Yummy Beef Soup

I like beef and I especially like beef from our seller at the Oak Park farmer's market.  Every fall, we stock up on the last day of the market so that we have healthier and more responsibly grown beef throughout the winter.  This year, we tried a new cut--beef shank.  We got two.  The first I made into a more traditional Western pot roast-like meal cooked low and slow in red wine and stock with mirepoix.  But truthfully?  Meh.  Dan loved it, but I won't cook it that way again. There's a dusty taste to cheaper beef cuts prepared in that way that I don't like and everything in the dish ends up tasting like beef. . . as it turns out, I don't like beef that much. 

So, on my second try, I thought, "Let's try to keep the yummy beef, but this time, let's let everything else still taste like itself," and enter my attempt at an Asian-inspired soup.  I made an Asian broth of ginger, carrots, onion and beef--and then used the broth and the beef (now falling off the bone), plus new veggies to make a super tasty soup that satisfied on a col winter's night.  Here's how. . . 

Amy's Asian Flavors Beef Soup 

(Serves 2 with large entree servings)

Hands on time: 30 minutes  Total Cooking Time: 5 hours

• 1 lb. beef shank
• 6 in. long ginger root--skinned and then cut into inch long chunks
• 1 med. yellow onion--peeled and quartered
• 5 large carrots--peeled; cut two carrots into big chunks and dice the other two carrots
• 1 c. head napa cabbage (bok choy might also be good)--rough chop
• 1 sm. bunch green onions--dice up all of it right down to the roots
• 1 c. peas--frozen or fresh
• salt and honey to taste
• optional hot pepper

Make the Soup Base
In a 3.5 quart dutch oven, toss in 4 of the ginger root pieces, the yellow onion, the two chunk-cut carrots, then fill pot 2/3rds full with water.  Put over high heat on the stove and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, add the beef shank (the water should come to within an inch of the top of the pot.  Bring water back to a boil and then immediately turn heat down to medium low, put the top on and simmer for a minimum of 4.5 hours.

Finish the soup
Using a slotted spoon, remove the beef shank (which should be falling off the bone) and set aside.  Remove the rest of the big chunks of vegetables and dispose of them.  Then strain stock into a bowl through a fine strainer lined with a cheese cloth to take out all of the tiny bits of impurities.  You should be left with a pretty, clear yellow broth that smells delicious.

Put the broth back on the stove and season to suit your taste.  I am a fan--especially with a dusky meat like beef or pork--of a slightly sweet broth and so I use the honey liberally and then throw in a tiny dash of cayenne pepper.  Bring the soup back to a boil, throw in the diced carrots, and the rest of the ginger (the ginger shouldn't be eaten, it's just to add an additional fresher ginger taste in the close).  Put the top back on, reduce the heat to medium.  Cook for ten minutes and then add peas and cook for another 5 minutes.

While the carrots and peas cook, shred the beef into bite-sized chunks (be careful, it might still be hot) and evenly divide between two big soup bowls.  Also divide cabbage and and green onions between two bowls (make sure you evenly divide the white and green parts of the onions between bowls).  Ladle two spoonfuls of hot soup over the ingredients in the bowls to warm them up and gently cook the cabbage and onions.

In two minutes, Ladle the rest of the soup (dividing carrots and peas evenly) into the two bowls.

And then enjoy.  This is ridiculously good. . . especially on a cold winter's day.

Apple Sauce

For the first time ever, the farmer's market had sour apples. Not sour apples like they have on the farm at home. . . But pretty sour.

Which means I had to buy them and make homemade apple sauce.

Apple sauce is crazy easy to make, and there are few things finer than thawing out frozen freshmade apple sauce mid-winter to eat with pork or as a side for a winter sandwich and salad.  (Please Note:  However, I think you have no business making it unless you have a food mill.  Food mills create the perfect silky apple sauce and nothing else will do).


Ingredients:
Apples (at least 4 lbs.)
Water
Lemon peel
Lemon juice
Brown sugar
Cinnamon

Core and cut apples into fourths.

Put in pot with enough water to cover half of the pile of apples. Boil/steam with the lid on the pot for 20 minutes.

 

Place food mill over second empty pot. Once apples are soft, using a slotted spoon, transfer small batches of cooked apples into food mill.

 

Once all apples have been run through food mill, mix in juice of one lemon, 1 heaping tsp cinnamon, and 1/4 cup brown sugar per 4 lbs apples. Taste and then add lemon juice or sugar to suit your personal taste.

