Mussels with Andouille

So apparently I’ve never written down my base recipe for mussels, one of my favorite things to cook and eat.  This recipe is an easy crowd pleaser served family-style, and is fun luxury for a date.

Ingredients

The rule of thumb when mussels are the main course is one pound per person.  This recipe makes enough broth enough to happily serve 4-6 people, maybe more.  I suppose you could make less broth if cooking for fewer, but then you might miss out on having an excellent leftover soup base.

• 1 or 2 andouille sausage, cooked and diced into roughly quarter-inch cubes (or linguica, chorizo). 1/4 to 1/3 pound total.
• 1 small onion, diced (or 2 shallots or 1 shallot and the whites of a bunch of scallions)
• 1 bulb fennel, diced
• (some halved cherry tomatoes too if you want)
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• pinch saffron (10ish threads)
• 1.5 to 2 cups chardonnay.  I like the Chateau San Michelle we have out in Washington a lot in this dish (a little sweet, not too much oak, and it makes good drinking too).
• salt to taste
• mussels (1 pound per person)
• greens of a bunch of scallions, 1 inch pieces (for color)
• good bread for dipping

Equipment

• big pot with tight lid for steaming.  You can make this work with a big skillet with deep walls and a lid too.

Preparation

1. Try to buy mussels the day you’re going to cook them, but people say they’ll keep for a day in a dry bowl in the fridge under a wet paper towel.
2. If the sausage isn’t pre-cooked, cook the sausage and reserve a tablespoon of the fat.  Then cube.
3. Rinse and soak mussels under cold water for a couple minutes to remove grit. Shortly before cooking, de-beard the mussels.
4. In a big pot with a tight fitting lid over medium heat, brown the sausage cubes in their own fat or tiny amount of butter.
5. After sausage starts to brown, add onions and saute for a minute or two. Add a pinch of salt and add butter as needed.
6. Add fennel and saute for a minute or two.
7. Add garlic and give things a good stir.
8. Add (remainder of) stick of butter, stir it in as it melts.
9. Add a pinch of saffron and stir it all about. A little goes a long way. My best guess is I put in about 10 threads, maybe a little more.
10. Add 1.5 to 2 cups of wine (you’re already drinking some, right?). Turn up the heat and boil until the alcohol smell is diminished (2ish minutes for me).
11. Taste and add salt if necessary (a pinch at a time, stir and taste).  You want it to taste a bit under-salted because the mussels add their own, but you don’t want the broth to taste totally flat at this stage.
12. Add in the mussels and the scallion greens, put the lid on, and steam for 3 to 5 minutes.  Once most of the mussels are open wide, it’s done.
13. Transfer to a big serving bowl, let rest for a few minutes to come to a tastier temperature, and enjoy with lots of bread!

Leftovers

If you have leftover broth, there’s a great soup base waiting.

1. With any leftover mussels, pluck the meats out and set aside. They’re good in a salad.
2. There’s a lot of flavor on the mussel shells, so take the leftover shells (minus any mussels that didn’t open), and put them in the big pot with the leftover broth and about 1 to 2 times as much water.
3. Boil everything for a few minutes with the lid on.
4. Discard the shells and use the broth for soups or whatever.

Soup ideas

1. This last time, we made a soup with more andouille cubes, scallions, kale, and grated parmesan.  This went great as an opener for a lemony butter garlic pasta.
2. This would also make an excellent tortellini soup base.
3. The next night, we shifted it with a little soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and a little sweet paprika and white pepper, served alongside rice.

Enjoy!

Butternut Squash Soup

Calorie Count: 2400 with cream, 2000 without

Ingredients

• 2 T olive oil
• 2 leeks (or a large onion), diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 1 butternut squash (2-3 pounds), peeled, seeded and coursely diced
• 2 waxy potatoes, peeled and diced
• 2 or 3 apples, peeled and diced
• 2 T of ginger, peeled and minced
• a few garlic cloves, chopped
• a pinch or two of red pepper flakes
• 6-8 cups vegetable broth
• 1 C cream
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Over medium heat, sweat the onions, carrots, and celery for a few minutes with a hefty pinch of salt.
2. Add in everything else, stir and cook for 5 minutes.
3. Add in the broth with a healthy blast of black pepper.  Bring to a boil, and then simmer 20 to 60 minutes depending on how lazy your dice was, until everything is cooked.
4. Add cream. Blend everything thoroughly with an immersion blender.
5. Serve warm with a blast of citrus juice to brighten.

