How to completely suck...

Put dinner in the Crock-Pot, leave town, and come back three and a half hours later so hungry that you forget to take a picture of it before you begin devouring it.
Another day this week, I suppose.

Turkey and Veggi Soup

Here in the frozen area of Upstate New York it's the season for soup! Today I will share with you one of my new favorites. Every time I make this soup it comes out a little different. This is because I am always changing up whats in it depending on what I have around and what looks good to me when I am at the store. Feel free to change this one up as you see fit or to make a smaller or larger batch depending on who you are having over for dinner. I give you Turkey and Veggie Soup!

250g bacon (or smoked pork product) - diced
2 medium onions - diced
3 carrots - diced
2 celery stalks - diced
4 turkey thighs – bite size pieces
4 cloves of garlic - crushed
4 cups turkey stock
400g crushed tomatoes
2 zucchinis - diced
400g (1 can) cannellini beans
2 handfuls baby spinach - chopped
1 handful napa cabbage – chopped
1 container small mushrooms (portabella, or baby brown)
parsley or basil (your choice), salt and pepper

Start off by putting a little olive oil in your pot and cooking the bacon for a few minutes. Then add your onions, carrots, and celery and sauté for about 10 minutes until the veggis have cooked a bit.

Next add your turkey and garlic and sauté until the turkey is cooked. Once this is done you can add a cup of white wine to deglaze the pan and simmer to reduce. I did not have any on hand this time to I omitted this from the ingredients above.

Now add your turkey stock. If you are like me you have a metric ton of the stuff left over from what you made during thanksgiving waiting to be used in your freezer. If not then just go buy some! I recommend getting the low or no sodium kind so you can season to your own taste. Along with the turkey stock add the tomatoes. Give it a stir and bring it to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Now add in your spinach, cabbage, mushrooms, beans, and zucchini. Then season to taste with herbs, salt and pepper. Simmer for about 10 more minutes.
I suggest serving this with a small pasta such as orzo. You can cook the pasta right in the soup if you wish but I suggest cooking separate and then adding it in. This is a fantastic hardy soup that just begs to be changed every time you make it. Also if you end up with too much left over this freezes really well. Simply heat in a pan on low! Helps take the chill of those bones on any chilly night!
Yes, this is what I look like when I cook on a Sunday!

Good Noms makes curry

Anyone that knows me well, will tell you that there are few things I love as much as a bowl of hot, yellow curry over rice. Very few things, indeed.

Yellow curry:

• Carrots - 2 large
• Red potatoes - 3
• Sweet potato - 1 (Not a yam)
• Onion - 1
• Lemongrass - 1 stalk
• Green onion - 1
• Chicken thighs, or any other chicken with bones in it (4 thighs - 1 1/2 pounds)
• Coconut milk - 150mL (a little over 1/2 cup)
• Yellow curry powder - 1/4 cup
• Curry paste - 1 tbsp
• Basil
• Rice

Cook the amount of rice you want according to instructions. Rip the skin off the chicken thighs with your best "Hulk smash" impression. Cut the meat parallel to the bone, set aside. Cut the meat around the bone perpendicular to it, but not through the bone. Take the bones with the meat still on it, put it in the pot on medium high. This is the braising process. If the meat begins to stick to the bottom, do not worry. It will detach with the addition of water, later.

MEANWHILE...
Wash, cut your potatoes, carrots, onions. With the onions, it is easiest to cut them into slivers, as shown below.

By this point, check on the chicken bones. They should be cooked enough to cut through. Take them out (carefully, hot) and cut them up. Put them back into the pot with the rest of the uncooked chicken meat. When it browns on the outside, add in all the vegetables, give it a stir. Once the vegetables begin to look coated with the fats and the onions begin to caramelize, add in all the spices, and it will look like a hot mess. Once the spices are absorbed, add about 4 cups of water, or enough to almost cover the vegetables. Let cook for about 40 on med-hi. Once the veggies get close to fork tender, give it a taste to see if any more spices are needed, turn down to low, then in goes the coconut milk. Give it a good stir.

Stand back and ponder Life, the Universe, and Everything. Turn off the heat and serve over rice.

Breakfast Burrito Bonanza!

