Quarantine Cooking!

Now that we're all doing our best to be house bound, this seemed like a the perfect time to revive our cooking blog to swap recipes. Last night we made a good, freezable, fridge-cleaning soup that we call date soup! Here's the (very flexible) recipe:

For the protein:
1 lb ground meat (preferably chicken or turkey) (Or no meat! Do beans instead)
Liberal amounts of garlic (like 8 cloves?)
Basil or parsley (dried or fresh is fine)
Salt or garlic salt or onion salt, or a mix of all three!
Pepper
Olive oil
Cut any of the above seasonings, or add others that you like (I'd add fennel seeds, but that's not popular with the wife).

Add meat, crushed garlic, and seasonings to a bowl, and squish together like you're making meatballs or sausage. Heat the olive oil in a soup pot, then add meat, and cook so it ends up in little bits, like you're making a bolognese sauce or taco meat.

For the rest of the soup:

Carrots
Onion
Zucchini
Yellow summer squash
Mushrooms
Spinach
Fresh basil
Omit any of the above vegetables, or add others that you like or need to get out of your fridge.

Cut up your vegetables into spoon-appropriate sized bits. Add the carrots and onions to the protein, stirring until they're a bit cooked, then add:

Canned tomatoes or a can of spaghetti sauce
Chicken or vegetable broth
Bay leaves
Other seasonings (Italian seasoning, etc)

Then add the rest of the vegetables, starting with the summer squashes, waiting a while, then adding mushrooms, waiting a while, and adding spinach and basil right before it's done.

As the soup is cooking, cook noodles (pasta shells are traditional for us) to eat it with, or eat it with bread. (Italian rustic is really good, and here's an easy recipe that's worked well for me. (NOT SO RIDICULOUS OF ME TO HAVE BOUGHT A FIFTY POUND BAG OF BREAD FLOUR, NOW, IS IT, STEVE??))
Parmesan or mozzarella are great on top of this soup!

A proposal, and a winter's dinner

Now that it's the depths of winter in MN, and that winter is on the way out in RVA, we propose an idea. We have Bittman's How to Cook Everything and it is just chock full of delicious chicken recipes. So, we here in RVA think it would be fun to try one new chicken dish every week or two and post about it. Are you all game?
Our first post will be a mock-chicken salad and cream of pea soup with avacado.



This tofu salad is a great favorite at our house, and it doesn't contain any noxious onions or garlic that must be avoided by E at this juncture. It does contain delicious curry powder, raisins, and carrots.

1/2 lb firm tofu
3 T mayonnaise
1 tsp curry powder
1 rib celery, run through a mandoline
1 carrot, run through a mandoline
1 large hand full of raisins
salt and pepper

1. Wrap the tofu block in a CLEAN cotton/linen kitchen towel and gently wring much of the moisture out of the tofu over the sink (really, a clean one. This will not be cooked). Drop tofu into bowl and crumble into course bread crumb size.
2. Stir in all remaining ingredients and chill at least 1 hour, covered to let flavors develop.

We made a green soup to go with our white and orange sandwich spread, and it turned out deliciously.



Cream of Pea and Avacado Soup

3-4 celery ribs, chopped finely
1 T butter
3-4 cups of chicken broth
3 cups of frozen peas
1 tsp dried dill
salt to taste (check it before salting, packaged broth is SUPER salty)
1/4 (or more) avacado
1/2 -1 cup whole milk

Soup is pretty forgiving, but here's how we made it.
1. Saute the celery in the butter for c. 10 minutes.
2. Add the chicken broth, and taste for saltiness. Bring to a full boil.
3. Add frozen peas, continue to boil on lower heat for 5 minutes. Add dill.
4. Take off the heat and add avacado and puree until smooth. Stir in milk to lighten the color.

Tunisian Turkey Stew (or Turkey Triangles)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope fun was had by all in AZ! We had a great meal with E's family in RVA. Our turkey turned out truly fantastically, but we ended up with a great big bird


(13 pounds for 4 adults). The turkey was amazing, and the Bean thought it was the best thing ever with a little bit of cranberry "jelly".

Now that we've feasted, we're trying to enjoy the rest of our turkey without eating sandwiches, because those are just boring day in and day out. We've already made stock, and we saved most of one breast in one piece for another big meal. For the rest of it, we're thinking of clever ideas. Tonight we made soup. I modified one of my favorite soup recipes by throwing in turkey and a bunch of vegetables. It was a tonic to warm the belly and cure what ails you.



Tunisian Turkey Stew
2 T butter
1 cup yellow split peas (or lentils)
1 onion, finely diced
1 cup carrot pennies
1 T curry powder
1 inch ginger, chopped coarsely
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp salt
2 dried chiles, whole
1 cinnamon stick
4 cups turkey stock
1 14 oz can chopped tomatoes
4 - 6 cups cubed turkey (I just cubed a good sized mixture of dark and light)
1 cup frozen spinach
Chopped fresh parsley (optional)

1. In a soup pot on medium heat, saute onions and carrots with spices (save cinnamon stick) in butter for 5-8 minutes, until onions are soft.
2. In a second sauce pot, cook split peas or lentils in 2 cups of water, with the cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil, and partially cover. cook at a low simmer for about 30 minutes. Lentils are very foamy, so watch out when you first reach a boil that you don't boil the pot over.
3. In the soup pot, add tomatoes, turkey broth, turkey cubes, and spinach. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes.
4. Add the lentils and any remaining cooking water, and heat all together for 5 - 20 minutes more.