Pho (Vietnamese-Style Beef Noodle Soup)

I've only had pho in a restaurant once, but it was a memorable experience. Our party was seated at a table that had a hole in the middle--a hole, it turns out, that was for a basin of hot, rich, beefy broth. We were given platters of soup ingredients--fragrant mint, cilantro and basil, thinly sliced raw beef, piles of bean sprouts and other veggies, wedges of lime. The mission? Construct your own pho by cooking (or not cooking) veggies and meat to your satisfaction, and creating your very own individualized soup.

That was at a Vietnamese restaurant perched on the edge of Boston's Chinatown in 1998 , and I've been longing for those particular flavors ever since.

Why then, why did it take me so long to turn my attention to Pho?

Readers, this recipe isn't online but because it's so delicious and so easy I'm going to replicate it here. Don't be intimidated by the long-ish list of ingredients--the pay-off is worth it!

6 oz rice stick noodles (vermicelli, I used some other rice noodle thing I had kicking around)

1/4 lb snow peas, cut diagonally into 1/4-inch wide strips

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 cup sliced shallots (three large)

3 (1/8 inch thick) slices fresh ginger, smashed

1 teaspoon minced Serrano chili (including seeds, I used a jalapeno)

3 1/2 cups beef stock or store-bought broth

1 3/4 cups water

1/2 lb thinly sliced rare roast beef, torn into pieces

6 oz fresh bean sprouts (mung) rinsed

1/4 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro

1/4 cup loosely packed fresh basil

1/4 cup loosely packed fresh mint

3 tablespoons Asian fish sauce

3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Salt

lime wedges

Cook noodles in boiling water for 4 minutes--add snow peas and cook for 1 minute longer. Drain and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking, and drain again. Divide noodles/snowpeas into 4 large soup bowls.

Dry noodle pan, add oil and turn on moderate heat. Add shallots, ginger and chile, and cook (stirring) until shallots are brown (7-8 mins.) Add stock and water, bring to a simmer and simmer for 10 mins.

Meanwhile, divide beef, sprouts and herbs among soup bowls.

Remove ginger from broth and stir in fish sauce, lime juice and salt to taste. Ladle broth into bowls and serve immediately with lime wedges.

This recipe is killer, and it would be a perfect week to make it, what with the INCESSANT RAIN. Of course it's the fresh herbs that make it so intoxicating--if you're one of those folks who can't stand fresh herbs, what's wrong with you? Go eat a Lean Cuisine, I guess.

What makes this a quick/easy version of pho is that you're using store-bought broth instead of slaving over your own (real beef broth ain't that quick/easy), and rare deli roast beef instead of carpaccio, which is thinly sliced raw beef. The Gourmet staff amp up the broth by simmering it with goodies--ginger, shallots and chile.

And--with summer (kind of) here, or at least spring, fresh herbs should be cheap and in abundance. We do container gardening on our deck and I'll confess I went a little bananas at the plant nursery on Mother's Day and got 4 kinds of mint, among other things. 4 kinds of mint! I bet you didn't know 4 kinds of mint existed--they do and more. Chocolate, orange, spearmint and what they were labeling Mojito Mint. Yeah baby! Watch this space for mojitos and more.

Melissa Atones by Writing a List

Hey folks, remember when I said my life was sort of kind of a little busy and kind of crazy? Nothing has changed! The bad news is, less time for blogging. The good news is, I'm still cooking.

That's right--these past few months I've been cooking one or two recipes a week out of Gourmet Today, and here they are.

Moscow Mule

Vodka, ginger beer and lime juice. What could go wrong? Nothing! The big revelation here was finding Goya Jamaican Style Ginger Beer, which is ten thousand times better than Cap't Eli's. I had a taste-test (of two) and declare this the winner.

Gumbo Z'Herbes

Friend with overflowing garden + craving soup = thinking this is a pretty good recipe to try. Tons-o-greens in this--we're talking turnip, cabbage, beet, mustard, spinach, parsley...all made much less healthy by a few ham hocks.

And hey, guess what? 1 pound Salt pork DOES NOT EQUAL two pounds of meaty ham hocks! A) I curse Stop n Shop for being so White and b) sadly, I ruined this soup because I was too lazy to drive to Market Basket and get the effing ham hocks.

That doesn't mean I didn't give it a shot. But salty--holy jesus.

Turkish-Style Lamb Burgers with Walnut Sauce

I have a friend, Burak. He's from Turkey, and he not only loves food in general, he loves food from his homeland. We are constantly talking about having a dinner party featuring Turkish food, or going to this or that restaurant that serves Turkish food, so it was with NO SMALL AMOUNT OF GUILT that I whipped up this recipe and didn't alert Burak (who lives two hours away in Portland) to come help us eat it.

I did tell him about it the next time I saw him, though, and carefully described the ingredients of the burgers, and the walnut sauce (which, btw, is just walnuts ground w/ a little water, lemon juice and spices).

When I mentioned cayenne, though, Burak brought me up short.

"That is not Turkish."

"It was just a little bit! Just, like, a tiny little pinch."

"No. There really is no cayenne in Turkish food."

"So putting cayenne in something makes it not Turkish?"

"That's right."

So there you go. That must be why this recipe is called Turkish-STYLE. And the bonus was I didn't have to feel guilty any more.

