Border-blurring comfort food: White Bean Soup with Sage and Sausage

Variations of this soup are made in Tuscany, France and the UK. This version combines white beans, sage, shallots, garlic, wine and sausage in a soup hearty enough to be a meal. Recipe below.

AS FALL SETTLES IN HERE IN THE MIDWEST, our tiny garden is mostly shutting down. The tomatoes are over, the basil looking forlorn. But our sage is still going to town. So when I came across a recipe for Tuscan-style white beans that used sage on Saveur’s website, I mentally filed it away. Then overnight temperatures in the 40s last weekend had us turning on the furnace and me thinking of soup. Specifically, a white bean soup with sage. Continue reading “Border-blurring comfort food: White Bean Soup with Sage and Sausage” →

Seattle on five meals a day: Chanterelle Soup

Chanterelle mushrooms, shallots, thyme, half & half, sherry and plenty of butter create a rich, creamy, earthy soup. Recipe (and mushroom substitutions) below.

A couple of times on our recent trip to Seattle, I wondered about the city’s name and its origin. More germane to our visit, however, is the fact that the word ‘eat’ is right in the middle of the name. In our short time there, it seemed we were constantly eating something delicious, talking about some delicious thing we’d just eaten or contemplating what delicious thing we would be putting in our mouths next. Fortunately for us, downtown Seattle is one giant StairMaster. We didn’t burn off all the glorious calories we consumed, but we at least made a tiny, doughy dent.

After an extravagantly delayed flight, cutting-edge inefficiency at the car rental pickup and our GPS device’s refusal to accept that we were not still in Chicago (and the attendant instructions on how to make the 29-hour drive from Chicago to Seattle), we finally checked into our hotel in the late afternoon. Then we headed straight out for oysters. Continue reading “Seattle on five meals a day: Chanterelle Soup” →

Radical hospitality, nurturing comfort: Italian Chicken Stew

Chicken, potatoes, artichoke hearts, olives and capers create a hearty, rustic Italian stew. The recipe is adapted from Hedgebrook Cookbook: Celebrating Radical Hospitality. You could win your own copy of this cookbook. Recipe and contest details below.

One of the pleasures of writing Blue Kitchen is the opportunities we get to review cookbooks. We love food and we love the written word. Cookbooks give us both. The latest volume to come across our desk celebrates a place that has helped support the written word for 25 years now.

Hedgebrook is a writing retreat on Whidbey Island in Washington state, 48 acres with a farmhouse and six cabins. Since 1988, those cabins have been home to an impressive list of women writers, including Eve Ensler, Jane Hamilton, Carolyn Forché and Gloria Steinem, all enjoying what Hedgebrook calls “radical hospitality.” Continue reading “Radical hospitality, nurturing comfort: Italian Chicken Stew” →

Spring forward, fall back: Creamy Green Pea and Potato Soup offers hope, comfort

Leeks, potatoes and frozen green peas quickly cook into a creamy, hearty soup that tastes like spring. See Kitchen Notes for a vegetarian version. Recipe below.

Spring in Chicago is being its usual capricious self. Warm, sunny days mix it up with cold, blustery, rain-filled stretches. The range of our outerwear this time of year says it all. Leather jackets, sport coats, shirt sleeves, raincoats and, sadly, even our down parkas all see action.

It’s the same story in the kitchen. Longer days and soft breezes have us longing for fresh asparagus and other tastes of spring. Sudden blasts of cold send us running for comfort food. This soup delivers both. The sweet, green flavor of peas is filled with promise; the thick, hearty, potato-rich base soothes even on an unseasonably chilly night. Continue reading “Spring forward, fall back: Creamy Green Pea and Potato Soup offers hope, comfort” →

Southwestern antifreeze: lively, hearty Black Bean Soup with Ham Hocks

Lots of big flavors—cumin, garlic, celery, red bell pepper, tomatoes, jalapeño pepper and smoked ham hock—blend into a satisfying soup with a Southwestern kick. Go to recipe.

This is being a strange winter. Last Friday, for instance, the high flirted with 60ºF. In Chicago. Saturday, it dropped all day to the 20s. By Sunday night, it was 15. And on top of everything else, it isn’t snowing. As Marion points out in a post about a 6-inch tall fop on her blog, 9591 Iris, there has been no measurable snow in Chicago for more than 300 days.

