Duck season? Rabbit season? It's Soup season!

Fall is my favorite season. In spite of my disdain of pumpkin spice everything (except Pumpkin Spice Oreos, which are amazing), I love it when mid-September rolls around and we start to get that little nip in the air every evening. Granted, I'm still wearing flip-flops and I'm resisting grabbing a jacket in the morning, but I know that sweater/flannel/wool sock season is almost upon us. I love my fall clothes (I love them less in the winter even though they're the exact same clothes). 

Fall, of course, signals the beginning of Soup Season. While soup is arguably a year-round food, and there are plenty of cold soups to prove this, there's nothing that says "home" like a pot of hot soup simmering on the stove when you come in from a hard day's raking. For a couple of highly organized years, I would make a large pot of soup every Sunday afternoon and we would whittle away at it all week long; the house smelled amazing even before we started cooking dinner, and I felt incredibly virtuous. While I haven't been that motivated in a while, I do like a good soup dinner. 

This soup checks all the boxes. It's fast enough to make on a weeknight - no long simmering required. It's hearty enough to fill you up so you don't feel like you're starving your teenage son or forcing him to scrounge for leftovers. It's a small batch so you won't be eating it so long that you get tired of it. And most of the cooking is done in the microwave, which means that cleanup is pretty minimal. I was so happy to *not* have to clean up bacon grease. 

As with all soups, you can scale it up infinitely, limited only by the size of your pot, though this one won't freeze well because of the milk. It does end up being pretty thick but you can always add a little more milk or broth; personally I liked that it spooned up almost like scooping out the inside of a baked potato. 

This recipe comes from Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2011. Man, do I ever miss that magazine. 

It's Soup Season Loaded Baked Potato Soup

 

4 6-oz red potatoes 
2 tsp olive oil 
1/2 cup chopped onion 
1 1/2 cups chicken broth 
3 Tbsp GF flour mix or half-and-half mix of rice flour and cornstarch 
2 cups milk, divided 
1/4 cup sour cream 
salt and pepper 
3 slices bacon 
1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese 
4 thinly sliced green onions 

Pierce the potatoes with a fork and microwave on high for 13 minutes or until tender. Cut in half and cool slightly. 

While the potatoes cook, heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and saute 3 minutes. Add the broth. Combine the flour with 1/2 cup milk, then add it and the remaining milk to the pan. Bring to a boil, stirring often, and cook 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in sour cream, salt, and pepper. 

Put the bacon on a paper towel-covered plate, cover with another paper towel, and microwave on high for 4 minutes. Chop the bacon. 

Scrape off the potato skins and coarsely mash the potatoes into the soup. Serve with the cheese, bacon, and green onions.

Happy Cinco de Mayo: Mexican Jambalaya

It's Cinco de Mayo, which is generally a day for people to eat too many tacos and drink too many margaritas regardless of any Mexican heritage, in much the same way that St Patrick's Day is an excuse to drink to much beer and raise your blood pressure eating corned beef, regardless of whether you're actually Irish. This year it was also the day of Cinco de Mile, a 5-K race sponsored by a local sorority chapter to raise money for mental health awareness and programs in the city. It's a cause near and dear to my heart and I'm trying to form healthier habits, so I signed up with a friend in spite of being an avowed hater of running. My couch-to-5K program was going well until a minor ankle injury and then my running partner ruptured a tendon, so we decided that a brisk walk was the closest we were going to get and went to the race anyway. It was a lovely day for it and park we walked around was really nice; the pre-race Zumba was fun (to watch); and a good time was had by all, in spite of the fact that we took long enough that they disassembled the tent and packed up before we were quite finished. I'm not sure that I'll sign up for another event this year - really, I don't like running - but it was a great way to kick start some healthier habits and get into a walking routine. 