Eat right away or freeze. Frozen, it will last throughout the winter.

Getting Ready for Spring

Hung out with my honey today--gardening and cleaning up around the outside of the house.  We raked leaves and hacked our apple trees and wisteria back to their very nubs.  We weeded and got rid of unwanted plants.  We divided hostas and sage and replanted to fill in in empty spots.

It was cold outside, but we treated the day like spring.  So, to celebrate, I'm making a strawberry/rhubarb crisp for dessert. . . after a springy dinner of quiche and salad.  Even the outdoors knows it's a party tonight.

Butternut Squash Ravioli

Homemade Butternut squash ravioli--every bit of it. I made the filling two weeks ago and then the fresh pasta and assemblage last weekend.




Finally assembling the raviolis by the antique light of sunset. Cooking makes me feel connected to something. . . something historical and long-lived. Every piece I learn feels both important and inevitable.

These ravioli are part of a long-term obsession. Years and years ago, I went out for a holiday dinner with my whole work office at the restaurant "A Mano." Sister restaurant to its upstairs neighbor, Bin 36, it was one of the yummiest Italian joints I'd ever visited in Chicago. And the second course was pumpkin ravioli. . . coming at a time in my life when I hated pumpkin soup, butternut squash as a side dish, anything orange and squashy and edible. The only use for pumpkin was a Halloween decoration or pie.

But that ravioli--sweet and rich and buttery--served with walnuts, crisped individual leaves of brussel sprouts and tangy blue cheese changed my mind forever. And eating it, in the warm, sort of cavelike openness of A Mano, after the cold mile walk from work, up over the river, neck craned to take in the Marina Towers, surrounded by friends, I thought I might only want the waiter to bring that course again and again for the rest of the night.

And when A Mano went out of business in 2010, I knew that the only way to get those yummy ravioli again would be to make my own.

I've been working on it ever since.

Best Brussel Sprouts Ever

So, I found a recipe on Poppytalk that sounded good. But I had to change it. I don't know if I have difficulty with authority or just following recipes in general, but I can rarely leave them just as is. . . except in baking which feels like chemistry I don't understand and thus don't want to monkey with.

But these sprouts were amazing.


Preheat Oven to 400 degrees.

serves 2-3

2-3 handfuls of sprouts
2-3 T Olive oil
Ground Sea Salt to taste
Garlic Powder to taste
Ground Red Chipotle Pepper to taste (or Cayenne, if you prefer)
Ground Black Pepper to taste
(I put the dry seasonings in order of which you should use the most to least of. You can use the sea salt pretty liberally. But the idea with the red pepper isn't to make these little buggers incredibly spicy. . . just to give them a little pleasant heat.)
Honey to finish

Directions--clean sprouts as usual, cutting off tough ends and stripping a few outer leaves. Cut all but the tiny-tiniest in half, then soak in cold water for 15 minutes. Drain the sprouts and lay them out on paper towels--you have to do this with the cut side down or they will retain a lot of water.

Scatter sprouts over a metal baking tray. Pour olive oil over all sprouts, then sprinkle all dry seasonings over sprouts. Use hands to shuffle and mix sprouts on tray until they are evenly covered with oil.

Put in oven for twelve minutes. At end of twelve minutes, use a spatula to stir them around, flip them over, then put them in for another twelve minutes. (24 minutes total will carmelize them nicely--much more than that and they will burn.)

Pull them out of the oven and while still on tray, salt them a tiny bit more and dribble a little bit of honey over them. The honey--like the hot pepper--is not meant to overwhelm them or make them intensely sweet. It's just an additional flavor to round them out.

These are ridiculously good. It's like healthy comfort food.

Stewart Phillips Traditional New Years Day Brunch

Every year. First day of the year. Tea (me), coffee (Dan), orange juice, scrambled eggs, maple sausage, and warm out of the oven Danish puff pastry.

You have to start the year out right, doncha know.

Danish Puff Pastry Recipe

As part of a brunch, this will serve 6-10 people.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

First Part:
1 C. flour
1/2 C. softened butter
2 T. cold water

Second Part:
1 C. water
1 C. flour
1/2 C. butter
1 t. almond extract
3 eggs

Icing: 2 C powered sugar and enough warmed milk (1/3 cup?) to make a fairly runny, but still opaque, simple icing.

