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Posts Tagged ‘Winter’

It isn't soup yet...

The thing I always forget about the New Year is that so many people are relieved that the holidays are over. Those would be the folks who ask, “So, did you survive the holidays?” No judgment here. My mom spent the bulk of her working years in retail. Although she has long since retired, she still greets the holiday season with the attitude of a soldier gearing up for a rough patrol.

For others the end of the holiday season is a huge letdown. Understandable: all the goodies have been put away. Here in Manhattan, not long after Halloween we begin to get accustomed to a twinkly, idealized version of our city which disappears seemingly overnight after New Year’s Eve. The first Monday after New Year’s Eve can be a bit of a letdown in that respect. Last week we had a big snowstorm, and just a few days on, to roughly quote Stephen Sondheim, “…even the snow looks used.”

The third group rolls up its (collective) sleeves and gets down to work. “Happy Holidays. Let’s GO!” Healthy, well-balanced folk, that group.

Me? This year finds me in all three groups depending on the day / the hour / the minute. The little kid in me loves Christmastime. The food blogger in me knows that I can’t write about holiday food every week so is happy to move on.

I’ll miss the music though.

As is the habit every January I (and millions of others) vow (but not resolve) to lose weight: “Hack the Holiday Heft” is my program for 2011. My track record isn’t bad—some years I do better than other years—but I find the constant is to keep myself entertained with the cooking process. If I can keep playing in the kitchen I somehow feel less deprived. My game plan is to find meals that I can fuss over in the kitchen thereby distracting myself from the absence of cookies in my life. The tough part is chocolate; there simply is no substitute. Ah well, what is life without a little sacrifice, right?

Now, not to get all “Forrest Gump” on you, but I find that making chicken soup is a lot like planning the year ahead. (Stay with me on this…) The basic recipe is constant. It’s what you put into it that makes it yours and makes it special. Okay, I’ll grant you that this is not world-changing philosophy, but I’m standing by my statement, and I promise to not belabor it.

Making Chicken Soup is literally as easy as boiling water yet the end result is so soothing, and, depending on the “extras” you add, also a hearty, healthy meal ideal for hacking the holiday heft.

You wouldn’t think that something as basic and ages-old as Chicken Soup would be a subject for debate, but lately there seems to be a divergence of opinion about the chicken itself: after cooking the soup do you save the chicken or not? As debates go this is right up there with whether the toilet tissue should hang over or under—a debate I will not go near: soup isn’t the only thing chicken here.

Some folks insist that the chicken has been boiled away and should be discarded, some folks insist that it is still perfectly good. To resolve this weighty problem I consulted two experts: my Mother, a certified Grandmother, and the original New York Times Cookbook (circa 1960) which serves as my de facto ol’ Auntie when it comes to food.

Both assured me that I can happily retain the chicken meat. I want it shredded into chunks and returned to the soup, but my Mom insisted, “We always made Chicken Salad with it.” (When I explained that I wanted to use it in the soup, in true Jewish mother fashion she replied, “You don’t like Chicken Salad???” Emphasis: hers.)

Yes Mom, I love Chicken Salad, but I want Chicken Soup. And perfectly good protein goes where it belongs: back into the soup.

My aromatics – the other ingredients I add to the soup as it cooks– are fairly traditional except that I have a big bunch of Parsley and some left-over Rosemary which I’ll be using instead of celery. (Mom: “No celery???”) I’ll tie them into a bouquet with some butcher’s twine. A few parsnips, and carrots, a head of garlic (thank you Ina Garten), and a dusting of Bells Seasoning (left over from Thanksgiving) and I should have a richly flavored broth. (I’ll strain the finished soup through a mesh strainer, lest you think my finished product will look like some freaky, cloudy tea.)

As I am an impatient skimmer (skimming the fat from hot soup is like herding cats), I‘ll refrigerate the soup just after I strain it. The fat will congeal, float to the top, and be easily peeled away like pulling lily pads from a lake. Anyway, the soup tastes better after it has been allowed to sit for a while.

I’ll add salt just before I eat, and only to the portion of the soup I am heating. (Another debatable point. Some insist you must season as you go.) When dinner time rolls around I’ll break up a few sheets of No-Boil Lasagna noodles into the re-heating broth. These will approximate papardelle, and are lighter than the egg noodles my Grandmother would have added. I like to sprinkle in some diced red bell pepper, but that’s more for looks than anything else. A little fresh chopped parsley looks good too.

