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You know, I never fail to be stunned when I look at the nutritional labels on the back of a can of soup. I love soup and the myriad varieties, but man-o-man do I not love the sodium in them. Or the junk. I guess the quest for maximizing the mighty dollar has led food manufacturers to cut corners both nutritionally and with ingredients so the end result is appealing only to the Americanized palate that has been over-salted, over-chemicaled and over-junked.
And yet I keep checking the labels hoping against hope that the fancy bright packaging and tantalizing promises of flavors will yield a product that I don’t mind feeding my family. Alas, more often than not the nutritional label fails me and I continue down the isle, deflated and disillusioned.
My craving for soup is now transcribed to me digging through my pantry and fridge wondering what kind of liquid genius I can concoct. When I had the business, I recall a customer who came in regularly to buy soup for lunch, even in our ridiculous heat. He announced one day, to my displeasure, that ANYBODY can make soup. I disagree! Sure, anybody can boil cabbage and throw in a can of tomatoes and call that soup, but a good, thick, hearty and nutritious soup is an art. An art which I (without shame) admit to having conquered. And so, here follows a recipe for my Beef Vegetable Soup that is both low in sodium, low in fat, and ridiculously high in nutrition.
Beef & Vegetable Soup
1 TB olive or canola oil
1 lb lean (beef) meat, cut into small chunks – can be stew beef, sirloin or any other lean cut
1 – 28 oz can diced tomatoes without salt left undrained
32 oz Kitchen Basics beef stock(Kitchen Basics offers a brand that is made ENTIRELY without salt. watch out for those other salty versions – yuck!)
2 cups water
1/2 cup uncooked barley prepared according to package instructions
1 large potato, diced
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bag diced frozen vegetables
1 tsp dried thyme
1. Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed large pot over high heat. Add half the beef and let it brown on one side before mixing it around. When all sides have been browned (or mostly all sides), remove the beef and add the remainder. Repeat until all beef is browned then return it and any juices to the pan.
2. Add the onion and garlic and lower heat, and cook for about 5 minutes or until the onion is soft and translucent.
3. Add the beef stock, water, tomatoes and thyme. Allow to come to a simmer.
4. Meanwhile, prepare your barley in a separate pot according to package instructions but at the end of the cooking time add 1/2 cup of water. Barley is notoriously piggish when it comes to water and if you cook it in the stock it’ll just keep absorbing until grossly swollen and mushy. Cook the barley until al dente, until it still has some firmness.
5. Allow your beef soup to simmer about 30 minutes or until those beef chunks are tender. Stew meat may take a while longer. Just adjust your cooking time accordingly.
6. When the beef is tender, add your frozen vegetables and diced potato to the soup pot and allow it come come back to a gentle boil and cook for about 10 minutes until those veg are tender.
7. Season with salt and pepper and get ready to serve.
8. To serve, add about 1/4 cup of drained cooked barley to each bowl and top with the beef soup, and enjoy with a heel of crusty bread!
Store uneaten portions in the fridge but KEEP YOUR BARLEY SEPARATE or those greedy little pearls will soak up all your precious liquid. Just heat it in the mic and add to your bowl when next enjoying your soup.
Here’s a tip: If you don’t like your soups to be so watery but like me can’t abide the thought of adding a slurry or beurre manie to your broth, then try this neat trick to thicken up the soup to the desired consistency. Slowly sprinkle in instant mashed potato flakes to your broth until the soup isn’t quite so watery and let it simmer for a brief moment. Voila!
Well, I learned a long time ago not to make resolutions. I only set myself up for failure and then I make everybody around me miserable until I work through it. So, no resolutions for me.
However, if I were to make a resolution it might include trying to incorporate more healthy dishes into our family dinners. To that end I did some research and after being inspired by several recipes decided to create my own for baked fish.
This fish dish has the best of everything I love with fish: citrus, crunch, and FLAVOR! Gawd, there’s nothing worse than eating bland blah blah fish.Well, this dish is anything but. So if you are one of the many who has a resolution to eat more healthy, give this dish a whirl!