Lamb Chili with Masa Harina Dumplings

Hey, it's turning cold and what better to take the chill off than a little spicy chili? This is a southwestern-style lamb chili and it's not for the faint of heart what with all the New Mexico chiles and canned chipotle in adobo. Don't make this one for your granny.

How did I screw this one up? By not being able to find masa harina (not even in Market Basket) and just guessing that coarse cornmeal might be pretty much the same thing. Guess what--it's not. So the dumpling batter didn't hold together at all, and really what it ended up being was a flavorful thickener to this already pretty thick chili.

But--delicious! Plain Greek-style yogurt was awesome on top. Oh I forgot the other pain-in-the-ass moment, which was that I could only find lamb shoulder chops (bone-in). Ugh, so tedious to trim those. I hear that meat markets are coming back into style--I have to go find a few that I like because this supermarket stuff is for the birds.

Chockfull Blondies

THESE ARE THE BEST EFFING BAR COOKIES I HAVE EVER EATEN, EVER.

That's all you need to know, really. Go make them.

Chocolate Souffle Cake with Orange Caramel Sauce

Happy 17th birthday to O'Malley! As I do every year, I asked my son what he wanted for a cake. And as is his way, he was far more concerned with the tastes of his guests than what he desired for himself. It went like this:

"Zack doesn't like chocolate."

"Well, it's not Zack's birthday. It's your birthday. What do you want?"

"Aedan LOVES chocolate."

"And I'm guessing Brittany does too. What about Ben?"

"He'll eat anything."

Since O'Malley also likes chocolate, then we went through the chocolate cake options in Gourmet Today--Devil's Food Cake with Marshmallow Frosting, Double Chocolate Layer Cake, Chocolate Sour Cream Layer Cake, and so on. And O'Malley (as is his way) wanted the one that sounded the most sophisticated, which was this one.

This recipe involves making caramel (which I've done a gazillion times now, thanks to The Gourmet Cookbook)--but really the surprise in this recipe is that the orange caramel sauce is not really caramely in the way that you're thinking (like a kind of gooey ice cream topping). It's actually caramel-flavored orange juice, which you pour over the cake.

Not what I was expecting, but very good nevertheless. The kids loved it--ate it up with ice cream while they watched Harold and Maude. Isn't that a cool birthday?

Chai-Poached Apricots and Plums

It's nice to remember every once in a while that dessert doesn't have to involve flour and chocolate. This is a nice poached fruit recipe that calls for chai in the poaching liquid--this is great with vanilla ice cream or just on its own.

And that's my repentant wrap-up! Big thanks to the photographers of Epicurious-all the photos you see here are pulled from that site. I guess it's kind of a symbiotic relationship.

Happy fall, people! Go apple-picking.

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Gluten-free recipes in this post: Chai-Poached Apricots and Plums, Gumbo Z'Herbes, Moscow Mule

Low-carb recipe in this post: Gumbo Z'Herbes

Low-fat recipes in this post: Chai-Poached Apricots and Plums, Gumbo Z'Herbes, Moscow Mule

Recipe WIN in this post: Chockfull Blondies

9 Winter Recipes

The quandary of cook-through food blogging: what is more important, cooking the recipes, or blogging about them? When I have to choose one or the other due to time constraints, cooking always wins. Not the best scenario for you, dear reader, but luckily I don't have any scruples about combining many dishes into one post.

So here for your reading pleasure is a catch-up post on what's been happening in the Palladino kitchen over the last few months.

Herbed Lima Bean Hummus

When I was a kid, if you asked me if I hated any foods I would have promptly said "hot dogs and lima beans". But now I see that it's all in the preparation (although I'm sorry to say the only thing you can do to improve hot dogs is drown out their taste with the spiciest chili imaginable).

After you've cooked limas with an onion and some garlic, you whiz them up in a food processor with herbs, spices, lemon juice and olive oil. If you're squeamish about spending the bucks for all those fresh herbs in the market (because this calls for fresh cilantro, parsley, dill AND mint) wait for summer when they're abundant and free if you know the right gardeners.

This recipe is a win. I could eat it every day.

Ham and Black-Eyed Pea Soup with Collard Greens

Of the many bean-based soups in the book, this one has got to be the fastest. A few cans of black-eyed peas, a slab of ham, diced, a little chicken broth and some collards and hey presto--you've got soup. Very satisfying and if you sweat your onions instead of sauteing them you've got a good spring dieting soup too. Please note that's not my photo--thanks to iamglutenfree.blogspot.com for the swipe (at least I think that's what the script says).

Chicory Salad with Orange and Red Onion

I'm always a little nervous about using bitter greens in salad but I guess they have their place in the universe. One place they occupy nicely is as a counterpoint to a rich entree, like the Shrimp in Coconut Milk, seen here all snuggled up on the same plate.

This salad was pretty good though it called for vast and amazing amounts of chicory to be trimmed away (the dark green outer leaves--good for soups, says the book). If your chicory is like my chicory you can't wash it enough--it must be grown primarily in sand so take heed and wash wash wash. The best way to do it I think is to put the leaves in a big pot or bowl of cold water and let the sand sink to the bottom.

Would I make this salad again? Maybe!

Red Lentil and Tofu Dal

Again, not my photo, and not fully accurate--imagine cubes of creamy white tofu mixed in. Thanks to Recipes for a Postmodern Planet for the swipe.