Crackers? Only if I’m in the mood to make my Cornmeal Saltines, and even then, just a few. My cookie mascot “Mikey the Pig” (on the blog’s masthead) isn’t the only one saying, “Oink” right now: I have holiday heft to hack!

“Happy Holidays. Let’s GO!”

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Oh yeah: I made soup too. (Recipes follow...)

A few days ago I sat down on my big fat sofa to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Winter Games and realized that I was – predictably – hungry. I’d had a busy day and hadn’t had the time to plan something special as a tribute to the Olympics, so I had a great big Olympic Omelet, which sounds like something you’d eat at a Diner in New Jersey. Mine was just an omelet.

Bobby Orr (This poster hung on our bedroom wall.)

Do you mind if pause here to relate an observation about the opening ceremonies? Don’t worry; I’ll swing it back to food post haste. At one point in the program a small group of distinguished Canadian athletes carried the Olympic flag across the stadium. Among them was Bobby Orr, the legendary hockey defenseman of the Boston Bruins. I think of him as a hometown hero, so it was an odd but happy feeling to see this kind of tribute paid to him by another country – namely, his own.

Those of us who grew up in Northern New England in that era are closer to Canadians than we realize. Could it be the cold weather? Boston winters are generally much icier than the wimpy New York winters. When I was growing up everyone’s car had a toolbox of well-worn items needed to deice the windshield: scrapers, brushes, and my favorite, a spray that melted the ice so you could then continue to scrape it away. Forget your morning workout: no one got out of their driveway without scrape aerobics. I am generally the nostalgic type, but I don’t miss that.

And hockey was very much a hometown game – perhaps not to the extent that it is for your average Canadian kid – but it seems like everyone, including yours truly, had a hockey stick in their hands at some point. We skated indoors and out, at places with wholesome names like Crystal Lake and Bulloughs’ Pond.

My brother was a hockey player – I mean, for real. He spent part of his high school years playing Junior Hockey in Canada, and went to college on a hockey scholarship. Even now at the age of __ he plays a few nights a week in an adult league, and he still has all of his teeth.

So now you understand that for me, seeing Bobby Orr, long since retired, carrying the Olympic flag was, well…heck he’s “Numbah Faw, Bobby Aw.”

ANYWAY, I WAS HUNGRY.

I wanted to make something hearty, healthy, and warm to eat while I watched the skiing, skating, and curling. Since the goal was to sit and watch the Olympics, the hope was that I could make something that would last for several meals. I’m all about investing in time up front. Soup, anyone? Let’s face it, this isn’t brain surgery. Making soup, even from scratch, is almost as easy as opening a few cans and emptying them into a big pot.

Chili seemed like an obvious choice, but, with Super Bowl Weekend having just passed, I’m all “chilied out.” Compromise seemed to be the order of the day, and that came in the form of White Chicken Chili, but cooked “con carne” style, meaning with chunks of chicken instead of ground chicken.

Perhaps I was influenced by all the snow I was watching people glide over on my TV, but white seemed to become the “theme” of this meal, if indeed there was a theme at all. I chose traditional white chili condiments and white ingredients, except the one everyone may have expected: instead of white beans I used black eyed peas. But there was enough white stuff already. The translucent crunch of turnip instead of celery, and the starchy chew of hominy needed a little counterpoint to keep the chili from being too monochromatic.

The end result was indeed satisfying: warming, hearty, but minus the richness of regular chili. The heat and slight vinegary bite of tomatillos and green chilies gave the soup (stew?) a familiar “chilliness.” Texans and other purists may not like the result, although I am the first to admit that it is definitely Northern White-Boy Chili. Have I mentioned that I’m from New England?

It was with this defiant-slash-defeatist attitude that I decided to find a substitute for the expected tortilla chips that may have given some salty, crunchy consort to the chili. In my mind’s eye I pictured tortilla chips sneering at what I’d cooked, as if to say, “Sorry hombre, but that aint Chili!” Oyster crackers seemed to be a bit off the mark too, although their heavy, almost thudding crunch seemed tempting.

Cornmeal "Saltines"

Again, compromise: Cornmeal “Saltines” are like the secret love child of corn tortillas and oyster crackers. They are a cinch to make and their salty, dusty crunch and cornmeal graininess are like an oar you can use to row through the richness of the cheese and sour cream you’ll want to dollop on top. Baked, not fried! They are what used to be referred to as “homely”, that is, simple and very plain, but I think therein lays their appeal. I’ll be reserving a few as a solo snack while I watch the moguls.

