Are any of you hooked on The Canal House? Have Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer (no relation) reeled you into their culinary world? Each weekday I receive an e-mail, accompanied by the most gorgeously enticing photograph, describing these ladies’ lunches.
This week’s recipe, Cheating-on-Winter Pea Soup, pairs perfectly with cornbread slathered in honey and Black Mountain Vineyard’s Pinot Noir.
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice, Cheating-on-Winter Pea Soup, presented the perfect opportunity for me to play house like Melissa and Christopher. I returned to Nevada last weekend, after spending the week in Colorado organizing my March move. So, for the next month, most of my days are revolving around sorting and tossing and donating and selling and packing and not having any fun at all. (Okay, that last part is a fib.)
As you can tell from the Mise en Place, The ingredients for this simple soup are probably already in your pantry, refridgerator or freezer.
So, for Lent, instead of giving up something, I’ve promised myself I will stop each day and make a nice, nutritious lunch. Nothing fancy. Nothing difficult. Just lunch. A catch-up-with-yourself moment. And, thanks to Dorie, Thursday’s lunch was quickly created and delicious.
“The soup, made in about 15 minutes, is the liquid version of a classic French dish, peas with lettuce and onions,” Dorie explains.
Everything in this soup was already in my cupboard and fridge – no last-minute trips to the grocery store. The bag of frozen peas, found at the back of my freezer, were just begging for attention. I melted some butter to soften the coarsely chopped onion. After seasoning, I poured in the chicken broth, bringing it to a boil. Then I added the peas and the trimmed, sliced romaine lettuce to the broth, asking it all to simmer while I made corn bread.
Warm Corn Bread is always a treat. Drip a little honey on top, even better. This was a perfect opportunity to sweeten up my lunch menu.
Don’t you think corn bread slathered with honey goes well with just about anything? I decided to go all Pioneer Woman and make it in my cast iron skillet. Just loved smelling the aroma while I pureed the soup in my blender. Because I wanted a smooth, silky texture, I then strained it. Rather than garnish my pea soup, I browned and added some pancetta bits before adding a dash more of pepper. A civilized, tasty meal break during a busy day.
PART TWO: COEUR À LA CRÈME
The End of the Story: For last week’s FFWD recipe dessert, we made Coeur à la Crème, and I used Dorie’s recipe as well as the Barefoot Contessa’s (Ina Garten) for my two Coeurs. Both desserts were admired and willingly devoured, calories be damned. Because Dorie’s Coeur was refrigerated for three days, Ina’s, only 24 hours, it was firmer. I preferred that. Otherwise, the two complemented each other and we noticed little difference.
Admittedly, my friends would rather cook than pose but they indulged me for the sake of FFWD. Charlotte (l), is smiling, kinda, but worried about her garlic burning (it didn’t). DonnaG (middle), our always generous hostess, helped me make the dessert. DonnaC’s, (r), task was to add the panache to DonnaG’s and my Coeur à la Crèmes. As you will see, that lady can work wonders with raspberry coulis.
THE MOHAIR MOMENT.
Our hostess pulled out some special plates, beautiful heirlooms from her family, for serving and to honor this special dessert.
It took a village to produce these two Coeur à la Crèmes but aren’t they pretty? Note the bow (r) which DonnaC recycled from our earlier present exchange.
“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart.” Cesar Chavez
For the past several weeks, since returning to Henderson for the Winter, my nightime social life has skyrocketed from zero to seven (on a scale of 1 to 10). While that’s a good thing, it’s played havoc with my usual 8:30 pm bedtime but I’m not complaining.
This week’s FFWD recipe, Creamy Cauliflower Soup sans Cream, is smooth, silky and beautifully white in color. (I mention the color because this picture implies that the soup is a light pink. My bad. Annie Leibovitz was unavailable.
This past month, many friends who could not attend Michael’s service in Aspen, have found their way to Las Vegas to see me and have dinner. Next week my brother and his cronies, Denver businessmen turned wannabee cowboys, are here for their annual junket to the 10-day Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Since I’ve never attended next week’s event, I’m joining them (and, 175,275 other fans).
Lastly and even better, last night was Date Night.
My Date (l), always a good sport, and my long-suffering Trainer ( r).
Every year the physical trainers in Anthem Country Club’s Athletic Department have a very, very nice holiday party for all their clients. I have never attended and, because my trainer is the head honcho, I know it has hurt his feelings. This year, realizing it would be my last opportunity before moving back to Colorado, one of my early morning workout colleagues told me I was to be his date for this year’s party. He’d be by at 6:30pm to pick me up and, he added, “look nice”. I didn’t even hesitate – Ray is 49 years old, good-looking and very buff. Way to go, Mary.
You might be asking what all this has to do with this week’s FFWD recipe, Creamy Cauliflower Soup sans Cream. Here’s the segue…..
A mixture of onions, garlic, celery and fresh thyme are cooked slowly in a soup pot after first warming the pot with olive oil and melted butter.
Although Ray is sweet in temperament, he is not sweet in taste. He doesn’t do sugar. To thank him for the anticipated evening as well as acknowledging his being a good sport, my baking some Christmas goodies was a non-starter. However, when he asked what I was cooking for Dorie this week, I answered, “Cauliflower soup.” His response, “I would really like some of that.”
Done.