This recipe was beyond fantastic because of the spices. If you like Indian food in general, you'll swoon over this. It calls for Garam Masala which you can make but also now (thanks to McCormick's ever-adventuresome spice offerings) buy pre-mixed in the supermarket. Vegetarians, this one's for you.

Cauliflower with Ginger and Mustard Seeds

Cauliflower is not the first vegetable I turn to in the produce section when I'm grabbing stuff for dinner. It's not even the second one, and actually not the third one. In fact it might be somewhere down the list with broccoli rabe. Why? It's a perfectly innocuous vegetable but it seems sort of boring and also it's white which makes it seem somehow less healthy than green and orange things which of course is nonsense.

If you too feel uninspired by cauliflower look no further than this dish to create a little excitement with flavors that really pop and an ingredient that actually literally pops--mustard seeds, when heated in a skillet, will pop right out of the pan. So be careful. And enjoy this one--it's a nice way to mix up your weekday veggie repertoire.

Swiss Chard and Chickpeas

Trying to eat less meat? This is a quick week-day supper that will give you veggies, protein and fiber all in one fell swoop and it's also super fast and great for lunch the next day. Sometimes that's all you really need so if this is one of those times, go for it.

Sweet Potato Pie with Bourbon Cream

Aw, just when you thought I was getting all healthy on you with all these veggies and beans--no way, brothers and sisters. My dedication to butterfat remains as constant as ever. I am also pretty close to finishing the Pie chapter so I took the opportunity at our last book group (Serena by Ron Rash in case you're wondering) to make this pie.

What's different about this pie? Frankly I was amazed at how many of my fellow book groupies had never had sweet potato pie so that's different--might be a new experience for your diners. Two, the sweets potatoes are roasted, not boiled. Pretty subtle. Other than that it's just a good old sweet potato pie made with bourbon, and topped with heavy cream flavored with more bourbon. Can you really go wrong here? I think not.

Lemon Pound Cake

With this cake done, I can now count the remaining cake recipes on one hand. Five left, people!!

I made this for my writer's group and it was pretty easy to put together (if you don't mind zesting a gazillion lemons)--my only problem with it was that it just wouldn't finish baking in the middle. See that crack up there? I baked this pound cake for well over an hour and that one spot just wouldn't bake. Weird and vexing but it was still delicious (if slightly, er, moist in that center part). The book suggests serving with strawberries and I did.

Hmm, maybe I'll make that Passover Sponge Cake for my writer's group tonight.....

Coeurs a la Creme with Blackberries

This is one of the recipes I thought I would never get around to making. For one thing it calls for a special mold and for another it seems fantastically complicated. But, somewhere around Valentine's Day I found myself having a dinner party and since we inherited some heart-shaped molds from our neighbor Marjorie

it seemed like the obvious dessert choice.

Make no mistake--this dessert is kind of a pain. Anything that asks you to force a solid through a fine sieve is going to be irritating. Ditto for lining the little molds--individually--with damp cheesecloth. But what a pay-off! A sweet little dessert that will melt the hearts of your friends and loved ones, and the portion size is just right for a tasty but not too filling treat. Anybody local who wants to try this I'm happy to lend you these molds.

So that's the wrap-up, folks! Thanks for being patient, and I'll see you back here soon.

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Gluten-Free recipes in this post: Herbed Lima Bean Hummus, Ham and Black-Eyed Pea Soup with Collard Greens, Chicory Salad with Orange and Red Onion, Red Lentil and Tofu Dal, Swiss Chard and Chickpeas, Cauliflower with Ginger and Mustard Seeds, Coeurs a la Creme with Blackberries

Low-Carb recipes in this post: Chicory Salad with Orange and Red Onion, Red Lentil and Tofu Dal, Cauliflower with Ginger and Mustard Seeds, Swiss Chard and Chickpeas

Low-Fat recipes in this post: Swiss Chard and Chickpeas, Red Lentil and Tofu Dal, Cauliflower with Ginger and Mustard Seeds

Paleolithic recipes in this post: Cauliflower with Ginger and Mustard Seeds

Recipe WINs in this post: Herbed Lima Bean Hummus, Red Lentil and Tofu Dal

Black Bean Soup with Rum

Oh black bean soup! Is there anything like you in the dead of winter? I think not.

I'm going to write all about this soup but first I was just reflecting on how probably a vegetarian would look at this and think--oh! Soup for me! But sadly no, the recipe calls for ham hocks (which is not to say it couldn't be made WITHOUT ham hocks, of course it can. But for the cook-through blogger one must follow the recipe, the first time at least!)

And this reflection had me remembering how in my old job there were three vegetarians I had to sometimes consider in meal planning, and two sort-of-partial vegetarians. I made soup from The Gourmet Cookbook so often (and was so vexed by how a soup that one might THINK would be vegetarian actually wasn't) that I actually went through the soup chapter and put a "V" next to the soups that qualified. As vegetarian.

So here I am, looking at the page that has the Black Bean Soup with Rum recipe, and the other three recipes also involve beans, and NONE of them is vegetarian. Somehow that is weird.

Anyway, vegetarians don't forget that Gourmet Today has an ENTIRE chapter dedicated to vegetarian entrees, plus other vegetarian things scattered throughout the book (with a handy index to find them). You should buy that book if you haven't already.