Baked Crunch Citrusy Yummy Fish
4 fish fillets such as cod, halibut, or another firm white fish
2 TB light mayonnaise
1/2 TB lemon juice, or to taste
1/2 tsp garlic powder
grated black pepper
2-3 drops of Tabasco
1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
1 tsp melted butter
1 TB fresh grated Parmesan cheese
Pat your fully thawed fish fillets dry with a paper towel and place on a baking sheet. Preheat your oven to 425F.
Combine the mayo, lemon juice, garlic powder and pepper together, then add tobasco to taste. Smear this liberally over the top of the fish fillets.
Melt the butter then add the panko to the butter and toss until crumbs are well coated. Add the parmesan and combine well. Top the fillets with the breadcrumb mixture then bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or more until the fish flakes easily in the center. Thinner fish fillets will require less time so pay attention!
Hubby and I had a rare day the other day when he wasn’t at work, and both kids were at a friends house. With an entire day on our hands to do what we wanted, we decided that it ought to consider lunch at the kind of place you really don’t want to take the kids.
The thing with this city is that most of the fancy schmancy restaurants do NOT serve lunch! They’re open only for dinner and as a result this seriously hampered our choices. I didn’t want to just go someplace that had sandwiches no matter how fancy, I wanted a real lunch.
I had heard of this particular restaurant before but never had the chance to go for several reasons. The main reason is that it is at the other end of town. On this day however, we had time and so decided to give it a whirl.
Green Pastures is located in an older part of town that once, when the city was very young, would have been considered the countryside. Today it has been engulfed by a residential community but it stands out like an emerald in a sea of shabby chic homes that Austin has perfected. The meticulously groomed lawns greet you with a vista of green as you drive in but the eye is drawn first to the the magnificent and stately manor house that sits at the end of this short drive. I mustn’t forget to mention the peacocks even if they did elicit a sardonic chuckle from me; of course there had to be peacocks.
I was not overawed by the oozing pretention from this turn of the century home but rather climbed the few steps to the winding whitewashed porch than ran the length of the building and reached for the door knob.
Reached, and missed. Some elegantly dressed young man saw me coming and opened the door for me and welcomed us to Green Pastures and ushered us through and into a wood paneled foyer where we gave our name and party number and we were shown to the music room.
The music room is aptly named for the large, ornate and obviously antique piano that stood along a wall, but I was more interested in the cheery fire that burned therein and chose the seat with my back to it to ward off the chill.
The lunch menu was not the largest I’d ever seen but there were many options on there that I was seriously interested in. You can see the menu in its entirety here: Green Pastures Restaurant Menu
I decided to go with the Sauteed Chicken with Mushrooms, Blue Crab, Avocado and Jarlsburg. It was served perfectly cooked; the chicken was tender and NOT one of those disgusting spongy ‘marinated’ breasts that is full of sodium. It was sitting on top of a small disc of saffron basmati rice that absorbed all the wonderful buttery juice from the chicken. The Mushrooms were scattered over the top, as was the crab and avocado. Then jarlsburg to cover all and a brief foray under the Salamader to melt it and lightly brown the whole concoction. A delicate sauce was also on the plate.
A fairly simple dish yes, but it was executed perfectly. It was accompanied by a tossed baby greens salad that had no real stand out feature except for the cayenne shortbread cookie that adorned the plate in place of chunky and cumbersome croutons. The subtle flavor of the cookie was a perfect foil to the sweet greens and delightfully tangy dressing.
My husband ordered the Yukon Gnocchi with Grilled chicken, Blue Cheese, Artichokes, Sun-dried Tomatoes, Spinach, Walnuts and Vermouth with Cream. If my dish was good then his was heaven on a plate. Soft and fluffy gnocchi were perfectly cooked and had a pleasant bite of roasted garlic to them but not enough to over-power the potato. The artichokes were fresh and wonderful, the sauce creamy and divine without being heavy and every single bite of his dish blended the flavors beautifully. It was also a LARGE plate of food and well worth the $15.00 charged for it. My only potential complaint with his dish was that it wasn’t very pretty to look at…but hey, have a bite and shut up.
