Win Le Creuset

In the midst of this hectic Monday take a minute and visit David Lebovitz's blog. He's teamed up with Le Creuset to give away a six piece cookware set for Christmas. Hurry since the contest cut off times are based on Paris time:

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/12/le-creuset-holiday-give-away/#more-3038

It will probably be another week or more until I'm up and cooking. Right now Vega shakes are keeping me fed. A vegan, gluten-free, soy-free protein and fiber supplement is hard to find. One that tastes decent even more so. Add an wee umbrella to the glass and it will be your very own "Thomas Crown Affair" worthy gloppy, green breakfast.

http://shop.sequelnaturals.com/sequel-estore-us/Graceful-Aging_2/whole_food_health_optimizer-large_chai

Equipment

Just read this excellent post on what tools a baking kitchen needs. Look for a new sections soon covering a kitchen witch's tools, pantry and freezer staples.

http://www.culinate.com/articles/features/essential_baking_equipment_and_supplies

Comfort Food

I'm still struggling with medical issues and tests to try and figure out said issues. The current joke is my job is being a lab rat or medical experiment. Usually I freeze quarts of soups and stews for these stretches of time when trying to walk upright is a challenge. Right now I've worked through my entire stash. Which makes the box of Kettle Cuisine my good friend and neighbor gave me all the more welcome.

Chicken noodle soup is the quintessential don't-feel-good comfort food. As I recall it also is beneficial during colds, and other feverish, puny times. Mainly it tastes good, creating a feeling of lassitude and well-being, akin to a grandmotherly hug.

Now imagine a frozen soup actually tastes good, able to provide a modicum of those benefits, and you have Kettle Cuisine's gluten-free, dairy-free, corn-free and soy-free Chicken Noodle Soup.

Does it compare to the best chicken soup I ever had in my life, last winter in Texas? Home-made with a roasting chicken, fresh chopped veggies, delicately seasoned, and brought over in a lovely tureen. Sort of. That tureen of soup will remain legendary in my gastronomic memories, along with the wonderful woman who made it. Cooking for someone with food allergies isn't a simple thing. Cooking and making it taste good is work. Everything has to be checked, even the spices that may be laced with corn-based anti-caking agents.

Kettle Cuisine's chicken noodle soup is clearly related to home-made and admirably 'real' for prepackaged food. It isn't overly salty, yet the broth is lightly flavorful, not bland and not so seasoned as to upset a twitchy stomach. The chicken pieces are real chunks of chicken, not pressed together mystery bits. The noodles are sturdy, flat, egg-style noodles, just long enough to slurp and not so long as to be spaghetti. Carrot slices, diced onion round out this much needed bowl of comfort. And all wrapped up in a package that microwaves in four minutes.

Of the three boxes I bought at Natural Grocers this morning I don't expect a one to last the weekend. They can also be found at Whole Foods. At just over $3 per bowl they aren't inexpensive. For the first time in over a decade to have the convenience of a fast bowl of steaming hot comfort food, they are well worth it.

Even if you don't have food allergies, try a bowl. I'll be consuming mine, each starting with a whispered thanks for good friends bearing food.

http://www.kettlecuisine.com/Our-Soup.aspx

Tomato Soup

In my memories tomato soup is as good as the old Campbell's soup commercials imply. Fragrant, creamy, soul-warming, nourishing yet decadent with a diagonally-cut grilled cheese sandwich to dip in a brimming hot mug. As good as grandma's lightly floury hugs, filling but not so much as to not have room for her fresh baked cookies.

It is another simple comfort food that became verboten for too long. Canned soups are full of corn syrup, boxed soups have cream or enough salt to pucker your face off, or worse taste like liquid cardboard. None of which evoke nostalgia or fulfill a craving. Then a couple years ago I stumbled onto a recipe. At the same time I bought my first immersion blender. Over the winter making the recipe mine involved changing proportions, deleting some ingredients and mugs upon mugs of soup.

This recipe is fairly forgiving, if you have two leeks and only half an onion, go ahead and make the soup. Craving garlic, add a bit more. Change up the peppers for roasted and add a dash of cilantro. Have yellow or orange bell peppers moldering in the crisper? Chop'em up and toss them in the pot.

Make a pot after work while enjoying a glass of the white wine or make it on a weekend while enjoying a couple glasses. This soup freezes very well making it as convenient as the old canned stuff.

Tomato Soup

2-3 tablespoons of olive oil

1 leek (chopped)

1 yellow onion (chopped)

2 garlic cloves (chopped)

2 stalks of celery (chopped)

1 red bell pepper (chopped)

3-4 oz white wine, usually a sauvignon blanc

1 15oz can of pumpkin

1 tablespoon of basil (chopped) (or a palm of dried)

1 tablespoon of parsley (chopped) (or a palm of dried)

1 15oz can of diced tomato

1 small can of tomato paste

1 dash white pepper

4 cups of chicken broth, or veggie broth for a vegetarian option

Large pinch of kosher salt

Warm the olive oil in a dutch oven or soup pot. Add the chopped leaks, onion, celery, garlic and bell pepper.

Sauté until the onion is translucent. Add the white wine and simmer.

Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, pumpkin, broth, and seasonings. Simmer for about 30 minutes.

Purée with the immersion blender in the pot or transfer in batches to the blender. Let me know if what memories it evokes for you.

Gluten Free cookbook give away on Cybele Pascal's blog

Visit this blog http://www.cybelepascal.com/?p=1846 for a review of "Gluten Free Girl and the Chef" cookbook, and comment to enter for a free copy.

Then do read the book, at the store or at the library. The flat bread crackers recipe alone make the book a must-buy. I haven't read the story of their life, Shauna's writing is evocative and the beauty she'll describe will hurt right now. For now I skip through the recipe and plan to read their story next year.

