Honey yeast rolls

Mix in bottom of stand mixer bow:

• 1 cup warm tap water
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons yeast

 Let proof (get big and frothy) for a few minutes

beat together:

• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg 

add egg, salt and butter in with yeast mixture, mix 

•   2 tablespoon softened butter

Start adding bread flour, 1 cup at a time.      You want a dough that is not sticky.   

• 3 to 4 cups bread flour
  

Let stand mixer knead for about 10 minutes.     Let stand for a couple minutes, then turn on for a few seconds to beat down. 

Meanwhile grease the bottom of two 8" square pans  (or one 13 x 9 or two pie plates).     Divide dough into 18 balls, 9 per pan.     Preheat oven to 400.   Cover with a warm towel and allow to proof for 20-30 minutes.   

Brush top of each roll with a bit of cream mixed with honey.   

Bake for about 12 minutes, until lightly brown on top.   

Serve with bean and bacon soup (or any other yummy, warm dinner!) 

Creamy three-mushroom bisque with buttery garlic croutons

My husband asked recently about a mushroom soup, so when I was at the grocery store recently I picked up a big package each of sliced baby portabellas and sliced white button mushrooms.    This their story.  

1st, starting yesterday, roast a chicken and make stock overnight from the bones.     WHAT?   You didn't want to roast a chicken just to make mushroom soup?   Ok.  In that case you'll need about 1.5 quarts of chicken or veggie broth.   

Rinse the mushrooms well, while your soup pot or dutch oven heats with a turn of olive oil.     Add the mushrooms, cover and let them cook down.    Stir once in a while.     

Meanwhile crush up a good handful of a more flavorful dried mushroom into some hot stock.   I had dried porcinis on hand, but there are lots of different ones available.   

Once the mushrooms are cooked, pull out a cup or so into a bowl (for garnish) and in the pot with the remaining mushrooms add about 1 1/2 quarts of chicken broth, some dried onion (or sautee a chopped fresh one), some garlic powder, thyme, ground black pepper, nutmeg and about a cup of white wine.    A dash or two of Worcestershire sauce is good too.     Let it all simmer for 30-60 minutes.  

Then use your immersion blender to puree well, taste to see if you need more salt, then add about a cup of half and half or cream.      (No immersion blender?   Food processor or blender will also work, but be careful with hot soup and it takes up more room in the dishwasher)

Serve  garnished with croutons and the reserved mushrooms.  

Goat cheese (chevre), more cream, cream fraiche, bread crumbs ... all other good garnish choices! 

Happy Souper Bowl Day

Doctored Soups: Corn and Roasted Pepper Soup; Tortellini and Spinach Soup

I love a good soup, made from scratch. With a homemade long brewed stock. But during the winter, especially when our lives are very busy and/or we're fighting illness, I want to eat soup more often than I have bones to make homemade stock.

So instead, frequently I doctor prepared soups:

Trader Joes Corn & Pepper soup:

+ frozen corn

+ some type of already cooked protein (in this case, Langostino Tails, which I've been dying to try. Ok, but I wouldn't buy them again) Canned chicken, frozen shrimp, leftover poultry or sausage would all work.

Heat and serve!

Another soup - tortellini & spinach soup.

Chicken broth:

Add some flavors:

frozen tortellini:

+ some frozen spinach

Eagles Green: Kale, sausage and chickpea soup

Note: Due to a spammer, comments have been turned off for this post, and will be moderated from now on. Sorry!


A hearty winter soup, with lots of healthy leafy greens - and in keeping with our green theme here in Philadelphia!


Start by chopping and sauteeing two large onions, then cooking in a bit of bacon grease or olive oil until translucent:





Dump them into the crockpot.



Peel and chop a one pound carrot:









Oh - you don't have a giant carrot? Then just use a few smaller ones. Add them to the crockpot too.



Brown about two pounds of italian sausage, casings removed. (Hot or sweet? depends - do you like bites of spicy heat in your soup?)

Open and drain two cans of chick peas. Throw them in too. This is the ultra fancy Walmart store brand. We're high fallutin that way.

Wash and rip up a whole bunch of kale. (I would say 8-10 cups of raw leaves) I seasoned with just a touch of salt while cooking. Sautee briefly in a pan, in oil or bacon grease, before adding to crockpot.

To this add 8 -10 cups of liquid - either chicken broth, stock, vegetable broth or just water with concentrated chicken bullion. If you heat the liquid in the microwave first it will save a good bit of time before the soup simmers in the crockpot.