We're having tacos tonight (coincidentally, because I'm not really that organized) but I'd be remiss if I didn't share one of our favorite new recipes in honor of the holiday: Mexican Jambalaya. I'm not crazy about the name of this one - really, the only thing it has in common with actual jambalaya is the presence of sausage - but we haven't thought of anything better to call it. It's got the vibe of open-the-cans-and-call-it-Mexican-food cooking that I absolutely can't get behind, but really, I blame the name. It calls for actual chopped veg and actual spices and no more actual cans that plenty of other dishes we make, so I'm not sure why I'm being a snob about it. The end result is undeniably delicious. 

The recipe makes a ludicrous amount of food, which means that we actually end up with leftovers for lunch even when John is at the dinner table with us, and it's ready if not much more than half an hour. We've made some modifications to it based on what we can find at our local Aldi/GFS, as I'm not making a separate trip to find smoked Basque chorizo somewhere. I'm sure it's even better as written, but our substitute version has done just fine for us; it's become something of a regular in our kitchen. 

As with so many of the other recipes David finds online, I have no idea whatsoever where this came from. I'd be happy to attribute it to the original author if only I knew who they were. 

Mexican Jambalaya

4 1/2 oz Mexican chorizo 
12 oz smoked Basque chorizo, chopped
6 oz smoked Andouille sausage, chopped

OR 

1/2 package of the pre-cooked Black Forest sausage you buy at GFS that looks like kielbasa but isn't, chopped
2 cups chopped, cooked leftover chicken

Which way you go with the meat really depends on what your local grocery store stocks. By all means, find the sausages if you can and then pleeeeeease tell me how it turns out because I bet it's fantastic. 

1 yellow or white onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped 
2 cans fire-roasted diced tomatoes (regular diced if you can't find the fire-roasted)
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ancho chili powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp kosher salt 
2 cups chicken broth
1 roasted, peeled, and chopped Anaheim or jalapeno chile (or sub a can of diced roasted green chiles, if the fresh produce section of your store is lacking)
1 15-oz can pinto beans 

If you're using the Mexican chorizo, cook it in a large stock pot, crumbling it as you go, then add the onion. If you're using our cheater ingredients, start by cooking your onion in a little canola oil for about 3 minutes. 

Stir in the celery and bell pepper and cook another 5 minutes or so. Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil, then simmer and cook 25 minutes. Serve over white rice. 

If Minestrone and Ratatouille Had a Baby, It Would Be This: Italian Vegetable Stew

My out-of-control cookbook shelf(s) contains at least 9 vegetarian cookbooks, not including all of Anna's, because I'm avowed meat eater who aspires to be healthier. Most of the vegetarian recipes I've come across feel like entirely too much work for a weeknight, as they often: 

• include multiple recipes in the actual recipe in an effort to make something look easier than it actually is, (I'm looking at you, "Tofu with Broccoli and Spicy Peanut Sauce"), or 
• leave me hungry afterwards (I'm looking at you, "Tofu with Broccoli and Spicy Peanut Sauce"), or
• want me to substitute a fake meat for actual meat, which violates House Rule #1: No food pretending to be other food. This rules out a lot of tofu recipes for us (veggie crumbles generally contain gluten so they're right out anyway). 

If your experience has been different, please send me your recipes and I'll be delighted to try them. 

House Rule #1 has helped us avoid a lot of sadness in our gluten-free existence, as we're rarely tempted by such "treats" as frozen gluten-free doughnuts (which will never measure up to the real thing and just leave us noticing the difference). The solution to this - in both vegetarian and gluten-free cooking - has been finding ethnic recipes that don't want the offending ingredient in the first place. Naturally this leads us to Asia and the Middle East quite often. 

This baby looks nothing like minestrone or ratatouille

On occasion, however, we land solidly in Europe, as with this Italian dish that tastes like what would happen if minestrone and ratatouille had a baby. There are a fair number of steps in this recipe but nothing is actually difficult or time-consuming; this is something you can easily accomplish on a weeknight. And since the colder weather doesn't seem to be finished with us quite yet, it would also be lovely on a gloomy, rainy, cold day like today. 

Adapted very slightly from The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen, my favorite obsessive people in the whole world. They will cook every possible variation of a dish so you don't have to (see any given cookie recipe if you don't believe me) and their food is invariably foolproof and delicious. 

