Recipes: Fruit And Vegetables

After seeing this completely and totally awesome page for minestrone linked off of wikipedia, I felt it was my patriotic duty to make minestrone. After all, I do live in Las Vegas, and anybody who lives here knows that italian restaurants outnumber any other kind of restaurant by a factor of approximately thirty-seven to three. I especially liked the basic assumption- that you can pretty much just buy seasonal vegetables, completely at random, throw them all together, and make some soup. I mean, you basically don't need to know how to do anything. How could this possibly go wrong?

So I went to Sunflower Market, since they sell local produce, and bought twelve of every vegetable they had. If you could screw up minestrone, I was going to figure out how. I came home, got a big stock pot out, and started my soffrito- a fancy word to say I rendered the fat out of some bacon and then threw in some onions, leeks, and shallots.

I also didn't have pig trotters or marrow bones or anything like that, so for thickening I waited until my 'soffrito' was pretty much sweated, then threw in some flour, like a roux. Then I spent TWO. HOURS. cutting up vegetables and throwing them in. I cubed the turnips. I chopped up the zucchini, summer squash, celery root, spinach leaves, potatoes, and carrots. It looked like I was carving up the grisly aftermath of a war against the vegetables, a war which I handily won. All of it drowning in six cans of chicken broth and a pitcher of water, with a sprig of rosemary (I fished that out after everything started smelling like rosemary), a bay leaf, and a parmesan crust. Then, because I was pretty much throwing in everything I had, I put in two cans of kidney beans and a cup of orzo. By this point I was in such a rut that I might have diced my children and thrown them in, had they wandered into the kitchen.

It cooked for HOURS. Three and a half hours. I felt like a witch, sitting there and stirring my massive cauldron of stuff. And then something magical happened. It started to smell like delicious.

So, basically, you'd have to try way harder than I did to screw up minestrone.

Last night, I decided to do away with a bunch of leeks by whipping up some sort of soup with them, mostly because I'd wanted to try vichysoisse for months. I can now say that, whatever it is I made last night, I ate it and it was fantastic.

• 3 leeks, chopped fine
• 6 red potatoes, cut thinly
• 2 cans of chicken broth
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
• 4 pieces bacon
• 1 pint cream
• garlic salt
• pepper to taste
• 1/4 tsp celery seed
• 1/4 cup mild cheddar, shredded
• 1/2 cup romano, grated
• 1/4 cup portobello mushrooms, chopped
• 1/4 cup butter

I was at a baby shower yesterday and they had this great pink dip to go along with some fresh fruit (strawberries, raspberries, etc) and I had to know what it was. The answer I got was "It's Fluff!". Well okay, "But, what is Fluff?" Are you ready for this? It is 2 ingredients combined together...a jar of marshmallow cream and a small tub of strawberry cream cheese. And it is excellent.

Fluff

1 7oz jar Marshmallow Cream
1 8oz Strawberry Cream Cheese Spread

Combine the ingredients and serve with fresh fruit or graham cracker sticks.

While verifying the sizes of containers for you I found this site with an entire list of different ways to make a "cream cheese fruit dip". Here are two of them that I will have to try. They sound so good! (Note: The recipes below did not originally have names, these are just the names I have assigned them. Thanks.)

Coconut Fluff
8 oz. cream cheese
1 sm. jar marshmallow cream
1/2 can cream of coconut

Blend cream cheese until fluffy; add cream of coconut (be sure and stir the can up well before using). Beat in marshmallow cream.

Pineapple Fluff 1 8oz pkg cream cheese
1 small can crushed pineapple w/juice
1 small jar marshmallow fluff

Mix all and chill.

I have always made my own bread crumbs for this recipe. In my opinion the larger crumbs work better than the small size of a prepared bread crumb. You can use any flavor of bread (white, wheat, french bread), day old bread works great, as does the heel of the bread. If you would like to use a prepared breadcrumb rather than crumbling up some bread you might consider using some panko style crumbs

Creamy Spinach

• 2 package (10 oz each) frozen chopped spinach
• 1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 cup small bits of torn up bread (about 2 slices)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• seasonings of your choice. (I use 2-3 tsp Italian Seasoning).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cook the spinach according to the package directions and drain well. Combine the spinach, cream cheese, butter, and salt. Pour into a greased or buttered 8in by 8in baking dish.

Topping: Pour the melted butter over the top of bread crumbs. Use a fork to stir well making sure to moisten all of the crumbs. Add in the salt, pepper and seasonings. Spread out evenly over the top of the spinach mixture.

Bake uncovered for 30 minutes or until lightly browned and heated through.

(Note: If you double this recipe, bake it in a 9 in by 13 in dish following the same cooking time.)

I found this recipe last year and decided I would never again open a can of Whole Cranberry Sauce. It is so simple you won't believe you ever used the canned stuff either. The recipe is on the back of Paradise Meadow Cape Cod Cranberries and while many other great recipes can be found on their site, this one is not listed there. So I have listed it here for you.

Whole Cranberry Sauce

• 1 (12 oz) bag or 3 cups cranberries (fresh or frozen)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup cold water

Place all ingredients in a sauce pan. Boil rapidly until berries pop open (approximately 5 minutes). Cool.
Yield: 3-4 cups.

