recipe – Page 5 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Kitchen Sink Soup

eat-72478_1280

Toward the end of the month, and with $0.02 left in the food budget, we have to get creative. Hence, Kitchen Sink Soup!

In the freezer, I found a cut-up chicken. I put it in a stew pot, added water, celery, onion, tomato slices, bay leaves, peppercorns, a carrot, and some herbs. I brought it to a boil, turned it down to a low simmer, covered, and cooked the chicken. I pulled out the chicken, and set it aside for a pot pie or something else for tomorrow (after all the soup is gone). I ran the broth through a sieve, set it aside, discarded the cooked veggies (put them into your compost if you have it), and washed out the kettle. From there, I did this:

Kitchen Sink Soup

2-3 T. olive oil
1 andouille or other sausage or leftover meat (or none), chopped
4-6 cloves grated garlic
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 ribs celery, diced,
1 zucchini, diced
1 28-oz can plum tomatoes (I used Cento’s San Marzano Plum Tomatoes)
1 15-oz can Great Northern Beans
1/2 c. pasta (I used orecchiette)
broth from the chicken I just stewed (you can use regular broth, about 6-8 cups)
salt, pepper, etc.
Romano or Parmesan cheese, grated

Heat stew pot, add olive oil. Place chopped onion in pan, saute over low heat until clear and golden. Add meat (if using) and saute a bit. Stir in grated garlic. Add remaining diced vegetables, saute until cooked. Once the vegetables are at the desired degree of being done, pour in the can of tomatoes. Mash up the tomatoes (I used my potato masher), and cook a bit more. Put in the chicken broth or whatever stock you are using. Bring to a boil, add pasta and beans. Drop to a simmer and cover pot. Watch to make sure the pot does not boil over from the cooking pasta. Check pasta for al dente. Ready to serve!

Ladle into bowls, sprinkle grated cheese on top, and eat with good bread. (We used our homemade sourdough.)

Enjoy!

The Childhood Spaghetti Trauma Drama

I grew up on the world’s most disgusting ideas of what spaghetti with meatballs was. What is was consisted of some ground hamburger fried up in a pan, and then a box of some kind of “spaghetti dinner” added. Fast and cheap, and I would burp it up for days. The other idea of spaghetti and meatballs came out of a can and was warmed up in a saucepan. That’s it.

To this day, I have refused to eat anything with the word spaghetti in it (and it was years before I would try any pasta, but still will not eat spaghetti noodles), nor meatballs. That is, until a friend of mine from work told me how she makes spaghetti and meatballs . . . since she is the child of Italian immigrants, she should know, right?

So, here is the recipe I used . . . and like any recipe, it can be modified to use what is on hand, as long as it doesn’t deviate too much (I guess for me, that means nothing out of a can or box?).

Meatballs

1 lb ground meat (a combo of beef, Italian sausage, and if you use pork, very little)
1/2 c. romano cheese
chopped Italian parsley
milk
bread crumbs (I used panko)
seasoning such as garlic, onion, thyme, pepper
1 egg

Squish this all together, make into balls about the size of a golf ball. The balls should be light in feel, not heavy. Roll a bit in flour, and then fry until brown. Set aside and serve with spaghetti sauce of choice (preferably homemade, without oregano, as she says, “Oregano is used in pizza sauce.”), in which you warm up the meatballs, and serve with spaghetti noodles. (We will have bowties, thank you.)

Cornmeal Biscuits

Instead of the usual corn tortillas to go along with our homemade chili verde, I thought cornmeal biscuits were a good idea. At first, cornbread floated through my mind, and then I thought of biscuits . . . why not combine the ideas together?

Cornmeal Biscuits

Preheat oven to 425 F.

3/4 c. butter, unsalted, finely diced
1 1/2 c. unbleached flour
3/4 c. yellow cornmeal
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 T. white sugar
1/2 c. chopped, fresh sweet pepper (I used pale, green Hungarian)
1/2 c. corn, fresh or frozen
2/3 c. buttermilk (or thin yogurt)

Combine dry ingredients – flour, cornmeal, salt, soda, cream of tartar, and sugar – in a bowl. Blend in, as for pastry, the butter, until combination resembles coarse meal. Stir in the pepper and corn. With a fork, stir in the buttermilk.

Check biscuits for consistency, adding more flour or buttermilk as you think is necessary.

Create a ball out of dough and knead briefly on floured board. Roll out biscuits, about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick, on floured board, using 2.5 inch biscuit cutter.

Place on baking sheet. If you want, brush tops with extra buttermilk. Bake for 15-20 minutes, depending on your oven quirks, until lightly golden. Cool on wire rack.

I got a nice baker’s dozen, but YMMV.

Crustless Ricotta Spinach Pie

Crustless Ricotta Spinach Pie

4 eggs
1 c. heavy cream
1. c. whole milk ricotta cheese
1. c. grated Swiss, Jarlsberg, or Emmenthaler cheese
1 bunch of baby spinach, washed, rinsed, chopped, and squeezed as dry as possible
Fresh nutmeg

Preheat oven to 325 F. Rinse spinach, put in pan, steam until limp, then drain and squeeze and chop. Set aside.

Beat together eggs, cream, ricotta, and nutmeg. Stir in spinach and grated cheese.

Pour into 9 inch pie pan, sprayed with oil. Bake for 30 minutes; remove when pie is set but still jiggles. Cool.

Good with a fresh salad, or for an easy breakfast grab-and-go.

Biscotti & Broken Glass

With a few weeks off for the holiday season, the upcoming new year, it is time to get things done that have been put off for a woefully long time. One of them is cleaning the refrigerator very thoroughly, washing, rinsing, and sanitizing surfaces and nooks and crannies in all its dark recesses. And dropping a glass shelf, which shattered all over the place. Hence, the first part of the title for this post. Cleaned up, we move on to the best part – the biscotti!

Rum-Soaked Dried Fruit & Candied Peel

Holidays are about baking and cooking and eating and celebrating with friends and family and those you love, near and far. This year, Christmas day will be spent with family elsewhere, so the baking has begun. For a small contribution, we are bring praline bourbon cake to go with the annual gumbo, along with some biscotti, the recipe for which I found here at Foolproof Living, a cooking blog with a creative approach and lovely photography.

Adding the Fruit, Coconut, and Pecans to the Batter

The recipe is easy enough. I used leftover candied peel from King Arthur, and chopped up dried peaches, cranberries, and cherries, all finely diced. The coconut was slightly sweetened and I used pecans instead of walnuts or macadamias. I also used up a very generous amount of rum.

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum!

Follow the recipe – it comes out quite nice. The batter may seem a bit dry, but when you add the macerated dried fruit, it moistens up quite a bit. Also, patting out the dough onto the parchment is really necessary as the dough is sticky. I found putting some water on my hands helped a bit. Also, our knives are very sharp, so I used a straight-bladed knife (my husband tests the sharpness of our knives by shaving a spot on his arm or cutting paper with the just-sharpened knife) to cut the biscotti.

Biscotti Ready to Bake

Check out Foolproof Living – it has become one of my favorite blogs just because it has such a wonderful variety of recipes and interesting posts.

Biscotti Ready to Eat

Happy Holidays!