I'm trying a version of "Blackbird Bakery's apple pie tomorrow. Will post it Sunday if it comes out as amazing as the recipe sounds.

Mean time, go enter, and enjoy

Giving thanks

I received this from a feisty, continuous, handsome, elegant friend who now lives a hemisphere away, and had to share it with y'all. With thanks to her and all the friends and chosen family so dear to me. You are always at the table of my heart.

LET US GIVE THANKS

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people
For children who are our second planting
and though they grow like weeds
and the wind too soon blows them away,
May they forgive us our cultivation
and remember fondly where their roots are.

Let us give thanks:
For generous friends, with hearts as big as hubbards
and smiles as bright as their blossoms;
For feisty friends as tart as apples;
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers,
keep reminding us we've had them;
For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb
and as indestructible;
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants
and as elegant as a row of corn,
and the others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you;
For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts
and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes,
and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers
and as intricate as onions;
For friends as unpretentious as cabbages,
as subtle as summer squash,
as persistent as parsley,
as delightful as dill,
as endless as zucchini,
and who, like parsnips,
can be counted on to see you throughout the winter;
For old friends,
nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time
and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;
For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils
and hold us, despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;
And finally, for those friends now gone,
like gardens past that have been harvested,
but who fed us in their times
that we might have life thereafter;
For all these we give thanks.

-- Poem /prayer by MAX COOTS

Blessed Be!

Yukons and Yams

Yesterday turned out to be a no-cooking day. As I was getting ready to scrub the Yukon gold potatoes and the yams the garbage disposal fell off the sink. While running, and it kept running, giving the kitchen, the floor and the under sink cabinet contents a good rinsing, or flooding. Which means instead of slow roasting yams and boiling potato pieces the day went to mopping up, cleaning out under the sink, calling handy friends for help. Hopefully later this afternoon a good friend will have the disposal reattached, or replaced, and holiday cooking can move forward. Trying to be thankful it didn't happen Thanksgiving morning...and that not all my handy buddies are hunters off on a mountain somewhere.

Now we'll resume our regularly scheduled programming:

Yukons and Yams

You know how some leftovers taste better than they did during the meal? More flavorful, rich and enticing? That is one of the key reasons I like to prepare most of the side dishes and desserts a couple days before a feast. It gives the flavors time to meld, deepening the tastes, becoming leftover rich for the big meal.

Yukon gold potatoes are my favorite with their thin skins that don't require peeling and a buttery taste. While hosting a function at a hotel the chef made me yukons mashed with kosher salt and olive oil. They smelled divine, so golden yellow I was certain they'd been soaked with butter. I was blissfully wrong, slowly eating each bite and sorely tempted to lick the plate clean. That chef gave me back mashed potatoes. Even now I hesitate to put gravy on them, it distracts from their buttery simplicity.

Buy 6-8 oz of potatoes per person you're serving. If your crew consists of big eaters or carb fiends, bump that up to 12 oz. It will mean having a few leftovers, maybe.

The beauty of preparing potatoes, either kind, is there are no measurements after weighing them for purchase. Everything is by taste, by desired consistency, and fluctuates every time based on the potatoes.

Scrub the potatoes then cut them into even sized chunks. Place them in a pot large enough all the potatoes only half fill it. Add enough water to barely cover them. Sprinkle with Kosher sea salt. Cover the pot and cook on medium-low, stirring occasionally. Cook until the potatoes are soft and the liquid is almost gone.

I mash mine in the pot with extra-virgin olive oil, and a bit more sea salt. When I want smoother whipped potatoes the Kitchenaid immersion blender is the tool of choice; chunkier potatoes call for the old fashioned hand-masher. If it seems like they aren't salty enough add a bit of granulated garlic. It will enhance the salt and flavor without over powering the rest of the flavors. White pepper will avoid little black flecks, but really if your guests are whining about flecks in their potatoes they need to be a someone else's table.

At this point the potatoes go into a storage container to cool. The day I serve them about an hour before dinner I'll put them back in a pot with a bit of coconut milk creamer to keep them from drying out. If they aren't seasoned to the point you want to keep eating them out of the pot, keep adding salt, garlic, or creamer, until you do. Then they're ready.

Preparing the yams/sweet potatoes isn't much different, buy them in the same quantities as the other potatoes, scrub them well. Roasting the yams in-skin starts caramelizing the sugars, reducing the amount of sweetener needed later. If there aren't any other dishes needing to be baked, preheat the oven to 400 and bake the potatoes for an hour, or more, until they are tender to the touch. No need to wrap them in foil or even put them in a pan, right on the rack works best.

If you're baking other things, no worries, any temp under 400 works, the yams will just take a bit longer to cook. If you're lucky enough to be feeding a big crew having an oven full of yams roasting makes for a warm, autumn and caramel redolent house.

Once they're done, use mitts or silicon pads to remove from the oven. When they are still warm/hot but cool enough to handle without burning yourself, slit them open and scrap out the 'meat' into a mixing bowl. Mine end up in the Kitchenaid mixer with the paddle attachment. No mixer? That old fashioned potato masher works great too, just more effort on your part, or step where kids can easily help.

Add a splash of orange juice, a bit of light brown sugar, and a splash of Grand Marnier liqueur. If the yams seem a bit dry I'll add a splash of extra-virgin olive oil. Agave syrup also works in place of the brown sugar.

Just like the potatoes, store in a container and reheat in a pot with a bit more OJ and Grand Marnier.

These will be sweet, fragrant, yet nothing like the canned candied yams covered in sugar and marshmallows. If there are any leftovers a sweet potato pudding makes a wonderful hot breakfast or snack.

More later about cranberry relishes, right now it is time to reassemble the kitchen sink with a working disposal.