Minnestrone--an actual recipe

My friend mentioned the other day that she enjoys this blog but hasn't tried any of the dishes because I tend to be a little inexact with the details. She's right, of course. "Grate cheese until your arm falls off" isn't very instructional.

It's only that I think people's belief that they must do everything exactly as the recipe says is what makes them afraid to cook. Some would disagree with me, but in my view there is nothing sacred about a recipe. The fun is in substituting, combining, and streamlining recipes so that the dish matches your needs and not the other way around. Part of my hope in starting this blog was to talk about foods that are healthful, easy to make, and utilize ingredients you may have lying around. The only way people will start taking better care of their bodies through what they eat is if food is convenient and satisfying. I think we all love Chicken Mole, but the real deal calls for three kinds of chiles and real Mexican chocolate. If you are planning to make it, please invite me over, but alas, I will not be making it for myself anytime soon.

So, here is a real recipe, complete with measurements, for Minestrone. The word means "big soup" in Italian, and it is hearty enough to make a meal all by itself. I may be violating sacred Italian law by varying the ingredients, but I don't really care. I needed to clean out the crisper and had no meat on hand, so this one's vegetarian.

Home Food Minestrone

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
3 carrots, sliced into 1/2-inch pieces
5 ribs celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp thyme
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes (organic really are better)
splash red wine or sherry
1 quart broth (vegetable, beef, or chicken would work)
1 can white or romano beans
3/4 cup gemelli pasta (you could use any small-ish style--I just love the shape of this one).
7 large leaves red swiss chard, deribbed and shredded
3/4 cup frozen peas

Place a large pot over medium-high heat and add olive oil. Heat until it become fragrant, about a minute. Add chopped onion, carrots, and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions become transparent. These three aromatic vegetables give a lot of flavor to the soup, so don't rush this step.

Sprinkle salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and garlic over the vegetables and stir. You may need to turn down the heat slightly--it's ok if onions are sticking, but you don't want them to burn. Cook about 1 minute (your kitchen is going to start smelling heavenly at this point). Splash in enough wine or sherry to coat the bottom of the pan and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom of the pan to remove the stuck-on bits that are full of flavor. This is called deglazing and makes a huge difference (both for the recipe and for when you have to clean the pan later).

Add broth and beans. You may need to add some water as well, if the soup seems too thick. You'll have to eyeball this one. Just remember that if you add too much, it's ok--you can boil it off. And if you add too little, you can always add more later. Bring to a boil and turn down heat. Simmer ten minutes.

Bring back to a boil and add pasta. Cook at this temperature until pasta is done. Then turn the heat back to low. Add the swiss chard (powerfully nutritious stuff) and peas and give it one final stir. The heat of the broth will cook the peas almost instantly, even if they came right out of the freezer. Add more salt or pepper as needed, and serve with grated parmesan and a loaf of crusty bread. Yum!

How'd I do, Evi?

Butternut Squash Day Two

I felt a little cheated after not getting to eat very much of my brilliant ravioli filling from yesterday, but I didn't fret because I knew I could turn it into something equally brilliant today.

Home Food Waste Not Want Not Soup

Take 1 1/2 cups filling left over from a ravioli disaster or mix together:

Flesh of one butternut squash
1 clove garlic minced
2 teaspoons fresh thyme
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Set aide.

In a big pan, melt 2 tbsp butter or olive oil. I like butter for fruity soups. Add one finely chopped onion and cook until soft. I do not like undercooked onion, so I let it go a long time, but it probably makes no difference.

Add another minced clove of garlic and one granny smith apple chopped fine. Saute this all together until the apple gets soft and fragrant. Add the ravioli filling and splash in a little water or broth. Let this heat up and combine. It will be very thick.

Transfer to the processor and puree until smooth. Transfer back into the pan, add salt and pepper and about one cup more broth. At this point I thought it was still too thick, so I added about 3/4 cup milk (give or take) and maybe 1/2 cup yogurt. I challenge you to give me a recipe that is not improved by yogurt. It doesn't exist. You could also use coconut milk as with the pumpkin soup from a couple weeks ago. Oh, and don't forget a splash of sherry.

