Lentil veggie and garden leek soup with pesto butter and homemade bread

These pictures are from December 1. We took out all the basil and peppers and some of the leeks, and spaced out the other leeks better. The basil went into a pesto butter with garlic, butter, and almonds. The leeks went into a lentil veggie soup. We served the dinner with white wine and homemade whole wheat baguette.

Split pea soup with garlic toast

Begin by sauteing a mirepoix of leeks and celery, and add some thyme leaves. Then add about a cup of dried split peas and about three cups of water. Bring to a boil and simmer until the peas start to get tender, ten to twenty minutes. Then add spinach or young braising greens. If using non-spinach greens, be sure to remove any tough stems, and use only greens: no amaranth or beets or rainbow chard. When the greens are tender, puree everything with the immersion blender, and adjust the salt.

Meanwhile, chop and toast some walnuts for serving on top of the soup. For an extra special soup, before adding the walnuts swirl (but don't thoroughly mix) in some cream or creme fraiche. Also, mash some garlic with a little salt, spread on bread, and broil briefly to toast.

Byzantine onion soup

I'm finally posting food photos from November. The problem is that we're visiting Eugene, so I don't have my cookbooks.

About a month ago, we made a reasonably tasty "Byzantine onion soup" from a Greek cookbook we picked up at a used bookstore. I don't remember the exact recipe. Roughly, you saute onions in some butter with a number of "sweet" spices (cinnamon is the one I distinctly remember), and blend everything with the immersion blender. Then you do the whisk-in-an-egg thing to thicken the soup. We served the soup with freshly made croutons. It was tasty, but not something we'll repeat.

Some food from the weekend

I'm not going to regale you with recipes for every Thanksgiving dish — everything was delicious, and almost everything is a favorite standard — but I thought it best to at least check in with a quick rundown of the weekend. On Wednesday we made pizza for the family (four cookie-sheet-sized pizzas, two with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella and two with pears, walnuts, blue cheese, and mozzarella). Tomorrow night's plan is for stew with chickpeas, clams, and sausage. Tonight we had skate, very yummy baked fifteen to twenty minutes in a buttered pan at 400°, and then topped with browned butter and capers. We served the skate with brown rice and chard: bring a few inches of water to a boil in a large pot, and add a good handful of baking soda, and then stir in two bunches rainbow chard, cut into one-inch-thick ribbons; peel a couple cloves of garlic, mince them, and then add a large handful of salt to the garlic in a small pile on a cutting board and work the salt into the garlic with a knife until you have a nice paste; after about two minutes, drain the greens in a colander, dry them off a bit in a clean dish towel, and toss the greens with the garlic in a serving bowl.

On Friday, as we do every year, we made soup. My brother invited a friend from school to join us for the Thanksgiving weekend, and said friend is quite strictly vegetarian, so in addition to our usually turkey soup, we also made a vegan option. (The friend left today, hence the meaty dinners tonight and tomorrow.) Coarsely chop four onions, half a dozen celery sticks, and about as many carrots, and divide them roughly evenly between two pots. Add a few bay leaves, a few peppercorns, and a large handful of salt to each pot. In the larger pot, also add the saved turkey neck and giblets as well as the bones (break them up if you can with a cleaver to let the marrow out), but discard the skin and use the fat for some other project. Save any savable meat, of course. Cover the contents of each pot with water (but not more than enough to cover), place the lids on, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook about an hour.

Dice another three onions. Place two of them in a large pot and one in a medium pot, and saute in a splash of olive oil with some salt. Also add diced carrot and celery to each to make two mirepoix. To the smaller pot, add three quarter pound sliced crimini mushrooms. Once the mushrooms start to release their liquid, add between half and a third of a cup of pearled barley to the smaller pot, and between half a cup and two thirds to the larger pot. Stir the barley in to coat, and then place a colander or sieve over the smaller part and pour in the finished vegetable broth, rescuing the cooked veggies to give to the backyard chickens (it was raining all weekend — that soup was from October). Then move the colander to the larger pot and pour in the turkey broth.

Bring both soups to a boil. After about ten minutes, add frozen edamame to each pot. Bring back to a boil, cook another ten minutes, and stir in a fair amount of saved turkey meat into the turkey-broth (non-mushroom) soup. Adjust the salt and serve with good bread and good wine.

