Cannellini and Chickpea Pottage

 Even with the appearance of warmer weather there is just something about a big pot of well seasoned root vegetables and beans that is still really satisfying.  Then again I'm the type of person that has been known to suffer over a boiling pot of soup and cook a loaf of bread when it's 100 degrees so I might be biased.  I think we can all agree that a tasty one pot meal is pretty amazing regardless of the weather.

The fella and I have been making this all winter and had it again yesterday and it still retains it's yumminess no matter how many times we cook it.  The only problem has been trying to find gluten free chicken sausages here in town.  Amy's Organic are the only ones I've been able to find and sadly they are precooked without a casing which results in a slightly less appealing texture since the sausage refused to crumble into the beans nicely.  But if you can handle any ole chicken sausage you are in luck because raw crumbly sausage ups the delicious scale of this meal.

I've also found that I prefer giant white lima beans in this recipe instead of the cannellini beans from the orginal recipe.  The lima beans hold their texture much better during the baking process.  This was another one of those surprising discoveries, finding out that lima beans done right are out of this world.  More proof that just because you hated it when you were a kid doesn't mean you'll hate it later in life now that you know how to cook.

First beets, then kale, now lima beans.  Soon I'll find a way to make kohlrabi edible.  Now that will be the day.

Cannellini and Chickpea Pottage

1 tablespoon oil

4 chicken sausage links, casings removed (the only gluten free variety I've found in town is Amy's brand)

1 yellow onion, chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 cup chicken stock

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 teaspoon agave nectar

4 cups giant lima beans

2 cups chickpeas

3 tablespoons fresh thyme, divided use (or 1 1/ 2 tablespoons dried thyme)

salt and pepper, to taste

1 bay leaf

1/ 4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, finely grated

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Heat a  Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add about a table of oil and the sausage, breaking it up with a spoon as it browns. Once meat is browned, add the onion and carrots and sauté for 5 minutes or until both the carrots and onions look like they are beginning to soften. Add the garlic, and sauté for 2 minutes.

Stir in chicken broth, scraping the pan to loosen browned bits stuck to pot.  Add the tomato paste, agave nectar, lima beans, chickpeas, one tablespoon of thyme, a pinch of salt and pepper, bay leaf and crushed red pepper. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Sprinkle shredded Parmesan cheese evenly over the pottage and transfer dish to oven (uncovered) for 20 minutes or until the top becomes brown and bubbly.

Remove from oven, sprinkling any remaining thyme and Parmesan cheese over the top.

Original recipe from Food52 Blog.

Vanilla Panna Cotta Soup with Marinated Strawberries

I have to admit the major inspiration behind blogging this crazy diet experience, failures, insanity, crying jags, and all was reading Julie and Julia. A secretary in New York decides to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking in a year, a huge and difficult undertaking. If you haven't read it you're missing out. There were so many times I was reading it that I broke down in helpless piles of laughter that took me minutes to recover from. The lady can really write.

Julie Powell's book also prepared me for the difficulties that come with pannacotta making. The recipe is deceptively simple and yet oh so easy to ruin. Gelatin is a cruel mistress that requires all of your undivided attention and devotion. And even then the damn pannacotta will only turn out with a lot of luck.

With this is mind I warned all of the people coming to dinner to not be too surprised if the pannacotta was a failure and to try not to laugh too hard at my pannacotta soup. It was still a blow to my fragile fledgling French cooking self esteem when I reached in the fridge for the custards and got pannacotta soup. I took the advice from my friendly peanut gallery and put it in the freezer to ice up during dinner, because anything with that much cream, sweetness, and strawberries would be great regardless of consistency.

That was good thinking.

The balsamic vinegar really gave the strawberries a rich tart edge. I'm going to start keeping a container of vinegared berries around for putting on my yogurt and oatmeal in the mornings. On the soupy half frozen pannacotta the berries were divine. They were a perfect ending for my first dinner, with one really great dish, one demi-failure and one recipe that didn't turn out but ended up perhaps tastier in its new form.

With bellies full and two bottles of wine under our collective belts we retired to the living room to be hypnotized by a warm fire and play silly card games until way past my bed time. It was an evening well worth missing sleep over.