We were too full for dessert but out of professional interest I looked over the menu and was pleased to see a variety of offerings that weren’t the usual dessert trappings a la Sysco. Sure there was the stock cheesecake but Bananas Foster tableside, or Pots de Creme, or bread pudding…these things are made in house not from some stock food service company.
Our meal was delightful, relaxing and filling. Our waiter was pleasant and proficient without being stuffy or amateur, asking us once if everything was to our liking rather than the 3000 times as is the usual custom around here. All in all I would highly recommend this restaurant to anybody be it for business or pleasure, and I am eager to go back the next time (several years from now I’m sure) that I have a chance to lunch with my husband without kids.
Phew! So the Thanksgiving festivities are over and now we hurl ourselves with all abandon into Christmas. As you may know, I’m Canadian and the Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October which is in my humble estimation, a much more civilized time to celebrate it. You see, having less than a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is really just insane and leaves so very little time to properly prepare.
Never fear, where food is concerned I am here!
Today I’m going to share with you my secret for the best darn cheeseballs you’ve ever had. And, when I saw the price of them in the deli I was just flabbergasted. When you see how simple they are you will never again want to buy them.
Cheeseballs Made Easy
1 8oz package cream cheese (go light if you want though hey, these are cheeseballs, nothing about them is light!)
assorted leftover bits of cheese
toasted nuts like almonds, walnuts or hazelnuts
Here’s the tricky part about cheeseballs. You need to strategize. If you want a blue-er flavor to your cheeseballs I’d add stuff like blue cheese, parmesan, havarti even mozarella. Go easy with that blue; you’ll overpower your cheeseball in no time.
If you want a sharper flavor but less exotic I’d use sharp cheddar, brie (minus the rind), provolone.
How about Italian? Use a bit of sundried tomatoes (not oil packed) along with parmesan, little bit of cheddar for tang, provolone.
I store up all my bits of cheese over the course of the year in a baggie in the freezer. Defrost and voila!
So, add your softened cream cheese and all your other cheeses into a food processor and combine. Adjust for seasoning (though cheese is salty so go easy), roll into a ball then roll through toasted nuts.
Done!
Even though it is nearly winter in many parts of the world, picnics can still be a fun way to discover and celebrate the outdoors. The following article was contributed by a fellow food lover and blogger by the name of Chen and he shares with us a few great picnic ideas that look particularly scrumptious and who doesn’t love smoke salmon any time of year?
Two Unique Picnic Ideas
by Chen
No matter what time of year it may be, a picnic is always a lovely treat for you and your family. You can prepare a large variety of dishes and have your picnic at a large variety of places, and can enjoy each others company no matter what the circumstances. A big part of a successful picnic is the food that is being served, and deciding what to prepare can be a pain – especially when you are choosing between meats. Finding picnic food ideas for meat can be tricky, but rest assured, this article will show you the way. Below are recipes for two picnic meat dishes that you can prepare that promise to be a bit less common than your typical hamburger or hotdog.
Picnic Food Ideas for Meat: Smoked Salmon Sandwiches
When we think of dishes at a picnic, salmon probably does not immediately come to mind. But believe it or not, salmon makes a great picnic food. These smoked salmon sandwiches are delicious and a welcome divergence from the usual hamburgers and hotdogs. You will need the following (serves 4):
- 8 pieces of ciabatta bread
- 8-10 ounces of smoked salmon
- ½ cup of honey
- ½ cup of balsamic vinegar
- ¼ cup of soy sauce
- Cracked black pepper
- Arugula or other leafy green lettuce
- Melted butter
To make these sandwiches, first prepare the glaze. Mix the honey, vinegar, and soy sauce. Then, include a pinch of cracked black pepper. Mix well and set aside briefly. Take your salmon and cover both sides in the glaze. Let sit for a few minutes. While you do this, take your ciabatta bread and spread melted butter on the insides. Then, slice the salmon into strips, place the salmon between the bread, and add the arugula.