Plus: 1/2 C walnuts, finely chopped

Directions:
Mix first part. Divide into two even halves and pat each part out on an ungreased baking sheet. Both should be @ a 10"x4' rectangle. Both should fit on one large baking sheet.

Second Part: bring water and butter to boil. Take off heat. Add Almond extract and flour immediately. Stir until smooth, then add eggs, one at a time, mixing until smooth and full combined between each egg addition. Divide second part into two equal halves and spread evenly on top of the two strips of dough on baking sheet. Pat smooth.

Then cook for 60 minutes until lightly browned.

While still hot, drizzle liberally with icing and nuts. The icing is the only source of sweetness for this pastry, so don't be shy with your application. Best the 1st day, but also yummy as a leftover one day later.

Good Thing Eleven: Raclette

Man. As long as there is raclette in the world--plus the tiny red potatoes and gherkins to eat with it--there will be a reason to be grateful.

If you've never had raclette, you may not allow me to convince you of it. It's a stinky swiss cheese meant solely for melting and eating with salty buttery potatoes. It's undoubtedly terrible for you and the raclette is about $18.00 a pound. . . so, it's also pricey. And really, it's the perfect dinner meal after you have either driven a herd of cows or a flock of sheep amid the Alps. . . or alternately skied all day long or lumberjacked your way through a few giant cedars using only one of those two-handled saws, back and forth, back and forth.

I do none of those things.

But Dan and I have it at least once a year. We eat less cheese now--to save money, I guess, and to leave room for other things. Now we have raclette (just melted in a non-stick fry pan. nobody needs one of those fancy raclette cookers) over buttery boiled potatoes, with gherkins (traditionally to cut the grease of the cheese and potatoes. . . seriously, you have to try this), sliced up brats, and salty/lemony broccoli.

We got some greens in there. See. Now it's healthy.

Perfect Summer Salad

I can't believe that July is almost over. I have spent so much of this summer wrapped up in my health that it's skidded past me. It's silly, but while still bound to lay down much of the day, I feel like it will be fall and then winter before I know it.

So, I'm bringing summer inside with the perfect summer salad this evening.


Ingredients:

fresh sweet corn--cut right off the cob
red onion--diced
fresh basil--given a good chiffonade
apple cider vinegar
olive oil
freshly ground pepper and salt to taste

No specific amounts here, because who knows how much corn you have on hand (plenty, though, I hope this time of year!).

But this is how I put it together in a little word puzzle:

for each ear of corn, I add 1 T each of oil and vinegar.
for total amount of corn, I add half as much red onion.
I add enough basil so that it looks like there might be a bit of green in each bite.

It's so simple. As simple as summer food should be.

Pesto Day

We usually have a pesto making day a few times a summer. Early July, late August, and, if we're lucky, late September--however long it takes the basil plants to grow back every time we snip them down to their lowest few branches.

Mama--my nursemaid and companion after surgery--was nice enough to harvest the basil today, while I prepped everything inside for pesto making.

There's a recipe below, but I don't truly believe in pesto recipes. They're only ever there to give you a sense of what goes into a good pesto in general proportions. Because a pesto's ingredients are so few, how each ingredient tastes (and how those tastes vary widely between kinds of basil or garlic or types of olive oil or parmesan cheese) can change the pesto's final flavor drastically.

So, the recipe below is the basic, no fail recipe that will get you to a good balanced flavor, but then you should expect to add ingredients in small amounts to get to the flavor that you most prefer.

The two most important ingredients are basil (as fresh as humanly possible--right from the garden is best. Once basil leaves have been off the plant for more than 2-3 days, the flavor diminishes significantly and they should be discarded.)


And garlic. The garlic should be as fresh as possible as well. Older garlic tends to mellow, and since pesto is made to go on hot pasta, the heat of its final destination will mellow the garlic flavor a little. And I like my pesto to have some bite. Mama brought me fresh dug garlic from the farm in Cincinnati. . . lucky me.


And the garlic was soooooo pretty. I loved the purple inner papers.


Summer Pesto Recipe (makes 5 1/2-cup servings of pesto--or enough pesto for five pesto dinners for four people per dinner):

1 c. parmesan cheese (roughly chopped from a big block. get good cheese. it makes a difference.)
1 c. pinenuts
7 garlic cloves (or a whole medium sized head of garlic, peeled and smashed with the flat of your chef's knife)
8 c. basil leaves (preferrably sweet Italian basil)
3/4 c. + 1 T. olive oil (some people really care about the kind they use, but whatever flavor it could impart is pretty overwhelmed by the garlic and basil)
1/2 t. salt
5 turns of pepper grinder
1 t. honey (optional)

I suggest tasting as you go, so that you can get a sense of how each ingredient affects the flavor. But I usually put it together in this order: In a large food processor, pulse together the pine nuts, parmesan, and garlic until they look like cheaper parmesan shake-cheese you can still get at the grocery.