Also included in this menu:
Chicken in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Eggplant Pizza

Vanilla Panna Cotta with Marinated Strawberries


1 1/2 teaspoons unflavored powdered gelatin
1 1/4 cups 2% milk
1 3/4 cups half and half
2 tablespoons fructose
1 tablespoon vanilla extract


In a small bowl, soak the gelatin in 1/4 cup of the milk until soft, about five minutes. While waiting for gelatin to soften warm the remaining milk, half and half, and fructose in small pot until fructose dissolves, about five minutes. Leave the milk mixture to cool until barely warm and then add the gelatin mixture to pot, stirring well until gelatin dissolves completely.


Pour the mixture into four 2/3 cup ramekins, cover and chill at least over night.


To unmold pannacotta, fill bowl with boiling water and dip bottom of each mold into water for a couple seconds. Place a plate on top of the mold and flip it over. Carefully lift off the mold. If your pannacotta doesn't set, place ramekins in freezer until the liquid is half frozen and enjoy it as an odd ice creamy dessert.




STRAWBERRY TOPPING:
1 pound of strawberries, halved
1 teaspoon fructose
1 1/4 teaspoon balsamic vinegar


Prepare this at least an hour before you plan to serve the pannacotta. Sprinkle strawberries with fructose and vinegar. Toss to combine in a bowl and chill until ready to serve. Sprinkle a fourth of the strawberries over each pannacotta or serving of failed pannacotta ice cream.


Original recipe from The Big GL Plus Diet Planner.

Eggplant Pizza

This recipe does it's best to drive the person trying to make it crazy with unnecessary steps and the shear amount of time and preparation it requires to make something that will not in any way shape or form turn out correctly unless you are a famous French chef. As of this moment Boulud and I are not speaking for a while.

The day before the party I sautéed the vegetables, roasted a head of garlic and read over the recipe several thousand times. None of this helped things go more smoothly. The eggplant was a greasy disaster and I'm not sure even using the flour that was in the original recipe would have improved things. I just did not have the patience for something like this especially when it didn't turn out.

Thankfully the mess I ended up with was very tasty albeit very, very greasy. If for some reason you are masochistic enough to attempt to make this reduce the oil wherever possible because Boulud's method goes way over board. Or if you're a lucky bread eater the toppings alone would probably make the world's tastiest regular ole pizza. I'll leave it up to one of you to experiment with that and get back to me.

Also included in this menu:
Chicken in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Vanilla Panna Cotta

Eggplant “Pizza”




EGGPLANT:
1 or 2 medium eggplants
10 inch cake pan brushed with oil
salt
roll of paper towels


2 cups oil for frying
(original recipe calls for flour to dredge eggplant in, which I couldn't use.)
2 eggs, whisked (to unsuccessfully substitute for the flour)


Peel one eggplant and cut into very thin rounds. Supposedly it is easiest on the mandoline but I couldn't get the eggplant to cooperate on mine so I went at it as best I could with a big knife. You need enough rounds of eggplant to cover the bottom of the pan twice so experiment with placing them on the cake pan to see if you need more. (You might want to even have a few extra if you're as bad at frying as I am.) If so peel the other eggplant and slice thin.


Sprinkle the slices on both sides with salt and place them a couple of layers at a time between layers of paper towel. (The salting is supposed to get rid of some moisture and bitterness as well as help the eggplant not absorb as much oil. It doesn't work, they will still absorb massive amounts of oil.) Set aside for 45 minutes and start working the filling for the “pizza.”


***


To assemble the crust pat the salted eggplant between more paper towels. Place a rack over a baking pan and place it near where you will be frying, this is where you'll put the fried eggplant rounds to rest and drip off some of the oil. (I didn't have a rack so I used paper towel which only worked moderately well.)


Pour the oil into a deep sauce pan (I would use small amounts of oil to lightly pan fry them on each side rather than immersing them in oil because they will absorb too much of it) and put pan over medium high heat.


Dredge eggplant in flour or egg in a vain attempt to bread them, tapping off extra flour/egg. When the oil is hot fry eggplant a couple of rounds at a time until they are just crispy on both sides. Place on baking pan or more paper towels to rest.


Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 400. Line a baking sheet with foil (I have no idea what this does for the cooking at all.) Place the oiled cake pan in center of baking sheet and start constructing “pizza” by arranging fried eggplant slices with the slices slightly overlapping each other. Top with another layer of eggplant, season with salt and pepper and wonder why you spent two hours making a “crust.”




SAUTEED VEGGIES:
4 tablespoons oil
1 green pepper, cut into thin strips
1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 small zucchini, trimmed and cut into 1/4 inch thick rounds
1 small yellow squash,trimmed and cut into 1/4 inch thick rounds


This step can be done the day ahead of time or while waiting for eggplant to rest after being salted.