Autumn vegetable and chicken curry stew, served in kabocha squash bowls

Here's a fine fusion dish for a cold autumn day. Find small, round, blemish-free kabocha squash, one per person. Carve off the tops as if you were carving jack-o-lanterns, and remove and discard the seeds. Save the tops (if they are particularly thick, cut off a bit of the flesh for cooking into the stew; sprinkle the inside flesh of the tops with a little apple cider vinegar if you're worried about letting them sit out for a while). Rub some salt into the flesh inside the squashes, wrap the outsides of the squashes with foil, and back upwards of an hour in a medium-temperature oven. You want the flesh to be tender, but the sides to retain their integrity, so check regularly with a fork.

Meanwhile, prepare the stew. Begin by sauteing onions in olive oil with some salt, a bit of ground allspice, and plenty of curry powder. Then add a few sour green apples, chopped up, and some peppers, and any other fall veggies you might happen to have (e.g. the extra squash from the top of the jack-o-lanterns). After sauteing a bit, add some vegetable or chicken stock, or, better, some blended squash soup (we found some in the freezer). (If you have lots of extra winter squash, you can make this soup before making the stew: onions, squash, broth, a little salt, cooked until tender and then pureed.) Bring the stew to a boil, and then stir in some pieces of chicken, to poach. Once the chicken has cooked, taste the stew and adjust the seasoning.

When the flesh of the kabochas is starting to get tender, remove the "bowls" from the oven and fill with the stew while still very hot. The heat from the stew will help cook the insides of the squash even more. Replace the tops and serve.

The point is to eat the soup, and also eat the bowls mixed into the soup from the inside out. We had been intending this for our Hallowe'en dinner, but ended up pushing it to All Saints' Day instead. This stew can go with almost any wine, depending on how cold it is outside.

Chicken soup with rice

Whenever you cook a chicken, you should save all the extra inner parts in a bag in the freezer. You should save also the scraps of celery and onion and so on that you don't want to eat directly (wash all veggies before placing in the freezer).

On soup day, combine in a large pot the carcass from your cooked chicken (take apart your leftovers, saving any good meat), the giblets and veggie scraps from the freezer, a coarsely chopped onion, one or two halved carrots, a stalk or two of celery, and some black pepper corn and a bay leaf. Cover with water and bring to a simmer for about an hour.

When the stock is well-flavored, strain out and discard all the solid stuff. Saute a mirepoix of onion, celery, and carrot in just a little olive oil and add to the stock. Add also one cup of white rice (and some extra water if necessary) and bring to a boil. Cook the rice for ten minutes, and then add cooked meat cut from your leftovers. (The only part you don't want for any step of the soup is the fatty skin: the skin itself toughens a bit in boiling, and soup should not have much fat in it.) Cook another ten minutes. Then adjust the salt and serve.

Summer soup for the Harvest Moon

Tonight we were treated to a once-in-three-decades event: a full moon on night of the Autumn Equinox. Every year, the Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the equinox, but this year "closest" means "five and a half hours" rather than "ten days".

We began by making a hearty whole-wheat bread. Combine three cups whole wheat flour, one tablespoon wheat gluten, two teaspoons salt, and one tablespoon yeast. Also mix in one cup cooked wheat berries. Our flour and berries are from the always excellent Massa Organics, and after tonight's bread, we need to buy more of both. Then slowly add about one and a half cups water, mixing while you go. Knead a little bit and let the dough sit for a few hours. Bake the bread for about fifty minutes if you make it all into just one loaf, and let cool ten to twenty minutes before slicing.

Our soup was really more of a vegetable stew. Begin by sauteing half a red onion and some garlic in salted olive oil. Then add two bunches turnips, thinly sliced, and three quarters cup wine and six cups water, and adjust the salt. Bring to a boil and add one cup dried French green lentils. The lentils should cook a total of about thirty minutes, so take a short break and do dishes.

In a separate fry-pan or wok, heat some olive oil into which you have ground some black pepper. When the oil is hot, fry about half a pound thinly-sliced summer squash. Add the squash to the soup.

Also add the corn cut off of two or three ears, and one bunch greens (some quick-cooking kind: red chard, which is what we used, is particularly pretty; alternately, use the greens from the turnips if they are still fresh). Cook about ten minutes while you finish setting the table. Right before serving the soup, stir in two very fresh heirloom tomatoes, cut into wedges.

Serve the soup with the whole-wheat bread, butter for the bread, grated grana padamo for the soup, and a chilled white wine.

Cold corn soup with popcorn and salsa

We had a strange but tasty lunch at Eugene City Bakery, and decided that we just had to make it at home.


Begin by sauteing one large onion and two yellow bell peppers, coarsely chopped, in some olive oil until tender. In the saute, include also some salt (to help the onions tenderize) and ancho chili powder. Cut the corn off of three or four ears and add to the pot, along with just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil.