Getting the cooking bug back: ideas to try

Beans and ham hock

Beef winter soup

Red lentil dal (new favorite)

Lentil soup for a small planet

Meyer Lemon risotto

Meyer Lemon pasta

Sardines with potatoes (success!)

Fillet and soba noodles

Minestrone

Wild boar and lentil soup

Braised leeks

Vichyssoise

Merry Christmas!  I got to try out my new stick blender today.  “Food Network” brand, feels pretty wimpy, but it definitely got the job done.  This potato and leek soup came out smooth and tasty. A classic vichyssoise has only leeks and potatoes, no fennel or bacon.  But why not add fennel and bacon? The stick blender makes it easy to puree the soup, which is very necessary for texture.  This would not be the same as a chunky homestyle soup.  I served it warm for dinner with a half-ounce of blue cheese melted in, but the classic presentation is cold as an appetiser.  I’ll have to try that tomorrow with some of the leftovers.

Calorie Estimate: 1400

Ingredients

• 1 lb leeks, sliced 1/4 inch rounds, white and green
• 1 lb yukon gold potatoes (or other waxy potato), coarse dice
• 1 fennel bulb, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, mashed
• 1 T butter
• 1 oz bacon/prosciutto/pancetta, diced
• 4-6 cups water (optional, and not necessary: chicken stock)
• salt (a few t)
• pepper (about 1-2 t)
• parsley or chervil (1-2 t dried, 2 T + garnish fresh)
• 1 cup heavy cream (could use less, could use half-and-half)
• optional, but awesome: 1/2 oz blue cheese per bowl

Alternate Version (1000 Calories)

• minus cream (I have my reasons!)
• plus parsnip
• 6 oz of bacon

Preparation

1. Over medium high heat, start to brown the butter and render the pork.
2. Add the leeks, garlic, and fennel, and sweat but don’t brown for a few minutes.
3. Add the potatoes and the water (enough to just cover completely) and bring to a boil, then turn to a simmer.  At a teaspoon or so of salt at this point and some black pepper.  Cook for about 30 minutes until the potatoes are cooked.
4. Take the soup off the heat and let it cool for a minute or two.  Add the cream and parsley.  Take the stick blender and blend until somewhat smooth.
5. At this point, adjust the seasoning.  I needed quite a bit of salt and some more pepper to make it pop, but that’s just me.  As you add seasoning, blend it a bit more, and keep tasting until it’s right.
6. If you’re serving it warm, an awesome tip I picked up from a comment in Mark Bittman’s blog Bitten is to place a small piece of blue cheese at the bottom the bowl.  It’ll rapidly melt, so stir it into the soup before you eat.  This adds a really nice touch of complexity that would otherwise be missing and really made the soup feel special.

Sausage and Tortellini soup

Calorie Estimate: 1800

Ingredients

• 1 lb italian sausage meat, broken into bite-sized pieces
• 9 oz package tortellini
• 1 14oz can of diced tomatoes
• 1/2-1/3 lb mushrooms, brown/portobello, bite-sized pieces
• 1 zucchini, 1/3 inch dice
• 1 carrot, 1/3 inch dice
• 1 green bell pepper, 1/3 inch dice
• 1 onion, diced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 5 cups beef broth
• 1 T olive oil, if needed
• salt, pepper, italian seasonings to taste
• splash of balsamic vinegar

Preparation

1. Heat a deep soup pan over medium heat.  Dump the sausage meat in and break it up into bite-sized pieces with a wooden spoon.  Brown for a few minutes.
2. Dice all the veggies while the sausage is browning.  Add in onion and garlic, and extra oil if needed.  Cook for a few minutes.
3. Add in the mushrooms, the rest of the veggies, the canned tomatoes, and the broth.
4. Season a bit.  About 1 T dried basil, 1/2 T oregano, 1/2 T black pepper, etc.  Don’t overdo it now, tweak it later.
5. Cook for about 3o minutes until veggies are tender.
6. Add in tortellini and cook for 10 minutes.  Adjust seasoning during this time.
7. Take it off the heat and let it rest.  Perhaps in the bowl, add in a little fresh parmesan or pecorino cheese.  Also add in a splash of balsamic vinegar for a special touch of sweetness and tang.

Split Pea Soup

Based on this recipe from Chow.com.  The ideal meat is a smoked ham hock, or a 1 pound minimally-processed ham (diced), but I couldn’t find either of those in Seattle, so I used 1/4-lb pancetta (bacon would be better) and 2-oz of leftover hard salami.