Sauté vegetables one at a time in 1 tablespoon of the oil. Warm first tablespoon of oil in small skillet over medium heat. When hot, add green pepper and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the pepper is tender though not browned, about 5 to 10 minutes. Spoon into a dish and set aside.


Place pan back over heat and add more oil if needed. Warm oil, place onion in pan, season with salt and pepper and cook until tender. Set cooked onions aside on another dish. Repeat with zucchini and squash, adding salt and pepper to each, adding oil as needed and cooking until tender. Place each in their own separate dishes. (Cooking each vegetable separately made sure each one was cooked through perfectly but keeping each in separate dishes was unnecessary if you know you will be putting all the veggies on the “pizza” anyway.)




TOPPINGS:
5 basil leaves, torn into pieces (I would double this)
1 roasted red pepper (roast your own or used pre-prepared), cut into thin strips
1 roasted yellow pepper, cut into thin strips (I used two red)
1 tablespoon parsley
12 pieces oil packed sun dried tomatoes, washed or padded dry of all oil then quartered
1 head roasted garlic (do this the day ahead of time), pushed out of peel
12 black or kalamata olives, halved


2 tablespoons fresh grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled


Finish “pizza” with toppings by scattered basil over the eggplant “crust” already in cake pan. Lay red and yellow roasted pepper strips over basil, sprinkle with the parsley. Arrange a layer of zucchini on top of this, then yellow squash, and green pepper. Top with sun dried tomatoes and roasted garlic cloves. Finish with sautéed onions and olives. Dust “pizza” with Parmesan and feta evenly. Drizzle with oil (but only if you somehow feel all the oil already in the veggies isn't quite enough and you're hoping for a heart attack to round out the evening.)


Bake for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted. The original recipe claims you can them lift “pizza” out of pan and onto cutting board to use pizza cutter to make slices in order to serve. I ended up with a mushy oily mess with no integrity which we dubbed yummy plate o' vegetables casserole. Consoling myself with wine and adding more feta to the “pizza” I vowed to never look at this recipe ever again.


Original recipe minus the snarky commentary from The Cafe Boulud Cookbook.

Chicken in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

This is the wine carnage that resulted from yesterday evening's dinner party. You know it was a good time when you're too busy cooking and chatting up the company to have a moment to think about taking pictures of the delightful food that was eaten. Ah well, this will have to do.

The fella and I had three delightfully patient friends over to enjoy our first attempt at a genuine dinner party. With all the prep work I had done the day before and the hour head start I was getting before anyone arrived I thought people would walk in the door about the time the “pizza” was coming out of the oven. How wondrously optimistic of me. That just is never going to happen when anything from he Boulud cookbook is involved. Things got super complicated there for a while.

The eggplant refused to be mandolined, cut or salted. Then it burnt and smoked while being fried just in time for the first guests to arrive and help me air out the noxious plume of smoke in the kitchen so no one would asphyxiate.

Then I realized the fresh basil that went in both recipes had gone black and not at all fresh so the fella was sent out for new basil while out to pick up our other friend. Apparently it was an adventure to find it being so out of season so he was gone a lot longer than expected. I had to go on assembling the fakey pizza without the basil and hope it would be okay tossed on top later.

By now all the counters were covered in the wreckage of three half prepared dishes, making butterflying and pounding chicken breast practically an Olympic sport. I didn't allow myself to look at our friends to see how they were handling the now I'm sure very apparent news that the person cooking for them was nuts and they wouldn't be eating for a while.

Thankfully our friends know us well and brought a surplus of wine and the fella returned from the hunt for fresh basil in time to make a cheese plate so that people could snack and be pleasantly distracted as the endless cooking continued. The fella's fellow Mason is a bit of a wine snob himself and was nice enough to bring some really exciting bottles of Cotes du Rhone and a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc.

The Santa Rita Reserva Sauvignon Blanc was my favorite. Some fruit on the nose, light bodied and a super delicious melon and mineral finish. It was pleasantly complex, not one of those New Zealand Sauvignons that are like drinking pure grape fruit juice (which I also love by the way but would not have fit in with this meal.)

