Wednesday, June 09, 2010
A month of silence, broken by... a recipe. Fabulous.
(I am brewing a books post. I am always brewing a books post, I know, but with the onset of summer and a sudden near-glut of free time -- or what feels like a glut of free time compared to the jury duty/college/finals/home-school-wrap-up/garden-panic month that was May -- who knows? Maybe one will someday soon magically appear in this space.)
Tonight I made an experimental dinner and it turned out OK so I wanted to put the recipe in a place I'm not likely to lose it. Yes, I pay money to host an absurdly long domain name so that I can have a searchable, online recipe file. Right?
Without further ado (ha ha! my LIFE is all about further ado):
Pork Chops with Caramelized Apples and Onions
with a side of Roasted-Garlic Mashed Potatoes
and Green Beans that are Slightly Less Boring than the Ones In A Can
First I took a head of garlic, sliced off the top, peeled off the outside paper, and wrapped it (garlic, not paper) in oiled aluminum foil. I put it in the oven at 350º. It takes about an hour for it to roast. (Yes, I felt actual guilt about running the whole oven for an HOUR just for a little head of garlic.) I pulled some home-frozen green beans out of the freezer -- fresh would be better, but you can't have everything -- and set them in the steamer, ready to go when needed.
Then I started out with a couple of pounds of pork steak (item: how is this different from pork chops?), sliced pretty thin. I rubbed this on both sides with pressed garlic, coarse pepper, and kosher salt* and let it sit while I got the potatoes ready. (This is just your standard mashed-potato preparation -- wash, peel, and chop a couple of potatoes per person and set them in water on the stove; turn on the heat and when they come to a boil, let them boil merrily along for fifteen minutes or so.)
While the potatoes did their potato-y business, I cooked the pork steaks in a little bit of oil on mediumish heat until they were done and brown on both sides. While THEY cooked, I peeled and sliced (thin slices are good) four green apples and one yellow onion; then I tossed the slices together with a little bit of oil, some coarse pepper, and some kosher salt.
About this time I started the steamer with the green beans in it. Thought I'd forgotten those, didn't you.
When the meat was done, I set it aside on a platter and put the onions and apples in the pan -- actually it was two pans -- and let them cook down until they were pretty soft and rather brown, stirring often. (After I'd turned them a couple of times, I put the meat on top to absorb the flavor a little.) When the apples were close to done, I heaped the apples and onions and meat all in one pan and used the other one to sauté the steamed green beans with a little butter, coarse pepper, and kosher salt.
I took the garlic out of the oven, unwrapped it, and after it had cooled a little I squeezed the pasty roasted garlic out of the cloves with the side of a big kitchen knife. I added the garlic glop to the potatoes I'd just drained along with an unholy amount of butter (Grandma always used one tablespoon per potato and who am I to mess with tradition?) and -- you guessed it -- some coarse pepper and kosher salt. When mashing the potatoes, you want ot make sure to mix everything together, but leave them a little bit coarse.
Serve each person a pork steak with apple and onion stuff on top; put some mashed potatoes and green beans on each plate. No gravy required or desired. (Even if your husband insists. He won't keep insisting for long, I promise.)
I'm tired just writing about it. But mmm, it was good.
*I may never buy olive oil but heaven help you if you hide my kosher salt. Seriously.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
easy, cheap chili for a crowd
La la la, I am going to post a recipe because I am not going to write about politics.
We had a family gathering here today to celebrate the birthdays of my niece and nephew. I made a pot of chili to go with the hamburgers and hot dogs. People! Chili is SO EASY. Years ago I used to think you had to buy one of those $2.50 brown-bag spice packets to make good chili, but I was so wrong. And considering that this batch served about eighteen people (small servings) with leftovers, it was cheap. And it was an excuse to use my new anniversary-present slow-cooker*.