Ciambotta (Italian Vegetable Stew)

PESTO

1/3 cup fresh basil
1/3 cup fresh oregano (or a tablespoon dried, if you can't find fresh oregano at 3 grocery stores) 
6 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes 

STEW

1 eggplant, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces 
salt
1/4 cup olive oil 
1 large onion, chopped
1 lb potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces 
2 Tbsp tomato paste
2 1/4 cups water 
1 28-oz can stewed tomatoes 
2 zucchini, seeded and cut into 1/2-inch pieces 
2 bell peppers, cut into 1/2-inch pieces 
1 cup shredded fresh basil (optional but probably delicious) 

Toss the eggplant with 1 1/2 tsp salt. Place it on a large plate covered with paper towels or coffee filters and microwave 8-12 minutes or until it's slightly shriveled, tossing halfway through.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a Dutch oven. Add the eggplant, onion, and potatoes and cook until the eggplant is slightly browned, about 5 minutes. Push the vegetables to the  side of the pot and add 1 tablespoon oil plus the tomato paste and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes. Allegedly this will form a brown crust on the bottom of the pot but it didn't for me; if it works for you, that's great. You'll deglaze the pan in the next step. 

Stir in 2 cups water and the tomatoes and scape up any brown bits. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium, and simmer until the eggplant is completely broken down, about 25 minutes. 

Heat the remaining tablespoon oil in a skillet. Add the zucchini, bell peppers, and 1/2 teaspoon salt and cook until the vegetables start to soften, about 10 minutes. 

Meanwhile, put all the pesto into a food processor and process until it's well-blended. If you're using the dried oregano, stir it in after you've processed everything. 

Push the vegetables to the side of skillet and add the pesto. Cook and stir about 1 minute. Stir the pesto into the vegetables. Put the mixture into a bowl (if you use the same one you used for tossing the eggplant with the salt, it's one less bowl to wash). 

Off heat, add the rest of the water to the skillet and scape up the browned bits, if any. 

Stir the zucchini mixture and water into the Dutch oven. Cover and let stand 20 minutes so the flavors blend. Stir in the rest of the basil, if using, then salt to taste and serve. 

Cookbook Challenge #17: Ethiopian Split Peas

Thanks, Wikipedia! 

If you've ever had the good fortune to have dinner at the Blue Nile, you're probably already familiar with this dish. Dining there is a fun experience: your group sits around a big woven basket called a mesob and shares portions served on injera, a spongy type of flatbread that you tear off and use to eat your food - no forks anywhere in sight. When I mentioned the restaurant, my African friend made a face and directed me to a completely different one; we tried it, but the experience of eating this delicious food off plates was simply not the same. Also, my palate isn't nearly refined enough to be able to tell the difference between a restaurant that is "the best" and another that is merely excellent. 

Properly this is called yekik alich'a, but I have no idea how to pronounce this and don't want to mangle it: Ethiopian split peas it is. This recipe comes from Exotic Ethiopian Cooking, purchased as a birthday gift for David along with a promise to make a meal from it, after we discovered that some Ethiopian restaurants use wheat flour along with the teff in the injera. (We've since discovered that we can get injera made with teff alone, but we need to give a couple of days' notice in order for them to properly ferment the dough, a restriction that doesn't necessarily fit in with our haphazard scheduling these days.) This cookbook is distinctive in that it appears to have not one single recipe for a vegetable, only meat and legumes and bread. Also, please don't tell me that a split pea is a vegetable; while I realize this is technically true, they behave more like lentils and I'm going to persist in thinking of them this way.

I've been meaning to cook from this book for ages even though I find it a bit intimidating; there are assumptions being made here that I'm not familiar with and I'm not sure how to feel about the spice levels. Nevertheless I persisted. Sunday's dinner was yesiga t'ibs (meat cooked with spices and red pepper), which I've made previously with venison, and these split peas. I was glad that I did some adjusting as we went, as the meat recipe called for a full cup of berbere, a cayenne pepper-based spice mixture that blew our hair back from our faces even when we cut the amount in half. Variations of the split peas call for stirring in some berbere at the end, which I'm sure is delicious as well, but we needed something to cut through the spiciness of the meat. For which I used half the spices. Half. We're such cowards.  

