Beet Greens Soup: 100 Days of Recipes, Day 38

It's been a good while since I've done weekend shopping and cooked from that all week - it seems that in the past couple of years, it's been a day to day pondering, with the exception of making a large batch of something that lasts 2-3 days. "The Pleasures of Cooking for One", my current cookbook muse, is motivating me to create meals that feed into other meals, and is reminding me to think differently about all parts of the foods I'm using.  Today's "recipe" will take you through what I did yesterday, and while I am not writing this out in recipe form, if you read it all, the recipe is in there!

I'm a huge fan of leftovers and throwing things together with 'scraps', and reading this book in combination with recently discovering the Instagram feed called 'cookscraps' is giving me all kinds of great ideas!

All the bits and ends from weekend cooking and prep - soon to be a yummy stock!

Over the weekend, I started by preparing some salads for the week, and I tossed all the stems, peelings, ends and little bits left over into a stock pot with some water and a few herbs, and simmered a lovely veggie stock throughout an evening. I took that to the studio yesterday, with the rest of my beets, kale, garlic scapes, some onions, sweet potatoes, a random few mushrooms and carrot.

Note: Beet leaves are also great added to other greens in saute,
or even thinly sliced and added to other soups

I chopped up the beet stems and kale bones and softened them in a bit of the stock with a small spoon of coconut oil, adding more stock as I kept chopping stems and the liquid reduced. I also chopped up the onion, bulbs and greens of the garlic scapes and added that. And I finely chopped up about 2" of ginger and added that with about 1 tsp each of cumin, cayenne, smoked paprika, and turmeric. While that simmered away, I cut down the beet greens and kale, then added that to the pot with the rest of the stock (I had 2 quarts total), put a lid on it, reduced the heat to a high simmer, and let it do its thing until the greens and stems were completely tender. While that was happening, I peeled and cut 2 small sweet potatoes into cubes, peeled the beets, cutting the larger ones into smaller pieces, and cut the mushrooms into quarters. Those were tossed with a slight drizzle of olive oil and seasoned with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika, and roasted in a 400 degree oven until tender, but not overly soft. 

Green soup: pre-blend. I had gallery activity during the blending, so didn't photograph that part.

I forgot my immersion blender at home, but we have a small blender at the studio, so I did a few batches of the soup in the blender to get it all smoothed out (*tip: when pureeing hot soup in a blender, don't fill it all the way up, and drape a kitchen towel over the top before you go - the heat will expand out when you do, and if you're not holding on and/or if your lid isn't tight, it will pop off and shower you with hot soup. I did not find this out the hard way, I witnessed it years ago in a kitchen and never forgot!)

The pureed soup was returned to the stock pot, but it was thinner than I had hoped. We didn't have much for thickening, but luckily I had been busy enough that I never got around to my own breakfast, so I harvested some uncooked oats and walnuts, tossed them in the blender with a cup of the puree, and created a nice thickener to add back to the pot, along with the roasted veggies.

What resulted was a lovely, thick, maybe not velvety but smooth enough, green soup with a delightful depth of flavor.

Sexy, velvety soup with roasted vegetables over soft vegetable polenta.

As I was cooking at the studio, I was cooking for more than one, and we wanted to stretch the soup a bit more (and add a starch for those who wanted it). I hadn't planned for that, so another quick tour of the studio kitchen cupboards gave us our solution: a bag of grits and a can of vegan vegetable soup. I brought the soup, plus two cans of water to a simmer in a small pot. Meanwhile, we picked a casserole pan out of the backstock inventory (a beautiful piece by my studio mate Sarah Wells Rolland - we were all so hungry by the time this was done, it wasn't until later that I realized we never took a picture of that!). It got a quick 'greasing' with coconut oil, then 2 cups of grits, salt and pepper and mixed that together. The simmered soup/sauce was poured on top, mixed well, and the casserole was placed in the cold oven. We set that to 350, and about 35 minutes later, the grit/polenta was stirred up, then baked another 10-15 minutes. 

The result: a nicely seasoned soft polenta under the velvety, green soup. SO. GOOD. Note to self: I wish I had brought a lemon with me - it would have added even a touch more brightness, but I'm certainly not sad about it being left out!


PS - I ended up with yet MORE scraps that went into a bag. When the bag is full of other bits and ends, I'll start another round of stock. And so it goes on...

