A hearty, hot soup for chilly nights

Loaded with lentils, vegetables, chicken and plenty of spices, this crowded Curried Lentil Soup makes a satisfying meal by itself. Recipe below.

Broth is all well and good in soups, but I like my soups crowded. Even as a kid, I would scarf down all the noodles and little cubes of chicken in my Campbell’s Chicken Noodle and leave a bowlful of broth, aggravating my mom and missing out on the liquid benefits of soup. Now that I’m all grown up, I can appreciate a nice slurpy bowl of miso soup on occasion. But crowded soups—soups packed with vegetables and chunks of meat and maybe some noodles—are still what I really crave.

This soup fits the bill perfectly, a true meal in a bowl. It’s got lentils and a whole host of vegetables, including spinach. It’s got nice chunky bites of chicken. And it’s got spices—curry powder, cumin, red pepper and fresh ginger—to fire it up a bit and make it as interesting as it is satisfying. For the curry, I used Hot Curry Powder from The Spice House. Any Madras curry is a good choice for its heat.

It’s easy to make this vegetarian too. Just leave out the chicken and use all water or vegetable stock in place of the chicken stock.

Speaking of chicken stock, I lucked out big time. Marion made some homemade stock recently to freeze and I nabbed some of that. Just before Thanksgiving, we’ll post her recipe for chicken stock as part of a cold sweet potato soup that has become a delicious tradition of our Thanksgiving dinner. If you don’t have homemade stock for this lentil soup, be sure to use low sodium chicken broth. You can always add salt later—you can’t take it out.

With soup season in full swing, this crowded lentil soup is a hearty, flavorful meal with enough heat for the chilliest night. It’s also relatively easy to get on the table after a busy day. Continue reading “A hearty, hot soup for chilly nights” →

Dangerously good: Linguine Non Carbonara

Linguine Non Carbonara, a delicious, non-traditional take on pasta carbonara. Recipe below.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a post about a dish that wasn’t just more than the sum of its simple parts—it blew right past them. This one does the same thing in spades. How can something so insanely delicious not even use any spices, unless you count salt and pepper?

The dish in question is Marion’s decidedly non-traditional take on pasta carbonara. It’s dangerously good on a couple of levels. First, it is highly addictive. From the first time Marion made it for dinner guests years ago, it became a go to meal when we had people over—even people who had already had it, at their insistence [in the form of a polite request, of course].

It’s also dangerous because it’s, well, dangerous. No poisonous fish parts in it [am I alone in thinking that is about the dumbest culinary choice ever?], but it’s an artery-clogging party for your mouth. Marion dispenses with the heavy cream found in most American takes on carbonara [but interestingly, not used in the traditional carbonaras of central Italy]. But you start with a pound of bacon, okay? You cook things in bacon grease. And you add eggs and cheese. This is why we only have it once a year or so now. It’s also why, when we do, we enjoy every last tiny morsel of it. All right. You’ve been warned. Time to let Marion take over the kitchen.

The way this recipe entered our household has passed into the mists of time. I think that maybe it might have been something I found in a magazine, possibly, could be around 1980—that makes some sort of sense, although so do several other interpretations of what passes for my memory of this. It called itself Spaghetti Carbonara and it contained many of the elements that I still use to cook this dish. By the time I figured out that this dish is not even slightly a true carbonara—for one thing, it’s got vegetables in it—it was too late for us. We call it carbonara, just as we have dubbed every one of our daughters’ dates The Boy and call Schumann’s compositions ballet dancin’ music [Terry’s note—this term dates back to a comment by a little first grader during my teaching days, not any philistinian tendencies on our parts]. It’s our lingo, and we’re sticking to it.

Bacon takes the lead in Linguine Non Carbonara, but it isn’t the neighborhood bully. If you wish, you can use wonderful applewood-smoked bacon from organically grown pigs, each of whom has a real name, but one of the nice things about this recipe is its pragmatism: the most average grocery-store bacon still lets you create a super dish. The only real caveat I have is: use a good olive oil, decent zucchini, peppers, and shallots and a good Parmesan cheese that you grate directly into the dish at the last step.