Picnic Food Ideas for Meat: Grilled Kielbasa
Kielbasa, the delicious Polish sausage that is known for its rich and sometimes spicy taste, makes a great picnic meat, especially when grilled. This recipe gives you a great option for your kielbasa. You will need:
- 1 pound of smoked kielbasa
- 1 tablespoons of olive oil
- 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon of horseradish
- 1 teaspoon of honey
- Pita bread
- 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise
- Melted butter
First, take the olive oil, mustard, honey, and horseradish and mix well together in a bowl to make a sauce. Lightly spread melted butter onto your pita bread and set aside. Then, take your kielbasa and cut it in half, and then lengthwise. You can cut it crosswise into four sections if you want smaller portions. Set aside. Take your bread and lightly grill it so that it is slightly crisp yet still capable of being rolled. Then, grill your kielbasa for 3 1/2 to 4 minutes, turning over at around the 2 minute mark. Spread your sauce on the pita, place the kielbasa on the pita, and roll the bread. You can sear the outside on the grill for 30 seconds if you want; just make sure you get all of the bread.
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Chen has even more great picnic ideas at his blog: Picnic Food Ideas – check them out they’re great!
Onwards with my discourse on leeks. Along with onions and garlic, leeks are in the Alliaceae family. While certainly not very popular in Texas, leeks are revered in other more culinary inclined parts of the world. In many countries of Europe leeks are a focal point to the meal rather than just an ingredient. And sadly, if I see a leek at all in these thar parts then it is as an ingredient only.
Sure, we’ve all heard of leek and potato soup, but what a disservice to the humble leek! I think I could be perfectly happy if leeks were one of the three things I was allowed to take with me on a deserted island. Leeks, Hugh Jackman and Brad Pitt. Seriously though, leeks are so underrated here in the US and yet they are deceptively simple to work with. Here follows your primer.
Leeks look like green onions on steroids. When selecting leeks in the store, look for long firm leeks with the roots still attached. Feel the roots. Do they feel wilted and dried out? Don’t buy those leeks. Look for fresh roots and outer layers on the leeks that aren’t discolored or dried out. Get those ones!
Once home you can prep the leeks. Slice off about a third of an inch off the root end and peel off the outermost layer of leek, peel the whole dang thing off. The outer layer is usually kind of thick and rubbery and nasty. We can do without that. Now using a big sharp knife cut through the leek about halfway between the end of the white part and the top of the leek. Discard the top portion.
The important thing to remember when dealing with leeks is that you don’t want to eat the dark green parts. Blech. Bitter, tough and all around yucky. You want the pale green and white parts only. So go ahead and trim up that leek cutting away the darkest green parts until you are left with only the pale green and white end.
Secon d thing to remember about leeks is they are notoriously dirty! Leeks grow in fine sandy soil and they grow in layers so you’re going to have sand potentially in each layer of leek. The best thing to do is to cut your leek in half lengthwise, then cut into half moons. Place all cut sections into a colander and wash the heck out of them. Unless your recipe calls for a different preparation this is the easiest way to clean them.
So now you’ve got a mess of leeks, what the heck are you going to do with them? I’m going to share a recipe with you that is one of my favorite things of all time: Creamed Leeks. This recipe is more about technique than fancy ingredients. Go slow and take your time, you won’t regret this.
Creamed Leeks
6 leeks, sliced in half moons and cleaned
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste
1. Place cleaned leeks into a large non-stick skillet, and add butter.
2. Over very low heat, cook down the leeks until they are wilted and getting tender. Watch your heat carefully, you don’t want to brown the leeks. Low and slow on these babies.
3. Add the cream and on the lowest possible heat to retain the slightest of simmers, continue cooking the leeks, stirring frequently, until there’s little cream left. You want a nice porridgy consistency to the leeks.
4. Season and serve with broiled salmon and rice pilaf. OMG heaven. Or try alongside roasted pork loin with oven crisped potatoes.
There we have it. Creamed leeks. This is a side dish and it condenses down quickly. Use it as a garnish even. They are just so damn good. Do NOT serve them alongside anything that is too heavy a flavor. Do NOT serve them anywhere near beef. Amen. Chef out.