So, Black Bean Soup with Rum! I did the quick-soak with my dried black beans, then sauteed onions, celery, parsley and thyme sprigs with a bay leaf for a while...then added salt pork (they were out of ham hocks--guess everybody had the same idea I did) and beans and stock and water and cooked the dickens out of it for three hours.

Then I took the salt pork out (also the bay and thyme sprigs), added 1/3 cup dark rum (hello Sailor Jerry's) and some lemon juice and used my nifty immersion blender to blendify it. Then I put it through a fine-mesh sieve to get the non-blendified stuff out. By the way, this is in place of using a food mill, which, as you may have read elsewhere on this blog, I hate and will not use.

Then! Dish it up and garnish with a lemon slice, chopped hard-boiled egg, and minced parsley! Ta-da!

I would like to nominate the lemon slice garnish for this soup as Stupidest Garnish Ever. You can't eat it, and when you fish it out it is pretty much impossible to squeeze for juice (and if you tried you would get soup all over your fingers). Basically it's a visual. If I had a category for Stupid Garnishes I would put this one in it, but I only have one for Stupid Recipes (of which happily there are very few!). And this one is NOT a stupid recipe--it's good! Try it! It will make you warmer!

Miso Soup

It's a blustery, raw June (?!) day...the perfect setting for a post about soup!

Miso Soup, to be precise. This is one of the recipes in the soup chapter that seems tremendously appealing because it has only five ingredients. And this might lead you to think that it's easy to make, but actually, you'd be wrong!

Oh come on, I hear you cry. What's so difficult about miso soup?

Well, two things. One is that you are not going to find wakame, white miso, bonito flakes, and konbu in your supermarket, unless you live in Porter Square. So it requires a special trip to The Store That (Hopefully) Sells Those Things.

The other is the ingredient dashi (recipe follows). Embedded recipes can add a lot of time to your kitchen flow! OK, this one only adds 10 minutes. But I DO find myself avoiding recipes with embedded recipes, just fyi (Gourmet editorial staff).

So we'll start with the dashi. which calls for konbu (that's a type of seaweed), and dried bonito flakes (that's a type of fish). An ounce of konbu. Hmm, how much is that?



More than I thought!

Add that to six cups of water, bring to a boil and then take the konbu out, which the recipe helpfully notes you can reserve for another use, if desired. What, I don't know. I'm sure Martha Stewart would have many, many suggestions about this. Placemats? Picture frames? If you had enough of it, perhaps you could fashion a shift out of konbu. Project Runway, I would like to see this.

Then you add a cup of tightly packed bonito flakes...





...and sprinkle them on the konbu water and let them sit for three minutes.



Then you filter the bonito flakes out. The recipe says you can use cheesecloth or a coffee filter--I say, how about a fine mesh sieve? Worked just great for me. And, you can reserve the bonito flakes for another use too!

A word about bonito flakes--you might be wondering what they taste like. If you go for the salty/meaty spectrum of foods, you'll be hard pressed not to just sort of snack on these like potato chips, though they're maddeningly non-substantial. It's sort of a salty-fishy flavor with a little bit of a metallic aftertaste. Mmmmm. What you're supposed to do w/ soggy, post-dashi bonito flakes, I don't know either! I think the people who originally came up with these recipes must have been alive during the Depression. I suppose your cat might like them, or maybe you can wad them up and throw them at people you don't like.

Well, now you have dashi. On with the show!

Take your second type of seaweed, wakame, and soak it in warm water. My wakame was kind of long so I cut it up.



Then combine 1/4 cup of white miso with a little dashi. I have to confess here that I didn't use white miso, because I had some perfectly nice red miso hanging out in my fridge. What's the difference? Red miso has a heartier flavor, if I may be so bold as to use that term with miso.





Heat the remaining dashi in a pot, and then add soft, cubed tofu. Here's my tofu, it its pre-cubed state:



If you're used to firm or extra-firm tofu, the texture of soft tofu might be slightly disconcerting. But one of the reasons I love soft tofu is that you can use it in sweet things (smoothies, pies, etc) and people will never, ever know. If you are the sort of person who giggles at the thought of pulling one over on people, you should explore soft tofu.

Here's my soup with tofu and wakame...



Basically, you're just warming up the tofu and wakame. No need to cook them.

Here's the soup, finished off with the miso and sliced scallion greens:



If I were being snarky, I'd say that miso soup turns out to be less than the sum of its parts, but I'll rephrase that and say miso has a subtle flavor that is very soothing and actually would be perfect for breakfast, which is how they eat it in Japan. I ate mine for dinner, and it seemed very authentic, since it tasted like every other miso soup I've had in my life. Gosh, I am being snarky today--it must be the raw weather. I shall atone by making myself some miso soup for breakfast.

Oh, and please notice that I'm also atoning for photo FAIL these last couple of posts by an abundance of photos here! See, I can document a whole recipe from start to finish. Bet you didn't think I could.

Jellied Borscht

See, this is the problem when you have a backlog of recipes. What to write about when you can finally snatch a quiet moment to compose a post? Tripe? The triumph of grilled margarita pizza? The promised post on sauterne-soaked cake?

If I followed my methodical approach, I think I'd be writing about blue cheese-stuffed hamburgers, but I find myself wanting to tell you all about jellied borscht instead.

Yes. Jellied Borscht.