But strange or not, it’s still winter, and that had me thinking soup. This soup started with a remembered ham hock not getting any younger in the freezer. My first thought was black-eyed peas, but there was also a bag of dried black beans in the pantry with similar faded youth issues. So black bean soup it was. Continue reading “Southwestern antifreeze: lively, hearty Black Bean Soup with Ham Hocks” →

Miso Braised Pork Shoulder: Because nothing comforts you like umami

Japanese miso paste adds a satisfying umami note to chunky pieces of pork and carrots braised with garlic, fresh ginger and onion. Recipe below.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]W[/su_dropcap]hat’s the traditional sixth anniversary gift? If it’s a food blog anniversary, I’m going with pork. Yes, Blue Kitchen is six years old this month. A lot has changed for me foodwise in that time. For one thing, I feel like I know more about food than when I started—including how ungodly much I don’t know and will never know. But some things have remained the same, like my willingness to borrow ingredients from the global pantry and use them authentically or otherwise. This week, that ingredient is miso paste. Continue reading “Miso Braised Pork Shoulder: Because nothing comforts you like umami” →

Shrimp Fideos: Short for little Spanish toasted noodles and shrimp

Toasting uncooked pasta with olive oil in a skillet before adding liquid gives it a pleasingly nutty taste in this globe-trotting, Spanish-inspired dish with shrimp, red bell pepper and edamame. Recipe below.

One of the things I love about cooking is how recipes for the same essential dish can be so different. For fideos—short, thin noodles toasted and then cooked into Spanish (and Italian and Mexican) stews and soups, this is spectacularly so.

Fideos is actually the name of a specific type of thin noodle, most often short, slightly curved pieces. According to Joey Campanaro, chef/co-owner of The Little Owl in New York, fideos is the Catalan word for noodles, and many Spanish cooks use it instead of rice to make paella. Typically, English-language recipes call for using vermicelli, cappellini or spaghetti and breaking it into short pieces. Continue reading “Shrimp Fideos: Short for little Spanish toasted noodles and shrimp” →

Senate Bean Soup: Classic comfort food, comfortingly not updated

Served daily in the United States Senate Dining Room since the early 1900s, Senate Bean Soup is a soul satisfying, stubbornly old school dish. Recipe below.

Special Collector’s Issue is a term often used—and abused—by magazine marketers to boost newsstand sales. The October issue of Saveur magazine, however, lives up to the hype.

As the cover promises, it contains 101 classic recipes—and not much else. No restaurant showcases, no travel features, no chef profiles or kitchen gadget reviews. Just a short piece up front by the editor-in-chief celebrating Saveur’s 150th issue and a classic food-related photo of Lucille Ball on the last page, with the aforementioned recipes sandwiched in between. Continue reading “Senate Bean Soup: Classic comfort food, comfortingly not updated” →

Improvising with leftovers and sudden summer bounty: Tomato Fennel Soup

Fresh cherry tomatoes and a fennel bulb are the stars of Tomato Fennel Soup, a quick meal or starter bursting with summer flavors. Recipe below.

Every summer, it’s the same thing with our tomato plants. Nothing, nothing, nothing and then wham—tomatoes by the boatload. This summer, the timing coincided with having a leftover fennel bulb from last week’s caramelized fennel cooking adventures that wasn’t getting any younger.

Tomato Fennel Soup seemed like the obvious answer—except just about every version we found involved canned tomatoes; and most of them involved puréeing. I wanted something quick and easy, something a little on the rustic side. And I wanted to see the ingredients I was eating. So I improvised. Continue reading “Improvising with leftovers and sudden summer bounty: Tomato Fennel Soup” →

Cook For Julia: Tarragon and French technique flavor Fish Stew with White Wine and Tarragon

Based on a Julia Child recipe, this delicately-flavored fish stew combines classic cooking methods and ingredients. Recipe below.

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Julia Child’s birth, PBS.org is inviting bloggers to cook one of her recipes, post it and share the link on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #CookForJulia. Here is my contribution.

Each generation stands on the shoulders of the one before it. Our children use our experience and our knowledge as a foundation to see further than we can. To see things in a way that we can’t.

The same is true in cooking. In looking at some of Julia Child’s cookbooks, it’s easy to see them as a little old-fashioned, right down to the recipes. Chicken Marengo. Ham Steaks with Cream and Mushrooms. But home cooking is only where it is today because we stood on her shoulders. Continue reading “Cook For Julia: Tarragon and French technique flavor Fish Stew with White Wine and Tarragon” →