Yes, there are veggies aplenty in this carbonara. You know—vegetables, salutary, nutritious, radiating their sunny health benefits throughout your being. Well, don’t let the jolly presence of vegetables fool you. Any lurking health elements they may possess are eradicated by the lavish use of the bacon, and the sautéing, and then the great lashings of egg and cheese. All you have left is extreme deliciousness.

Linguine Non Carbonara is best accompanied by a big California chardonnay. On Sunday, we had this with a Girard from the Russian River area, which stood up to the pasta very nicely indeed. Continue reading “Dangerously good: Linguine Non Carbonara” →

Lightening up, speeding up a New Orleans classic

A lightened version of a New Orleans classic, Red Beans & Rice. Recipe below.

Last week I talked about cold soup. This week I do a 180, with hearty, spicy red beans and rice. A couple of weeks ago, we had a cold, gray spell in Chicago that gave me a hankering for some. I started with two recipes—one way too simple, the other a little too busy sounding—and created my own. But you don’t have to wait for cold weather to make it—anyone from Louisiana will tell you that any day is a good day for red beans and rice.

A traditional dish throughout southern Louisiana—and particularly linked to New Orleans—red beans and rice was actually born out of two traditions. Many families couldn’t afford to buy meat for their meals every day, but a ham dinner was a Sunday tradition. And that meant there would be a ham bone left over for Monday.

Mondays were also the traditional day for doing laundry—this was back before automatic washing machines and two-income families. So as load after load of wash was done, either by hand or in old-fashioned wringer washers [my grandmother actually still used one of the later models when I was a kid and hung her wash out to dry in the backyard], it was easy to have a big pot of beans with that ham bone simmering on the stove for hours, with just an occasional stir as you passed through the kitchen. And that made red beans and rice the perfect traditional Monday night dinner all across southern Louisiana.

Besides being amazingly flavorful with all those Cajun or Creole seasonings, this dish was practical. Beans served with rice was a great source of protein when people couldn’t afford to eat a lot of meat. And a big pot of beans could feed a big family cheaply. It was reasonably low in fat too, depending on how much actual meat had survived the Sunday dinner.

The way this dish has evolved, though, it’s anything but low in fat. Some recipes still call for a ham bone—or more often, ham hocks [which epicurious.com describes as “the lower portion of a hog’s hind leg, made up of meat, fat, bone, gristle and connective tissue,” usually cured or smoked or both]. But now it also almost invariably includes some kind of smoked sausage—classically, andouille or else kielbasa or some other smoked sausage. Read “fat bomb.”

I’ve lightened up this New Orleans classic considerably, without sacrificing flavor or stick-to-your-ribs heartiness. First, I use a lighter sausage with less fat. It’s still not exactly Weight Watchers, though—if you check the nutrition chart, you’ll see even the light versions contain an impressive amount of fat. And for that reason, I use half the amount of sausage a similar recipe calls for and substitute chicken breast or turkey cutlets.

I’ve sped it up too, with the help of canned beans. It still takes a little over an hour to pull together, but most of that time is just letting it simmer to blend all the flavors together. In other words, maybe time to cycle through one load of laundry if you’re feeling in a traditional mood. Continue reading “Lightening up, speeding up a New Orleans classic” →

Two continents, one plate: Biryani chicken breasts

Indian biryani curry paste gets a little Tex-Mex help in firing up spicy Biryani Chicken Breasts with a side of Coconut Rice Pilaf. Recipes below.

THIS IS AN EXCITING TIME FOR FOOD. There are more options now than ever before, from global grazing to eating local. And palates are more adventurous than ever before, as the minds and mouths of diners open up to cuisines and flavors from just about everywhere. The success of the Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations is a perfect example of this growing culinary curiosity. Continue reading “Two continents, one plate: Biryani chicken breasts” →

Grilling and lessons learned: Grilled Hoisin Chicken Thighs

A mix of Asian seasonings and indirect grilling combine to create flavorful, tender Grilled Hoisin Chicken Thighs. Recipe below.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Last week I wrote my little anti-grilling manifesto, and here I am doing a grilling post this week. It’s not that I don’t like grilling or the wonderfully smokey taste of something done right on the grill—it’s that I don’t like not being in control, not feeling like I know what I’m doing. Continue reading “Grilling and lessons learned: Grilled Hoisin Chicken Thighs” →

Spanish sausage and well-traveled legumes

Paprika-rich Spanish chorizo teams up with globe-trotting beans in this Warm Butter Bean Salad with Chorizo and Tomatoes. Recipe below.