The recipe as written freaked me out a little, so I did some quick Googling and adjusted the recipe a bit based on what I learned, namely that using half the oil was completely fine as there are other versions that call for mere tablespoons. Apparently you can also make this with butter, which I imagine would make for a very rich dish indeed. I could see serving this as a main dish and adding some vegetables on the side - there have to be some Ethiopian vegetable recipes online! - or feeding my vegetarian/vegan friends with it. It can be served hot or cold and would make an interesting addition to a potluck. The version that appears below includes my adjustments.  

From Exotic Ethiopian Cooking: Society, Culture, Hospitality, and Traditions by D.J. Mesfin. 

Yekik Alich'a  

2 cups split peas (red or green; I used green) 
4 cups water 
2 cups red onion, chopped 
1 cup oil (we used canola for the neutral flavor) 
1 Tbsp ginger paste (or chopped fresh ginger)
1 Tbsp garlic paste (or chopped fresh garlic)
4 fresh jalapenos, chopped 
1 tsp black pepper 
salt to taste 

Rinse the split peas and boil until soft; this took about 30 minutes but your mileage may vary. Drain. 

Cook the onions with the oil, stirring often. Add the peas, garlic, ginger, and black pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, about 20-30 minutes. The longer you cook this, the less defined your peas will be so keep going if you want something that is more like a paste than separate peas. Stir in the jalapenos and salt to taste. Serve over rice (or ideally with injera, if you've thought ahead 3 days to ferment the dough). 

Burger of the Week Continues: A Thoroughly Bougie Burger

Our household's love affair with The Great Big Burger Book continues unabated. Someone in the house picks out a new burger for us every week, to be served - regardless of the serving suggestions - with a sheet pan full of Tater Tots. It's entirely possible that this will be the first cookbook I make every single recipe from, assuming I can find a fishmonger somewhere in the area to supply me suitably for Chapter 3 (I am ignorant and useless when it comes to cooking fish, so I'm afraid of making substitutions)(among other problems)(clearly I need a cookbook dedicated entirely to fish so that I can finally learn how to cook it)(I eat sushi, fer cryin' out loud - why am I so terrified of undercooking seafood? The worst that can happen is I'll kill us all from some food-borne pathogen). 

This latest burger has been made significantly less posh by my interpretation. Billed as "the rich man's hamburger," it has a lovely list of ingredients that didn't quite exist in my pantry as written; there is no greater indicator of my growth as a cook than my confidence in modifying and substituting in recipes, and this one is a great example. I can only imagine how delightful this would be if I actually followed the recipe, as the bougie-fied version was really flavorful and made outstanding leftovers. As written, the recipe made one half-pound burger and claimed that even if you were full you'd be willing to eat the entire thing, which I don't doubt. However, we've all learned a valuable lesson from the Big Mock double-decker burger experiment - namely, don't. Making yourself sick from overeating is not necessarily a compliment to the cook. 

I'm writing the recipe as we made it, with smaller 1/4-pound patties that make a more reasonable serving size. A little goes a long way with these, honestly. One of these days I'll revisit it and faithfully follow the recipe, perhaps when I've cooked my way through the rest of the book. In the meantime, here's my version, which is somewhere above solidly-middle-class but nowhere near posh: The Bougie Burger. 

Adapted from The Great Big Burger Book by Jane Murphy and Liz Yeh Singh. I can't believe I haven't yet convinced you to buy it, this is a fantastic cookbook. 