One of the things that absolutely delights me about The Gourmet Cookbook is when I make something beyond my realm of experience that turns out to be amazingly good. Of course, you have to enjoy the key components here, namely: beets, radishes and gelatin, but if you're down with those things you'll love jellied borscht.

It's not on epicurious, so here we go. It's so simple I can even recite it from memory.

You'll need:
a jar of borscht
fresh lemon juice
unflavored gelatin
radishes
sour cream
fresh dill

Strain the solids from the jar of borscht, and save those for something else. Put the liquid in a bowl and add 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice. Sprinkle 1 1/2 envelopes of unflavored gelatin on top and let it soak in, then put it in a pot on the stove, bring to a boil and let simmer for five minutes.

Pour into a pyrex dish and put in the fridge.

When it's set (it'll take at least 2 hrs), chop it up and put it in a bowl. Put some diced radishes on top, a dollop of sour cream, and a sprinkle of fresh, minced dill.

Here's what mine looked like. Forgive the tupperware; I was taking it to work.



Should you be wondering, borscht jello tastes like a deep, complex cherry jello. Adding radishes, sour cream and dill rounds out the flavor. I used daikon radish--that's why they're completely white.

I have to confess part of my pleasure in making this dish was chortling over imagining O'Malley coming home from school and digging into the jellied borscht (which didn't happen, alas). I DID get him to take a bite of the whole thing, ensemble, only to discover that apparently he hates both beets and radishes, and was very sad that I had put that stuff in his mouth. Oh, the face!

And it turns out that some people hate gelatinous stuff. I was going on and on about this dish to my friend Elizabeth, and all she could do was shudder in horror.

But Don and I loved it, and one of my cooking clients was so keen on the idea when I described it that she wants me to make it for a dinner party next Thursday.

As the weather gets warmer (and for some of you it's damn hot already) keep this one in your toolbox.

Italian Chicken Soup with Egg Strands and Parmesan

I must confess I had high hopes embarking upon this soup recipe, and here's why:

When I was head chef at As You Like It, I made Stracciatella (that's Italian Chicken Soup with Egg Strands and Parmesan) one fine day, using a recipe from Joy of Cooking. Now, don't get huffy--this was years ago and before our beloved Gourmet Cookbook was in print.

We used to have a regular customer, an artist from Rocky Neck. He was clearly a man who enjoyed his food, and he especially loved my soups, and he just FLIPPED over this one. Said it was just like when he was a kid--the "rags" of egg especially. It's not that hard to make, but you don't really see it around that much on menus.

This recipe, which is not online, is one of the super fast ones--you whisk together eggs, grated parm, parsley and scallion, bring your stock to a boil, then add eggs in a stream, whisking constantly.

If you look closely at the photo above, you'll see that the eggs were hardly "strands". Little tiny egg curds were more like it.

I think the error lies in the direction to "whisk constantly". If the eggs were stirred gently with a spoon in a clockwise motion while you were pouring them in, you'd get some cohesiveness instead of that scrambled eggs effect.

It wasn't bad. But with a soup this simple, texture and flavor become all-important, and the texture of the cooked eggs was (I thought) unappealing. Unfortunately I made this at work--no chance for a re-do--it had to go out for a small luncheon, and it did.

Damn.

Celery Root Bisque

I used to know a woman who said that she ate plenty from the four food groups--salt, fat, alcohol and chocolate.

She would have loved Celery Root Bisque.

Why? Because in spite of its bland-sounding name, this soup is a celebration of duck confit--not just the meat, but the cracklings. If you don't know what cracklings are, it's this--duck skin peeled off and sliced, then rendered in a pan over low heat until golden, crispy brown. Drain grease off on paper towels, and salt to your little heart's content. People who talk about heaven on earth surely must be including duck cracklings in their equation.

I made Celery Root Bisque for the below-mentioned (Profiteroles! Hot Fudge Sauce!) birthday luncheon, and it was a smash hit. It's actually a perfect make-ahead soup--the bisque itself is nothing more than celery root, celery and shallots sauteed in butter, then simmered in water until tender. Puree, puree, puree, add lemon juice, salt and pepper, and you've got your bisque.

The duck confit can be shredded ahead of time, and likewise the cracklings, if you can keep yourself from eating them. All that's required is a gentle rewarming with the confit, and a sprinkling of cracklings on top.

You know, I'm looking at this recipe and seeing that it also calls for an optional garnish of (unsweetened) whipped cream. I must have been so overcome by the duck that I completely ignored that suggestion, but thinking about it I'm not sure what it would add. Hmm.

Oh, and save your pennies if you want to make this soup. My one and only source for duck confit (The Fruitful Basket) sells those babies for $11/leg.

In the flavor department, here's why this recipe is a home run. You've got a smooth, lemony-neutral soup base, with slightly ropey, chewy, meaty duck leg, with crispy, greasy, salty cracklings on top. You can't go wrong.

Red Bean and Bacon Soup & Pan-Roasted Mahi-Mahi with Butter and Lime

Red Bean and Bacon Soup is an incredibly satisfying supper, but it brings up the life-long anxiety I've had about beans.

No, not this one:

Beans, beans--good for your heart
the more you eat, the more you...well, you know.

It's this one:



vs.