Anything that prompts me to call my Aunt Veta down in southern Mississippi is a good thing. She is my favorite and most colorful of all my aunts—and I have been blessed in that department. She and my Uncle James raised a family and then proceeded to raise two grandkids until Uncle James passed away several years ago. Then Aunt Veta finished the job on her own. She is stubbornly positive and optimistic, even when the going gets rough—and if she can’t find something good to say about you, you are a sorry individual indeed.

What prompted my call the other day was this dish. Specifically, the butter bean part of it. Based on a dish served as a starter at London Moorish/Spanish restaurant Moro [covered in the May issue of Food & Wine], it also features Spanish chorizo—but more about that later.

Butter beans? Lima beans? The one thing everyone agrees on concerning these beans is that they originated in South America. Explorers and slavers of the early 1500’s carried them to the farthest parts of the earth—Europe, Africa, the East Indies, India, the Philippines. Depending on who’s telling the story, they’ve been cultivated since either 4,000 B.C. or 6,000 B.C. There are two distinct varieties: The baby lima—an actual variety, not just a lima bean harvested early—and the larger, plumper Fordhook. According to most sources, the names lima and butter are interchangeable, with butter beans simply being the popular name for them in the southern United States. But other sources say that southerners insist that the lima bean and the butter bean are two different beans altogether.

It was time to call Aunt Veta. “They’re as different as black-eyed peas and English peas,” she proclaimed. “James and me, we never much cared for lima beans. So James would always plant speckled butter beans.” [When mottled with purple they’re called calico or speckled butter beans—great, more names.] But Uncle James would harvest the beans early, when the pods were light green, so the beans would be white. Still, when Aunt Veta cooked them, they would turn the cooking liquid to what she called a “blue liquor.”

Whatever the name/size/color, these full-flavored, slightly kidney-shaped beans contain high quality protein, phosphorus, potassium and iron. They’re also rich in the best sort of fiber, soluble fiber, which helps to eliminate cholesterol from the body.

Spanish Chorizo. Last week I wrote about Spain’s love of all things pork and mentioned this dense, paprika-powered sausage. Chorizo is made from coarsely chopped fatty pork and seasoned with mild Spanish paprika, salt and garlic. That’s pretty much it. Spicier versions will also include small dried hot chiles. In Portugal, they make a similar sausage called chouriço. Both are completely different from the ground pork Mexican chorizo.

As an indication of how much paprika is used in making chorizo, when you sauté the fully cooked sausage, the rendered fat is deep red-orange and will color anything else you cook with it. I like cooking up some chorizo and maybe an onion and some red bell pepper, then scrambling some eggs with it—they take on a nice, orangish tinge. They are also quite delicious.

So is this dish. I adapted the recipe to use as a side instead of a starter. Either way you use it, it’s as impressive as it is easy to make. Continue reading “Spanish sausage and well-traveled legumes” →

Iberia meets Italia—for dinner

Pork Chops with Paprika and Fennel Seeds combine favorite flavors of Spain and Italy. Recipe below.

My friend Stan went to Spain last year. After he got back, the first thing I asked him about was the food, of course. He said that most restaurants offered pork, pork and more pork. Stan is Jewish, so he would notice this sort of thing.

To be fair, he did find other things to eat in Spain [and as he admitted to me later, did finally succumb to the delights of pig meat in his travels]. But Spanish cuisine does embrace meat in general and pork in particular, in all its forms, both fresh and cured. The small, dense Spanish chorizo sausages, a completely different, um, animal from the Mexican variety, are wonderfully intense. I know I’ll feature them in at least one upcoming post.

And to flavor all this meaty goodness? Paprika, of course. Paprika [or pimentón, as it’s known in Spain] is one of the essential ingredients of Spanish cuisine. It is made from ground aromatic sweet red peppers and ranges in flavor from mild to hot and in color from bright orange-red to blood red. Originally from the Americas, most commercial paprika now comes from Spain, South America, California and Hungary.

