Carrot Soup with Lemon Tahini and Crisped Chickpeas

From Smitten Kitchen, via Jenna

Jenna's note: [This] was really good. I didn't make the crisped chickpeas but its plenty exciting with just the tahini sauce and pita chips. XO!

My soup vice is because I’ve already confessed to finding it a little dull, that I overcompensate with add-ins. Here, there’s a dollop (lemon-tahini), a crouton (cumin-crisped chickpeas, which might sound familiar as they’re also here), wedges of toasted pitas (brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with za’atar) and a garnish (parsley). If you’re not me, this might seem like overkill, in which case you should definitely just use the ones you find the most interesting.

Serves 4, generously or 6, petitely

Ingredients:
For the soup:
2 tablespoons (30 ml) olive oil
2 pounds (905 grams) carrots, peeled, diced or thinly sliced
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 regular or 6 small garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon table salt, plus more if needed
Pinch of Aleppo pepper or red pepper flakes
4 cups (945 ml) vegetable broth

For the crisped chickpeas:
1 3/4 cups cooked chickpeas, or 1 15-ounce (425-gram) can, drained, patted dry on paper towels
1 generous tablespoon (15 ml or so) olive oil
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

For the lemon-tahini dollop:
3 tablespoons (25 grams) tahini paste
2 tablespoons (30 ml) lemon juice
Pinch or two of salt
2 tablespoons (30 ml) water

For pita wedges:
A few large pitas, cut into 8 wedges
Olive oil, to brush pitas
Za’atar (a Middle Eastern spice-herb blend) or sesame seeds and sea salt to sprinkle
2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped

Instructions:

1. Heat two tablespoons olive oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add carrots, onion, garlic, coriander, cumin, salt and pepper flakes and sauté until they begin to brown, about 15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat your oven to 425 degrees F. Toss chickpeas with one tablespoon olive oil, salt and cumin until they’re all coated. Spread them on a baking sheet or pan and roast them in the oven until they’re browned and crisp. This can take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the size and firmness of your chickpeas. Toss them occasionally to make sure they’re toasting evenly.
3. Once vegetables have begun to brown, add broth, using it to scrape up any bits stuck to the bottom of the pot. Cover pot with lid and simmer until carrots are tender, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, in a small dish, whisk together tahini, lemon juice, salt and water until smooth with a yogurt-like consistency. If more liquid is needed to thin it, you can add more lemon juice or water, a spoonful at a time, until you get your desired consistency.
5. Spread pita wedges on a second baking sheet and brush lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle with za’atar or a combination of sea salt and sesame seeds and toast in oven with chickpeas until brown at edges, about 5 minutes.
6. Puree soup in a blender or with an immersion blender until smooth. Ladle into bowls. Dollop each with lemon-tahini, sprinkle with crisped chickpeas and garnish with chopped parsley. Serve with pita wedges. Forget January, you’d eat this anytime. Right?

 Tags: 
Vegetarian

Stracotto Meat Sauce

Adapted from Nika Hazelton’s Pasta Cookbook, a favorite cookbook of the Makanda clan

Ingredients:

• 2 oz dried porcini mushrooms
• 1 lb thin round steak
• 1/2 c butter
• 1 med. onion, minced
• 1 med. carrot, minced
• 1/2 celery rib, minced
• 1/2 c minced parsley
• 1 c dry Marsala
• 1 c beef bullion
• Salt
• Fresh ground pepper
• 1/3 c cream or half and half
• 1/2 tsp grated lemon peel
• pasta

Instructions:

1. Crumble the porcinis into a bowl and soak in lukewarm water for about 20 minutes.
2. Cut meat into smallest possible dice; do NOT grind it because this would alter both the flavor and texture of the sauce.
3. Melt the butter in a Dutch oven.  Add onion, carrot, celery and parsley and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 3 to 5 minutes. Add meat and cook, stirring, until lightly browned. Add mushrooms and their strained liquid, along with the Marsala and bouillon. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Cover tightly and simmer over lowest possible heat for about 3 hours or until the meat has almost dissolved; stir occasionally. If the sauce is still too liquid, remove cover and simmer for another 20 to 25 minutes until reduced further. 
5. Stir in the 2 tablespoons butter or cream. Cook for 5 more minutes, and then remove from heat. 
6. Stir in lemon peel
7. Serve over freshly cooked pasta or freeze.