Calorie estimate for the batch: 2400 – 3000 (depends on meat)

Ingredients

• 1 lb split peas
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 lb carrots, cut into thin (less than 1/4 inch) rounds
• 1/4 lb celery, cut into rounds, (or 1 green bell pepper, diced)
• diced salted/cured pork, as described above
• 2 T olive oil
• 8 cups chicken broth
• 1 T black pepper
• 1 t red pepper flakes
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Dice onion and mince garlic.  In heavy-bottom soup pan, warm olive oil over medium heat.  Cook onion and garlic for 5-7 minutes until softened.
2. Add everything else.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.  If using a ham hock, toward the end of cooking, pull it out and take the meat off the bone.  Put the meat back in.
3. When it’s finished, see if it needs salt (probably not) and more pepper.  It’ll taste better then next day.

Lentil Soup

Since it seems to be popular with my friends to attempt this recipe, if somewhat unsuccessfully, I’ve decided to post it today.  Granted, I should be going to work right now, seeing as I’m making progress on my “elliptical chicken problem” (after having solved the spherical cow last week), but anyway, it’s a holiday. Non-sequiturly, this is an easy recipe to make vegan, if that’s your affliction.

I usually serve this over some sort of rice, steamed while the soup is cooking.  I don’t suggest mixing the rice in because, even if it’s long-cooking rice and it works for the first night, the rice will be mush when reheated.  To reheat, I usually drop some rice in a pot with the soup, add 1/2 cup of water and reheat on the stove top (7 minutes on high heat, constantly stirring, 30 minutes with a lid on medium-low heat, paying no attention).

This recipe makes 4 meals of food for me if I add a cup of cooked rice at each meal.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Almost-Neglected Cooking Time: 40-50 more minutes

Calorie Estimate for the batch: 1800

Tools:

• knife
• cutting board
• big pot with tight-fitting lid
• wooden spoon or ladel

Ingredients: (as always, all spice amounts are “-ish”)

• 1 large (yellow) onion, coarsely diced
• few cloves garlic
• a splash of olive oil
• carrot and celery, diced in equal amounts to the onion (usually 3 or 4 each of carrots and celery stalks)
• 1.5 pounds red lentils (the red cook up much quicker and are pleasantly fragrant)
• 1 can chopped (or petite cut) tomatoes (be careful to never buy pre-seasoned canned tomatoes!)
• 3 cans chicken or veggie broth (+ about 1 can water to finish)
• 1 T cumin
• 1 T coriander
• 1.5 T black pepper
• 2 T red pepper flakes (a touch of heat is always nice)
• possibly salt to taste

Note: it really should be red lentils.  The red ones have the tough outer hulls removed and they take 40 minutes to cook instead of hours.

Variant ingredients (inspired by this recipe, 10/25/09)

• as above except
• 2 oz bacon or pancetta
• 1 cup red or french lentils
• 1 cup long grain rice
• 1/4-1/2 cup white wine (or vermouth or sherry)
• 1 T thyme, dried
• 1 t tarragon, dried
• 1 bay leaf
• 1-2 t balsamic vinegar

Method

1. Coarsely dice one onion and mince as small as you’re patient a few (3-7, mood-dependent) cloves of garlic.  Wash enough carrot and celery to have about equal amounts to the onion (or buy a frozen mirepoix mix).  Don’t bother to peel the carrots, unless they’re really filthy, even after washing (and if they’re a mess, why did you buy them?).  Coarsely dice the carrot and celery.  In the bottom of the soup pot, over medium-high heat, splash in a little olive oil and soften the veggies for a few minutes.
2. Rinse the lentils in cold water.  You really should do this, I hear.  I never do it.  Haven’t found a rock in my lentils yet, and they don’t seem too dusty.  Probably should do this though.
3. Toss the lentils into the pot and stir to distribute the softened veggies.  Then add the can of tomatoes and the broth.  I stir between each addition, but there’s probably no good reason for that.  Later, we’ll talk about adding water.
4. After all the liquid is added and everything is nicely stirred, add the spices.  I start with the amounts above and then leave it alone.  You probably won’t need salt if you’re using canned broth (even low-sodium, which I usually use), but keep it in mind.
5. With the lid on from hear on out, bring it to a boil and then reduce to a simmer (2-2.5 on my stovetop for this much liquid).
6. After it’s been simmering with the lid on for 5-10 minutes so the lentils start to swell, check to see if it needs more liquid.  It probably does, so add water by the 1/2 can until you’re happy.  Thicker is better than thin in my opinion, as you can always cut it later.  I end up adding about a can of water, if I remember correctly.
7. After 40 minutes, give it a taste.  If  the lentils are softened to your satisfaction, it’s done.  If it’s too thick, add a little water and give a stir.  If it needs a little more of any spice, add it in, stir thoroughly, give it a minute for the spices to hydrate, and taste again.
8. When your happy, add in 1-2 balsamic vinegar if you’re making the variant.  Regardless, enjoy!

