me that she pressure cans her chicken stock, and since I recently discovered that had two of each kind of bag in the freezer, I decided to give it a go. I followed the instructions on this site sort of. Due to nap time for my toddler, the pressure went higher then that (about 15psi) and it stayed in the canner longer. I believe my friend told me she leaves hers in for an hour, but she didn’t mention what psi she used.

Creamy potato zucchini soup

Shannon — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:59:19 +0000

Our blender got broken back in the spring, and I only just replaced it in August. I decided to get an immersion blender for a replacement, because I love creamy soups, and they are such a pain to make with just a regular blender. It turns out that I had perfect timing, because I had two fillings replaced the day I was planning to make this.

3 c chicken stock
6 med yukon gold potatoes, quartered
1 large leek, sliced
3 med zucchinis, sliced
1 head garlic
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a crockpot on high for 5 hours, or until your potatoes are soft. Turn off heat and let cool a bit. Blend an immersion blender until smooth.
This makes a lot of soup. You could either feed 10 adults, or put some in the freezer. I put a quart in the freezer, and we’ve eaten it for at least three meals.

Challa stuffing

Shannon — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 04:39:27 +0000

I love bread, and I especially like bread I can pretend is a balanced meal. This weekend we celebrated my husband’s 40th birthday with a faux Canadian Thanksgiving meal. Friends brought stuffing and stuffed acorn squash, but we ended up with all the leftover turkey and no leftover stuffing. So I decided to make something to eat with the leftovers that had lots of veggies in it.

1 c raisins
½ c rum
1 loaf of Challa bread (you can use stale bread, it’s better for this use, but I hadn’t planned on making this until that morning, and I didn’t find any day old bread at the store.)
½ med diced onion
4 sliced carrots
1 red pepper, cut up
1 T minced garlic
2 eggs
2 cups chicken stock
salt pepper to taste
1 T lemon juice
1 t oregano
2 t basil
olive oil

Soak the raisins in the rum for at least 30 minutes, but longer is better. Usually when I know in advance that I’m making stuffing, I soak them over night.
Cut the bread into roughly 1.5″ cubes. Spread these in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast for 5-10 minutes in a 350 degree oven.
While that is cooking, saute the onions, peppers and carrots until they are cooked through. Add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.
Lightly beat the eggs in a large bowl and mix with the chicken stock and herbs. Toss the cooled toasted bread in this mixture until all the liquid has been absorbed and then stir in the veggies. Pour into a greased 9×11 pan and bake for 20 minutes at 350.

Serve with gravy and turkey. An actual vegetable would be good too, if you are more motivated then I am.

Spaghetti Sauce

Shannon — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 04:47:04 +0000

Ingredients:
2 cans tomato sauce (I use sauce because I have a problem with cooked tomato pieces, but if you like them, they work just as well.)
1 lb ground beef (I have easily cut this amount in half an put in more veggies, and it’s still delicious.)
1 medium sweet onion, diced
2 sliced carrots, 1 small chopped green pepper, 2 diced celery stalks, ½ extra diced onion. (I usually just use whatever veggies we have around the house, about 2 cups worth, especially if my husband has cooked recently and there are pre chopped veggies sitting in the fridge. I have also used broccoli, spinach, chard, brussel sprouts and peas before, but not together. I probably wouldn’t use the peas again.)
3 T garlic
2 T basil
1 T oregano
2 t celery seed
2 T ill or sage (Depending on season, this time I use dill. It’s my favorite spice ever. Use whatever you like.)
Salt & pepper to taste
Molasses to taste, between 2 T and 1/3 c (This is a trick I learned from a friend, that cuts the acidity of the tomatoes. The amount you need depends on the veggies you use. You need significantly more if you use spinach then you do if you just use peppers and carrots.)

Directions:
Brown the ground beef in a large, tall sided pot over medium heat. When the meat is brown add the onions and cook until they start turning translucent. Next add the veggies in whatever order makes sense, I cooked the carrots longest and the peppers the least. Cook until all veggies start softening and add the garlic. Cook for another minute and add the tomato sauce.
Reduce the heat to medium low (tomato sauce splatters a LOT). Add spices and cook, stirring occasionally for 10-15 minutes, or until the pasta is almost done. Add a small amount of molasses at a time, until you like how it tastes. This is a good time to adjust the other spices if needed too.
Garnish with Parmesan, and serve with garlic bread. Yum!
Feeds 6-10 people.

I actually used some of my home canned tomato sauce in this batch, which is runnier the the commercially canned stuff. I’m going to have to do some fiddling to see if I can figure out a good way to thicken it, without resorting to canned tomato paste.