Posts Tagged ‘Vegetables’

Cream of Asparagus soup

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

A week or so ago I made a pretty tasty asparagus soup. I’m posting it now because I really liked the recipe, but also because I wanted to recommend the stick blender I have. It’s the Cuisinart Stick Blender and it is very inexpensive. I’m constantly surprised how well it blends despite the low price tag. The following recipe was made with ingredients on hand, so not really fancy or anything.

  • 4 cups chicken stock
  • 2 lbs of asparagus
  • 2 medium sized russet potatoes diced
  • salt / pepper to taste
  • 2 ounces of pancetta
  • 1 smoked bratwurst
  • 2 fluid ounces of cream

Trim the asparagus and cut the heads off and reserve. Chop the asparagus roughly. Bring the chicken stock to a boil and add the chopped asparagus along with the potatoes. Cook for 30 minutes with a lid on until breaking apart. Blend with the stick blender. Add rendered pancetta and tops of asparagus back to the pot and bring everything to a low simmer. S

Did I remember to say how much I love the stick blender? This soup was very smooth.

If I had other ingredients on hand I would have cooked some shallots and garlic until translucent in a little olive oil, then added the asparagus, potatoes, and stock. I would also leave out the bratwurst and pancetta as the taste of the pancetta was quite strong. Serve with a dollop of sour cream.

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Frittata

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Yesterday I got up early, still jet-lagged from my trip to China, and decided to go to the grocery store at 6am to stock up the fridge a bit. I decided that I was going to make a frittata so I picked up some shredded potatoes, some tomatoes, cooked turkey, and some eggs.

When I got home I put together the following ingredients in a 12 inch oven-safe skillet:

  • 1 lb shredded potatoes
  • 3 diced roma tomatoes
  • 6 oz diced cooked turkey
  • 2 medium shallots sliced thinly
  • 1 cup of thinly shredded mozarella cheese
  • salt and pepper to taste

Layer all the ingredients evenly and pour over 10 eggs that you mixed together. Cook at 350F in the skillet for 35 minutes or until the eggs are just set.

If you didn’t have a (now) picky 4 year old, you could add some diced green/red pepper to the mix along with some scallions.

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Honey-Mustard Potato Salad

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

I made this a few weeks back, it turned out quite tasty. I had been reading a few blogs and it sounded like it was easy to make a tasty warm potato salad without having to use a mayo-based dressing. I cooked up 1 1/2 lb small red potatoes with the skin on like normal and made sure not to overcook them. While the potatoes were cooking I whisked together this quick dressing for the potatoes to suck up.

  • 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 2 tsp mustard
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • salt + pepper to taste

I dumped the potatoes into the dressing and flipped them a few times, then foiled the bowl and let them sit while I grilled up some pork chops to go with the potato salad. The pork chops were marinated in garlic, salt, pepper, and oregano for an hour before going on a very hot charcoal grill. Overall the meal turned out pretty good!

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Pickled Jalapenos

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

When I read the Ruhlman post about Michael Symon’s Pickled chilis back in March I knew I had to try and make them. Not until this week did I actually get as far as buying a pound of fresh Jalapenos at the grocery store, and I couldn’t remember enough of the recipe so I assumed I had everything I needed. Not so. I had to make at least a few substitutions such as rice vinegar instead of sherry vinegar. It’s easy enough to click the link to get the original recipe, so I’ll only put down what I actually used here.

  • 1 cup water
  • 1 cup rice vinegar
  • dash of french thyme
  • 1 tsp aleppo pepper
  • 1/2 tsp oregano
  • 2 tbsp white pepper
  • 1 1/3 tbsp salt
  • 1 1/3 tbsp cane sugar
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 2 tbsp of  coriander
  • 2 bay leaves
  • ~ 1 lb of fresh jalapenos

The peppers fit snug into a quart mason jar with just cutting the tops off. The remaining ingredients were put in a sauce pan and simmered on the stove for 10 minutes. Let cool just a little bit and poured over the peppers. They go in the fridge as soon as the jar is cool enough. I’ll see if I can keep my hands off of them for a week or so before sampling the first time. Hopefully my substitutions wont have made it horrible.

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Redwine and Creme de Cassis marinated flank steak & Herb and Cheese Pork Tenderloin with grilled sweet potatoes and grilled polenta

Monday, May 25th, 2009

I wanted to grill out again today, and I had a perfectly fine flank steak in the fridge that I took out from the freezer yesterday. I had just finished watching another episode of Bobby Flay’s “Grill It” where he marinated some beef in Creme de Cassis and Red wine. It certainly sounded good to me, so I knew what to do with the flank steak.

  • 2 lb flank steak
  • 2/3 cup red wine
  • 1/2 cup creme de cassis
  • 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
  • fresh ground pepper
  • pinch of kosher salt
  • oregano

Remove the sinew and extra fat on the flank steak. Cut in some 1/4″ deep cross marks on the flank steak and sprinkle generously with the kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, and oregano. Put the remaining ingredients in a zip lock bag and put the flank steak in the marinade. Refrigerate for an hour before letting it come to room temperature to get ready for the grill.