But just now I’m off to watch the Curling. Sweeping a broom on the ice to make big rocks go farther? That looks like something I could actually do!

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Click here for my recipes for Chili Con Pollo and Cornmeal “Saltines”.

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

Still life with onions...

Yeah, yeah, I know: I don’t eat enough vegetables.

I recently read an article in a food magazine I respect and enjoy, written by a highly esteemed author/blogger/restaurateur. In the article the writer professed her love of kale, so much so that even writing about it made her hungry.

Kale.

To be clear: I am hardly a “Falstaff-ian” figure. I try to eat correctly, and usually succeed. But kale? No, the mere thought of kale doesn’t make me hungry.

Chocolate, yes. Kale, no.

It’s not that I hate vegetables; it’s just that I like all the other stuff on the plate more. Yet, I freely acknowledge that when vegetables are cooked properly (or uncooked properly, if that applies) they are wonderful.

So it follows that when the winter root vegetables start to show up in the markets every fall, I begin to feel confident that my veggie intake will increase for a few months, because I like them as much as or more than the other stuff on my plate. Heck, sometimes I don’t need anything else on the plate, and for vegetables, that’s saying a lot.

The great thing about winter vegetables is that they seem so easy to prepare that in my mind they qualify as fast food. The reality is that there is a bit of simple labor involved, yes, but knowing what awaits you when the timer rings (or beeps) is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. (This is not to imply in any way that the prep for these vegetables is in any way medicinal.)

Being a city dweller, the closest I get to handling earth is when I water the small juniper bush that sits on the ledge of one of my kitchen windows. So the fact that some of the winter vegetables arrive in my home with traces of the farm still clinging to them only increases the self satisfaction I get from the minor handling they require before they hit the heat.

It all starts with a few turnips, and a sweet potato or two.

Have you met parsnips? (Say hello, parsnips.) They look like carrots that slavishly wore sunscreen (and I thought I was pale!) Cooked, they taste like the progeny of a carrot and a potato. Sweet potato (I’m told) is a bit of a misnomer: the sweet potatoes we get are actually yams, and I like to mix the mellow white yams with the more effusively sweet orange yams.

When I was at the market this past weekend I found golden beets which, in addition to being mellower than their violet brothers, have the added benefit of not staining your hands when you peel and chop them. They’re good.

I also found some little cippollini onions. You don’t even need to peel cippolinis; when roasted they shed their skins so fast it’s almost like they’re stripping because they can’t take the heat.

The preparation / recipe is simple: first I rinse the vegetables to remove the dirt. No need to scrub, just a cool shower and a rub with your fingers is all that’s required (I mean for the vegetables–get your mind out of the gutter.) Then I peel the veggies using a vegetable peeler, but if you prefer, go ahead and use a paring knife. (As I said, you don’t need to peel the onions.)

Then the chopping. Don’t be put off by this. While fancy-shmancy knife skills are not a prerequisite, if there is any part of this routine that qualifies as the “tricky part” this is it. I recommend that you use a sharp knife. Chop everything to approximately the same size, so they will all be finished cooking at the same time. “Chop” is a misleading word. Cube may be more accurate. Cut the veggies into cubes approximately one-half inch wide and high. No need to measure.

Throw the cubes into a large bowl; drizzle generously with extra virgin olive oil, and less generously with salt. Toss everything around to make sure all have been coated. Roast them on a sheet pan or cookie sheet in a hot oven (450˚F) for about 40 minutes.

If you want to magically convert this into a dinner, toss in your choice of protein. Some sliced turkey sausage is an easy choice. This past weekend, I threw the veggies in a roasting pan, and plunked a whole chicken breast (the bone-in, skin-on variety) on top. Fifty minutes later I had two meals.

Please don’t think that you need to adhere to my variety of veggies. If you like sweet potatoes just use those. (They are especially good when, just out of the oven, you drizzle them with a bit of maple syrup and then return them to the oven for a few fleeting moments.) If you can’t find cippollini onions, just chop a big, zesty, red onion into appropriately sized cubes and roast.

There’s also a great time saver that you can usually only find during November and December: many markets sell butternut squash already peeled and seeded.

But keep in mind that this is a great way to gamble at low stakes with a vegetable you’ve never tried before. Roasted using this method almost any hearty vegetable will have a toasty sweetness that won’t disappoint. And preparing vegetables as a Thanksgiving side could not be easier than this.

Isn’t nature wonderful?

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