The Bougie Burger 

1 lb top round
1 small onion, minced 
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard 
4 dashes Tabasco or hot sauce of your choice, possibly scaled up a bit if you're feeling it. I used a big dollop of Anna's Fuego from Spicy Caribbee, which I don't expect anyone who hasn't visited San Juan lately has in their fridge 
4 egg yolks. Under no circumstances should you listen to your husband and use the whole egg, because your burgers will be gloppy and thus crack in the pan and you will be sad 
4 dashes Worchestershire sauce
2 Tbsp dry sherry or whiskey (I realize these are not substitutes for each other in any normal sense. Use 2 Tbsp cognac instead, depending on the state of your liquor cabinet. I was absolutely not going to buy cognac just for this purpose)
1 tsp salt 
2 Tbsp capers, drained and chopped 
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper. Yes, it makes a difference here. 
1 Tbsp butter plus 1 Tbsp oil 

Pulse the beef in the food processor until it's coarsely ground. Honestly, this makes such a superior meat I can't believe I don't do it for all my burgers. Hahahahahaha. But really it does make a difference. Gently mix in all the other ingredients except the butter and oil, then form into 4 patties. 

Melt the butter and oil together in a large skillet. Fry the burgers until they're as done as you like; 4 minutes per side gave me a nice medium burger.  

The original version calls for blotting the pan, then frying the bun cut side-down and serving it with a mustard-horseradish butter and some good bleu cheese crumbled over the top. We served the burgers naked on a sesame seed bun and they were delightful, but I have no doubt that the original version is superior in every way. Do please buy the cookbook and try it, and let me know how it goes. 

A Non-Traumatic Christmas Breakfast For Once: Currant Scones

 Christmas breakfast has been known to be traumatic around here (see https://normalonpaper.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-sad-saga-of-christmas-breakfast.html and https://normalonpaper.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-christmas-breakfast-saga-continues.html for previous breakfast traumas). And we don't even talk about the year when my Christmas breakfast was currant scones, champagne, and tears. But things have calmed down, partly as a function of my kids getting older and thus more helpful, David's dietary restrictions loosening up, and my general giving of fewer fucks with the passage of time. Things were so chill and organized this year that I decided, 10 minutes before breakfast, that we needed a batch of (non-teary) scones to go with a pot of tea after we demolished the breakfast casserole. 

I love scones. My introduction to them was an unexpected delivery from Zingerman's, which is both an unmitigated delight and the best possible introduction to any baked good. They've always felt exotic and special to me since then, and I loved coffee shop trips in my thirties when I found scones in the bakery case. I was delighted to realize that they're dead easy to make and are just as exotic and delicious at home with a pot of tea (yes, I realize scones are actually the opposite of exotic, they're basically a muffin that doesn't leave you with an annoying pan to wash, or a rich biscuit with fruit - both very ordinary foods). 

This is such an easy recipe as written, but I've adapted it slightly to make it Even Easier and to take zero bowls, unless you count the one from the food processor, which I don't because it fits in my dishwasher and I don't have to hand-wash it. How to Cook Everything was one the first cookbooks I've destroyed through love and over-use, though I refuse to replace it with an updated version no matter how dilapidated it becomes; the new versions have everything in the wrong order and they don't have 2 decades worth of notes written in the margins. Mark Bittman helped me become a good home cook, leaving behind the Gourmet Magazine excesses of my twenties and actually managing to produce something on weeknights on a regular basis. It's sufficiently comprehensive that I'll never manage to cook my way through it, and it continues to be my go-to when I have an ingredient I'm not necessarily feeling inspired by. 

These really are at their best the day they're made. I've never tried freezing and reviving them because they never last long enough; I was shocked to wake up this morning and realize that we had three left from yesterday's breakfast. They were perfectly fine with a cup of coffee, but they dry out quickly and the crumb isn't as tender. I'm only going to recommend the food processor method if you're using gluten-free flour mix, as there's no danger of overworking your dough and thus overdeveloping the gluten and making your scones tough. While they're not as tender a crumb as a scone made with wheat flour, they're also not going to make anyone in your house sick or sad that they're missing out. 

Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. 

