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I haven't posted about cooking in awhile.

I'm attempting vegan black bean soup today. I'm somewhat hampered by the fact that I don't like the southwestern variations on black bean soup much. Bell peppers are not an ingredient I like much, and I've yet to find one that didn't use either that or jalapenos (the bell pepper of the hot pepper family).

On the other hand, the one New England style recipe I found seems a little bland.

So. I've put the black beans on quick soak with my now usual addenda: cumin and kombu. I find that they really do help avoid too much flatulence (as does actually cooking the beans long enough). The base will have onions, carrots, bay leaf, black pepper, and, because I'm me, thyme. They'll be sauteed in avocado oil to bring out their flavor before adding the beans and water to the heavy iron pan they'll be cooked in.

To substitute for the ham hock, I'm using miso and liquid smoke. I'm debating whether to add some kale that I have in the refrigerator toward the end of cooking.

I'd also like to add a grain, but I'm afraid it would throw off the texture of the soup too much.

I'll let you know how it works.

Many of you may remember that I was pretty damned sick for several days in early April. We're talking ambulance and IV rehydration and days of Gatorade and crackers.

What I don't think I've shared from this is that I am as a result a piscatarian. I eat fish -- a little bit occasionally, mostly as anchovies or sardines in cooking with the occasional plate of bivalves as a treat. I can just about handle a small piece of white fish once a month.

In other words, for much of the time, I'm functionally vegetarian. Cheese is all right. Milk, buttermilk, and yogurt are great, actually. Eggs, well, right now, I'm eating them less often than fish, and I'm not eating much fish. I try a bite of meat occasionally, but my body is NOT happy with me when I do. The smell of most meats cooking turns my stomach. Poultry is a little better: the smell doesn't nauseate me. It's no better for eating though. *sigh*

This can be awkward for a cook. I'm dreading making my first chess pies of the season because I'm not certain I'll be able to eat them.

I'm teaching myself about whole grains. Pasta, as much as I love it, can get old when it's five nights a week, so I'm learning about kasha, quinoa, bulgur, and millet. (Barley, oats and I are old friends, and I always had brown rice in the cupboard even though I don't eat it much. It's a good excuse to keep wild rice -- which I love -- in the cupboard, too.)

I want to continue to do things like cook for friends when I stay at eanja's, but most of the time, it's going to be new and different cooking.

So there will be more soup recipes this winter, including one under the cut. If you're used to cooking with a hambone, smoked turkey leg, tongue, or sausage, go ahead and add it. The recipes themselves will be vegetarian or vegan.

( Read more... )

Ingredients:
1 cup Navy Beans
1/2 strip of kombu
2 Tablespoons of cumin, divided
1 teaspoon black peppercorns, divided
1/2 head of Cabbage
2 carrots
1 old apple (optional)
1/2 a large onion
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup of Belgian beer (Chimay)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon vinegar
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 Tablespoons dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon grains of paradise
about 10 cubebs
1/2 teaspoon fenugreek
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt

Here's what I did.

Last night:
I soaked a cup of navy beans with the intention of making a bean and cabbage soup today.

This morning:
I drained and rinsed the beans, then I added three cloves of garlic, half a strip of kombu, and a tablespoon of cumin to them in the pot I intended to make soup in. I covered them with water, brought it to a boil, and then turned it down to a slow simmer. Let it simmer, covered, for 90 minutes. Turned off the burner and let it cool. Removed the strip of kombu.

This afternoon:
Added another 1/2 tablespoon of cumin and a teaspoon of salt to the beans.

I heated a heavy cast iron skillet and added the carrots (peeled and roughly diced), final clove of garlic (chopped), the rest of the cumin, and diced onions. I added 1/2 teaspoon of salt. As they sauteed, I ground together the other spices with the rosemary and added it to the mixture. When the carrots were soft, I added the sugar and let it carmelize for a minute before adding the beer. That cooked for about five minutes while I diced the apple and cut up the cabbage.

I put the contents of the skillet on top of the beans, added the apple, vinegar, and cabbage and covered it with water. It cooked for another 90 minutes.

eta: This is my best vegan soup to date. It really had great flavor and texture.
Am I allowed to be proud of myself?

I've been soaking chickpeas since yesterday, and I currently have them cooking on the stove. I soaked enough to make at least three lunches this week.

This is actually a fairly bland cooking since I plan to divide up the cooked total and make the actual meals later.

I'm going to try a Chickpea curry recipe that I found in one of my cookbooks. There's a simple chickpea and carrot salad with yogurt that I found online, too. I'm not sure what I'll do with the other third -- maybe mash it into a hummus.

One day, I'm planning to make a Waldorf Salad. I'll probably do a spaghetti puttanesca one night this week and make enough for two servings so I can take the other one to lunch.