Add one can of well-rinsed black beans, which go phenomenally well with sweet things like squash and sweet potatoes, in my humble opinion. Bring to a boil and simmer. If it's too thin, boil off some liquid; too thick, add more.

You will know it's done when you are pacing around the kitchen with drool on your chin because it smells so good.

If you are not completely undone by ravenous hunger, make some cornbread. If you are still riding the coattails of birthday laziness like me, open a bag of tortilla chips and serve.

Pumpkin Soup and Brown Rice

And now for another food I bought on sale: coconut milk. I've had a couple cans in the pantry forever. Last week I added a splash to some cupcake frosting in lieu of regular milk. But that left me with about a cup and a half and not a clue what to do with it.

I don't have all the right spices to make curry, so that was out. A search on Epicurious for recipes containing coconut milk yielded Silky Coconut Pumpkin Soup, a recipe from a new book I've been wanting to take a look at: Hot Sour Salty Sweet, about Asian cooking.

But I didn't really have all the ingredients for that either. Undeterred, I decided I would make something like it and just taste as I go to get the flavor right. Beware: there aren't really any exact measurements here.

Home Food Pumpkin Soup

Dice an onion and caramelize it in olive oil. This takes about 15 minutes. Start at medium heat and turn it down. Keep stirring the whole time so the onions don't burn. Deglaze the pan with a little sherry or broth or water and keep cooking until golden brown.

Stir in a large can of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling), however much coconut milk you have left over after making frosting (about a cup and a half) and chicken broth until you get a thick soup consistency. You can always add more or boil some off. Add about a teaspoon of coriander, lots of black pepper, sea salt to taste, a couple tablespoons of maple syrup, and some balsamic vinegar. The idea is to balance the sweet and sour, so just keep adding and tasting. Bring to a boil, simmer ten minutes or something, and then hold on warm while you cook the brown rice. Or, if you are known for planning ahead, perhaps you cooked the brown rice at the same time as everything else. If so, you are not really the sort of person I'd like to spend a lot of time with.

Other possibilities for this: plain yogurt (there you are again, my love!), cloves, curry powder or peppers or something spicy, fresh pumpkin instead of canned, in which case you could keep the chunks large, fry them first, and then serve the whole thing over rice rather than side by side. Or thin it out a lot more and add some pasta. It doesn't get any easier or beta-carotene-ific than this!

Roast Chicken Day Two: Broth

As promised, I culled two dinners from the four-pound chicken I brought home the other day. The first was roasted breast with rosemary. Simple and delicious. The following day I submerged the carcass, with some of the dark meat still attached (and the rest chopped and set aside in the fridge) in a deep pot with about eight or nine cups of water. I added one onion quartered, one carrot cut down the middle lengthwise and then in half, a stalk of celery, and two parsnips cut in large chunks.

As directed by Alice Waters, I brought the pot to a boil, then immediately turned it down to a simmer. I skimmed off the foam, which she said can make the broth cloudy if allowed to stay. Mine ended up cloudy anyway, but that didn't seem to matter. I simmered it at medium-low heat for about five hours, adding a bit of salt every so often and giving it a stir.

The picture above is from the third hour.

The chicken carcass eventually broke down completely as the cartilage dissolved. When it was finished (and there's no exact time, but I think four hours is minimum) I strained it and threw away the bones and depleted vegetables.

I let the broth cool and skimmed off the fat. Meanwhile, I melted butter in a clean pan and sauteed some chopped onion, one carrot sliced, and, because we were both feeling a little sinusy, a lot of garlic (the cure for everything, I believe in my heart). I poured the skimmed broth back into the pan with the reserved dark meat from the day before and a generous teaspoon of oregano, more salt, and black pepper. I brought this to a boil, then added two big handfuls of fettuccine, broken into pieces. I wish I would have added a little more because I like a noodleful soup.

The main event here is the broth, though. It was so rich, so flavorful--I would have enjoyed it without anything in it at all.

Please go forth and do this immediately.