Then add basil with olive oil--you may have to do this addition in a few batches because the flat leaves take up a bunch of space. . . but hardly any once pulsed. So add a handful of leaves and some of the olive oil, pulse, repeat.

Definitely taste it at this point. If there's no bite from the garlic, you need to add more. If there's no nutty flavor, you will need to add more pinenuts. Then add the salt, pepper, and honey.

Honey is not a traditional ingredient of pesto and its purpose is not to make the pesto taste sweet. Both honey and molasses--much like salt--are excellent for making a thing taste rounder and more fully like itself. Trust me. Maybe make the pesto without honey, but then add a short drizzle to one half cup of it, mix it up and see whether you prefer it with or without.

We immediately put this pesto into small 1/2-cup tupperware containers and freeze them. I don't honestly know how long its advisable to keep them once frozen. But we have certainly thawed them out in early March the following year and found it to be just as good and tasty as it was the previous summer. And man, in the winter doldrums of early March in Chicago, nothing is better than eating food that tastes so green and homegrown to chase the blues away.

Easter and Passover Season

I'm not a very religious person. I was raised Presbyterian and was active in church until I fell away in my angry teen years--but more than any other season of the year, spring still seems attached to religion and the food that is attached to religious communities.

April pops up and every year, I get a yearning for hot cross buns, delicately poached fish on fridays, and homemade matzos ball soup (raised Presbyterian, but close friends all through childhood with loads of folks from the Catholic and Jewish communities of Cincinnati. Most closely tied to the Jewish community, though, as if the German-ness of both Presbys and Jews was the tie that bound us together in a German German German town).

I am also the daughter of both a gardening tribe (Hi, Mom's people!) and a farming tribe (Hey, Pop's peeps!) And so Spring is a season of hopeful, simple, ridiculously yummy food. Sweet sugar snap peas everywhere. The first fresh herbs of the season (sage, thyme, parsley, oregano, chives) showing up in pale flavor-rich soups and simple bean dishes.

My first venture into the new season:



The strength of this matzos ball soup was the broth--some homemade, some storebought, but all combined and recooked for an hour or so with a few pieces of garlic, bay leaves, celery leaves, peppercorns and a handful of uncut carrots. Ridiculous. The matzos balls could have been a little more flavorful and will be next time. . . but topped off with fresh parsley from the garden, it was pretty great anyway. . .

Celery

Celery is beautiful. Truly. It doesn't have loads and loads of flavor and lots of people hate its stringiness. But is there a better, more natural boat-shaped vehicle for peanut butter and raisins? And when I was a kid, my parents put leafy celery into colored water and a day later the celery leaves had turned deep blue. Magic!

And celery can be pretty helpful in print making.

Exhibit 1:


The shape of the end of a celery is the perfect thing for printing cabbage roses on paper or fabric. If you can do it with potatoes. . . why not with celery?

Exhibit 2:


Close up, its colors are subtle and lovely. Sort of like slices of lemongrass.

Cooking is more fun if you enjoy the process. . . if you slow down long enough to take note of the ingredients you're using.

I promise it's true.

Wings

Dan has been going through a buffalo wing craving phase. Who knows why. . . this is a first in our eight happy years together. But all of the wings he's ordered from local restaurants have been pretty bad, and it's hard for me to watch him eat frozen TGIFriday's wings.

So, a big football game today and I thought I should probably try my hand at spicy wing cooking.


I don't deep fry food, so I baked them. Coated them in flour, then egg, then panko. Once cooked, I doused them in a sauce made of butter, Louisiana hot sauce, cayenne pepper, honey, worchestershire sauce, paprika, garlic powder and a tiny bit of salt. And they were awesome.


It was oddly satisfying to make. . .


and L.P. sure wished he could have some. I love the desperate, sort of haunted look in his eye here. He would have been sorry if we had shared, though. Dogs and spicy are never a great mix.

Fish Pie

It's going to be crazy cold tomorrow. . . freeze the nose right off your face cold. 8 degrees is the expected high with "sub zero windchills" predicted. Wish I could skip work, stay at home, and whip up another batch of the fish pie I made this past weekend.