Carrot, Spinach, and Rice stew

Based on this recipe by Mark Bittman.  A tasty, cuminy, very nutritious stew.

Calorie Estimate: 1900

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, diced
• 3/4 pound carrots (1/8-inch medallions)
• 1 pound spinach (chopped or baby)
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 C long grain rice
• 6-8 cups water/chicken broth
• 1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed
• 1-2 T cumin
• 1 T coriander
• 1 T black pepper
• 1-2 T butter
• salt to taste (1-2 t)
• optional: 3/4 pound chicken thighs or lamb, 1/2 inch pieces

Preparation

1. Place sliced carrots into 6-8 cups of water/broth.  Bring everything to a boil.  Put in a generous pinch of salt.  Add in 1 pound of spinach, diced onion, chick peas, rice, and any meat you’re including. Add pepper, cumin, and coriander.  Reduce to a simmer.
2. Stir occasionally for next 40 minutes.  Spinach should get silky and the mix should set up into more of a stew than a soup.
3. Add garlic and butter.  Check the seasoning.  Cook for 5 more minutes.   Let it sit for as long as you have patience, and enjoy.

Potato and Rice Soup

Based on this recipe from The Wednesday Chef.

Calorie estimate for the batch: 2400

Ingredients

• 4 T olive oil
• 2 large baking potatoes, 1/3 inch dice
• 1 large onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 carrots, sliced thin
• 2 stalks celery, sliced thin (or 1 green bell pepper, diced)
• 2-3 T tomato paste
• 10 C chicken broth
• parmigiano rind
• 1 C long grain rice
• 2 bay leaves
• salt
• 1 T black pepper
• 1/2 cup fresh basil/parsley (or 1 T dried)
• dash of red pepper flakes (optional)

Preparation

1. Rinse potatoes really well.  If you’re making this for company, peel the potatoes.  Otherwise, leave the skins on–they taste good, but they will fall off the potatoes and just kinda be conspicuous in the soup.
2. In a deep soup pot, heat olive oil over medium-high heat until it shimmers.  Add in diced potatoes. Cook for 5-8 minutes.  Try to brown some of the potatoes a bit and get them all started.
3. Add in the onion, garlic, carrot, and celery (or bell pepper).  Stir together and cook for a few more minutes.
4. Add in tomato paste.  Stir around until a bit of red coats all the veggies.
5. Add in 10 C of chicken broth (or, 10 C of water and enough Better Than Bouillon to make the broth).  Add in the bay leaves and black pepper and bring to a boil.
6. Turn the boil to a simmer.  Leave the lid off the pot so things stew down a bit.
7. You don’t have to stand their stirring, but give it a good stir every so often.  The potatoes will break down and thicken the soup.
8. Add the rice in whenever you need to so it cooks through when the dish is ready.  For wild long grain, about 40 minutes before the cooking is done.  Add dried herbs at this time if you’re using them.
9. The total simmering time should be 60 minutes or so.  If it starts to get  too thick, put the lid on.
10. When finished, add fresh herbs and salt to taste.  Fish out the bay leaves too of course.

This dish will go well with a little pepperoni in the mix too if you want.  Maybe a small salad along side and you’ve got a filling, tasty dinner.

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

care of chow.com.

Calorie estimate for the pot:  1950 (check next use)

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
• 3 medium carrots, peeled and finely chopped
• 3 large celery stalks, finely chopped
• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced
• 8 cups (2 quarts) low-sodium chicken broth
• 1 1/2 cups wild rice blend
• 1/2 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, medium dice
• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, medium dice
• (or chicken hearts (cheap!, but very high in cholesterol))
• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped Italian parsley

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. When it shimmers, add onion, carrots, celery, and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is softened, about 10 minutes.
2. Add broth and rice, season with salt, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer, covered, until rice is tender but still has some firmness, about 25 to 30 minutes.
3. Add chicken, and season with freshly ground black pepper. Simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, add parsley, taste, and season with additional salt and pepper as needed.