I've soaked dried beans overnight, I've done the "quick-soak" thing, I've used canned...and when ever I used canned I feel like somehow I'm cheating. Like the finished produce will somehow be shoddy.

But baby, it sure is fast. Canned, that is.

I threw expedience to the wind with this recipe, though, and used dried red beans, using the above-mentioned quick-soak, which is (if you don't know) bringing your beans and water to a boil, then covering them and letting them sit somewhere for an hour or two.

OK, now that we've got my neuroses out of the way, right up front, I'll go on to say that this recipe is kind of a pain in the ass but if you've got a little time it's worth it for the end result.

Bacon, of course, adds its deliciousness to the whole thing, in the form of the grease that you cook the soup veggies in at the front, to the crispy bacon bits that you garnish the soup with at the end. Other tasty components include chili powder, medium-dry sherry, and sour cream (as a garnish) in addition to soup regulars like garlic, onions, etc.

And because I don't have a food mill, because I HATE food mills and will never waste my money on one, I just blended the bejeezus out of the cooked soup, all of which is messy and (as I mentioned above) time consuming but worked nicely to create a red bean soup puree.

And now I can't find a good photo to steal. Grrr!

OK, just use your imagination, kids...visualize a bright blue bowl, filled with a brick red pureed soup...with a dollop of sour cream, a sprinkling of crispy bacon, and a spangle of scallion greens.

And now you can picture me with my friend Elizabeth, with whom I used to walk umpteen miles a week but the winter has been so crappy we've lost our routine, so imagine us getting together FINALLY not to walk but to eat this soup and drink red wine and catch up on our lives.

Yeah.


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NO, I did not really cook mahimahi. Where do you think I am, the Virgin Islands? But I am relieved that they've stopped calling this fish by the name I used to know it--dolphin--an alarming prospect on a menu for somebody who buys dolphin-free tuna.

Want to see a picture?



Now, I'm not going to tell you about the one deep sea fishing trip I took (in the above-mentioned Virgin Islands) but I will tell you that mahimahi, when it's in the water, is the color of rainbows, and when it's dead, it's gray. Also, if you're at all squeamish, you should never go on a deep sea fishing trip.

I used haddock instead, which for all I know might also be rainbow-colored in the water but I don't think so.



Ah, men and their fishing trips. You don't really see a lot of women in these pictures, I wonder why that is?

Anyway, here in Gloucester we have haddock a-plenty, and so haddock is what I used.

This recipe (Pan-Roasted Mahimahi with Butter and Lime) is ridiculously easy and makes good use of simple, flavorful components. All you need is a skillet you can put in the oven, fish, flour, butter and lime and you're good to go.

It's not in the book so I'll go into detail should you be inclined to try it--preheat your oven to 350, then dredge your seasoned fish in flour. Melt 2 tbsp butter in a skillet and let the fish cook not too long...about 3 mins. Flip them, throw the pan in the oven, let them cook for about another 7-8 minutes, and take them out. Remove the fish from the pan. DON'T FORGET THE HANDLE IS HOT. (duh, you're saying but I've grabbed hot handles more times than I can swear at)Add a little more butter and a lime's worth of lime juice--deglaze the pan (that means stir it while it's boiling for you newbies)and pour that over the fish.

Yum bunnies. You can garnish with parsley, if you want to get fancy, but you don't have to.

Argh! I suck at taking photos these days (I'll make it up to you, I promise) so here's another opportunity to work on your visualization skills...imagine a nice, thick piece of white fish, with the palest brown crust...in a pool of buttery sauce with the sharp perfume and bite of lime.

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Gluten-Free recipe in this post: Red Bean and Bacon Soup

Melissa Feeds the World , Continuing with Her Writing Group

There are two reasons I love my writing group:

1. They are great writers and readers.

2. They enthusiastically eat whatever I put in front of them.

I LOVE people like that. Give me an appreciative and adventuresome audience any day. (Oh, picky eaters don't be sad. I love you too. You know who you are.)

So when it was my turn to host I thought a nice thing to make for our wintry lunchtime meeting would be Yellow Split Pea Soup, and being the organized lass I am, I even made it the day before so I could share it with my son and husband.



What's not to love about split pea soup? The folks on Epicurious sure do--this recipe is rated by 30 people with a 4 out of 4 fork rating...all would make it again. And I will too--it's seriously yummy and I made it even more so by putting in all three of the ham hocks that were in my styrofoam meat tray from Stop n Shop instead of only one.

Now, I just know my writing group gals are reading this, and scratching their heads and saying I KNOW we didn't eat split pea soup, yellow or otherwise. What gives?

What gives is that while I was heating it up for dinner, with Don and O'Malley, I left the burner on, and scorched the bottom (this is the problem with thick, puree-type soups) and what I could rescue was not enough to feed my lovely guests.

Plan B!!

I was determined to have soup. And I didn't have loads of time, considering I had to shop and produce said soup between dropping my son off at school and welcoming my group at 11:30.

Chicken Soup with Almond Matzo Balls seemed to be easy enough, and pretty fun since a) I've never had matzo ball soup and b) one of our group is a gal from Vermont who converted when she married a Jew from Long Island.

The basic idea here is to spice up what seems to be a bland product with coarsely chopped almonds, fresh dill, and cinnamon. Sounds weird, but they taste great, and Martha was so impressed that she took some home in a baggie to give to her Dan. She was sure they wouldn't fly with his mother, but maybe at home, during Passover?