Cook for at least three hours to allow the kale to fully soften and all the flavors to merge. Serve with bread and butter, or popcorn, or crackers, or just a spoon!

Eagles Green: Pantry Raid Pea Soup

So after baking almost a thousand cookies, fighting a cold, attending Christmas parties, celebrating Christmas with services and family, enjoying trips to NYC and DC in between surprisingly busy work weeks, and trying to catch up on sleep ... I'm finally back!

In the spirit of the Philadelphia region right now, I offer green foods this week. This one fits the bill.


As I came back to my kitchen last week, wanting to make something frugal and at least somewhat healthy, this is what I scrounged up:



A few ham hocks from the freezer. Ham hocks are fairly inexpensive, and wonderful when you want that ham bone flavor in a soup, but don't happen to have a ham bone.



This LOVERLY looking bunch of vegetables. Note the green stuff growing out of the top of the onion. Onion are not dangerous when they have growths like this - just cut out the green parts on the top and on the inside. (on the other hand, I would never BUY one that looked like this ...)

So I chopped the onion, and carrot and celery and shallots and a bit of garlic, the split peas, and threw it in the crockpot along with the ham hocks and this:

a bit of flat champagne. Fill the rest of th way with water. Add salt and pepper, stir it all together, and then cook for about 8 hours on low. If necessary, add some more water and cook longer.

E - A - G -L - E - S!

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait: French Onion Soup

French onion soup is one of my FAVORITE things to order in a restaurant. But a few years ago, I also started making it at home. It isn't hard, but it does require patience, and attention.

First, slice a whole pile of onions. I normally cut them in half, and then slice into half moons. Note that my pot was almost full at the beginning. (I don't remember exactley but about 8 of those great big softball sized sweet onions would do)

Start a soup pot over medium heat. Add a little oil to the pan, and start cooking.

Stir occasionally. We're trying to both soften the onions and release a lot of liquid.

Keep stirring every few minutes. Note the brown bits I just stirred up. Every time you stir make sure to stir every bit of the bottom of the pot.

Eventually it will become a dark caramel color. Keep cooking, and keep stirring. Once it gets to this stage I add a little liquid each time I stir (apple cider, water, or chicken broth). We still want to get the color a bit darker, but don't want to burn the onions.

Keep adding liquid and stirring:

Once you are satisfied with the deep brown color, add liquid to make broth. I normally use about half apple cider, half chicken broth. Make sure to add some salt if you use apple cider. The flavor of the onions will be the star of this soup, so if you add other spices make sure they are not scene stealers. I added about 8 cups total liquid.

Scoop some hot soup into oven proof bowls. Top with a slice of bread, large bread crumbs, croutons, or toast rounds.

Top with cheese. I like a mixture of cheeses. Any combination of swiss, jarlsberg, dubliner, asiago, or similar cheeses will do. Broil in the oven, or bake at 450 until the cheese melts.

Enjoy!

"Orange" Soup

Preheat oven to about 375. Place in a roasting pan:

3 squash, cut in half with seeds removed (I used two butternet and 1 acorn squash), cloves from 1 head of garlic, peeled

Roast until the squash flesh is tender - test by stabbing with the tines of a fork. To avoid shreiks of burning flesh (YOUR burning flesh), allow to cool about an hour before peeling. Set aside cooked, peeled squash.

Chop 1 large onion or a handful of shallots. (onions will suffice if you didn't get shallots from a CSA share) Sautee in a large soup pot with a few tablespoons of butter. Add about 1/2 pound of shredded carrot, and a few stalks of chopped celery. If you did NOT add garlic to the roasting squash, add some minced garlic now.

Add chicken broth or stock - about 4 cans/8 cups. (tip: for a "hurry up" version of this soup, you could also add canned pumpkin - obviously the unsweetened variety - instead of roasting whole squash)

Grate 1 large piece of fresh ginger (2 or 3 inches square). Retain as much of the ginger juice for the soup as possible. Add the squash and ginger to the pot.

Cook for twenty minutes or so, and then blend with your immersion blender. (if you don't have an immersion blender you'll have to allow the mixture to cool enough so you can put it in a regular blender). Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

I always serve with a splash of cream or half and half.