Roasted Chicken Thighs. 100 Days of Recipes: Day 36

Roasted Chicken Thighs

current reading

I'm not really intending to just cook my way through "The Pleasures of Cooking for One" from start to finish, but as it happens, I picked up some lovely chicken thighs at the Tailgate Market, and her very first recipe is for a Broiled or Roasted Chicken that just hit the spot. Actually, it's the first formal recipe, as the introductory writing in the first chapter is a recipe of sorts on general kitchen preparation. I was pleased to read a lot of what I already have and do, and that we share the belief that cooking is "an ongoing process, one dish leading to another," (Pleasures of Cooking for One, p.4) and she has a lot of lovely, handmade pottery throughout her images, which makes Judith Jones my kitchen BFF. I also got a giggle out of this section:

fresh garlic scapes and young onions were my substitutions 

It wasn't in the list of essential equipment, but I thought a
mezzaluna would have been great to mince up these aromatics.
Then again, I do love my kitchen knives of all sorts!

"... If you don't happen to have an ingredient that I suggest, try a likely substitute - a shallot for a small onion, some fennel instead of celery, a different root vegetable to replace the ubiquitous carrot, dried mushrooms for fresh. Above all, don't throw away those few tablespoons of cooked spinach, or the three or four extra spears of asparagus you couldn't quite finish, and particularly the little bit of precious juice left in the pan - all these can be used in myriad ways and offer the single home cook some creative challenges." (Pleasures of Cooking for One, p5)

It tickles me because so often when I'm sharing recipes, I'm usually sharing lists of optional replacements, and a friend recently noted the extreme number of "small jars" in my fridge - all with bits of this and that leftover from some previous meal.

I digress - so the first recipe I come to in the book is for Broiled Chicken, and in what I think is the very spirit intended, I immediately see how I can change it up to suit my ingredients. Here's what I did:

Roast Chicken

4 Bone-in, Skin-on Chicken Thighs

for the Herbal Undercoating:
1 Garlic Scape bulb, peeled and cleaned
Salt
1 good size, or two small spring onion bulbs, with about 3-4 inches of the greens, too
2 strips of lemon peel
handful of parsley leaves
fresh ground pepper
2 TBSP olive oil

Accompanying Veg:
1 small Sweet potato, cut into wedges
3-4 med/large mushrooms, cleaned and cut in half or quarters
3-4 baby turnips, cleaned and trimmed and cut in half
1 small carrot, in thick slices across the round
salt and pepper

I prepped and cooked this dish in one of my ceramic pie plates, so I did not pre-heat the oven, but put it in cold and then set it to 375. More on that later, but if you're not cooking in handmade ceramic, you can pre-heat your oven to 375 and use a roasting pan.

Rinse and pat dry the thighs, and place them skin-side up in the pie plate. 

Prep the Undercoating*:
Finely chop the garlic scape, onion bulb, and green onion with a good sprinkle of salt to a coarse paste texture. Chop up the lemon peel and parsley, and add it to the other and chop/mince it all together with the olive oil. Add a generous amount of fresh ground pepper. Divide out the mixture in four parts, and after creating an opening and separation of the skin on the thigh, push 1/4 of the undercoating mix under the skin of each thigh, pressing on the top of the skin to help spread it evenly. Salt and pepper the skin side, then flip them over and salt and pepper the other side (leave skin side down). 

You may most certainly bake/roast in handmade ceramic -
Just heat the dish with the oven. There are very few recipes that
truly require a 'pre-heated' oven. The flavors develop beautifully.
It's kind of like chicken pot pie - the extreme 'gluten-free' version!

When you cut your accompanying veg, place them all in a bowl, and give a very slight drizzle of olive oil over them, tossing them to get them all coated. Salt and pepper them, and then add them to the pie plate with the chicken.

Place the pie plate in a cold oven, then set it to 375 degrees. In a pre-heated oven, you might roast the chicken 20-25 minutes, then flip them skin side up and roast for another 10 minutes. Starting in a cold oven, you will have to adjust that a bit, maybe just adding another 5-10 minutes for the warm up. I flipped the chicken after about 35 minutes, and the skin was nicely done, but I worried about over cooking, so decided to re-crisp the skin under the broiler. That was a great idea, but a slight distraction caused me to check it about 3-4 minutes later than intended. Everything was still DELICIOUS, if not a bit charred here and there. Extra flavor.

Roasted in handmade, served on handmade, and delicious!

*I'm sharing my take on this wonderful recipe, and I don't know how available or hard to find this book is, but I highly recommend seeking it out if you don't have it, because her own style of describing a process, along with some other very cook tips and tricks that I didn't include, are in the book. Get the book.