It's Jamie Oliver's recipe. . . I can't claim credit for thinking it up. But, man, was it good! It's actually an "upside down" pie. Truthfully, it's not a pie at all.

Spinach cooked in olive oil, lemon juice, salt and minced garlic cooked in the pan first. Add a layer of freshly cooked polenta on top of that. Then lay out fish (this time I used shrimp, mussels, cod, and perch) that have been tossed in lemon juice, lemon zest, sea salt, pepper, spicy red pepper and thyme, and cook in the oven for 15 minutes.

Shut the door! It's the yummiest comfort food ever, and I swear it's better the next day as leftovers. . . even heated up in a microwave.

Happy New Year

the customary New Years brunch in the Stewart/Phillips household.
homemade danish puff pastry, eggs, sausage, orange juice, tea or coffee.

I love New Years. My husband and I are both patently bad at the partying part of New Year's Eve, but I love the fresh feeling of a new year. It's a time to begin again. To cuddle into the couch and look through the last year's worth of magazines to figure out what needs to be kept and what needs to be recycled. To make plans and dream about what the new year will bring.

And this year, I have decided to give up on resolutions and have traded them in for a list of projects that I hope to complete in 2011. I'm not likely to change any of my entrenched bad behavior, but I do like to check tasks off lists. So I'm hoping that I really will re-paint the dining room and swap out a few light fixtures in the house and come up with a fabric design and finally use the beautiful felt I've had in storage for two years in 2011.

I've already cleaned my office and kept it clean for a whole week. So, I think there's hope.

Happy New Year!

Turkey, Pork and Potpies, oh my!

Last weekend, Dan and I threw a dinner party. . . a big, wander around and chat and graze on the food and drink and laugh party. I have almost no pictures from the actual party at all. This is unconscionably lame, but it might also mean that I was having far too much fun to take many moments to remove myself with a camera.

But we had loads of good food and, happily, loads of good leftovers. I smoked two pork butts and Cicero's annual free turkey. All turned out well, but I brined a turkey for the first time ever and it was worth it. I have no idea if that turkey was any good at the start, but by the end of brining and cooking, that thing was miraculous--juicy, rich, yummy. (easy peasy folks, 2 Qts. apple juice, 1 cup kosher salt and enough water in a big container to fully cover the bird and leave it over night. To cook, I just stuffed it with a cut up honeycrisp apple, lemon, head of garlic and onion, then put it in the oven and literally left it alone until it was time to come out.)

So, with leftovers, what to do?


Turkey potpies!


Everyone heartily approved except for L.P. because he didn't get to share.

Holy Fall Cooking!

I am embracing Fall with open arms and food. Loads of soups. My first first chicken pot pies from scratch. Cranberry bread. Brussel Sprouts. Catatoes or mashed parrots--Dan's awesome combo of mashed potatoes and carrots.

the handsome husband denuding the brussel stalk.

How pretty is that? I was super proud. If you ever make chicken pot pies, steal this crust recipe. Fill however you like, but this crust is awesome.

Savannah Salad

Had friends over for dinner last night. We slow-cooked/smoked a bone-on pork butt on the grill for about 5.5 hours for North Carolina Pulled Pork. As one of the side dishes, I made this yummy/pretty salad:


I got the idea for this salad from a hostess in Savannah who threw an amazing brunch for my buddy Alex, the day after her wedding. Romaine and spinach, goat cheese, pine nuts and water melon. . . and I added edible nasturtium blooms. The dressing is made of watermelon juice, walnut oil, white wine vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper.

It's the perfect summer salad and a nice pairing for entrees that are strong tasting--like the vinegary/smokiness of N.C. pulled pork. It's cool and crisp and sweet, a little creamy. And really pretty.

Butternut Squash Soup

Last night, I

decided not to fight against the cold weather anymore. We're still in the thick of winter and there's nothing I can do about it.

And I have had a Butternut squash in the pantry since the last farmer's market in late September of last year. Ah, the wonder of root vegetables and gourds.

So, I cut that bad boy up and then made a pretty fabulous creamy squash soup without using a recipe. Lots of ginger and paprika. . . some bacon (because seriously? if you start with bacon, you can't go wrong after that). And partnered with a yummy mixed greens, blue cheese, vinagrettey salad. . . that just might have included candied walnuts.

It tasted like winter food and it was yummy and waking to snow this morning was a little less sad.