A Little Break...

Hey Ma-

I am so totally going to make Pop-pop's candy this year. I loved eating it growing up, ducking out into the cold to grab a piece after dinner (or after breakfast...or after lunch...) from the garage steps where you stashed it for cool and safe keeping. It is beyond delicious and I love the idea of bringing Pop-pop into our kitchen here, surrounding M with the smells that once surrounded him. Cooking really rejects linear temporality in some ways, doesn't it?

But anyway...

What I have to share with you today is something you will never make. It was pretty yummy, though, and so I have to share it. Plus, it's a welcome break from the general heaviness of holiday eating. This steak in teriyaki broth with vegetables dish manages to be both hearty and light at once and left John and me feeling full but not too much so. Plus, this is the first time EVER that I cooked a steak right which, in its own right, merits a mention here on the blog.

Click here for the recipe. It's super easy and I ate leftovers for days, including eating just the broth as a vegetable soup once the steak was gone.

I think, actually, the dish might be good with chicken. Why not, right?

Also, now I have this bounty of oyster sauce that I have NO idea what to do with. Have you ever used it? Any suggestions?

Alright. We're off to dinner with friends now.

XXOO
-R

Sick? Soup!

Hey Ma-

So, I had plans. Not big plans, but fresh vegetable plans. I was going to make egg noodles with green beans, mushrooms, those little grape tomatoes (I could eat these by the cup) and fresh grated parmesan cheese. It wasn't going to be fancy, but it was definitely going to be good and I was really looking forward to it.



And then the plague happened.

Not the real plague, but our first full-on, everybody's-down-for-the-count family-wide illness. I thought I had been sick before, but I now know that you have NEVER been sick until you've had a baby (ok, not really...I'm only talking about illnesses that come and go within a week's time). I did not know what it was like not to be able to sleep all day and all night, waking only to blow your nose or pull the tissue out from your sweatpants that somehow weaseled its way in there while you were snoring (blissfully!) through two nostrils with--yup, you guessed it--tissues stuck in them. I did not know. But I digress...

The byproduct of the arrival of the plague was a complete and utter lack of desire to make the aforementioned dinner. In fact, I can't even remember what we ate during those days of disease. What I was left with, then, was a bunch of vegetables on the brink of turning.





As I know I've mentioned before, we often have portions of homemade chicken stock in our freezer. As of late, I've been saving our vegetable bits in a bag in the freezer to, all in the name of letting them accumulate and turning them into soup one of these days. Yesterday was just the day.

M and I thawed the stock, chopped the veggies, sauteed them and combined everything. A sprinkle of that parmesan from the dinner-that-never-was on top, a piece of toast, and I am one happy eater.



(Ok, maybe M was more into her new dinosaur booties than our kitchen project, but I can dream...)

XXOO
-R

Slurp! Soup!

Rachel here: The recipe I'm sharing this week is from my grandma on my dad's side (my grandma on my mom's side is/was my grandy). The last time that I had it with her was a few years ago when I brought John to Connecticut for the first time to meet my family. We went to my grandparents' for lunch and this was on the menu. I had started gathering recipes from my grandma a little bit earlier and so, after lunch, I followed her into the kitchen and asked her for this one. Chicken soup is one of the great simple foods, I think, when it's done well. So often, though, it's a mediocre product. My grandma's recipe (which she would want me to reveal she learned from her brother's former wife because she was humble like that), however, gives chicken soup all of the tlc it needs to turn around and give that tlc right back to the person eating it. It is at once complex and familiar, hearty and basic. When my kitchen began to smell like my grandma's house, I was transported back to that afternoon copying her recipe while she chattered about how nice John seemed while putting the lunch dishes away. I could see the sunlit snow through her windows and hear the quiet calm that always hugged her home. My house smelled like my grandma's house last night and, frankly, as I come close to the one-year anniversary of her death, it is nice to know that she is a part of my home and my new family, that something as simple as chicken soup--and with it, my grandma--can be carried and woven and traced throughout my life.

Grandma's Belgian Chicken Soup
Ingredients
1 roasting chicken (3 1/2 to 4 1/2 pounds)
1 large onion, sliced
2 medium leaks, cleaned and chopped
4 stalks of celery, chopped
3 small carrots, sliced
1 parsnip, sliced
4 c. water
1 1/2 c. dry white wine
4 sprigs of parsley (plus extra to garnish)
2 tspn. fresh thyme (I used lemon thyme)
1 bay leaf
2 whole cloves (I used 1 tspn. ground cloves instead)
1 T. instant chicken bouillon
2 tspn. salt
1/4 tspn. pepper
1/4 tspn. nutmeg
1/4 tspn. cayenne
2 egg yolks
1/2 c. half-and-half
1/2 lemon (or, one small lemon) thinly sliced

Method
Combine the first eight ingredients (my grandma's recipes always give instructions this way and I find it nice and concise), from the chicken through the wine in a large pot. Make a bouquet garni with the parsley, thyme, bay leaf and cloves (or don't...I didn't, but if you are not going to then definitely go with ground cloves and don't forget to fish out your bay leaf when the soup is done cooking). Add to soup pot along with bouillon and spices (by spices I am referring to the ingredients from the salt through the cayenne). Bring this all to a boil, then reduce the heat and cover, letting simmer for an hour or more until the chicken is tender.

About halfway through, rotate the chicken if it is not entirely covered by the liquid. When chicken is tender, remove from pot. At this time, if you have used one, you should also remove the bouquet garni. If you didn't go the garni route, this would be a good time to find that bay leaf and pull it out. Remove skin from the chicken and cut the meat from the bones into bite-sized pieces. Skim the fat from the chicken broth before returning the now bite-sized chicken to the pot (if your chicken is on the larger side you may not need to add all of the chicken back into the pot which means you will have some very yummy meat for sandwiches...in fact, it's so delicious that I would recommend erring on the larger side for your chicken in the name of having leftover meat).

Combine the egg yolks with the half-and-half and stir this mixture into the soup. Heat until hot, but do not boil. Stir in your lemon slices. Sprinkle each serving with chopped parsley, put some hearty fresh bread on the table and dig in.

Seriously? I think this soup is perfection. What do you think? I also think the stock would be a great base for other soups, though I've never tried it because this recipe is so good that I never want to not make it.



Janet here: As the older of this duo, I love reading how much cooking with her grandmother means to Rachel. It makes me feel so heartened to see the story continues even after the death of the cook.

Making soup always makes me feel so cozy. The process is so relaxing — cutting up the vegetables and other ingredients — and like baking cookies on a cold rainy or snowy day, it just makes me feel so safe and warm. This roasted vegetable soup is my adaptation of a recipe I first made from one of the Barefoot Contessa's cookbooks. I hope you like it. As with most of what I do, there's room for variations and individual ideas. Enjoy!

Roasted Root Vegetable Soup
makes at least 10 servings

Ingredients
20 ounces of turnips, peeled and cut into cubes
5 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
3 large carrots, peeled and diced
3 large potatoes, skin on and cut into cubes
64 ounces of chicken or vegetable broth
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Method
Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Put the vegetables into a large bowl. Dribble with olive oil and salt and pepper. Mix well.Put onto a roasting pan. Cook for about 40 minutes until the vegetables are done. Turn at least once in the middle to make sure all sides get roasted well.

After the vegetables are cooled, add to a blender a little at a time with some of the broth and puree. I happen to like my soup just one or two steps above mashed potatoes, but if you like it soupier, then you'll want to perhaps use more broth in general.
Heat and serve when you're ready. This is soup with substance, so all you need is some bread and maybe a salad to have a complete winter meal.