I'm not used to doing this type of lunch planning, but my last unemployment check came last week and my first paycheck doesn't arrive until August 25. A friend loaned me enough to pick up a prescription that I need before the health insurance kicks in -- *gnashes teeth* -- plus a little extra in case of emergency.

My basic chickpeas
1 cup of chickpeas soaked for at least 24 hours (I don't know why chickpeas need a longer soaking than most beans, but after the last batch I made with only an overnight soak, I'm trusting my books that say 24 hours.)
1 bay leaf
1 clove
2 cloves of garlic
A few peppercorns
1 tsp cumin (I was told this would help reduce the flatulence of bean dishes. It seems to work.)
1/4 tsp fenugreek -- just because I like the taste
A length of Dulse (This one is a suggestion for fuller bodied soups. Since the liquor the beans form is part of the appeal of chickpeas, I thought it would be useful here. Rinse it before adding to the pot.)

Drain and cover the chickpeas with enough water. Add all the other ingredients. Bring to a strong boil, put on a lid, and reduce to a simmer. Cook for an hour. Add a teaspoon of salt. Cook for another half hour. If the chickpeas are still too firm, cook for another half hour and check again.

Don't add salt at the beginning, it turns the beans tough. If you can wait to salt them after they're cooked, that's best. I find I tend to add too much salt at the table if I do that.

I made myself split pea soup tonight. There was a special on smoked turkey neck. It was easy, and I feel replete.

6 Baby Carrots
1 Rib Celery
1/2 an Onion
3 Bay Leaves
1 and 1/2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 Tablespoon Thyme
1/4 teaspoon Clove
5 Black Peppercorns
2 pieces (about 5 ounces) Smoked Turkey Neck
1 Tablespoon cider
3 cups Water
2/3 cup of split peas

Chop the celery, carrots, and onion into a mirepoix. Cook it with the olive oil and herbs until the onion is clear. Add the spices, turkey neck, and cider. Add the water and the cleaned and sorted split peas.

Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cover. Cook for two and a half hours. Eat.

Makes enough for two large bowls of thick soup.

My recipe for mashed potatoes.

Take one medium potato per person and cut it into chunks. They shouldn't be too large, but there's no need to cut them finely either. Peel them or not according to taste.

Put them in a heavy bottomed saucepan add 1/2 cup of skim milk (up to 1 and 1/2 cups for six people) and enough water to cover them. Bring to a boil and immediately turn down to a simmer so the milk doesn't scald. (Since we're not using all milk, it cuts down on the opportunity for scalding.) You may add a couple of black peppercorns or some peeled garlic to the pot.

Cover and cook for 15 minutes.

Test the potatoes for doneness with a fork. If they fall apart easily, they're done. A little firmer is fine, completely disintegrating is a little overcooked. If they aren't done, recover the pot and cook another 5 to 10 minutes before rechecking, adding more water if necessary.

Using a slotted spoon, put a portion of the done potatoes into a bowl with a little salt and begin mashing. Add more potatoes and use the cooking water to moisten them until they hold together. Grind a little black pepper over them and/or add 1 Tablespoon of butter, if you like.

As you can see, this recipe, sans butter, is fat free. The flavor is nice because you're putting the flavor back in by using the water/milk mixture they cooked in. What I'm not doing is using fat free cream, fat free sour cream, or fat free evaporated milk.

I firmly believe most recipes will accept substitutions (Do not try this theory with cakes, cookies, or other baked goods unless you really know what you're doing. I'm talking about cooking not baking.). Substitutes, created by corporations and often involving something called guar gum, are an entirely different animal.

If you don't need your potatoes fat free, add a little more butter during the mashing or use whole milk instead of skim in the cooking. If you're serving them as a side dish with a kosher meal, just use water, but add a little more salt or garlic. Boiled garlic can add a buttery texture without adding dairy. And boiled peppercorns will mash.

Many of us have dietary restrictions. But I find using All Fruit (especially the St. Dalfour brand) in making fruit tarts to be superior to trying to use Splenda. There was a line in the TV show Friends, "That's what evil tastes like," to describe a fake chocolate. All I can say is, they hadn't tasted Splenda -- it's actually worse than aspartame for me.

As an example of how to do this, let me give you my peach cobbler recipe.

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Make baking powder or Bisquik biscuits. The recipe here is very close to the one I use. (My cookbook with the biscuit recipe is in storage or I'd just write out my own from the Good Housekeeping Cookbook of 1964.)

Take a fairly deep casserole or souffle dish and grease it (vegetable shortening or butter according to taste). Cut fresh peaches into 1/2 inch to 1 inch chunks and put in the greased dish. I vary the size of the chunks in order to get a variety of texture.