There’s something special about the area I live in that makes companies want to use us as a test market. Case in point Wendy’s. I was in my super-mom rush to get home from the grocery store and hadn’t eaten since sweating off several pints of liquid at the gym. Parched and famished I pull into Wendy’s and fall sucker to bright blitzy ads. TRY OUR NEW WRAPS!! says the sign to my left, the sign on the window, the big writing on the menu board.
Hmm, thought I. That might do the trick. I certainly know better than to order anything burger for fear I’d be eating a days worth of calories, and I don’t get fries because my arteries are having a hard enough time. So this wrap, like a beacon of light totally obliterates my idea of getting a lonely grilled chicken sandwich.
So I have my choice between:Smokehouse BBQ Wrap and the Baja Wrap. As a lover of most things spicy, I choose the Baja Wrap with cilantro lime sauce, pico de gaillo, chicken, lettuce, and a fresh looking really yummy tortilla.
Fast forward to getting home, sitting here at the desk and enjoying every delightful bite of this wrapped scrumptiousness! Mmm, the tortilla is tender and fresh, the lettuces crisp and bountiful, the tomatoes have just the right spice, and the cilantro lime sauce is a pleasant undercurrent of flavor. Enter the chicken. I was slightly disappointed that the chicken was battered and fried, but the entire thing was just so darn good that I didn’t care.
So let me check the nutritional info on this, thought I. Being a test product, Wendy’s website doesn’t show the nutritional information. However, I found a website where a fellow claimed to have called Wendy’s hotline to get the nutritionals on these wraps. Umm…hold on tight, here are the numbers:
Smokehouse BBQ wrap has 57 grams fat, 1070 calories & 4 grams of fiber. The Baja Wrap has 48 grams of fat, 860 calories, 4 grams of fiber.
I just about clearly fell off my chair. The sodium isn’t listed but we all know that that will also be sky-high. So, in one meal I just had half my daily calories and most of my day’s worth of fat. That wrap isn’t sitting so well with me now, but I have no one to blame but myself. I KNOW better. Let this be a word from the not-always-wise: anything with sauce, be it smokey bbq sauce or cilantro lime sauce is going to be SCREAMING fat and sodium. The fried chicken thing is just a no brainer.
At $4.29 each, I’m feeling pretty dismayed. I could have had a few tablespoons of Crisco shortening for less, though it might not have tasted so good.
So now what, thought I. Now I must figure out a way to work in an extra workout into my day…jeeze, thanks Wendy’s!
So I may be a bit off season here and should save my discussion on grilling for say…summertime? I present the argument that it is summer in Australia and I have some devoted Aussie readers. As for the rest of you, tuck this bit of info away for next spring or a beautiful fall day.
I grew up with parents who loved to cook. Perhaps that is what started me on my love for food, but my father was the undisputed grill-master. Whether it was just to stand outside in self-contemplation with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, or by grilling he was filling some pseudo-male need for contributing in bringing in the hunt, my father loved to grill. Oh, he also loved to grill things to death.
Oh the years of chewing on nicely flavored albeit dried out meat were endless. Steaks were either notoriously under or overcooked, and for God’s sake don’t let the man BBQ chicken or we’d all get sick. No Dad, chicken should NOT be pink inside.
To be fair, it is tough to grill to perfect doneness. That is why the majority of chefs don’t! Grills in a professional kitchen are largely for putting grill marks onto meat, and imparting a taste of a thousand other pieces of meat and burnt ickyness into the meat.
Once perfectly marked and seared, the meat goes into the oven. Yup, that’s right. Finish that meat in a blast of 400F oven and your meat can be monitored and finished to perfection without drying out.
This is how I do it at home, too. Rarely (pun intended) will I fully cook something on the grill. The only exceptions are steak and meats on the rotisserie. The rest gets lovingly marked and seared and then into the oven.
Try it next time. Unless of course you’re one of those men who stands outside with cigarettes and beer contemplating the mysteries of MAN-kind while fiercely guarding the grill to provide sustenance for your family.