I streamlined the recipe slightly by cooking the matzo balls in the chicken stock instead of cooking them in water and then putting them in the stock. I don't think I screwed anything up by doing that, and it made a lot more sense to me.

Try it. You will like it too.



And since I had had such a success with the chicory salad from the dinner party with my parents, I thought I'd go wild and try another salad recipe, and one that I've had my eye on since the beginning: Bibb Lettuce with Butter Dressing.

All you have to do is wave the word "butter" around in front of me to get my attention. I love that stuff, though it seems like a counter-intuitive choice for salad dressing. The trick here is to have your lettuce at room temp--anything cooler will make the butter clump up unpleasantly.

But there was no clumping in this household. The way you make this is wonderfully simple--melt butter and add one halved clove of garlic...saute until both garlic and butter are golden brown. Add a little lemon juice and some salt, pour it over the lettuce, and toss to coat.

Easy, and delightful. Hooray for butter! I didn't take a picture of the salad, but here's a picture of a 800 lb. butter sculpture for you to enjoy.



Butter. Is there anything it can't do?

Barley Risotto and Creamed Spinach

Dear readers, I offer you profound apologies. It's not that I haven't been cooking, it's that I haven't been blogging about it. Oh for Teena's discipline! I'd like a large helping of that with my turkey, please.

In the weeks since I last wrote, here's a sample of what's been gracing our tables:

Chinese Beef Noodle Soup (the broth: heaven, and finally a cut of beef (short ribs) that doesn't shrink and toughen up like stew beef)

Kale and White Bean Soup (my biggest gripe with this was using dry beans, which sometimes just never fully soften up. Grrr.)

Shrimp, Crab, and Oyster Gumbo (Amazing, and expensive. Make this only if you are wealthy, or somebody wealthy is footing the bill, or you live in shrimp/crab/oyster country. Measurement note: Gourmet says 24 oysters = half a cup, but not in this part of the world. More like two cups, and have fun shucking those oysters.)

Beef and Sausage Lasagne (Meat lover's lasagne--mmmmm. My major complaint is that 13X9 baking dishes just aren't deep enough to really hold lasagne.)

Slow Roasted Salmon with Mustard and Parsley Glaze (pretty good and would have been better if I hadn't started with salmon that was still ever-so-slightly frozen in the middle)

Old-Fashioned Gingerbread (words cannot adequately describe how much I loved this cake. And please note that in spite of the instructions, I DID use blackstrap molasses, and thought it was better for it.)

Hungarian Chocolate Mousse Cake Bars (technically challenging, this recipe gave my Kitchen Aide a workout. The cake: swoony.)

Russian Tea Room Cheesecake (a cross between a lemon souffle and a cheesecake, another Kitchen Aide exerciser, and a perfect complement to the above-mentioned Hungarian Chocolate Mousse Cake Bars)

Coffee Bourbon Barbeque Sauce (the flavor is fine, but it's so thin!! Perhaps it would be better as a marinade?)

Well! Now that I've told you all about the food I was too busy to tell you about, I don't have time to write about Barley Risotto and Creamed Spinach. So until next time....

Chilled Lemongrass Tomato Soup

Somewhere in the world, for somebody, Chilled Lemongrass Tomato Soup has an Active Time of 30 minutes and a Start to Finish Time of 16 1/2 hours (including making and chilling the tomato water).

Not for me.

This recipe took me almost a week to make. Why, you might ask?

Well, there was the draining of the tomatoes aspect. Then the cold weather that made chilled soup unpalatable.

But mostly, it was procuring the darn lemongrass.

Three supermarkets didn't have it, including the usually-reliable-for-unusual-produce Market Basket in Danvers. I finally ended up ordering it from Bobby at the Fruitful Basket.

But let me back up to the beginning of this recipe. Chilled Lemongrass Tomato Soup asks you to make something a little unusual--Tomato Water. What is this, you're wondering?

Well, you puree 5 lbs. of tomatoes, pour the puree into cheesecloth-lined colander, gather up the cheesecloth and tie the ends around the shaft of a wooden spoon, and suspend this over a nonreactive pot. The "water" will drain out overnight.

At least, that's the idea. I didn't have cheesecloth, so I tried paper towels:



Obviously you can't tie paper towels to a wooden spoon, so I left them in the colander and hoped for the best.

Two days later, although there was some tomato water in the pot, I decided to get some cheesecloth and do it right, for the full effect.

I did this by laying the cheesecloth out on the counter, dumping the puree on top (with the soggy papertowels), and then simultaneously trying to gather up the ends (to keep the puree from oozing over), getting the paper towels out, and avoiding the tomato water that was now gushing out from the puree-filled cheesecloth across the counter and onto my feet. Can you tell I didn't quite think it through? Don and O'Malley were less than helpful; Don saying, "Isn't that the stuff you're trying to save?" and O'Malley saying, "It looks like you're squeezing a giant, bloody heart!"

Anyway, I managed to get it all cinched up, and with a little bit of difficulty, tied to a wooden spoon, to hang suspended over the pot (for another two days).



When I finally got my hands on some lemongrass, I followed the next stage--chop 3 stalks and boil with one cup of tomato water...stir in unflavored gelatin and reunite with the rest of the tomato water.

