Oui, Chef

Meatless Monday: Butternut, Carrots and Fennel.....Oh My!

 

Here's another great meatless recipe that includes some of our favorite veggies and fruits.  We love making soups and stews of all sorts this time of year as they are great to have in the freezer for a quick weeknight meal when you just don't have time for anything else.  Heat a pot full of soup, toss together a quick salad, warm a loaf of crusty bread, and all is good with the world.

An Impromptu Chili

 

The pork shoulder roast used to make this chili was originally scheduled for a little "low and slow" oven love before being served up to the gang as a Sunday roast.  However, mid-way through prepping it for this purpose I had a change of heart, prompted by my need to get our fridge and pantry inventory below the level that would feed a small country (you think I'm kidding?).  Turns out this lovely chili allowed me to use up not only the shoulder roast, but also a box of baby spinach, all the carrots, onions, shallots, celery and cilantro left in the fridge, a can of crushed tomatoes and a bag of flageolet beans from the pantry, and a cooked bag of bacon shards in the freezer.  

How's that for a kitchen sink recipe!

Sweet Potato Cottage Pie

This big trough of awesomeness is a slight adaptation of a recipe I saw recently in Fine Cooking magazine, which is fast becoming one of my favorite food publications.  In my continuing effort to purge the fridge of long held condiments I decided to try this dish as a means to polish off some cerignola olives and peppadew peppers we had lying about.  Yeah....this baby was a two-fer in our quest to pare down the number of bottles, cans and plastic tubs we've accumulated over the past year.

While it meay be that we turned to this dish as a fridge cleaner, we'll go back to it again and again (and again, if Arthas has anything to do with it) because it flat-out rocks with salty, sweet and umami tastes in perfect balance.  Those of you feeling the urge to run screaming from this cottage pie because just seeing the name is dragging up memories of grade-school lunch ladies serving you a dish of the same name, DON'T.  This dish is as far a cry from the cottage pie of your elementary school youth as Barbara Streisand is from Ke$ha.  

Do I make myself clear?

Ming and Muppets Chicken Noodle Soup

Doesn't that rich chicken stock look delicious?

 

We call this Ming and Muppet's Soup because at it's base is a poached chicken and broth that comes from a recipe I adapted from Ming Tsai, and that appears in his great cookbook Simply Ming - One Pot Meals .  Ming serves his dish Chinese style, with each diner getting as piece of chicken and a cup of the broth to dip it in.  The other night when Muppet was begging for some homemade chicken noodle soup, we turned to Ming's chicken dish and just took it a few steps further by adding a couple more ingredients, and serving it over pasta for an unvbelievably tasty soup.

French Lentil and Sausage Soup

I've been making this soup for years in one form or another, but until now had never written out a recipe for it.  Truth be told, even though this version was quite fantastic, the next time I make it I'll probably tweak it again and come up with a slightly different twist on the bugger.

Thai Shrimp Curry

I love curries, and I mean all curries.  Thai, Indian, Pakistani, Cambodian, you name an ethnic cuisine that boasts a curry and I'm all over it like.....well....

Like curry on rice!

It doesn't matter to me whether the curry is a long braised Indian lamb curry, or a quick to the table Thai version like this one here, there is just something special about the spice blends that define curries that I find very appealing.  Some are scorching hot, others not so much, but one thing all curries share is a complexity and depth of flavor that I find absolutely addiciting.

Peyton's "Jean-Georges" Meal

 

Today I lay down my pen (as it were) and camera, and hand over the reigns to Peyton who offered to write this guest post about an awesome meal she cooked just before heading off to summer camp.  All the words and photos are hers, and she hopes very much that you enjoy them. Cheers - Steve

One of my earliest memories about Asian food was trying to use chopsticks. I struggled, and ended up using my fingers instead. Another I have is about going to a wonderful Japanese restaurant and eating at a hibachi table. The chef cooked with huge flames, made onion volcanoes, and tossed eggs into his hat.  But what I remember most was his smile. He was enjoying the show as much as we were. Up until cooking with Steve, I hadn’t even dreamt of cooking Asian food. The techniques seemed so complicated and took years to master. 

Not long ago I was looking through his many, many cookbooks for a recipe for lamb. I went into Jean-Georges Vongerichten's cookbook, Jean-Georges: Cooking At Home with a Four-Star Chef, and it jumped out at me. No, not the lamb dish that I was looking for, but rather a picture like what you see above. It was of a whole plate of his signature appetizers, and it looked delicious.  Of course, it also looked like an intimidating challenge.  If you knew me personally, then you'd know why I couldn't just turn another page. I had to make it!