*I just had the best anniversary date EVER with my husband. He bought me the aforementioned slow-cooker, and he took me to bookstores and the Olive Garden and A PLAY. How many years have I wanted to go to a community theatre play with him? Sixteen years, that's how long! It was so, so awesome. Also, we went to Winco. Winco is one hot date just by itself. There may have been smooching in the bulk-bin area. Hey, we have a license to do that.
So. Recipe. SERIOUSLY SO EASY.
You'll need:
*About, I dunno, a quart of dry beans. Maybe more. (I love love love black beans. Black beans are my very favorite foodish thing right now and they are excellent in this chili AND they are available in Winco's bulk bins.) (You could, of course, use canned beans, but that seriously decreases the cheapskate value of this meal because it's going to take something like five or six cans to get the same amount of beans. But then, your house will smell less like boiled beans later, so that's a bonus.)
*Some bacon if you like to cook your beans with bacon, or salt pork, or ham, or, hey, whatever, just salt if you want.
*2 pounds of very lean ground beef
*a yellow onion, chopped
*a couple of cloves of garlic, minced
*some chopped bell pepper if you like bell pepper in your chili (I used the very last bit of last year's bell peppers for this today. My only comfort is that this year's bell peppers are beginning their lives under a grow-light on top of my kitchen cupboards as I type this.)
*About 3 or 4 tablespoons of chili powder
*A tablespoon or less of cumin
*Salt and pepper
*Some canned tomatoes if you want (I usually don't, for chili, but whatever floats your boat.)
*You could also fully customize this by adding a bunch of hot stuff if you wanted to. Also, I bet you could do these up in some animal-friendly vegetarianish kind of way, if you like plain beans without meat. And let's face it, if you're a vegetarian, you're used to boring stuff like that already, so it'd probably be just fine for you. Go for it! (Also: MUCH CHEAPER.)
Soak the beans. You can do this overnight, or you can, like I always do, cover them in a few quarts of water, bring them to a simmer, simmer for a couple of minutes, and then let them sit for an hour with the lid on.
Then cook the beans in a few quarts of water. (I generally do not change out the soaking water. You get more nutrients this way, I am convinced. Also: I am lazy and I like to conserve water for totally non-green reasons.) You can add some bacony goodness, or you can not. You can add some salt, or you can wait till they're cooked and do it then. Hey, whatever. You want to cook them thoroughly, for two or three hours at a slow boil. (This time I put them in the slow cooker overnight on High**, but I usually don't.)
(**I think I got up in the wee small hours and turned them down to Low. But anything I do in the middle of the night is liable to be completely forgotten or else remembered incorrectly by morning. So. All night on High might be too much cooking for beans. Or it might not.)
When the beans are cooked, brown the ground beef with the onion, garlic, spices, salt, and pepper. Add the bell pepper when the meat's almost done. Then, once the meat is done, add the beans (or, if you're like me, add the meat and stuff to the beans in the slow cooker). Stir well. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for at least half an hour; the longer the better.
DO YOU SEE HOW EASY THAT WAS? People, it's just beans, meat, garlic, onion, bell pepper, chili powder, and cumin. That is SO MUCH EASIER THAN PIE.
This filled the 6-quart crock of my slow-cooker (it's not a Crock-Pot-Tee-Em so I can't call it that, now, can I?). My next canning project (late this week, I'm thinking) will involve canning some of this chili. With store-bought bell peppers. Snif.
Friday, February 06, 2009
well, at least it's not a meme.
Only six days into my attempt to post every day for a month and I am already out of things to write. Hey, I know! I'll post the recipe for the supper I just made!
It was very nice of you to roll your eyes where I couldn't see you just now. Thank you.
The kids earned a massive reward a couple of weeks ago when they did about a million tons of laundry for me. I promised them that for one of our Twilight Zone nights they could have whatever they wanted for supper, and they decided on a Chinese-themed night. C wanted beef with broccoli (which I make with some regularity, and it's OK, but not fabulous), and LT wanted orange chicken, which is a rarer treat. (When we go to Panda Express, he gets a two-entree plate with double orange chicken. I don't think he's ever eaten anything BUT orange chicken at Panda Express.) Making the two things at the same time is a huge amount of work and creates a ginormous mess, but they certainly earned it.