 So I’ve been wanting to talk about base for a while now. For those of you who are die-hard bullion users, welcome to the new century and usher in with all due fanfare…base!
I’m not certain how long bases have been around but there’s no doubt for those who use them that they truly are a chef’s best friend. Let me extrapolate:
Bases are a super concentrated paste made from pork, beef, chicken, seafood…anyplace you might normally find bullion. Base is much more flavorful and goes a heckuva (thanks Sarah!) long way further than bullion. Those super salty little cubes are a pain in my tuckus and have about the flavor punch of a baby. Enter base. This super concentrated paste is usually lower in sodium than bullion and is easily added to soups, stews, sauces…anywhere you need a wee bit of a flavor boost.
I was buying the professional version when I was working, but there is a good variety in the supermarket. You should be able to find it in the soup section, or wherever they sell that inferior bovril or bullion. The brand down here is “Better Than Bullion” and indeed it is.
So here’s the skinny on base. Sure, you could use stock but stock is going to add significant volume to whatever you’re making. Say you’re making chicken pot pie and you’re working on the sauce. You don’t want to add a bunch of chicken stock that is going to leave you with gallons of sauce, but a teaspoon or two (yup, that’s it) will add all the chicken flavor you need to your sauce.
Yes, I know it’s cheating. But not everybody has time to boil down bones for hours at a time to get a demiglace of such and such. Keep that base in your fridge and it’ll keep for months. Just add a spoonful to that crockpot of beef stew and watch what happens.
High in sodium you say? Sure, look at the label and gasp. But keep in mind that you’re just using a tiny tiny amount which is being folded out into multiple servings. Also consider the amount of sodium in those store brand stocks. When I make my own stock (yes, I still do on occasion), not a drop of salt hits the pot. Ever. The simple answer to the sodium in base is don’t add any extra salt until you’ve added your base. Base first, then salt.
I honestly cannot eat roast beef gravy without base in it. The base adds such a wonderful beef flavor that anything else is sub-par.
Try it in place of bullion – trust me. You won’t regret it!
The next in my series of blogs about onions, are pearl onions. These tasty mini onions are just fabulous in a variety of ways…provided you don’t have to peel them! When I had my biz, I once had to sit and peel 10 pounds of pearl onions. Can you imagine? I stank like onions for a week! Ya ya, of course you can blanch then peel them, but where’s the fun in that?
I’ve seen pearl onions in white, red and of course yellow varieties, but unless you’ve a hankering for smelling like onions for a week, do yourself a favor and buy the frozen ones!! Oooh yes, the lovely folks at BirdsEye have a retail pack of frozen pearl onions. Just thaw them under running water and then squeeze the onion out of the thin papery shell that they leave behind just to drive you crazy. People who are less the perfectionist than I may well leave that papery film on but I find that it is unpleasant to eat and well worth the extra minute to pop the onion out of there.
Pearl onions can be pickled, baked with a parmesan herb crumb on top (yum!), sauteed, added to stews, soups and pot pies, but one of my favorite methods for cooking pearl onions is in creamed onions. This dish has its roots in merry old England, and is one of those traditional dishes that you might turn your nose up at if you’re Texan and what? Not cook them on the BBQ? Seriously though, creamed onions are delish and such a treat that I’d save them for a holiday table. Here follows a recipe for these gems…dig in and enjoy!
Creamed Onions
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1 cup warmed milk
salt, pepper and a dash of nutmeg
2 10 oz bags of frozen pearl onions, thawed and papery film removed
1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a saucepan. Add the flour and stir frequently until the paste bubbles a wee bit, but don’t let it get too brown.
2. Slowly add the warmed milk, whisking as you go to prevent lumps. Continue to simmer over low heat until the mixture thickens.
3. Add the pearl onions and while stirring let the mixture continue to cook for 3-4 minutes or until your onions are warmed all the way through.
4. Season with salt, pepper and a wee bit of nutmeg. Keep the serving dish away from my brother and dig in!
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