I also had a pork tenderloin in the fridge that I wanted to grill at the same time.

  • 1.5 lb pork tenderloin
  • sprig fresh thyme
  • sprig fresh oregano
  • 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
  • 1 1/2 cup of fresh grated asiago & romano cheese
  • 4 cloves chopped garlic
  • fresh ground pepper
  • kosher salt

Remove the fat, sinew, and silver skin from the pork tenderloin. Butterfly the tenderloin into a 1/2″ thick flat piece. Sprinkle the seasonings and cheese mix on top of the tenderloin and roll it up tightly. I used some butcher twine to keep the roll together for cooking. It’s fairly easy to tie a few butcher’s knots to keep it together.

The tenderloin needed a little longer cooking time than the flank steak. The flank steak had a nice char to it and was perfect medium rare in the thicker part. The Creme de Cassis really came through in the final product. The pork tenderloin was also perfectly done although a little on the dry side. Also had some nice grill marks on the outside. Next time the pork tenderloin should really have some kind of gravy to compliment it.

I wanted to grill some vegetables and had a roll of polenta from Trader Joe’s that I wanted to grill up too.

  • Roll of organic polenta from Trader Joe’s
  • 1 large sweet potato
  • 1 cup fresh grated asiago & romano cheese
  • oregano
  • fresh ground pepper
  • kosher salt
  • 1 clove chopped garlic
  • 2 tbsp olive oil

Peel the sweet potato and cut it into about 6 equal sized slices. Brush olive oil on each side and sprinkle with ground pepper and kosher salt. Open the roll of polenta and cut them into even sized slices (about 1/2″ thick). Brush both sides with olive oil and sprinkle fresh ground pepper and kosher salt on them. Mix the cheese with the chopped garlic, oregano, and fresh ground pepper.

Put the all the slices over a medium hot fire. The polenta will stick pretty bad even with the olive oil. Leave them for a few minutes – enough to get some grill marks. Once you flip them over sprinkle with the cheese and herb mixture on top – it will lightly melt as the residual radiates up to through the cheese. Even with the sticking it turned the polenta turned out pretty tasty and almost creamy.  The salty cheese mixture on top worked well with it too.

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Stir fried pea tips

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

One of the things I really miss from my few trips to Beijing were the absolutely fabolous stir fried pea tips (Dou Miao) from Din Tai Fung(*). I’ve tried making it a few times before after finding Peat Tips at Shuang Hur on University Ave in St. Paul. They usually turned out OK, but very bland. I remember the liquid tasting like chicken broth, but it wasn’t soupy by any means. The flavors didn’t have any strong components that were easy to pick out. So I figured I could try a splash of regular chicken broth at the next attempt – It really didn’t do much.

Back then I had done some Googling, but just wasn’t able to find any recipe and I didn’t know the Chinese name for it at the time so I forgot about it until I got a craving for it yesterday triggered by having the dish last weekend, when Sarah and Jesse brought it over from Little Szechuan.

Hoping I’d have better luck this time I once again turned to Googling, and the blog Life kept coming up in my searches with this recipe for Dou Miao. I was a bit skeptical as I remember the dish being delicate and I didn’t think that both garlic and ginger fit in. One thing that did strike me right off the bat was the use of granulated chicken broth to get the chicken flavor without the dish turning into soup – I remember that I had the exact same can from when my coworkers from Beijing were over about a year ago. Back then we used it in some traditional Chinese boiled dumplings that were out of this world.

The basic ingredients were fresh pea tips, ground ginger, salt, sugar, chicken broth mix, and sesame oil to finish. The pea tips in the pictures on the site look a lot smaller than the ones I’m able to get here. The stems of the pea tips available here are very thick, so I cleaned them out and removed lots of the stems.

I used fresh, chopped ginger for my dish and fried it until golden brown in peanut oil. Then added the rinsed pea tips. They cooked down a little bit and I added salt, 1 tsp sugar,  1 tsp chicken broth mix, and 2 chopped cloves of garlic.  Stir frying for a few seconds more I decided to add just a tiny amount of water as the chicken broth mix was dosed based on the  larger amount of pea tips used in the original recipe and it seemed to cling to the leaves without dissolving.

Next time I will probably try to dissolve the chicken broth mix it in a bit of boiling water first. After stir frying I pretty much realized that I need many more pea tips next time.  They whittle down as much as spinach. I used about half an lb before cooking this time.  It could also use a bit more sesame oil.

The dish was finished off with just a little dash of sesame oil. It was very tasty – close to what I had in Beijing. I’m sure it will get better as I try making it again.

* Din Tai Fung is most known for soup style dumplings. They are some of the tasties dumplings I’ve ever tasted. If you happen to be in one of the cities where they have a restaurant it’s worth going out of your way for. I have since going there figured out that the way you get soup into a dumpling is to make a very gelatenous soup (boiled pigs skin?) that you chill and mix with your dumpling filling. I will have to try this in the near future too.

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