With an immersion blender, puree the veggies. Also mix in one four-cup tub of non-fat plain yogurt.




Do not reheat the soup: the idea is to have it cold. Do, however, add a lot more spices — your tongue is less sensitive when the food it is tasting is cold, and you probably have spiced the soup for hot. In addition to a bit more salt and ancho, blend in a some curry and tarragon (both of which go wonderfully with cream).



Pop a pot of popcorn, and flavor the popcorn with salt and paprika. Also make a fresh salsa of tomatoes, onions, and garlic. Serve the soup cold with popcorn and salsa mixed in at the table.



As odd as the pairing might sound, this dinner was one of our best.

Salmon chowder

I think I'm finally up-to-date with posting pictures here. We'll see how long that lasts. Last night we made a fantastic salmon chowder.

Begin by making the fumet: simmer the head (gills removed) and bones of a whole salmon (you should be able to get such scraps from your fishmonger, for around $1/lb), along with some ends of leeks, in just enough water to cover for about half an hour.

Meanwhile, start sauteing leeks, sliced, in a little butter or olive oil. Add some salt and, once the leeks soften, add just enough milk to cover. Dice two sweet potatoes and add to the leeks-and-milk.

When the fumet is done, strain it and add some to the soup. Add also 1/2 lb salmon trimmings (the bits of fish that the fishmonger cuts off the fillets to make them even, and so sells for half price), which will poach pretty much instantly. Stir in one cup cream, and maybe a little more fumet because although you like stew, you don't want the soup too thick. Adjust the salt and serve the very rich soup with a lightly-chilled cab-merlot blend or pinot noir.

Cream of mushroom soup

Cream of cauliflower soup with homemade baguette

B made this wonderful dinner for us and a friend of ours. He described the soup as "cream of everything in the fridge": after sauteing and boiling cauliflower, leeks, and celery, he blended the soup with the immersion blender. The cauliflower gets very creamy — no dairy necessary. We garnished the soup with parsley and broccoli flowers from the garden.

Mushroom barley soup

Begin with a mire poix of carrots, celery, leeks or spring onions, dried bay leaf, and a little ground black pepper, and saute it at the bottom of your soup pot in olive oil and salt until the vegetables soften. Add a bit of minced garlic and a cup of dry pearled barley, and stir to coat the barley in the hot oil. Add halved crimini mushrooms, one large jar of home-canned tomatoes, with their juices, and, if you like, some cooked kidney beans or white beans. Add lots of water — the barley will expand as it cooks — and salt liberally. Bring to a boil and simmer at least an hour. Before serving (or after, if you forget) add a dash of red wine vinegar.

Chowder with clams, sweet potatoes, and corn

A lot went into this chowder, but the end result was great. We began by sauteing a mire poix of leeks and onions in butter. Then we added crab stock, water, and sweet potato. When the potato was soft, we separated the soup, and, using the immersion blender, we blended half of it with cream until smooth. Meanwhile, we steamed open some clams and removed the from their shells. We combined the clams, the blended soup, the unblended vegetables, and a can of corn. We adjusted the salt, stirred in chopped parsley, and enjoyed the excellent meal.

Sushi!

Our dinner menu from March 7:

• Miso soup
• Terriyaki salmon (wild-caught from Alaska, via Berkeley bowl), served over white sticky rice
• Tuna sashimi (wild-caught, via Berkeley bowl), served over shaved carrots
• Avocado and green onion rolls
• Viu Manent Sauvingon Blanc (very dry Chilean wine)

Long time ago: Greek Dinner for Columbae

I was recently going through some very old posts at a different web journal. I came across this collection of recipes, and I do not think I have posted the here. The following is from May 14, 2005.

At a recent bookstore sale, I picked up two vegetarian cookbooks, each for $6 (one normally goes for $13, the other for $28). The cheaper one looks especially like a keeper: called Vegetarian's A to Z Guide to Fruits & Vegetables, it provides a number of simple but yummy-looking recipes for each vegetable (the veggies are alphabetized by name), as well as nutrition information for each recipe and discussion of the vegetable's properties, time of year, location, storage, etc. I can imagine living near a local organic farm and subscribing to a weekly produce box that would provide me with seasonal produce with, at any given time, a small selection. In such a situation, a book like this would be a lifesaver: we're eating cucumbers for a week? Fine, let's see what we can do with cucumbers. The farmers decide to grow Batavian endive? We can look that up too.