Chicken Corn Chowder

Chop one large onion and sautee:

Use microwave to thaw frozen corn:

Chop onions. To make a large dice, first cut off the ends and remove seeds, and then cut in two:

Force the two halves to lay flat:


Cut into strips:

Cut the strips into squares (sorry for the blurry picture)

Add the peppers (I used a mixture of green and red for visual interest) to the pot, along with chicken stock or canned chicken broth. I added cumin, cilantro, salt, pepper, and ancho chili powder. If you're not trying to be careful of the heat level, you can add hot sauce as well.

Add the chicken in the last two minutes, so it doesn't dry out. I added half of this chicken meat - so the meat of one chicken.




Serve with salsa or hot sauce for anyone who wants to add more heat.

101: chicken stock

Sometimes I read cookbooks where the author seems to think we're still cooking on these:

Especially when they say it takes hours to make chicken stock. Yes, good chicken stock must simmer for hours. But that doesn't mean you need to WATCH it simmer! Almost everyone has a crockpot - perfect for chicken broth.

Place chicken bones from one or two chickens in a crockpot. I recently started putting only the large bones in the crockpot. It reduces the mess in straining it later. Add any or all of the following: a few whole peppercorns, a bay leaf, a quartered onion (or if you are quite frugal, save the ends of the onions you normally discard), a chopped carrot, a chopped stalk of celery.

Simmer on your lowest setting overnight. Allow to cool for an hour or more, then pour into a holding container through a strainer.

Help! Cooking on Gas

Ok - I need help from anyone who has been cooking on gas for more than ninety minutes. I just made a simple soup (fresh sweet corn with canned crab in a seafood/paprika broth). I burned the roux WHILE watching it. How do I get the knack for this??

My oven also cooked my salami/croissant rolls in about half the time they should have. Any thoughts? (to make this easy soup accesory: open one can of croissants, roll each one with three thin slices of hard salami or pepperoni and bake as directed)

Here's approximately how you make the soup:

Melt 1/2 stick butter in sauce pan, whisk in 1/4 cup flour. Brown until just nutty smelling and a light toast color. (or darker brown if you want to do it EXACTELY as I did today) Stir in about 2 teaspoons paprika, and a teaspoon of seafood (or chicken) soup base. Add 2 cups water and stir while it comes to a boil. Add some herbs. I forget which ones. It's more about green flakes looking good than taste - the main flavor is paprika, crab and sherry.

Cut the kernels off six ears of sweet corn with your knife (or thaw a bag marked "sweet corn" from your freezer). Add the kernels to the pot.

Open two cans of crabmeat (the cheaper ones on the shelf in the grocery store - not the mortage-the-children cans in the seafood department). Add both the meat and the juice to the pot. Refrain from adding the wax paper.

Bring back to a simmer. Serve with a tablespoon or two of sweet sherry per bowl. The Southern resident also likes hot sauce for a bit more heat.

Leftover Clam Boil Soup

A week or so ago we did a little clam boil with friends. I layered corn on the cob, sliced kielbasa, with live clams and mussels. I added a little white wine and a little water, and then cooked it until the all the shells popped open*. We made a grand old mess while we enjoyed the feast.

But the best part was the next day.

I started with a simple roux - 1/2 a stick of butter went into the pan with about 1/4 cup of flour. I stirred this frequently over medium heat until it was a toasted-nut scented paste.

To this I added seafood bisque concentrate, and then about 8 cups of water but if I didn't have that on hand I would have used low sodium chicken broth. I added about a tablespoon of half-sharp paprika as well.

I cut the kernels off the leftover corn cobs, chopped the kielbasa into smaller pieces, and picked all the remaining clam and mussels from their shells. My sister arrived while I was making the soup, so I opened a can of clams from my pantry and added them as well (along with the juice from the can).

I have to say it turned out pretty tasty!

* overly paranoid safety warning here. If this is shellfish 101 for you, here's how to prep clams and/or mussels for cooking:

1. When purchasing live clams (littlenecks are scrumptious!) or mussels, make sure they smell mostly like sea water ... if they reek of fishiness, pick something else for dinner.
2. Sort through the live mollusks, and THROW AWAY ANY THAT ARE OPEN AND do not close when tapped. These are already dead. You don't want to eat shellfish that isn't cooked immediately upon death. (those of you who eat raw oysters .... you're brave.)
3. Place the shells in a large pot and cover with water. Leave them alone for about half an hour, and then change the water. If the second change yields a good bit of sand at the bottom of the pot, you might want to change the water a third time. Remember - these are living creatures, and they are processing the water and expelling sand for you!
4. Steam or grill the clams and mussels until they open. IF ANY DO NOT OPEN, DO NOT EAT THEM.
5. Enjoy!