Il Sandwich di Simeone

A cheese sandwich is a cheese sandwich, right?  Wrong.  Possibly true when the child is hungry and you are slapping down a slice of that individually wrapped latex stuff on a piece of bread and flinging it onto a pat of sizzling butter.  But most untrue when Jane Simeone is in the kitchen conjuring angels.  Next time, try this instead:

Heat in a heavy fry-pan:

• 1/4 c extra-virgin olive oil

Slice and place between two pieces of your favorite not-too-thick white bread:

• fontinella cheese slices to cover
• 2 slices prosciutto (optional)

When the oil is sufficiently hot, place the assembled sandwich in the center of the pan, and weight with something heavy (a cast-iron pan, or perhaps a little brother).  Be vigilant--cooking is quick, and you should be ready to flip at the first hint of smoke.  When both sides are nicely brown, plate and eat, with either a cottage-cheese container full of lemonade or a nice Chianti.  Ecco fatto!

ziplist.com and aisle411.com

Do you have interest in either or both of the following?

• creating an online shopping list you can use on your smartphone
• "clipping" online recipes into a single repository from which you can make such shopping lists

If so, read on.  

Thom and I have been using two different shopping list apps on the iPhone.  Thom uses aisle411, because it can actually tell you where to find the item in the store.  I was using Ziplist, because it lets you save recipes from most any site (including goodintasty), then add them to your shopping list.  I love collecting recipes from all over the web, and have amassed a sizeable collection. 

Unfortunately, Ziplist's shopping list leaves a bit to be desired.  So I took a look at aisle411 and found that, lo and behold, its recipe features are actually powered by ZipList- you can actually link the two.  So yesterday I did just that, then tried out the whole process.

First, I pasted a favorite recipe from the Goodin Family Cookbook into goodintasty, then I used the Ziplist Recipe Clipper to put the recipe into my Ziplist "recipe box":

Then I added the recipe to my shopping list, selecting which ingredients I would need to purchase:

Note: Ziplist has one recipe-based feature it apparently didn't license to aisle411- the ability to add recipes to meal plans, then add the entire meal plan to the shopping list.  It even gives you an iCalendar feed you can use to show your recipes in calendar programs like Outlook and Google Calendar.

Then I opened the aisle411 app on my phone, selected a store, and was ready to check things off as I bought them:

Lastly: when cooking, I open ZipList or aisle411, find the recipe follow the link to the recipe source, then start cooking.


To make all of this possible:

1. Get a ZipList account
2. Install the Ziplist Recipe Clipper and start clipping recipes
3. Get an aisle411 account
4. Link your aisle411 account to your Ziplist account 

As the weeks go by, I plan to post the Goodin Family Cookbook recipes I use most frequently on goodintasty.  That way I get online access to the recipes (as with Thom's GFC PDF), but in a way which lets me add them to my shopping list.

If any family wind up getting a ZipList account, I would be happy to share my recipe file with you.  Just e-mail me.


Tony

KAI PHAD KAPHRAO (CHICKEN FRIED WITH BASIL)

Kayte

This is a very simple, delicious Thai dish.  I serve it over cooked spinach, though it is much more common to serve it with rice.

4 fresh green chilies, chopped lightly

8 garlic cloves, chopped lightly

1/4 c peanut or corn oil

11 oz boneless skinned chicken sliced across the grain into narrow strips

1/4-1/2 t  dried red pepper flakes

1 T oyster sauce

1/2 t fish sauce

1/4 t black soy sauce

1/3 c sweet basil leaves, chopped or sliced coarsely

                Chop the green chiles finely in a food processor or blender.  Add the garlic and process again until mixture is finely chopped and mixed.  Heat the oil in a wok or pan until hot.  Add the chili-garlic mixture.  Fry for 1 minute.  Add the chicken and stir-fry for 1 minute; then add the red pepper flakes, oyster sauce, fish sauce and soy sauce.  Stir-fry for 2 minutes, mix the basil in well and serve immediately.

                Serves 4.

Merguez Sausage

Here is a link to the sausage recipe which was given with the recipe for Marg's merguez seasoning.

And now a short survey to see which font you prefer:
This is Verdana
This is Versam

Thai Roll Ups

Uses Marg's Thai seasoning mix.