In theory, Columbae would opperate that way, and we do try to keep to local seasonal produce. That said, I've been looking forward to preparing a traditional (well, with vegan modificaitons) Greek feast tomorrow, and although we did get baby spinach from the local organic supplier, I wanted celery, cucumber, grapes, all of which are seasonal in mid- to late summer. Our produce manager, however, is currently my most favoritest person in the world: she got me a couple heads of celery, a big box of grapes, and a big box of cucumbers, all conventional. So I'll have to wash everything, and the cucumbers are probably waxed, which is a shame, because the skins are the healthiest part, but still.

I have filo dough, which I need to remember to move to the fridge tonight to defrost, and I have my veggies and recipes. I need to soak the beans, too, and look up the spices suggested for apple rather than pear filling for the desert (pears aren't in season, whereas we have a hella lot of apples, but apples aren't as delicate, so require more spicing). I don't get olives --- dry goods and dairy came through for me with the feta but not with everything --- but oh, well. It will be good.


Soup: Fassolada me Spanaki Serves 6-8

Soak for 4 hrs, drain, boil, and drain

• 1.5 cup dried cannellini

or open

• 2 cans beans

In a large saucepan on medium heat, saute in plenty of olive oil for 30 minutes

• 2 medium onions, finely chopped
• 4 medium carrots, finely diced
• 2 sticks celery, finely diced

Add, and bring to poin, cover, and simmer

• 4 sprigs celery leaves (optional)
• 2 large cloves garlid, finely chopped
• 2 Tbsp dried thyme (and/or greek oregano)
• 1/2 a medium bunch of fresh parsely, coarsely chopped
• the beans, if used dried
• 8 cups water or light vegetable stock
• 1 large can diced tomatos (or skin and dice three large tomatoes and let sit salted 15 minutes)
• 1 Tbsp tomato paste diluted in 3 Tbsp water
• 8 oz spinach, cut in thin ribbons

Simmer perhaps 20-30 minutes, adding the tomato paste and spinach in the last 5-10 minutes. Stir in

• another 1/2 bunch of parsely
• a little more oil

Serve hot, with

• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar

sprinkled over each bowl.


Bulgari Pilafi Serves 4

Heat gently in large saucepan

• 3 Tbsp olive oil

and saute until translucent

• 1 large onion

Break up with fingers into roughly 2-inch pieces

1/4 cup thin spaghetti, vermicelli, or angel's hair

and add to onion. Continue stirring until pasta is pale golden and arromatic, 2-3 minutes.
Soak for a few minutes to enlarge, then rinse in a fine sieve under running water

• 2 1/4 cup coarse bulgar, picked clean

and add to pan, stirring, and add

• 1 1/2 cup vegetable stock (scale sublinearly)

Cover and simmer gently 7-8 minutes, until mixture looks almost dry. Cover with cloth, replace lid, and let stand off heat at least 10-15 minutes, or up to 1 hr.


Spanakopita Fills 13x15 lasagna pan, enough for 8 people as a main course

Make sure to have left the filo dough out to defrost to room temp 5 hrs before use.
Chop into uniform 1/4-1/2 inch cubes

• 1 large onion

and saute until clead. Add

• 1 clove garlic, mashed
• 2 lbs fresh or frozen spinach

and saute until limp.
Mash to chunks less than 1/2 inch

• 16 oz firm water-packed tofu (frozen and defrosted if you have time)

and add to pan, along with

• 2 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp black pepper
• 2 Tpsp oregano

Remove from heat and drain excess water. Let cool slightly.
Preheat oven 350°F, oil a large lasagna pan, and get ready to work with filo dough: as the dough will dry quickly, don't open the package until everything is ready. Have 3-4 people working. Each sheet should be lightly oiled (so keep a brush and a bowl of oil handy) after it's placed in the the pan, and someone should keep a clean, barely moist towel over the unused dough. Anyhoo, when ready, cut open

• 1 pound filo dough

and place individual oiled sheets, with edges hanging over edge of pan, in varying directions. Use a third of the dough (roughly 6 sheets), then fill in half the spinach, then a third of the dough, then the other half spinach, then the last third of the dough. Fold edges over or in, make sever slashes through the top of the pastry to the filling, and bake 45 minutes to 1 hr, until golden brown.


Apple filo strudel makes 3 rolls (?)