The Italians are no slouches in the consumption of pork either. And for them, one spice of choice for combining with it is fennel seeds. If you doubt this for a moment, just wait ’til the fennel seeds hit the hot skillet—you will smell the essence of Italian pork sausage. Fennel seeds have been compared to anise, but while they do have a big flavor, it’s not as pronounced in its licorice flavor as anise.

In this recipe, paprika and fennel come together to deliver a nice, subtle complexity in a quick, easy-to-make main course. Continue reading “Iberia meets Italia—for dinner” →

In a bind[er]: Seared Tuna Pepper Steaks

Sesame oil, soy sauce and sherry give a subtle Asian taste to Seared Tuna Pepper Steaks. Recipe below.

The vent above our stove in the new kitchen has us cooking more seafood these days. And that has me looking for more recipes and ideas. Last week, I saw beautiful tuna steaks at the store. So I nabbed a couple with no real game plan, knowing I’d figure out something to do with them once I got them home. We have tons of cookbooks—well, actually more like pounds, but anyway lots—but I turned first to the binders.

The binders started out as a binder, one of those blue cloth-covered ones with maybe one-inch rings. And for a long time, that was plenty. Occasionally, we would clip a recipe from the newspaper or photocopy something from a library cookbook, and into the binder it went.

Then came epicurious.com. Does everyone go as nuts as I did when first stumbling on this site? From my first visit, I was hooked. There were recipes, thousands of them. There was the advanced search feature that let you specify cuisine, course, key ingredients, cooking technique… There were even dictionaries—one for food and one for wine, for crying out loud.

I visited every day, sometimes several times a day, checking out the Recipe of the Day [an evil feature designed to keep you coming back for more] or just doing random searches based on any ingredient or food substance that popped into my fevered brain. And like crack or eBay or any other addiction, it interfered with my work. Well, maybe a little. Not that it mattered—my creative director at the time was a fellow foodie, so as long as I shared my findings with him, all was good.

Perhaps most telling, though, I printed out vast quantities of recipes. Scads of them. Reams of them. The single blue binder was replaced by two, these with three-inch rings and dividers with tabs. This seemed like an ambitious step at first, even foolish. But soon these were swollen and ready to call for reinforcements.

And then the obsession stopped, as quickly as it had begun. Oh, I still love epicurious.com—I have a permanent link to it in my blogroll. But now I use it responsibly. I log on, find the recipe [or more often, a basic technique based on a few recipes], then get out.

And the binders are still around. They continue to grow, but at a much slower pace now. So when I came home with the tuna steaks last week [remember how this rant started?], I flipped through the seafood section of one of them and adapted this recipe from one I found there. It originally appeared in Bon Appetit, sent into the Too Busy to Cook column, one of my favorite sections of the magazine. Because as much as we love to cook, we’re all often too busy, aren’t we? Continue reading “In a bind[er]: Seared Tuna Pepper Steaks” →

Direct from the source: Brazilian Rice and Beans

Brazilian Rice and Beans, a daily staple on dinner tables throughout the country, is cooked up by Brazilian guest blogger Patricia. Recipe below.

As comedian Steven Wright says, “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.” And the Internet keeps making it smaller every day. It’s shrunk my world in many ways—and made it a more interesting place at the same time. For example, I’m in touch more now than I have been in ages with a high school friend, Helmut, even though he moved back to Germany several years ago. I know a blues-playing barrister in Bakewell, England. Through Marion’s work for a Francophile website, we’ve made numerous friends [including our Brooklyn buddy Ronnie and San Francisco-based mystery writer Cara Black] and have stayed in the fabulous Paris apartment of the site’s founder.

And now I’ve met Brazilian food blogger Patricia Scarpin. Well, met her online anyway—the Internet has also redefined meeting and knowing people. Patricia produces two versions of her blog Technicolor Kitchen—one in English and one in Portuguese.

She responded to my last week’s post on chili and mentioned a popular basic Brazilian rice and beans dish. After a couple of email exchanges, it sounded like a great dish to post here—and a chance to take Blue Kitchen global. Patricia not only supplied the recipe, she sent me photos too! So I’ll turn the kitchen over to Patricia now, then come back at the end and tell you what little modifications I made when I tried it in the test kitchen—well, in the kitchen. Continue reading “Direct from the source: Brazilian Rice and Beans” →