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.

Meatless Monday - Baked Eggs with Spinach, Artichokes and Leeks

 

I'm a huge Paul McCartney fan, in fact I'm a Beatles freak.  While I'm a touch too young to have seen the Beatles perform live, I've been fortunate enough to see Paul a few times over the years and I am so grateful to have had the chance.  As I sat the other day thinking of performers I REALLY want my kids to see before they retire (don't ask me why I was thinking this, but I was), Paul McCartney topped the list.  I mean, can you think of anyone (still alive) that has influenced the music we all listen to today in such a profound way?  Yeah....me neither.  I could go on for days about what it is about his songwriting and singing that moves me, but much of it you've probably heard before, or even feel yourself.  

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!

Parchment Baked Fish with Fennel

Baking fish in parchment is a fabulous technique that I'd read about for years but didn't try myself until just the other day, inspired by having seen my chef-friend Jody Adams cook some this way in a recent cooking class I attended.  Jody, who along with her husband Ken write and shoot the fabulous home-cooking blog, The Garum Factory, prepared a similar dish in her class, and from the first bite I was hooked.

Pomegranate Pork with Gingered Kale

Happy New Year Everyone!

This recipe was inspired by one I found in a Whole Foods magazine recently.  I was excited to play with it last week not only because of its lovely green and red holiday appearance (the greens look a bit like a Christmas tree, don't you think?), but because kale and pork are always welcome guests at our table.  I love recipes that offer a simple sauce to accompany pork because let's face it, plain pork tenderloin is a yawn.  As for the kale, it is so versatile and SO GOOD for you, it is something I'm trying to incorporate into our diet more and more.  So much so that I'm thinking about a kale based new year's resolution.

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?

Rapini with Sausage, Cranberries and Polenta Cakes

I'm a huge fan of rapini (broccoli rabe) and  sausage with pasta, in fact, next to a good carbonara it's probably my favorite pasta dish. It's such a great combination of flavors and textures, bitter, sweet, salty, spicey...you name it, and that dish has it.  The other day I was hankerin' for a big bowl of the stuff, but when I checked the pantry I found we were out of gluten-free pasta, and as I'm trying hard to keep the missus wheat-gluten free, I decided to twist the dish up a bit and make it with  polenta instead.

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.

Pork Tenderloin with Coconut Cranberry Sauce

 

 We are huge fans of Ming Tsai in this household, so when I found his latest cookbook at a deep discount at our local (and sadly, closing) Borders Books, I grabbed it.  The book, Simply Ming One-Pot Meals  is chock full of Ming's trademark East-West recipes that are simple enough to cook on any given weeknight...huzzah.

Fennel Soup with Chorizo

I’ve never had the opportunity to eat in a Gordon Ramsay restaurant (Santa, are you listening?), but I do own a few of his cookbooks, and while I’m not a rabid fan of his TV shows, I’ve enjoyed a few episodes over the years.  I know lots of people hate the guy, or at least the personality he puts forth on TV, as he berates contestants on Hell’s Kitchen or The F Word, but I have to say that I appreciate his approach to cooking.

He may be an challenge to work with, but his application of classical technique to the very best ingredients he can find, and his ability to conjure bold, yet approachable flavors for his guests, has earned him a spot among the very best chefs in the world.  I’m a fan.