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.

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.

Crispy Chicken Thighs with Olives, Lemon and Fennel

Here is yet another Thomas Keller recipe that we at Oui, Chef can wholeheartedly endorse.  As you all must know by now, we are big fans of braised chicken, as we’ve cooked this dish, this one, and this one over the past couple of years.  We love these dishes not just for their bold, deep flavors, but for their economy as well.  It really is hard to beat chicken for feeding a crowd on the cheap.

 This braise marries some of our favorite flavors, sweet fennel, briny olives, and bright, fruity citrus.  All of these elements combine with the rich, moist thigh meat and meld into a truly satisfying meal.  As with most of his recipes, Keller offers up a trick for this dish that will change the way I finish all chicken braises in the future.

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.

Carnitas Tacos

I have discovered homemade carnitas, and I am in love.

Not sure why it took me so long to make carnitas on my own, I mean I've loved them in great Mexican take-out joints for years, but for some reason never thought to make them myself.  As you all know, I am a big fan of braising, and my favorite dish of all time is duck confit (another dish I've never made....doh!), so it should come as no surprise that carnitas and I are made for each other.

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.

Sloppy Joes

It takes a while, but every summer by about this time we all start suffering from burger fatigue.  I don’t know about you, but we definitely get our fill of burgers and dogs around here during grilling season, so much so that by mid-August I start thinking about how to take the idea of a burger in new directions.

One of our favorite alternatives is this Sloppy Joe. 

Please don’t tell me you reach for a can of Manwich, or just dump a jar of Ragu in ground beef when you fell the urge, you don’t do you?  For years the Sloppy Joe has been sold as just that kind of meal, much like that old chestnut, Tuna Helper, a desperation meal in a can that you keep hidden in the back of the pantry.  If that IS the only kind of Joe you’ve ever had, then please keep reading, as you are in for a treat.