Non-Traumatic Christmas Breakfast Scones 

2 cups GF flour blend (we're using Bob's Red Mill these days)
1 tsp salt 
4 tsp baking powder 
2 Tbsp sugar 
5 Tbsp butter, ideally cold, cut into pieces 
3 eggs 
3/4 cup heavy cream 
1/3 cup dried currants or other dried fruit even though currants are best 
1 Tbsp water 

Preheat the oven to 450. The rest of this will come together in the time it takes the oven to come to temperature. 

Put all the dry ingredients minus one tablespoon of the sugar into the bowl of your food processor and pulse to blend. Sprinkle the butter over the top and pulse to combine; your flour will look more like coarse cornmeal once everything is blended in. Beat the eggs with the cream and pour over the top, then pulse to just barely blend. Sprinkle the currants evenly over the top and pulse a few times to combine. Pulse a few more times to fake the step where you gently knead the dough on a floured cutting board, which is altogether too much work and too sticky with GF flour. 

Turn out onto a baking sheet and pat into a 1 1/2-inch thick round or rectangle. Cut into triangles (or use a biscuit cutter if you're being fancy; you can re-pat the scraps to make as many as possible). 

Beat the third egg with the water and brush over the top, then sprinkle with the second tablespoon of sugar. Bake 7-9 minutes or until the tops are light golden in color, which actually happens even though they're gluten-free thanks to the egg. 

This is Not a Burger: Chop Suey Something

Weeknight dinners have become pretty routine around here since I went back to work full-time. As much as I love variety and new things for dinner, the need to get food on the table before 10 p.m. limits what I can reasonably do. As a result, we've had a regular go-to list of the same items in rotation, and not much of it is something I feel the need to preserve in writing. 

The burger cookbook, though.... I've posted recipes from this one before, specifically the amazing Big Mac knock-off that has become a staple around here and black bean burgers that non-vegetarians will enjoy. This book lets me not think too hard about the grocery list but adds a lot of variety to burger night; we're well on our way to cooking every recipe in here (though I suspect the seafood section will pose some difficulty. We'll have to wait until John moves out). While cooking from this book falls into the category of Having Burgers Once a Week, it does give us an excuse to make Tater Tots on the regular and lets me try more variations on a simple theme. 

This recipe for a "chop suey burger" - the most American version of an American dish masquerading as Chinese - is a bit of a departure from the burger patty. I honestly don't know how they can justify calling it a burger when it is clearly something that needs to be ladled over hot rice and eaten with a fork. Nonetheless, it's much more delicious than I would have thought from the ingredient list, which is full of vegetables but no spices whatsoever. We doubled the recipe below so there was enough for Hungry Teenage Boy and also leftovers for lunch the next day; as written it says it makes 6 "burgers" but I really have my doubts about their math. Note that if you double the recipe you don't end up with extra bamboo shoots and water chestnuts.  

From "The Great Big Burger Book" by Jane Murphy and Liz Yeh SIngh, which I discovered at Kyrie's cottage and bought on a whim. No regrets. 

Chop Suey Something That is Definitely Not a Burger 

1 lb. ground pork
1 tsp soy sauce 
2 Tbsp oyster sauce 
1 medium yellow onion, chopped 
1 Tbsp canola oil 
1 cup chopped bok choy 
1/4 cup bamboo shoots 
4 oz white mushrooms, sliced 
1/4 cup sliced water chestnuts, drained 
1 celery stalk, sliced 
1 cup chicken broth 
2 Tbsp cornstarch 
1/4 cup water 

In a large skillet, brown the pork with the soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of the oyster sauce, and the onion until the meat is no longer pink. Transfer it to a bowl. 

Heat the skillet over high heat until it's really, really hot. Add the oil and swirl around the bottom of the pan to also make it really, really hot, then add the bok choy, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, water chestnuts, and celery. Cook until the vegetables are just softened, about 4 minutes, then add the pork and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer 10 minutes. 

Make a slurry of the remaining tablespoon of oyster sauce, cornstarch, and water. Add to the skillet slowly and bring to a boil for about a minute or until the sauce is thickened. 

Serve over rice. The original recipe recommends serving it over toasted French bread but I think that's just a last-ditch effort to make it sound like this is actually a burger. I see no need to bring knives into the equation.