If you are ready for some yams that appeal to the adult palate that the children will enjoy as well, then this recipe is for you. My aunt has made Praline Yams every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas since I was in 5th grade. I have always looked forward to eating her yams because they were sweet, yet they had no marshmallows. I've never had yams like hers anywhere else. I finally asked her for the recipe last year and found out that it is right on the can of Princella Cut Yams. Who knew!

If, however, you must make Candied Yams with marshmallows on top, I leave you with one warning. Do not leave the oven unattended. One evening, my mom was making candied yams to go with dinner and suddenly there were flames shooting out of the oven. She had forgotten about the yams and the marshmallows caught on fire. My dad grabbed the fire extinguisher and put the fire out. Needless to say, we had no candied yams that night, but we did have a large mess to clean up.

See you next week with more recipes for your Thanksgiving dinner.

This Cranberry Salad recipe is another passed on from my aunt. I have been making it for several years now and always get excellent reviews. It is a great dish for the summer time as well.

Start this dish the evening before you are serving it. In the morning stir in the remaining ingredients and the dish will be ready when you need it. A great make-ahead dish.

Be sure to buy cranberries in November and store them in your freezer (they keep for 1 year that way). Cranberries are not available the rest of the year.

Cranberry Salad

• 1 bag (12 oz) cranberries
• 2 cups sugar

Grind the cranberries using a food processor. Put into a bowl and combine with the sugar. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

• 1 1/2 cups walnuts
• 1 bag (10.5 oz) marshmallows
• 1 pint whipping cream
• 1 can (20 oz) crushed pineapple, drained

In a large bowl, add the remaining ingredients to the cranberry mixture, stir. Refrigerate for at least one our before serving.

I'm still formulating my article for my Greek Night dish, but in the meantime I thought I'd share something I had stumbled on the other day while making steaks.

First, a little background info. We bought some Omaha steaks from some wholesaler for pennies on the peso, and as a sort of celebration, we decided to have them with a pan sauce.

I get home, throw the cast iron 12 in the oven at 500 degrees, wait until its rocket hot, and start searing my steaks. While it's sizzling along, I start to look for things for my pan sauce. Button mushrooms, sure, those will work, butter, got that, garlic salt, check, white wine.... crap. There wasn't any white wine in the house. I did, however, find an old bottle of Nigori Sake, so I decided to give that a shot. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Sake-wise, go here.

Anyway, I finish up the steaks, a la Alton Brown style, and throw the cast iron back on the stove. I put two tablespoons of butter in the pan, and waited for it to melt completely before adding the mushrooms. I know, some of you are screaming "YOU SHOULD'VE DEGLAZED FIRST!@#!#!". The reason I didn't? Sake is acidic, acid + nicely seasoned cast iron = bad. Editor's note: You wuss. It's cast iron. Just do it.

So, I started with the mushrooms to provide some cover for my nicely seasoned pan. I digress. I garlic salted and peppered the mushrooms while they were doing the saute mambo. Then, carefully, I added about 4 tablespoons sake, and deglazed the pan with that.

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p>After deglazing was finished and the kitchen was filled with a smell not unlike a Japanese bath house, I added 2 tablespoons (approximately) of heavy whipping cream and combined. All in all, the sake made a fantastic substitute for white wine. It had a subtle sweet sake flavor, paired with the earthiness of the mushrooms and creaminess of the, well, cream. It just goes to show that necessity is the mother of.. something.

For greek night tomorrow, I'm going to be making a variation of Emerils Dolmades. Since I have yet to know what I'm going to mangle about the ingredients, I can't post anything that resembles a recipe. Authenticity I guess will be a tad sacrificed in lieu of .. um.. science? or something. Anne will be making Kota me Manestra which is a sort of Chicken and Pasta dish.

When Savory and I go on cooking binges, we tend not to mention that we each have a raging and private yen for the sheer art of complexity. Our reptilian epicurean mindsets require, as it were, a tremendous number of ingredients, sensitive temperature and timing, or at least a bit of showmanship before we consider ourselves as having truly lived up to the task of cooking something.

While I'm certain that if ever there were a recipe which required us to write a Unix shell script in time with our food, we'd be shuddering in (separate) orgasmic delight, there is something to be said for the simple. In fact, sometimes the simple is the most wonderful thing one can have.

Case and point: oven-roasted corn on the cob. I grew up in a family with both Southern American and German roots, and corn on the cob was something one boiled, slathered in butter, then consumed with those little pokey ceramic things suspending it like some sort of corn spit before our mouths. And of course, the butter ended up all over everything- kind of like inviting the Tasmanian Devil to an all-you-can-eat crab restaurant.

If you've got a gas broiler, you can come darn close to barbecue-level corn on the cob by:

1. Strip the corn on the cob of silk and husk.
2. Put half a stick of butter in the bottom of a pyrex baking dish, and set your broiler on high over it.
3. When the butter is melted, put in your corn on the cob (4 cobs).
4. Check every few minutes. When the top of the corn is dotted with roasted kernels in punch-card fashion, rotate your corn, grind on a little pepper, and sprinkle on a little salt.

Once the whole thing is pretty much roasted, you'll have the most amazing corn ever produced from an oven. In four ingredients.

Of course, now I need other methods to deplete my spice rack. Lest it grow, gain sentience, and claim sovereignty over my newly annexed kitchen. Gotta go.