Without further ado (even though excessive ado is pretty much my trademark):
Rachel's Attempt at Orange Chicken
(also known as: It's Not PAN-DA!, But It's Not $8 A Plate Either)
Start oil heating to 375º-400º in the deep fryer. (What? You don't have a deep fryer? Buy one that doubles as a steamer; you'll feel much better about yourself. $25 at Wal-Mart. You might even use it as a steamer occasionally.)
Whisk together in a large bowl:
1 egg
a blort of oil -- 2T maybe? 1/4 c? (Not olive oil because it has to be able to handle really high heat.)
about a teaspoon of black pepper
about 2t of salt
a good sprinkling of cayenne
Add to the above and mix well:
2lb boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
Then add:
1/2 c cornstarch
1/4 c flour
and mix well again. Mix it even better.
Deep-fry chicken pieces in 3 or 4 batches for 3-4 minutes per batch. Drain on paper towels.
Make a sauce with:
juice of two oranges (I reduced the orange juice this time, just as if I were a Real Chef, but then I added water to the sauce. Oops. Don't bother with the reducing, I'm thinking.)
Add about equal parts vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce -- you want about a cup of sauce total. Maybe less sugar than the other things. I didn't measure this.
Set aside a small amount of sauce to be used as a thickener with:
2t cornstarch
Stir-fry over high heat in a wok or large skillet, until fragrant:
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 t fresh ginger, minced (I didn't have any tonight so I used a tiny sprinkling of ground ginger instead)
Add sauce and bring to a rapid boil; then add chicken and toss until coated. Combine reserved sauce with cornstarch (you want it runny, not pasty); stir well and then add thickener to pan. Toss until the sauce is thick and everything is nice and glossy and OH MY GOSH so tasty. Serve over hot, cooked rice. Serves four if you're moderately hungry but not going to gorge yourselves.
(P.S. That same deep-fried chicken recipe is really delicious with buffalo sauce -- I make mine with a partial cube of butter melted into maybe 3/4 c of Frank's Red Hot. Usually when I'm making that I slice the chicken into strips instead of bite-sized pieces, and I dip the besauced strips in ranch dressing, and I go around bloated to twice my usual size for a couple of days because do you have any idea how much sodium is in Frank's Red Hot? TONS of sodium, that's how much. Not to mention all the salt in the batter/breading/goop that goes on the chicken.)
See? There. Not only have I powered through to keep up with my blogging promise, but I've done my part to contribute to obesity and hypertension among my vast blogging public. My work here is done.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
It's NOT a resolution. (complete with recipe recommendation.)
Corny as it is to do this at the turn of the year -- which was not our motivation -- T and I have both decided that it's time to stop shoving our faces full of as much crispy... savory... spicy... delicious... FAT as we can physically manage, and be more sensible. After all, one of us will turn forty this year (and it's not me).
Also, HE SAID I WAS TOO FAT. Now we'll find out how long it is before I'll take off my clothes in any environment other than absolute pitch darkness. (He's right, though. And he did say it more nicely than that. And he used the term "we". He's not mean, just a little too honest.)
This means that now, with the whole Thanksgiving-to-New-Year dietary trainwreck behind us, we have begun to attempt to settle into healthier eating habits for our entire family. We are, in fact, on day three of this mission. Congratulate us! I warned T on Sunday that I would not withstand accusations of being The Bad Guy and would go back to feeding us deep-fried and/or cheese-covered comfort-yumminess, BMIs and heart health be damned, if this whole thing turned into one long whiny complaint about "is this all you made?" or "where's the meat?" There's a lot of strain on the shoulders of the family's commissariat when she is solely responsible for this sort of lifestyle change. In two weeks, when everyone (including Daddy) has forgotten Daddy's pep talks about being healthier and living longer and being able to run farther and jump higher et cetera et cetera et cetera, and Mommy's still cranking out boring grilled chicken and green salad and vegetable soup instead of cheesy, saucy, greasy enchiladas, and juicy cheeseburgers with curly French fries... and crunchy chicken strips with that sinus-clearing punch of buffalo sauce... and crispy-bottomed pizza with extra mozzarella and a little sprinkling of Parmesan on top of the hot red rings of pepperoni...
...where was I?
Oh yes. It's easy to become the big blue meanie, is what I was saying.
So I was glad when everyone liked the soup I made for dinner last night, courtesy of Cooking Light online and an almost uncanny event wherein I had everything in my refrigerator or pantry that was called for in a randomly-located recipe from the Internet. That never happens.
It's called Roasted-Chicken Noodle Soup, and it's much, much heartier than any chicken-noodle soup you ever had before, as evidenced by the fact that my broth-hating husband asked me to make it again. I kept having to remind myself that there was no bacon in it. It's THAT GOOD. I only used half the potatoes called for, and I didn't peel them, and I used a half-cup more condensed milk because that's how big my can of it was, and my chicken wasn't technically leftover since I cooked it with this soup in mind, but otherwise I made it exactly as presented. Excuse me while I go count the minutes until I can eat the leftovers for lunch.
(I should note that we will still have a place for our beloved junk food. Fridays will be something of a cut-loose day -- I'll cook our favorites, although maybe not in the quantities we've been accustomed to [that is to say, quantities that would feed your average family of, say, twelve].)
Thursday, September 25, 2008
dinner for the new great depression
Oh, now that's a really cheery thought. (My confidence in government bailouts is not so strong. I'm feeling very October-1929ish these days; how about you? Have been for months, actually. Hence the extra push toward self-sufficiency. Wacko survivalists, that's us.)
Seriously, though, last night I made potato soup for the first time in a long time and it was a huge hit. Considering that (in pre-crash dollars) it only cost about $3.50 to make enough for two meals for all four of us*, plus about 40c for saltines, I'm thinking this will be in our regular rotation from here on out. (Also, if we had a good garden and goats, we could make it almost entirely from things we grew ourselves. Next year!)
*except we were little piggies and overstuffed ourselves (especially me) so we ate it all at once. Bad us! That is not using it up, wearing it out, making it do, or doing without. But we could have been comfortably not-hungry and had enough leftover for tonight.
OK, without further ado, let me put my Betty Crocker hat on and type out the recipe.
Cut 1/2 pound of bacon into 1/2" to 1" slices; brown in a Dutch oven over medium-low heat.
When the bacon is almost cooked, add about half an onion, chopped. Cook together until the onion begins to brown.
Meanwhile, cut 6 potatoes (peeled if you prefer) into smallish cubes. Add to bacon and onion and cook for a few minutes. Then drain off some of the fat and add enough broth (your choice -- I use water and chicken bouillon cubes) to cover all the potatoes -- about 3 cups. Simmer for 15 minutes, until potatoes are soft.
Add 2 cups of milk along with plenty of salt and pepper, and bring nearly to a boil (actually, full disclosure, mine boiled, which I think goes against some deep and strong "Thou Shalt Not Boil Milk" cooking tradition, but it didn't harm my soup any). Then add 1 cup of milk thoroughly mixed with 1/3 cup of flour, and cook until hot and thickened.
This is easily expandable. Leaving the bacon the same, add more potatoes, more broth, and a little more milk, and you can make a batch that will feed six people twice, if nobody's greedy.
You can use cream or half and half if it makes you happier. I had 2% milk on hand this time, so that's what I used, but I usually use 1% or nonfat.
Also, you can add whatever vegetables you like to this. You could get in all three of your major vegetable requirements for the day if you added some carrot and broccoli, for example. (I've done the carrot, but never the broccoli... yet.) You can make it without the bacon -- just use a little oil to brown the onions and potatoes. Of course it loses some flavor, but it also loses some fat and is cheaper that way.
You can also add cheese if you want to. My husband thinks (silly man) that cheese and potatoes should never, no never ever, be placed in any kind of near proximity to one another, and also we were out of cheese, and furthermore we are all already fat enough, so I left it out. It's fine without, and cheaper.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
in which I get all Betty Crockerish and give you a recipe
I tried a new recipe today, out of desperation, mainly, because I had a crisper and a garden full of squash and a girl can only eat so many pounds of steamed vegetables a day before she starts to sprout.
The big, funny-looking squash are a YUMMY heirloom variety called Zucchino Rampicante; I heartily recommend them to gardeners. One of those provided nearly eight cups of slices. (This is not one day's haul, but it's only part of what has been building up in the fridge over the past few days.)
So I began a quest for a good squash casserole recipe; I did *not* want the somewhat traditional one that's so full of butter you can barely taste the squash, but I ended up with something only marginally less unhealthy. I copied it almost entirely from cookinglight.com, except that those virtuous and healthy souls use ingredients like low-fat cheese and fat-free sour cream (which, frankly, ought to be outlawed out of respect), which I don't stock because Costco doesn't stock them and, well, because I like being fat. Apparently. So my re-fatted version of the recipe they so carefully de-fatted is as follows:
Simmer 8-10 cups of squash (sliced) along with one large onion (chopped) in a half cup to a cup of chicken broth (yes, that's 1/2 cup; it sounds like it's not enough but it works) in a covered Dutch oven.
Meanwhile, cook enough rice to yield about 2 cups. (I just did 2 c water and 1 c rice and didn't measure the result.)
When those two things are done, combine them, after you kind of mash up the squash and onion a tiny bit with a potato masher. Sounds moderately OK so far, right? Especially if you use brown rice... which I didn't this time, but I'm going to try it.
But now the fun part starts. Add a cup of sour cream, a cup of shredded cheddar cheese, a couple tablespoons of grated Parmesan, and a quarter- to half-cup of Italian-seasoned bread crumbs, along with a teaspoon or so of salt and some pepper. (The original recipe added two beaten eggs at this point, but I left them out because T has a strange allergy to them. It was fine without them but it might be even better with them.) Stir everything together and then spread it out in a prepared (sprayed with nonstick spray) 9"x13" pan. Sprinkle a few more bread crumbs, some more parmesan, and a tiny amount of cheese on top, and bake the whole shebang at 350º for about half an hour, until it's all bubbly.
I warn you that this is the kind of casserole that leaves you feeling far fuller half an hour after you eat it than you do at the moment when you finally persuade yourself to put down your fork. Some dishes, especially those laden with starch and dairy, are evilly magical that way.
The thing that pleased me most about this recipe, other than the fact that it has squash in it and my children and husband were actively enthusiastic about it, is that it didn't involve canned cream-of-anything soup. I was not in a cream-of-anything soup mood today, perhaps because it's August and we're having a rare spell of humidity along with our usual blistering August temperatures, or perhaps just because I have this uneasy feeling that canned cream-of-anything soup is kind of creepy and just wrong. (Ask me if that stops me from using it under ordinary circumstances.)
The recipes I referenced in my last post were both bread recipes (whole wheat bread -- I added cooked wheat berries -- and braided French bread) which I basically got straight from Pillsbury, so I won't copy them out here because I am so tired I can barely type because that would be a shameless violation of copyright.
Because this entry wasn't already full enough of boring kitcheny details, I'll go ahead and add that this is the week when we have to turn in our entry blanks for the county fair, and I have made a solemn vow that I will do my part to help resurrect the baked-goods room. Some of the exhibit divisions are thriving -- photography and knitting are really big right now, for example -- while some rooms (baked goods, preserved foods, and flowers) just get more and more empty every year. I'm terrible with flowers and I've only just started canning, but I can certainly make people fat with baked goods, and I decided last year at the fair to do my part to bring back the glory that was Building D in former days. As it is right now, there are about three elderlyish ladies (one of whom is my grandmother) who turn in the vast majority of the entries, and they usually only have enough stuff to put on three or four tables, and that is just sad. So I'm entering about five kinds of cookies, brownies, three kinds of bread, some rolls, biscuits, and even a jar of blackberry jam if I can get another batch made in time (in smaller jars this time). It'll barely make a dent but at least I'll see if I can beat my grandmother at anything. (Probably not.)
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
oh, quit bothering me with your 'title' nonsense already
Yesterday I was in serious need of a comfort-food kind of dinner, so I made the following:
****
Ingredients:
1 c milk
3/4 c Italian-seasoned bread crumbs
4 large mushrooms
1/3 of a large yellow onion
1 large clove garlic
1 carrot, shredded or grated
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
sprinkling of parsley
2 beaten eggs
2 lb lean ground beef
1 package brown gravy mix
2 T sherry
Soak crumbs in milk. Finely mince garlic, onion, and mushroom (I use my Pampered Chef chopper, which has seen better days, but still works fine), and sauté together until soft in a little bit of butter or oil. Add to milk and crumbs, along with carrot, salt, pepper, and eggs. Mix together, then add meat and knead with hands until well-mixed (Eew! gross! but if you try to use a spoon you'll be there all day). Shape into loaves or put into pans and bake at 350 degrees until an internal temperature of 160° is reached -- about an hour and a quarter. Slice and serve with gravy, which you mix according to package directions, except replace 2T of the water with the sherry.
****
Now, most people would call that meatloaf. However, I call it large rectangular meatballs which I happen to serve sliced with gravy. That way my husband will eat it. I also made twice-baked potatoes, which are SO YUMMY (halve baked potatoes and scoop out most of their innards; mix said innards with sour cream, butter, crumbled cooked bacon, and garlic and onion cooked WITH the bacon; replace in potato shells and top with grated cheese; bake till hot). I warned T when he called from work that I was making two of his least favorite foods for supper, but it ended up that he took seconds of everything. I think the earth's axis tilted a little bit; did you feel it?
Then, as much as I wanted to stay home and power through an entire half-gallon of Dulce de Leche ice cream, I couldn't. I had a meeting of the board of directors for our community chorus. (someday it might look kind of good on a resumé or whatever, that I am on the board of directors for something. Which is funny, since the reason I got the job was that I was one of only six people to show up at a planning meeting once, a few years ago. Everyone who went to that meeting is on the board of directors. That'll teach me to show up for stuff...). Usually these meetings are really, really boring, in that usual sort of Robert's-Rules-accompanied "I wonder if anyone would notice if I pulled Persuasion out of my purse and started reading it under the table" kind of head-exploding, frustrating way. And there was a good deal of that sort of thing -- why does it take us an hour to verbally go over a budget that we all have PRINTED OUT IN FRONT OF OUR FACES, for example. But last night things got enlivened by a lovely little shouting match between the chairman and the scholarship committee person, and since none of the rest of us had anything more than the vaguest idea of what they were talking about, we basically had to just sit there open-mouthed while the WWF Senior Tour had its first major smackdown right in the chairman's living room. And it wasn't pretty.
Funny how I wasn't feeling depressed anymore when I got home, though. I wonder what that says about me. (probably it helps a whole lot that the kids cleaned the kitchen while I was gone, but still.) Today I have a raging headache, but I seem to have shoved really hard against the sides of my chute, if I'm not climbing back up yet, at least I don't think I'm going down either. God works in strange ways sometimes.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
a couple of really well-timed recipes
Here it is the END of winter and I'm posting soup recipes. It's all Kristen's fault. She wanted me to email them to her but I felt low on actual content today, so I thought I'd just post them here. Plus the world in general is not fat enough yet, so this clam chowder one needs to get spread around a little more. YUM.
Monterey Clam Chowder
(my brother found this recipe after we'd been on a trip to Monterey, getting clam chowder samples at every restaurant on the Wharf. THANK YOU BROTHER, it is wonderful. And I probably really needed those EXTRA FIVE POUNDS PER BOWL.)
- 1 carrot, diced
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 1 potato, diced
- 1 stalk of celery, diced
- 1/2 lb minced bacon
- 1/4 lb butter
- 3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
- 1 pt clam juice
- 1 1/2 c flour
- 1 pt milk
- 1 pt heavy whipping cream (when I make it I use just a quart of half-and-half and a pint of nonfat milk -- not because of calories but because it's cheaper and nonfat milk is what we keep on hand. It comes out fine this way, actually maybe a little easier to eat cause it's not SO overpoweringly thick and rich. YMMV.)
- 1 pt half-and-half
- 1/2 t black pepper
- 1/2 lb chopped clams (fresh, frozen or canned) (2 or 3 of the 6-oz cans)
- 1/2 t clam base (optional -- you can get this at Smart and Final but I've never used it. It makes a mellow clam chowder without it. Might be stronger with it, but Monterey clam chowder generally has a milder clam flavor than New England clam chowder anyway.)
Once you have the vegetables sautéed, you can put the whole thing in a crock-pot for several hours if you'd like.
And here's one for minestrone. I read that word phonetically till I was heading toward junior high. I had heard of minestrone soup; it just never occurred to me that it and the mine-strone I saw in Campbell's cans in the store were the same thing. I did the same with Yosemite, although I was cured of that one much younger. My five-year-old self would see hitchhikers carrying signs that said "Yosemite" and wonder -- what's this Yose-mite place? Hello, Rachel, YOU LIVE RIGHT OUTSIDE IT. Do I need to tell you about "Chevrolet"? Probably not.
SHUT UP AND GET TO THE RECIPE ALREADY RACHEL.
Thank you, I needed that.
OK, here it is. Warning, it takes like eight hours to make if you don't soak the beans overnight, five or six hours if you do. It's not something you can just whip up for dinner. I got this recipe in Cultural Foods class in high school, which was kind of an odd combination of the history of the discovery of and immigration to the US, and home ec. You'd have to try it to understand, but I don't think they offer it anymore. SHUT UP AGAIN RACHEL.
Minestrone
Soak 1 pound of small white beans (navy beans) in a couple of quarts of water, either overnight, or by simmering them for 2 minutes and then letting them sit in the pan for 2 hours.
Then melt 3T butter and 1/4 c oil in a heavy 5-quart saucepan. (I use less at a time but I do probably end up using this whole amount. I'm sure you could make the soup without the sautéing, too, but I never have yet.) Sauté the following one at a time, 2 minutes each:
- 1 c chopped onion
- 1 c diced carrot
- 1 c chopped celery
- 2 c diced zucchini
- 1 c diced green beans
- 3 c shredded cabbage
- 1/2 bunch chopped spinach (I've always left this out. Not because we don't like spinach, just because, um, I never have it on hand and generally forget to buy it.)
- 1 lb cubed beef steak or stew meat
- the drained beans (reserve the liquid)
- 6 c weak beef broth (I used 2 cans broth and 1 can water)
- 1 can tomatoes
- 4T tomato paste (I just add the whole 6oz can, have no idea how many T that is)
- 1/2 c chopped parsley (I use maybe 3 T of dried parsley)
- 3 cloves minced garlic (why don't they have you sauté this? I'll have to try it sometime)
- 1 T basil
- 1 T salt
- 1/4 t pepper
- 1 c red wine (I always feel like Such A Grownup buying wine at the store. I only ever buy it for cooking; can't stand the taste of it. Because I'm a baby. I don't like black coffee either. Or dark chocolate.)
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