Bacon and Lentil Soup

So, it's mid-November, and that means cold dreary weather. Except, lately it's been rather warm here in central Ohio. I mean, it was 70°F this past weekend! Most people would be quite pleased with that, but for myself, I'm ready for winter soup season, and I want my weather to cooperate. But since I haven't yet figured out how to change the weather, I might as well get started on the soup making.

Last month I did a simple tomato soup that you hopefully read about (and made, and enjoyed!). Well, this time I'm back with another simple soup. How simple you ask? Well lets see, there are 7 ingredients, and one of them is water. You make it all in one pot in about an hour. And you probably (or at least should) have all the ingredients handy all the time. I say that last bit because everyone should have at least two containers of lentils in their cupboard (red and puy being the two). And only crazy people don't keep bacon around.

As you'll quickly see, what makes this soup so great is that it's ridiculously easy to prepare. Crisp up the bacon, cook the veggies, then add water and the lentils. In about than an hour you're eating. So lets get too it!

Bacon and lentil soup:
1 lb. pepper bacon, chopped
1 medium onion, sliced
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 carrots, coined
1 larger potato, cubed (pref. yukon gold)
1/2 cup puy lentils
4-6 cups water

1. Put your soup pot over medium high heat and add the bacon. Cook until it crisps up then add the carrot and potato.
2. Cook another 2 minutes then add the celery and onion. When the onion turns translucent, add the lentils and enough water to completely cover the other ingredients. Bring to a boil and then let simmer ~45 minutes.
3. When the lentils are plump, the soup is done. Dish into bowls and enjoy!

Mmmmm, yummy soup...

That was easy huh? Told ya so. Now, I know what you might be thinking... a pound of bacon, water, no salt?! Yup, yup, and yup. You see, the bacon serves a couple of roles here. The first is to provide fat for cooking the veggies. The second is to add tons of flavor. And by using pepper bacon, you've got all the seasoning you need (bacon naturally has a good amount of salt). Now, in case you're wondering, puy lentils are sometimes referred to as french lentils. I suggest buying them in bulk from Whole Foods or a similar store than a normal grocery store. Just look for the greenish/blueish ones you see below.

Puy lentils, unlike red, don't get mushy when cooked, so don't substitute the two.

So, when you're in a bind, and need a fairly fast, incredibly easy, and extremely tasty dinner, give this soup a try. I can promise you that you won't regret it!

Till next time,
Cheers,
Mike :)

Double Chocolate Bread Pudding:

So, lets see, I get my manuscript off to my advisor to review, think I have at least a week of down-time... and I get sick. And waiting for me when I get better... revisions! Gah, the last year of grad school really is a vicious cycle of writing and trying to have a life.

Oh well, I'm back now, and with a dessert that will definitely wreck any diet you may happen to be on. My history with this particular bread pudding goes back to the beginning of the year. Coming back from my winter vacation with my mom's forgotten bread maker, I now had the means to craft all sorts of breads in my rather busy and chaotic schedule. One such bread was a brownie bread that made for great eating all on its own, but I knew would make an excellent base for bread pudding. Of course, time went buy and I never got around to it (as usual). That was, until a few weeks ago when on Throwdown with Bobby Flay they had a challenge based on chocolate bread pudding.

In that episode, Flay had to best The Dessert Truck, a NYC food wagon specializing in desserts but best known for their chocolate bread pudding with bacon crème anglaise. He lost, over-complicating things by adding coconut and a passion fruit syrup. Both contestants, however, used normal white bread (ok, brioche) and made it chocolate by adding chocolate to their custard for the pudding. You can see where I'm going with this...

Double Chocolate Bread Pudding:

For the bread:
2 tsp. yeast
3 cups bread flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 egg + 1 yolk
2 tbsp. butter
1 cup warm water

1. Either put all the ingredients in a breadmaker and run on large loaf normal or follow the rest of the instructions.
2. Add the yeast to the water with a pinch of the sugar to get it going. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar and salt. Combine the egg, yolk, and butter in a small bowl and add to the dry mix.
3. Pour in the yeasty water and mix for about 5 minutes to incorporate well. Incubate in a warm place for 30 minutes.
4. Pre-heat oven to 350°F. Knead dough for 5-10 minutes and incubate another 15.
5. Add to greased loaf pans and bake in oven for ~45 minutes to an hour till set (No set time seems to work best for me).
6. Leave the bread (no matter which way its made) out on your counter for a day (or two) to harden before trying to use in the pudding.

For the pudding:
Bread from above, cut into 1/2" cubes
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups milk
4 eggs + 2 yolks
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
8 oz. dark chocolate, chopped up

1. Combine the cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla in a saucepan and heat over medium/high heat just till it bubbles, stirring occasionally. Add the chocolate slowly and stir throughly to integrate.
2. Whisk the eggs and yolks really well till they're pale in color in a large bowl. Slowly add the chocolate cream mixture, whisking constantly to prevent the eggs from cooking.
3. Add the bread cubes to the custard and toss thoroughly. Pour everything into a 13x9 baking pan, distributing the bread evenly. Pre-heat the oven to 350°F now.
4. By the time your oven warms up, the custard will have completely soaked into the bread. Give the pan a jiggle to even things out, and then bake for 35-45 minutes (this depends on how dense your bread was, but you're looking for a firm top that gives a little when pressed).
5. Find lots of friends to share with...

Brownie bread, just waiting for some custard.

The final, ungodly delicious product.

So, there you have it. Straight out of the oven, the top is all nice and crusty, while the bottom is like warm chocolate mouse. You could top it with some crème anglaise, but quite frankly, this is sweet and rich enough as it is to stand on its own. If you can't find people to help you eat this all right out of the oven, don't worry, after a day in the fridge, the whole thing turns into a homogenous creamy, chocolatey mass of awesome. As I said at the beginning of this, say good bye to your diet, at least for a week.

I'm hoping to have time to post again next week, but no promises about anything from now on. Hopefully by the time I do post you'll all have recovered from your sugar coma's after making this.

Cheers,
Mike :)

Simple Tomato Soup:

This post is going to get to the point since I have a Friday deadline to get a manuscript out for review.

Simple Tomato Soup:
2 lbs. tomatoes
3 slices pepper bacon
1/4 onion, diced
3 cups chicken stock --or--
3 cups water + assorted chicken bits (wings, necks, etc.)
~2 tsp. salt
1 cup whole milk

1. Peel, core, deseed and chop the tomatoes into small pieces. You can use nearly any type of tomato here, I had a mix of yellow, red, and green from my garden. A good tip is to deseed over a strainer in a bowl so you can catch the juice and add it back in for more flavor.
2. Cook the bacon in your soup pot till crispy and then drain on paper towels. Pour off the fat, keeping about 1.5 tbsp. Add the onion and tomatoes and cook until well broken down (~15-20 mins).
3. Add the stock, or if you're out like I was, water along with some chicken pieces you usually use for making stock (you'll fish them out later, they're just there for flavor). Bring the pot to a boil and then let simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring 3 times or so.
4. After the 30 minutes is up, remove the chicken bits if necessary, and adjust the seasoning. When cooled down a bit, puree with an immersion blender or in a normal blender till smooth and creamy in consistency.
5. Add milk to lighten the color and make it a little smoother. You can go with heavy cream here, but whole milk keeps it lighter and as long as you don't over heat it, won't curdle.
6. To serve, top with some crumbled bacon and possibly some croutons (I prefer bread on the side, but thats just me).

Ok, so I've got another soup recipe to post some time, as well as some baking type recipes.. I'm hoping that once this manuscript is off I'll have at least a week to do something I actually want... No clue when next time will actually be, but till then...

Cheers,
Mike :)

Paella falsos:

Yes, that is spanish for fake paella. I decided to call this dish that because my first choice of description, tomatoey-rice gruel, didn't have that certain ring to it. Either way, I'm still not entirely sure what exactly this dish is. A quick history of it's creation.

A couple of months ago, when the chard in my garden was growing full steam ahead, I harvested what was probably about 2.5 lbs. worth. Now, by this point in the season, I was getting a little sick of chard to be quite honest, so I kept having to find new ways of using it. Since it was close to the end of the month, a time when I generally cut-off my grocery shopping as a means to force clean out my fridge and cabinets, I had limited provisions on hand. Like most, I have a group of staples that I always keep around, of which rice and whole canned tomatoes are a part of. I also have been keeping skinless turkey sausages in my freezer as they're rather utilitarian meat for a number of dishes. So, there it was, chard, rice, canned tomatoes, and turkey sausage... what the heck can you make with that?

Paella falsos:
1 33oz. can of whole peeled tomatoes
1 cup rice (any kind will do, I used long grain)
1-2 lbs. chard, washed
6 oz. skinless smoked turkey sausage
1-2 tbsp. olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp. coriander
pinch saffron

1. Remove the stems and central rib from the chard and chop or tear into roughly 1 inch square pieces. Mince the garlic and heat the oil in a soup-pot till shimmering, then add in the chard, garlic, and coriander and cook for ~5 minutes.
2. Add in the rice and ~1/4 tsp. salt and stir to coat each grain in oil. Pour the liquid from the tomatoes into a bowl and reserve. Seed and chop the tomatoes into small pieces. When the rice is translucent, pour in the tomatoes and juice. Bring the pot to a boil.
3. Slice the sausage into small, bite-sized pieces. When the pot reaches a boil, add the sausage and the saffron and drop the heat to medium. Cook, uncovered, for a good 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. After 30 minutes, the mix should be thicker as the rice absorbs the tomato juice, adjust the final seasoning now while there's still some liquid left.
4. Now, there are two ways to finish this. The first, as I did it the first time, is simply to keep heating it in the pot, creating a crusty bottom. Alternatively, you can transfer some to a non-stick skillet and achieve the same effect.