Preheat oven 350°F.
Wash, peel, core, and dice

• 10 medium apples

to get about 14 cups. Mix in

• 6 Tbsp lemon juice
• 8 tsp cinnamon
• 5 cups walnuts, chopped or cuised
• 2-3 Tpsb white sugar
• 3 Tbsp brown sugar

Prepare to work with filo dough (see above), and stack 4 sheets, individually oiled. Spoon some filling along one long edge, leaving a 2-inch boarder. Fold filo dough over filling, tuck in ends, and roll up. Brush with canola oil. Place rolls seam-side down on greased baking sheet at least 2 inches apart. Slice into 1.5 inch pieces half way through roll. Bake 20-30 minutes until golden brown.


Greek Salad

We will be using

• mixed greens
• celery
• onion
• shredded carrot
• grapes
• feta on the side

Traditionally a summer salad would also include

• kalamata olives or possibly capers
• tomato
• possibly bell pepper

whereas winter salads are normally cabbage-based. Dressing is always olive oil mixed with lemon juice; one would normally place slices of feta on top of the salad, sprinkle everything with dried oregano, and then pour the oild and lemon juice on top, but I'm going to use crumbled feta and mix the oregano into the dressing. Grapes wouldn't normally be in the salad, but I don't get olives, and it will be yummy.

Hearty Italian soup

It's been pouring here non-stop, perfect soup weather. Our original plan for tonight was "mushroom and barley soup," to which we ten decided to add tomatoes and beans for a nice Minestrone-style stew.

Oh, and this recipe is going up immediately, because we forgot to take photos of dinner. I have a hard enough time remembering what we made based on two-month-old pictures, and by the time I get to posting the last few meals (hopefully soon) I won't remember we made tonight's dinner at all.

This is a "quick" soup: no stock. Begin cooking about ninety minutes before dinner, but you'll have at least an hour of simmering when you can go do other things.

Heat a large splash of olive oil at the bottom of your favorite soup pot. Add salt and begin sauteing:

• 3 spring red onions, cleaned and diced
• 1 spring garlic, washed, cleaned and diced
• 1 clove dried garlic, minced
• 4 small carrots, washed well and diced
• 3 dried bay leaves
• 2 sprigs each rosemary and savory, stems removed and minced

Stirring, let the mire poix saute until the onions are tender. Then add

• 1/2 cup pearled barley
• 1 lb crimini mushrooms, washed and halved
• a bit more salt

and cook on medium, stirring, until the mushrooms have just begun to wilt. Then add

• 1 large can tomatoes
• 1 small can your favorite white beans (we used soy beans, since it's all we had)
• 2 quarts water
• yet more salt

Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook covered for at least an hour.

Right before serving, stir in a small splash of vinegar. Sprinkle the bowls with minced parsley, and serve with a crusty bread.

Cioppino

A good fish stew, and Cioppino is no exception, includes lots of kinds of fish. So go to the market and get a little of everything: clams, mussels, shrimp, white fish. Even earlier, begin collecting scraps for a fish broth.

Begin by creating the base for the soup. In the pan you'll cook the soup in, saute a mire poix — onions, celery, lots of garlic, and shallots if you have them — in lots of olive oil. Also dissolve into the olive oil a can of anchovy fillets (washed and deboned). Once the onions are translucent, add a large can of diced tomatoes, and start to reduce the mixture. Meanwhile, in your largest pot, cook a fish stock: crab and shrimp shells, trimmings from earlier fish dinners, and the ends of leeks, celery, and onions.

When the stock has cooked an hour, strain it and add to the mirepoix. By now, you should have prepped the fresh seafood: scrub the bivalves, devein the shrimp, cut the fish into one-inch-thick strips. Bring the soup to a boil and add the seafood. Poach everything about ten minutes, until the bivalves have opened and the shrimp and fish are opaque.

Adjust the salt, and serve with a crusty Italian bread. If you're here in Berkeley, I highly recommend the olive bread from the Farmers' Market for a meal like this. A well-chilled wine completes this hearty dinner.

Leek soup

Saute leeks in butter along with a little garlic and celery. Then combine with broth and blend. Transfer to bowls, and pour some cream on top to create a nice swirling pattern.

Fish stew and rouille

I continue to be about a month behind in posting pictures. Near the end of January, my best friend S came over for dinner, and she, B, and I made fish stew (not quite a bouillabaisse, which should have fennel and pernod) and rouille. For the fish stew, we started with a whole sea bass from Berkeley bowl. The trimmings from the fish, along with all our frozen crab shells and ends of aromatics went into a big pot for the stock. The stew itself had a mirepoix of more aromatics, the fish, and clams and mussels. The rouille was very good — we followed Alice Waters' recipe, and got to try out the new stone mortar and pestle B gave me for Christmas. S brought a wonderful bottle of Beaujolais nouveau.

Making the soup:








Making the rouille:





Everything together on the table: