Posts Tagged ‘savory’

Back in August I was feeling a little on the sniffly, sore-throat, swollen-gland side, so naturally I wanted some soothing comfort food. I emailed my mom asking for her chicken noodle soup recipe I loved growing up, expecting it to be an easy, throw-together kind of recipe.

Oh how wrong I was.

I had no idea my mom’s (well, grandma’s) recipe entailed making your own stock, cooling it overnight, cooking more vegetables the next day, cooking the egg noodles, etc. For an average weekend this would be no big deal, but the idea of doing all that work feverish and sick was just a big no. So the email sat dormant, until I realized I would be cooking my favorite roast chicken and thus have the carcass to make stock (bing!). Since I usually eat a leg and a little breast when I roast a whole chicken, and then do whatever with the leftovers, it felt like the perfect opportunity to eat a bit of roast chicken, and then use the rest of the delicious meat (plus the carcass) to make the ultimate chicken noodle soup.

Some people would call the list of ingredients and recipe pretty pedestrian – but as the saying goes, simplicity is the sign of perfection. The flavor of the stock is superb, and cooking the vegetables separately the next day really adds a nice layer. Although my mom has always served egg noodles with her soup, you can really use any short pasta. Either way, this dish is simple, but time consuming – something I find in most soups I love.

Stock veg!

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Merry Christmas, everyone!

We celebrate the happiest day of the year with plenty of red meat, traditional English sides, and a froufrou dessert I always like to tackle. Usually I make a cranberry upside down cake, but this year I wanted to try something different so I made a spin on a pear tatin, which was scrumptious to say the least. Plus chruscikis, cookies, hot apple cider, Holiday blend from The Roasterie and plenty of Usinger’s during the day.

Have a holly jolly holiday! I’ll be off in my food coma now, surrounded by DVDs and my family, but here’s a nice large selection of photos from our holiday. Enjoy! (recipes at the bottom if you’d like to scroll past!)

One of my biggest holiday indulgences.

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Usually when I post on here I always start with some anecdote on what inspired me to make the dish above and go from there.  But this post is a little different because nothing inspired me other than, well, jonesing for some serious short ribs.  So as I was scratching my head, researching recipes and rewriting this post over and over trying to figure out what to say other than “Short ribs are awesome and braising is full of win,” a light bulb went off.  I could not only share the recipe, but how I got there.

When I want to make something I don’t have a favorite recipe or tried and true method for, I go through a routine to find and create the dish. I adore short ribs but have never made them at home, always having them in restaurants where all the work is done for you.  But since I have had them before, I at least knew what flavor profiles I liked. Thyme, red wine, heavy tomato base. And that was my jumping off point.

First, I go through all my cookbooks I own that I know would have recipes that fit the bill. I skim and flag anything that looks promising. Then I move onto this huge manila folder I have on top of my fridge (seen above) which is a pseudo-scrapbook of recipes I have torn out of magazines, printed off websites, transcribed from my mother, etc. I’ll pull from there. And finally, I hit up my favorite recipe websites (Epicurious, Everyday Food, Food Network, etc.) and compile those as well.  I look at all the most promising recipes and pull methods, ingredients, and measurements from them and sort of mash them altogether into the final recipe which I tweak along the way as I cook, often reducing serving sizes because I’m only cooking for one or two. And that’s how a “Based on…” recipe is born here.

And speaking of the recipe, this one is a perfect Sunday dinner treat. You can easily feed an army for cheap since short ribs are super tough cuts of meat and thus they run usually under $5 a lb. Since the cuts have a lot of connective tissue, it’s all about low and slow, braising the ribs in a great liquid base and not touching them for hours, so you get the most tender, fall-off-the-bone meat ever. Plus if you just whip up some instant polenta or steamed veggies on the side, you can just throw these in the oven for 5 hours, come back, and have dinner on the table in 15 minutes. Talk about the best way to enjoy your Sunday.

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Fall flavors are back with a vengeance! Well, not so much a vengeance as a delicate “ahem” with this dish. I made this for Valentine’s Day last year when my former roommate Beth and I had a fun single-gals dinner and drinks night. Beth was in town this past weekend and somehow this lasagna got brought up in conversation, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since (thanks, Beth!). Thankfully the flavors are über-autumnal and since I’m a big fan lately of making a dinner on Sunday I can literally eat all week, this fit the bill perfectly.

This lasagna is deliciously deceiving. You hear lasagna and you think mountains of cheese, meat, pasta, sauce, etc. But this vegetarian version is actually pretty light and delicate (well, as delicate as lasagna can be) and not that bad calorie-wise. Sweet and savory butternut squash puree and basil béchamel is layered with yummy fresh pasta sheets and mozzarella cheese to balance it out. I think it’s best served with a nice bitter salad, like endive or raddichio, dressed simply with good balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.

Time to take a little break from fall/squash/cinnamon flavors and do something a little different. This post is a miniature tribute to two things: one of my best friends Rachel and Gourmet magazine.  I didn’t intend for this to happen but it was just one of those realizations as you begin to work with something. Rach teaches in Bahrain but is from Minnesota, so we’re both Midwestern fall-loving girls at heart. Since she doesn’t really get to experience autumn, this was a way for me to give her something fun and easy to cook, and give me a break from typical autumnal flavor profiles.

As for Gourmet, this is a web-exclusive recipe of theirs, which is my sad little homage to a fantastic magazine that will be missed. Word is the website will be gone come the new year, and after looking at my bookmarked recipes and seeing row after row of entries with little black and white “G”s marking them, I was disheartened. I get inspired by food photography and food print almost more than anything, so the idea that Gourmet, one of the best (if not the best) will no longer be there to give me ideas is heartbreaking. So I salute you, Rach in Bahrain with no fall leaves, and Gourmet magazine for inspiring me all these years.

Now for the recipe – this is a super quick and yummy noodle dish, perfect for substitutions and open to putting your own spin on it. I’m a huge fan of spicy eggplant dishes from Asian take-out, so I threw that in, with some more spices and soy to layer the flavors. The flavor is rich and spicy, but also refreshing from the cilantro and basil. And like any good wok dish, it’s all about super high heat with short cooking time, which makes this a perfect fast weeknight dinner.