It's hard to get a nice picture of this, this was the best I could do.

So, the reason I call this fake paella is simply because it's like paella in principle, but I certainly didn't plan it that way and no Spaniard would ever mistake this for the real thing. The end result, however, is a really delicious, tomatoey-savory rice dish wish a crusty bottom, so fake paella. I've made this a few times since its first accidental creation, and I haven't really made any changes to it yet. It may not look all that great, but do yourself a favor and try it, I think you'll be quite pleasantly surprised.

Well, that's all I have this time, I'm back to finishing a manuscript again, but I'll try to post again this coming weekend if I have time.

Cheers,
Mike :)

Champagne-Pear Sorbet

Ok, so I've been a bit AWOL of late, its been almost a month since my last post! But to make the long story of why very short, work > blog, so unfortunately that comes first.

But now I'm back (at least for a while...) and I've got a recipe that I'm really excited about. Anyone who's ever been to Columbus, OH, and many who've never even come close, know the name Jeni Britton (or at least the Jeni part). For those who have no clue who she is, take a moment to check out her day job. The site unfortunately does little justice to the general awesomeness that is Jeni's ice cream, sorbet, or frozen yogurt. Ms. Britton likes to push some boundaries when it comes to her creations, a current 'seasonal flavor' is celery while a standard 'signature flavor' is thai chili. So after a recent visit, I decided to try my own hand at a unique yet totally awesome frozen treat.

The key to making this type of endeavor pan out on the first attempt is to start with a flavor pairing that already works well. I don't know how or why it popped into my head, but fancy dinner desserts seemed like a good place to start. Having gone on a few cruises in my currently short lifetime, I thought about when they had the 'dessert tray', which erroneously had a plate of fruit, cheese, and nuts next to the crème brûlée and triple chocolate cake. Now that I'm older I realize adults consider a glass of champagne with an assortment of nuts, cheeses, and fruits to be a worthy dessert, and they're actually right. Since I planned on using champagne, a sorbet was a natural fit over an ice cream. And pears are just hitting their season, so like Ms. Britton I figured I'd work with what's naturally abundant.

Now, a simple champagne and pear sorbet is pretty pedestrian compared to Red Beets with Lemon & Poppy Seeds, so that's where the nuts and cheese come into the picture. Having just bought a bunch of walnuts to make candied walnuts for salads, those were a natural addition. For the cheese I decided a mild crumbly blue would provide come interesting contrast to the rest of the flavors, as well as a dose of salt to intersect the sweet and tart flavor of the sorbet itself. But cheese in a sorbet? And blue cheese!? I had to do some checking with others to make sure I wasn't going crazy. After sampling an n of 3, and getting back overwhelming statistical evidence that it sounded yummy (p<0.001), I went for it... and boy am I glad I did.

Champagne-pear sorbet with walnuts and blue cheese:
1 bottle champagne (nothing fancy...)
1.5 lbs. pears (pref. bosc)
1 cup sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2-1 cup crumbly blue cheese

1. Pour the champagne into a container big enough to hold the pears when chopped up.
2. Peel and core the pears. Chop into smaller pieces and put into the container with the champagne. The acidity in the champagne will help prevent browning and infuse some flavor into the pears.
3. When the pears are all chopped, let them sit in the champagne for 5 minutes and then pour the champagne into another container. Take 1 cup of the champagne and add to a small pot with the sugar. Bring to a boil and hold for 5 minutes, then cover and turn off the heat to make a champagne simple syrup.
4. Put the pears into a food processor, blender, or food mill and purée. When done, add the pear purée, champagne, and champagne syrup to a container and put in the fridge till well chilled.
5. Add the sorbet base to your ice cream maker and process like always. When finished, mix in the walnut pieces and blue cheese crumbles thoroughly! Pack into containers and harden in the freezer (although eating it immediately is really really good).

The final product. You can see bits of the cheese (in white) and the faint darker tan of the walnuts.

Pick out the dark walnut pieces and use them for something else; blue cheese crumbles shouldn't be bigger than a pencil eraser.

As I said, no need to buy anything fancy. I would suggest a brut or extra brut if you have really sweet/ripe pears.

So, there you have it. The perfect fancy after dinner dessert, made into an even more perfect sorbet. I will admit, that before I made this, I wasn't too sure of how it would turn out. I mean, goat cheese in ice cream is one thing, but blue cheese in a sorbet can go horribly wrong. Fortunately my culinary intuition (or is it insanity?) was right. If the cheese really is putting you off from trying this, do yourself a favor and try this: make the the sorbet as given, and only add some nuts and cheese to half the batch. The champagne pear sorbet itself is great, especially right from the churn when the acidity of the champagne is still at full power. The nuts and cheese just give it that little push into uniquely awesome, its a recipe that Jeni Britton would be proud of... and I'm sure you'll all love it too!

New recipe to be out next week, so until then...
Cheers,
Mike :)