Add 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla and 1/2 cup of peach all fruit jam to a small saucepan over low heat and melt the jam to a liquid. Add 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon or cardamom to the saucepan.

Pour the melted jam over the peaches. If there is not enough to cover the peaches, melt more, but don't add the vanilla or spices.

Roll out the biscuit dough. You can either do drop biscuits on top, or cut biscuits on top, or lay the rolled out dough over the top and cut a few vent holes.

Bake until the dough is cooked through, usually 20-25 minutes.

Puttanesca Sauce

The original meaning of slut was a descriptive term for a poor housekeeper. As a matter of fact, the term "slut's wool" was still in use in rural Virginia when I was in my teens rather than "dust bunny."

I mention this because the idea behind "Whore's Pasta," a literal translation of Puttanesca, is that the woman in question will only have the bare essentials in the pantry through laziness and poor housekeeping. Although I think if she's good at her work, she only has the bare essentials through lack of time.

If you order spaghetti Puttanesca in a restaurant, it will have capers, olives, and, usually anchovies in a tomato based sauce. When I think of puttanesca sauce, the huge hit of salty richness from those three ingredients is my first image.

However, the point of puttanesca is that it shouldn't require anything beyond olive oil, tomatoes (fresh or tinned), and either garlic or onion. Everything else is what's in your pantry.

Me, I love olives. eanja doesn't care for them, so when I made puttanesca at her place it was olive free. I have friends who hate anchovies. I'll leave it out in that case. If I don't have an onion, I'll just use garlic and vice-versa. On the other hand, I miss eanja's fresh herbs. I always just picked what ever looked or smelled particularly good.

So here's my basic recipe for puttanesca. Modify it to your heart's content.

Two (or more) Tablespoons of olive oil
1 or more Tablespoons of fresh herbs (I like oregano and rosemary, but I've used thyme and/or savory as well. Sage will work.) or 1 or more teaspoons of dried herbs (same list)
1 hot pepper (optional) -- use ground black pepper if you omit this.
1 onion -- I usually embrace the laziness factor and leave the chunks relatively large
1 or 2 cloves of garlic -- again, I usually just slice it
1 Bay leaf -- Told you, I liked the flavor

Put all of the above ingredients into a pan over medium heat to saute the onions to transparency. Stir occasionally and adjust the heat if necessary.

Once the onions are soft add:
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 anchovy or 1 teaspoon of anchovy paste

Stir these in until the anchovy begins to break up and the tomato paste is well distributed.

Add:
One can of tomatoes, chopped, diced, or crushed preferred. Whole is fine if that's what you have.
Clean the can with 1/2 cup of red wine.
Add a small can of sliced black olives or 1/2 cup of whole olives (preferably pitted). Green olives or a mix are also fine.
1 Tablespoon (or more) of capers -- salted are the best, I usually have the more common pickled ones in my fridge.

Stir it all together; put on a lid, and reduce the heat to a simmer.

If you put on water for boiling pasta (I like spaghetti, capellini, or linguine, but really, any pasta is fine. I also prefer whole wheat.) as soon as you begin the sauce preparation, you can have the whole meal ready as soon as the pasta is finished.

Or you can be more traditional and just let the sauce stay on a low simmer for several hours.

The sauce is excellent either way.

Aioli --

I hate what most chefs call aioli. They'll add chipotle peppers to it or onion compote (and who calls a compote a confit unless they write menus?).

The word derives from the French word for garlic. There are other garlic mayonaise-type sauces; rouille uses bread as a thickening agent, for instance. It's heavenly with the fish soup -- not bouillebaisse, though it's good with that too -- served all over the Mediterannean coast in France.

Aioli is communal. In the more inland parts of Provence, many towns still have a "Grand Aioli" in the middle of August. I suspect it is usually held around the Feast of the Assumption, but certainly from mid-July to mid-September these small town Grand Aiolis are the equivalent of pancake breakfasts or spaghetti dinners in US small towns.

The food at a Grand Aioli is simple. The meats are grilled, baked, or boiled. The vegetables are steamed, boiled, or raw. Dessert is either fresh fruit, fresh fruit tarts, or sorbets.

The focus is on the sauce. This is my recipe. I derived it from several sources over years of experimentation. Not all aiolis have mustard in them, but I find it emulsifies better and I like the extra flavor. I've also taken salmonella warnings to heart.

Two egg yolks (use either pasteurized eggs or bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Add the eggs by slowly lowering them into the water with a spoon. Time the eggs for a full minute and a half. Use cold water or ice to bring their temperature down quickly. Open the eggs and take out the still soft yolks.)

Three to five cloves of garlic -- Don't use elephant garlic. The fresher the garlic, the better.

scant 1/2 teaspoon mustard powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt

1/4 teaspoon of white or long pepper corns

1 teaspoon lemon juice (more may be required. Fresh is best.)

1 teaspoon grated (not shredded) lemon zest (Fresh. Omit if you don't have fresh.)

1 to 2 cups extra virgin olive oil. (Some people recommend a mix of olive and other vegetable oils or using light olive oil. I don't.)

In a mortar and pestle put the salt, garlic, mustard, and lemon zest. Pound and grind into a paste. Add the egg yolks and lemon juice and keep pounding and mixing.

Add a few drops of olive oil. Bring into the mixture until emulsified. Add a few more drops of oil and mix thoroughly. Continue adding a few drops at a time until about 1/4 of the oil is gone.

Now here it gets tricky. I recommend a second person for this part.

While you continue to mix and work the emulsion, pour a thin stream of olive oil into the mixture. If the emulsion stops absorbing the oil, stop pouring and continue mixing. Return to adding a few drops at a time and then go to the thin stream stage.

Stop and taste. It may need more lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, or mustard. Incorporate the ingredients. Add a few drops of olive oil. Mix into the emulsion. Return to the thin stream stage until you have a thick, creamy mayonnaise.

No, you may not use a blender, food processor, or electric beaters. The heat effects the flavor and texture. If you don't have a mortar and pestle, finely mince the garlic and add the egg yolks at the very beginning. Use ground white or long pepper. Beat with a fork or wooden spoon. The texture won't be the same, but the flavors will still be wonderful.

I almost forgot. The aioli will need to sit in the refrigerator for at least two hours to let the flavors meld. I prefer to leave it overnight when possible.

I like Jenny Baker's cookbooks. This comes from Simple French Cuisine: From Provence and Languedoc.

Carrots
Honey
Whole Orange

For every pound of carrots add an equal amount of honey and one whole orange which should be stabbed with a knife before adding it. Put in twice as much water as carrots (in other words, 32 ounces of water for 16 ounces of carrots and 16 ounces of honey.).

Bring to a boil and then turn down to a simmer. Cook for at least half an hour, but you can keep cooking for as long as you like. According to the original recipe, after about hour 5 it will turn into jam. I don't know. I've never cooked it that long.

What I do know is that people who claim they hate cooked carrots, carrots in general, or carrot shaped objects will sharpen their elbows and run over the other guests in order to get plenty of this dish.

It's terrific cold which makes this an easy, if sticky, picnic dish.

In honor of DC heat, I've decided to do picnic foods.

This can be a side salad or a main course depending on how many people you spread it around. I believe the original for this recipe came out of a Seventeen magazine circa 1981. But I could be wrong.

The original recipe called for farfalle (bow ties). I like gemelli for this, but I haven't found them in whole wheat yet. If I use whole wheat pasta, it's rotini. Spaghetti and angel hair also work, if it's a main course. Don't use shells because you can't get the flavoring to pasta ratio right on the fork.


1 pound of tomatoes. More if you are trying to get rid of some or really love tomatoes. If you use whole tomatoes, skin them and chop them. Seed them if you don't like the seeds. I use the water I'm boiling for the pasta for the skinning and add the pasta afterward. If you use grape or cherry tomatoes, cut them in half. Life is too short to peel cherry tomatoes. Put it all in a large bowl. I prefer glass or pyrex. Anything except metal is fine. (I've mixed cherry tomatoes and large, peeled tomatoes in this recipe. It's very forgiving.)

1 large bunch (2/3 of a cup of leaves. More if you like) of Basil. Chop or chiffonade (roll the leaves into a long cigar and slice through them) the basil and add to the tomatoes.

2 Tablespoons of good olive oil. Add it to the tomatoes and basil.

Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste. Add to the bowl.

At this point you can stop and refrigerate the ingredients. I usually do that for about an hour and then pull them out of the refrigerator just as I start the water for the pasta. It isn't necessary, though.

1 pound of pasta. Prepare according to the directions on the box.

1 cup of grated mozzarella cheese.

1/2 cup of chopped walnuts.

Drain the pasta. Add some to the bowl with about a third of the mozzarella and nuts. Stir lightly and add more pasta, cheese, and nuts. The cheese should get a little stringy.

You can either serve it immediately or let it cool and chill it for awhile. I would use it within 24 hours, but I've known it to keep longer if well covered.

Variations:
Substitute sundried tomatoes for some or all of the fresh tomato.
Use pine nuts, pistachios, or slivered almonds in place of the walnuts. Pecans and cashews are too bland.
Try another fresh herb -- dill is good -- in place of the basil. I would keep it to ONE herb, not many.
If you really love spicy food, a seeded hot pepper cut into rings is a good addition. Warn your guests because the acid in the tomatoes seems to enhance the burn of the pepper.