Every morning you run out the door and the last thing on your mind is stopping to make breakfast. Maybe you grab a bagel and stuff it in your mouth wishing for something with a little more flavor and perhaps a little healthier for you. Well I have the solution! The home made frozen breakfast burrito! You can put whatever strikes your fancy into these little guys. Just make sure your ingredients are dry or when you reheat your burrito it gets kinda soggy. You can make as many of these as you want at a time. I made a dozen of them this time and for that I used:

1 dozen eggs

12 burrito shells

1 pack lean turkey bacon

1 can black beans

Grated cheddar cheese

Salsa

Rinse and drain your beans well. Chop the bacon and cook well. Cook your eggs, but just before they really start firming up add in the turkey bacon and black beans and mix together. Cook your eggs all the way through (or burrito will be soggy!). Let the egg mixture cool all the way.

Now take your shells (I used whole wheat this time) and put a ½ cup of your egg mix in the middle, top with some salsa and cheese, fold up tight!

The important part to making these is really in how you freeze them. Place them on the freezer shelf, or on your cookie cooling rack, in a single layer with nothing covering them. Freeze them solid (takes maybe 2 hours). Then once they are solid you can store them in a big ziplock bag. When I need to take one with me I just take it out and put in a smaller ziplock in my lunchbox. Now to reheat wrap the burrito in paper towels and microwave for about 2 minutes. Tada! Insta-breakfast!

Crock-Potular success

So...

I received a Crock-Pot for Christmas (thanks Paul and Caterina!!!) and have been ITCHING to try it out. So I present to you a recipe (with a few small modifications) that I found on the Crock-Pot website.


Ingredients
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (halved, as my man doesn't like spice)
1 tablespoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 to 2 pounds beef brisket, scored with a knife on both sides
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup real maple syrup
1/4 cup Jack Daniel’s, or other whiskey
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon tomato paste
Juice of 1 orange (about 1/3 cup)
2 cloves garlic, smashed
4 slices orange peel, 1/2" x 1/2" (careful to avoid bitter white pith when peeling)

Step 1: Rub
Combine cayenne pepper, ginger, salt and black pepper. Rub all over brisket and place in a plastic bag inside of a bowl (to prevent drippage).


Step 2: Marinade
Mix up the rest of the ingredients except the orange peel and garlic. Add in the last two ingredients and pour into the bag. Seal up, and for the love of God, put it on the bottom shelf of the fridge. You do not want the icky meaty greasy stuff all over your fridge if it spills. Let it marinade for 2 hours or overnight. I pulled mine out about halfway through a 3-hour soak and gave it a little massage.



Step 3: Cook
Stick the whole mess in your slow cooker and cook on high for 3½-4 hours on high or 7-9 hours on low, turning once or twice. Take the briskety goodness out of the pot and let it rest for 5 minutes or so before you carve it up with some of the pan juices spooned on top.

Good noms reminisces about Soviet Russia

It snowed again in our not-so-wintry land of Mary, and Tu and I made soup. What sort of soup, you ask? Why the sort of soup I grew up eating as a wee lass. It's called borscht, or any number of alternate spellings, and can be (and has been) made vegetarian by omission of meat and substitution of vegetable broth/bouillon.

Ingredients:

• MARROW BONES (I yelled it because this is the basis of delicious soup. If you don't want to eat meat in your soup but don't want to make it vegetarian, you must use bones. Trust me.)
• Beets. 2 large or 3 small.
• Potatoes. 3 medium.
• Cabbage. 1/4 to 1/3 head, depending on size.
• Onion. 1 whole.
• Carrots. 2-3.
• Meat (optional) (stew beef or chuck) 1/2 lb - cut into stew-pieces.
• Olive oil for cooking.
• Peppercorns.
• Bay leaves. (3)
  
• Salt/peppers.

Toppings/serving suggestion.

• Sour cream.
• Clove of garlic.
• Really heavy and dark rye bread.

Bring a large pot of water with the bones in it to a boil (here you may notice I'm using my lovely Christmas LeCreuset, affectionately dubbed as LePot, 5 qt). Peel and halve the beets.