Another good thing to come out of prepping this meal, and as encouraged in the book, I had a good bit of vegetable bits and ends, and I brewed up a nice pot of veggie stock that will become a soup later this week. Stay tuned!

Smoothie du Jour. 100 Days of Recipes: Day 7

Smoothie du Jour

I love packing smoothies to take to the studio. I also love cooking at the studio, but sometimes you just don't want to stop work long enough for the fun of prep and cooking. I have learned, however, that it's worse yet to keep working until the 'hangry' stage, so I try to have something on hand when that scenario approaches.

My smoothies vary, depending on what's in the fridge/freezer, but today's smoothie features something I just learned: you can eat banana peels!!! I feel like I should have known this - I know often times the best nutrients can be found in the skin/peels of foods, and I know bananas are jam packed with nutrients! Till now, I considered bananas only for wrapping other foods in them to cook, tossing on a compost heap, or putting them in a pit fire for potassium flashes - I never thought of edible uses. My recent focus on 'what to do with the scraps' has made me more attentive to all the scraps I create, and a quick google later, I learned I can, indeed, eat the peels. Even better, I learned that over-ripe peels are more tender and sweeter, and good for smoothies. 

Frozen spinach, frozen blueberries, frozen sliced bananas (with peels!),
cacao nibs, chia seeds. I added some Forager Project's Cashew Yogurt
drink and a bit of coconut milk to thin it all out.

 Lucky for me, I'm often too lazy to peel my bananas before freezing them, and usually just wait until they're past the ripeness that I care to eat, and toss them whole in the freezer. No more frozen fingers trying to get the peels off before using them!!

The finished batch - a bit for now, and more for the studio.

The smoothie tastes as good as it ever does, and I've added fiber and other nutrients to the mix. And the only part now that goes to compost are the very ends and stems. If I ever get a Vitamix, there will be much banana peel cooking in the kitchen!

Scraps Soup. 100 Days of Recipes: Day 6

Finishing up what was started last night, and a lovely, therapeutic morning puttering in the kitchen. Here's what became of my pot full of scraps:

I think I'll just call it "Scraps Soup", as I doubt it will ever be the same twice, and I think that may be what I like most about it! Because this is intended to be 100 days of recipes, here it is, more or less:

Scraps Soup

In my large stock pot, I tossed leftover scraps of cauliflower stalks, bits of sweet potatoes, onions, fennel bulb,and a few cloves of garlic. I covered it in some open containers of vegetable and chicken stock from the fridge, threw in a handful of crushed thyme leaves (dried out from last year's herb garden), a generous toss of salt, and several grinds of pepper.

That simmered, covered, on a med/low heat for several hours. That's probably not necessary, but I fell asleep watching a movie. Luckily there was enough liquid, and the heat was low enough, that it didn't dry up and burn off. I turned it off and left it to finish this morning, when I put it back on that heat to warm it while I scoured the kitchen for any more scraps. I found two little ends of fresh-but-drying-out turmeric and ginger, so they were grated into the pot along with a bit more salt after tasting. In the fridge, I found the leftovers of a small tin of chopped up mushrooms and truffles*- in they went. I picked up some ramps at my favorite tailgate market yesterday, and added the tender leaves to the pot as well.

As it heated up under cover again, I saute-ed the ramp bottoms with some trumpet mushrooms, also collected at the tailgate, in a bit of olive oil.

Once the goodness in the stock pot was heated again, I went at it with the immersion blender, melding all the good flavors into a velvety, thick soup. 

The result - a soul-warming soup base to hold the seasonal goodness of the ramp/mushroom saute. And plenty in jars, ready to nourish throughout the week!


*I love shopping at Hopey & Company! It's on my daily route, great selection of organic produce, lots of local products, and then the occasional, random find that pops up. The little tin of chopped truffles and mushrooms in oil was one such find - I grabbed it on a whim to top some of the sweet potato toasts at the annual meeting. The finishing flavor on this soup is a nice blend of the ramps, melting into a soft truffle sweetness. 

Soup, Part 1. 100 Days of Recipes: Day 5

I started today's recipe late, so it will finish tomorrow -  here's part 1:

Other than 'Soup' there is no name for this creation as of yet, but by the slow-simmering aroma wafting from the kitchen, I think it will be a good one! The ingredients are mostly the scraps from cooking earlier in the week: cauliflower stalks, bits of sweet potato, fennel bulb, onion, and stock. That's my starting point, tune in tomorrow and see what it becomes!