A great finger food/appetizer using Marg's Thai spice mix.
 

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb. ground chicken
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4-6 Tablespoons chicken broth
• 2 Tablespoons green onion, finely chopped
• 1 Tablespoon fresh cilantro, finely chopped
• 1 Tablespoon Herbal Thai Seasoning Mix
• 3 Tablespoons lime juice
• 1 Tablespoon Nam Pla (fish sauce)
• 12 lettuce leaves, washed and dried

Instructions
Heat 2 Tablespoons broth to a boil in saute pan. Add chicken and garlic, stir fry. Keep adding broth as needed till chicken is cooked. Remove from heat and mix in onions, herbs, lime and fish sauce. Mix well, spoon onto lettuce leaves, wrap up sides, then roll up, and eat with fingers. Delicious and easy!

Basquing in West Carbondale

Prologue
So it's January, and the snow was still at about eight inches deep last week, and those of us in West Carbondale have been watching Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow & Co. traipse around Spain, enjoying the warm breezes of the Mediterranean and eating good food.  At some point, Mario walks GP through the assembly of a modest spinach dish, using pine-nuts and currants, and I decide we need to have our own "stay-cation" Spanish dinner.

We started with Pan con Tomate, which is essentially bruschetta minus the basil and tomato chunks.  Drizzle or brush a good solid bread with olive oil, cook over a grill, rub a peeled garlic clove over both sides, and then smear a ripe tomato into one side and add a dusting of sea-salt.  I have to confess that, while making this, I felt a strong gravitational pull from bruschetta, and so a few leaves of basil and chunks of tomato may have ended up in the final product, but in general I tried to stick to the script.

We followed this with Catalan Spinach, which recipe is also found in the Batali/Paltrow cookbook which accompanies the show.  I doubt that anyone out there is as averse as I am to the notion of combining fruit and veg in the same dish, and one of the reasons I picked this was just to see if it could be done (and, more to the point, eaten).  I also picked it because it is brutally easy to make and has a prep-time of under five minutes.

Catalan Spinach
from Spain: A Culinary Road Trip (Batali & Paltrow)

• 2 T olive oil 
• 3 T pine nuts 
• 3 T currants 
• 1 large bunch spinach, washed and mostly dry 
• sea salt 
• fresh ground black pepper 

Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium high heat. At nuts and currants and stir for a minute or two, until the nuts start to brown. Add the spinach, in batches if necessary, and stir and cook until the spinach is nicely wilted, 3 to 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, and serve.

For the entree, I wanted something with pasta and mussels, but I passed over Batali's Fideos and crossed over to Italy for this:

Linguine with Mussels

Epicurious

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 4 large garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds 
• 1/4 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
• 1 cup dry white wine (we used a Sauvingon Blanc)
• 2 pounds cultivated mussels, scrubbed
• 1 pound thin linguine
• 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
• 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh herbs such as basil, dill, flat-leaf parsley, and oregano 

Heat oil and butter in a 5-to 6-quart heavy pot over medium heat until foam subsides. Cook garlic, fennel seeds, and red pepper flakes with 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper, stirring, until garlic is softened, 3 to 4 minutes. Add wine and boil until reduced by half, 4 to 5 minutes. Add mussels and cook, covered, shaking pot occasionally, just until mussels open wide, 5 to 8 minutes. (Discard any that remain unopened after 8 minutes.) Remove from heat and keep warm.

Meanwhile, cook linguine in a pasta pot of well-salted boiling water until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup cooking water, then drain linguine.

Toss linguine with mussels and any liquid from pot, cheese, and herbs (we used lots of basil, and about 1/4 c each of oregano and parsley). Thin with reserved cooking water if desired.

Epilogue

The combination of these three dishes on our table produced such swooning among the assembled adults as has not been seen since the first time I made Pho Beef.  Even Daughter, who eats Chicken Noodle Soup 24/7/365, ate a mussel and did not gag (although she pronounced herself unimpressed, and went back to happily munching the Pan con Tomate).  I would caution against omitting the fennel: I am so little fan of fennel I haven't cooked with it in 20 years, but it--along with the red pepper--adds warmth and depth to the sauce.  So enjoy, and by all means post back and let us know how many people at your table fainted in their plates!

Video of Dad's poems from Christmas

I put the video of Dad reading the poems at Christmas on YouTube.  Enjoy!