When the pot comes to a boil, you will see white foam come to the surface. Scoop it off. It is bad. It will make your soup taste bitter. Commit the look/consistency to memory, for the next time you decide to call someone a scumbag. After a few minutes (10-15) the scum production will slow down, add the beets. Chop up carrots and onions (I also like to leave the skins on on the carrots, not the onions though). Arrange in clever shape on your plate (optional).
When the beets are soft, take them out, add the potatoes that have been quartered (with skin on), meat, peppercorns and bay leaf. Sautee the onions and carrots in a bit of olive oil. You may season it with salt/pepper. Process the beets (basically shred them by hand or in food processor). Slice the cabbage really thin (think cole slaw/sauerkraut). Put all of above mentioned ingredients back into the pot. Turn to medium low, cover, do as you please for about a half hour.

This is important so pay attention. To serve - get out your fur hat (optional, but recommended). Pour hot soup into the bowl (add salt/pepper to taste), top with a dollop of sour cream. Eat with a clove of garlic, and a slice of dense, dark rye, taking alternating bites. Feel Russki.

Winter Stew

While I was on holiday in the Northeast, I had my two and a half weeks of winter. Then I returned to Southern California where I walked around in my shirt sleeves after dark and thought about how happy I was to be back. But while I was East, I made a very wintery meal, which I will now share with you, to help you get through all those long, dark, cold days that you may or may not have ahead.

YOU WILL NEED:

4 white or yellow onions

6 or so fair sized red-skin potatoes

2 cloves of garlic

1 parsnip

1 turnip

1 yam

1 pound of carrots

1 large steak

Oregano, thyme, black pepper, tarragon and bay leaf to season.

Olive oil, to cook in.

Begin by chopping your onions and pressing your garlic. In this case, I chose to use a garlic

press instead of just chopping it, because I wanted it to infuse into the broth that I was making.

Chop two of your onions into into small pieces. Set the other two aside. Press both cloves of

garlic. Fry these two things in olive oil in the bottom of a large soup pot.

Next, you will need to cut up your meat.

Once you have done this, add it, and more oil, to your pot.

Fry it until all the meat appears cooked.

Then add six to eight cups of water and a teaspoon of salt. You have magically created beef broth, free of all the extra crap and packaging usually associated with beef broth!

Let it come to a boil as you chop your vegetables.

You will need to peel and cut the turnip, parsnip and yam. All vegetables should be cut to about the size of a quartered, small potato. You should leave the skins on the potatoes and carrots.

The skins add flavor and nutrients to your food. You might want to cut up your carrots into smaller, coin sized rings. That's what I do.

Add the veggies to the pot, and then season it well with Oregano, black pepper, two bay leaves, thyme and tarragon. Don't over do it, but don't under do it.

Then get it simmering and leave it there for a while, uncovered. With soups and stews, I have the following rule of thumb: if you want it to thicken, uncover it. If you want it to keep its moisture, cover it. Stews should thicken out.

Then go do something else for about an hour. I recommend Mario Kart Double Dash.

Once you've totally won against your siblings and become the queen of your household once again, or if you did something else, about an hour later, the soup will be ready. You should check it in between every couple of races... I mean, every fifteen minutes or so, to make sure

nothing is sticking or burning. If it is, reduce the heat.

When the soup is finished, the yam will have cooked into the broth and all the rest of the vegetables will be mushy and tender. The meat, in my case, was tender enough to cut with a

spoon.

Now, I like to eat garlic bread with stew, personally. Garlic bread is easy to make. Its very similar to the recipe for garlic bread stuffing, but here it is again, just in case:

You will need:

About a half a stick of butter

4 cloves of garlic

Oregano and basil, to season

Thick bread, sliced.

Arrange the bread slices on a cookie sheet. Preheat the oven to about 375. Then melt the butter in the microwave so it is a liquid. Use a garlic press, or cut the garlic by hand into small pieces, and add all of it to the liquified butter. Season it. Stir it up.

If you have a little brush, you can brush it on the bread. If not, you can sort of pour it on with a spoon.

Bake for about five to ten minutes, keeping a weather eye, to make sure the bread gets to be your desired amount of crunchy without burning.

Dip the garlic bread in the soup. Mmmmmmm.