You know how some smells are really place-specific? This is where boiling lemongrass transports me:



When I was in college I dated a guy who got a job managing the King's Alley Hotel (the bar/restaurant part) in St. Croix. For two years I flew down there for vacations--even summer vacation, from Waterville, Maine all the way to St. Croix via Puerto Rico.

So what's the connection with lemongrass? The locals had a homemade concoction that was said to cure everything from hangovers to baldness. There were lots of variations, but they all involved aloe vera peeled in whizzed in a blender. The second most popular ingredient was an infusion of lemongrass, made by boiling it up into a tea.

So I smell boiling lemongrass, and suddenly I'm sitting at an open-air bar in St. Croix at 9 am...blue sky, rustling palms...listening to Face tell me why this drink is so healthful (and how it's going to cure my hangover. Hair, I got plenty of).

Not a bad little mind-trip for a few minutes worth of cooking.

Here's the final product, eons later:



It was pretty good! I happen to love tomatoes and watermelon together (the book also has a tomato-watermelon salad) and they reunite happily here, though I could have done with even more watermelon. The chives seemed superfluous. By the time I actually served this soup the weather had turned hot, so it was deliciously refreshing--very light.

Don's comment was that it would be a great soup to break a fast--not breakfast, mind you, but if you happen to fall into that unusual category of people who refrain from eating from time to time (psst...I'm not one of them)

Was the end product worth the backflips? Mmm...if only for the experience of cooking and writing about it, and presumably next time I'd be more organized so it wouldn't be such a project.

Cucumber Soup with Wasabi Avocado Cream and Melissa Triumphs Over Technology

Here's the risky thing about deciding not to go out of town (Rockport) to shop. You're stuck with the IGA and what it has to offer, which is limited and eccentric.

Still, I thought, the shopping list for Cucumber Soup with Wasabi Avocado Cream was simple, because I had most of it. I had luscious, ripe avocados from last week's organic produce box, I had wasabi powder and plain yogurt...I had everything, in fact, but three seedless English cucumbers, a lime, and chives. I was a little galled at the thought of buying chives because we have tons at work in the herb garden...but it's such a small list I thought I'd suck it up and shell out 3 or 4 bucks. It's just money, right?

Did the IGA have English cucumbers? Yes they did. One.

Did they have limes? Yes.

Did they have chives? No.

So I bought the one English cucumber and two fat waxed ones, and my lime, and thought hard about chives. Suddenly I remembered that my neighbor Don Rittenburg has a long back yard that abuts ours filled with what he calls "onion grass" and when he mows his lawn it smells like onions.

So I went foraging when I got home. See the sunlight on the other side of those trees? That's where I was going. But I had to climb over this berm type thing:



And there was a whole patch of it, uncut.



Ha. Just call me Euell Gibbons.

Now, I had to be sneaky about using this so-called onion grass, which means to say I couldn't tell Don (my husband, not my neighbor) where I got it, because he claims that the foraged "chives" give him a stomach ache.

This is due to his deep-rooted suspicion of anything not found in a supermarket. My husband is the guy who, when we were vacationing at Small Point, Maine, really really really did not want to eat the mussels I picked off the rocks for dinner because they hadn't been refrigerated first. Like in an 18-wheeler on its way to the supermarket.

So shhhhhhhhh. Don't tell him. Here are my final ingredients, lined up:



Once they're peeled and seeded, all cukes look pretty much the same. A full blender



reduces to very little liquid!



By far the best component of this recipe is the wasabi avocado cream. Oh my god, people! I could eat bowls of this every day of my life. The only thing I was worried about (and still am) is that I never was quite confident that the wasabi paste got thoroughly incorporated into the avocado and yogurt. It's possible that sometime soon I will bite into a little wasabi ball surprise. I suppose a food processor would eliminate that worry but then you'd be dirtying two appliances and unless you're making buckets of this, what's the point?

Anyway, here's the soup and avocado cream, ensemble:



By the way, if you're going to try this, please follow the directions and use kosher salt, not iodized table salt! If you use the latter, it will be too salty. Or I suppose you could use LESS table salt, but kosher salt is really so much better, honest to god.

Oh, what did my husband think? He took some to work today. If he has a stomach ache I am so busted, but I predict he'll think it was heavenly.

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Melissa Triumphs Over Technology!

Little have you readers known that I have been laboring under a handicap with my snazzy Sony Cyber-Shot camera, which is that when I got it I immediately started fooling around with the settings and as a result, for the last half year, every setting except two (Low Light with and without Flash) have given me these weird stop-time movies. I'd press the button and it would give a little chirp and say "Recording". Who wants to record Deviled Crab? It stays on the plate!

Grrr!!! So vexing. And I COULD NOT figure out what I had done wrong, because all those little symbols in the window are completely meaningless to me and I couldn't find the manual.

So I've been having serious photo envy at these other food blogs, and when I complimented Ryan at Nose to Tail at Home on his photos (along with a few whines about my own camera), he suggested I find the manual online. He even offered to do it for me! Ah, chivalry.

Well, if I can pump my own gas I can find my own PDF manual, so I wandered around and found not exactly what I was looking for but enough to get me to understand that I had activated something called "multiburst".

And I turned it off. So now I can take photos on every setting, and even though I still think I'm a lousy photographer at least I can take lousy photos in dark rooms and outside in the sun. Yay me!!