The Domaine Oratoire St. Martin was a very basic Cotes du Rhone. Drinkable, light bodied with some unripened red berries early on the tongue, finishing with the typical French mineralistic tannins. Unfortunately the special bottle of Domaine de la Janasse from 2000 that he has been holding on to may have gone past it's prime. The nose was a little too dirty gym sock to be enjoyable and the wine was almost tasteless so the poor Cotes do Rhone was abandoned for the other bottles.

We also opened a bottle of non alcoholic cranberry and cherry spumante from door county for our pregnant guest. A nice gesture but I'm going to agree with her when she said it was like drinking cherries in a sewer. The taste was nice but it was hard to get past the icky smell. Kind of like a durian apparently.

An hour after anticipated we finally sat down to dinner. The fake pizza was yummy but overly oily and very much not worth all the effort, it would have been better just to steam all the vegetables together and add a bit of oil. The chicken dish however was a huge success and it was super hands off and easy. I would make it again but would probably add some sort of addition herb like oregano, rosemary, anything to give a little extra flavor.

Also included in this meal:
Eggplant Pizza
Vanilla Panna Cotta

Chicken in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

2 tablespoons oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, cut finely
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 cup white wine
3 ounces black or kalamata olives, halved and pits removed
4 roasted red peppers (I used can ones but you can certainly roast then yourself it you have the time)
4 chicken breast halves (will cook faster if butterflied and pounded thin)
fresh basil

If you're roasting your own red pepper heat the oven to 400, place peppers on cookie sheet and roast about 45 minutes until blackened all over. Transfer to a bag to cool, this will make the skins easier to remove later before chopping.

Heat the oil in a deep pan and cook onion about 5 minutes or until translucent. Add the garlic and cook about 2 minutes longer. Now add tomatoes, tomato paste, wine, and olives then simmer slowly for about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally and add water if sauce becomes too thick. Cut red peppers into bite sized pieces, stir into sauce with some black pepper. Add chicken pieces, then cover and simmer about 20 minutes or until meat is cooked through.

Garnish with fresh basil and serve in shallow pasta bowls with a good ladle of the sauce covering each chicken breast.

Original recipe from The Big GL Plus Diet Planner

Minestrone Alla Tuscana

It's not very photogenic but I promise you it's delicious and filling. Just the sort of thing to come home to after working two jobs and getting a ticket for failure to remove 8 inches of ice from a side walk no one ever uses. If someone at the Madison streets department would like to come over and tell us how to do such a thing with out super powers I would be curious to know. I figure it should be included in the $182 dollar ticket. As it was the fella and our duplex neighbor were outside with ice picks and 75 pounds of salt and sand until 1AM so as not to get a repeat offender violation. Oh the bureaucracy.

Days like these I really thank the heavens for comfort food and a fella that cooks for me on my long days. This soup was definitely the high point of the day. The half hour of no work and no winter weather drama during which I filled my weary belly with this warm meal was the only pleasant bit.

It's from the Silver Spoon Cookbook which is swiftly becoming my favorite for recipes these days. Besides chopping and boiling it really takes no effort. It took so little effort and was so ugly and beige he figured it was going to be inedible mush and was a little sad about spending time on it. He changed his tune after the first bite. It really does need a make over but aside from that it's perfect, lots of veggies and for having so little in it the soup manages to have a nice zing to it. Must be the rosemary and pepper.

We'll be making this again soon. Next time I'll probably forgo taking pictures of it at work though. People at the office job already think I'm crazy without the photo shoots with my food. It's not that they're wrong I just don't want to get them any more evidence to work with.

Minestrone Alla Toscana

½ cup cannellini beans, soaked over night and drained(or one can, retain liquid for cooking)
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 bay leaf
4 tablespoons oil
1 onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 tablespoon parsley
1 head escarole (or any bitter green, he used a couple handfuls of spinach)
1 tomato, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
1 leek, white part only, chopped
½ cup brown rice

Put beans, rosemary and bay leaf in sauce pot, add enough cold water to cover. Bring to a boil and simmer about 2 hours, then discard herbs. (If you're using canned beans, you can obviously skip this step and just add the herbs to the soup and discard them in the end.) Place about half of them and the starchy water in food processor to puree.

In soup pot heat oil over low heat. Add onion, celery, and parsley, cook stirring occasionally for about 5 minutes. Add escarole, tomato, zucchini, and leek, cook for another 10 minutes. Stir the bean puree and remaining beans into soup pot, season with salt and pepper. Add enough water to cover the vegetables or to make your preferred soup consistency.  Bring to a boil, add rice and cook for about 20 minutes or until rice is al dente.