I like cauliflower so this soup was on my radar and I was anxious to share it. Surprisingly, it emerged to be full-bodied and robust. No cream nor potatoes for thickening usually translates to watery, thin soups but not in this case. Just less calories. Expecting the soup to possess the pungent earthy flavor of the vegetable itself, I was surprised by its mildness. I would have enjoyed more of a kick.
After buying a large head of cauliflower, remove the leaves and break into florets. Be sure to discard the tough core.
This is a relatively simple soup to make. Just add chopped onions, garlic, celery and thyme to a soup pot containing warmed olive oil and butter. Season with salt and pepper (I always use more seasoning than Dorie suggests.) After simmering that mixture for 20 minutes, pour in chicken or vegetable broth and toss in the cauliflower florets. Bring to a boil and simmer another 20 minutes.
I allowed my soup to cool a bit before using my immersion blender to puree it to a very smooth liquid, leaving no chunks. Reheat and then season to taste. Be creative with a topping of your choice – shaved truffles, crème fraîche topped with caviar, or grated Parmesan or Comté. I drizzled a little walnut oil on top of the soup and then tossed some chopped, toasted walnuts onto that, adding some crunch.
I toasted some walnuts and then coarsely chopped them. After drizzling some walnut oil on the soup I then threw some chopped walnuts on top.
A perfect lunch or light dinner. Add a salad of fresh greens and crusty bread and you’ve got a memorable meal.
If this is a soup for you and your friends, go here to find the recipe. See how other Doristas coped with cauliflower this week by linking to French Fridays with Dorie.
The drizzle of walnut oil topped with toasted chopped walnuts added a nice texture to the smooth and silky soup.
AT LAST!!! Dan, who works at the front desk at The Gant, called to tell Clara, (L) and Emma (R) that Mrs. Berg’s cookies had arrived. They ran to pick up the bigggggg box.
Although Dorie calls this week’s recipe, Spur-of-the-Moment Vegetable Soup, she admits it’s really Stone Soup. She’s referring, of course, to that glorious ancient folk tale which, in 1947, writer Marcia Brown used as the basis of her children’s book entitled Stone Soup. And for writing it, Brown won a prestigious Caldecott Medal that year.
Before we get to the soup, let’s move on to dessert, Oatmeal-M & M’s Cookies baked by Liz Berg of That Skinny Chick Can Bake. In July, Liz participated in an on-line baking auction to raise money for victims of our devastating Colorado fires. After a fierce bidding war, I successfully won her cookies. We decided that she would wait to bake and send the cookies until mid-October when my entire family, including two little girls who love cookies, would be in Aspen.
Emma is older so she gets to open the box.
This past Tuesday we celebrated Michael’s Life with family and friends at a wonderful and joyful service. Our two little cookie monsters stood at the altar, in a church full of strangers, and sang like angels. Is it sacreligious to say they nailed “Amazing Grace”? It goes without saying that when the anticipated cookies arrived, even their Mother (that’s Melissa), let them each have a bag, no sharing. Thanks, Liz, you baked a great reward!
“It’s a big box, Grandma.” (Clara)
The Mother Lode.
“One bag of cookies for each of us. Thank you, Mrs. Berg.”
The vegetable soup, which was our main course for dinner tonight, was a wonderfully simple and nutritious entrée. After cooking sliced carrots, onions, celery, and seasonings in olive oil, I added chicken broth, diced potatoes and brought everything to a boil. After taking it down to a simmer for 20-30 minutes and adjusting the seasoning, I did choose to puree it. And to that pureed soup I added cooked quinoa for extra nutrition, texture and flavoring. I served the hearty soup with yellow/red beets and crusty bread for a delicious meal.
I put together a mixture of sliced carrots, onions, celery, garlic and Provençal seasonings and tossed them together with olive oil into a Dutch oven .
After adding chicken broth and diced potatoes to the mixture, I brought it to a boil and then let it simmer, partially covered, for 20-30 minutes.
To see what stones my colleagues threw in their soup this week, go here.
After adjusting the seasonings and pureeing the soup, I added cooked quinoa to make a heartier soup.
Many of you would not put Easter, Springtime and slowly, braised lamb stew, in the same sentence. This would be a wintertime all-in-one meal at my house. Perhaps, first snowstorm, crockpot and slowly, braised lamb stew fits better.
According to Ms. Greenspan, our leader and author of Around My French Table, this week’s recipe is a classic and a staple of the Easter season in France. The lamb is meant to be paired with freshly dug spring vegetables, tiny onions, carrots, turnips, potatoes and peas. I was able to buy all the vegetables but the peas at our local Farmer’s Market. (I used frozen peas.)
Farmer’s Market Spring Vegetables
I cut a three-pound boneless lamb shoulder into 1 1/2-inch cubes. Be sure to remove the excess fatty pieces. The cooking method is a classic braise, perfect for my 7 1/4 quart Creuset cast-iron dutch oven. Brown the meat. Add broth and other seasonings. Simmer.
Mise En Place – The Fixins’
Next, prepare the veggies and brown in butter for ten minutes. After the meat has simmered for 45 minutes, add the vegetables. A caution, the peas stand alone, unable to play with others until the last moment.
Browning the lamb pieces
Brown the vegetables in butter. No peas, please.
While the stew simmered and still having 1 pound of fresh carrots left, I decided to make Dorie’s café-style grated carrot salad (p. 107). Carottes râpées is also a French classic and served everywhere, from the toniest restaurant to the cheapest student café. Buy it at any take-out place or local grocery store. It’s arguably the favored raw salad of France.
Dorie’s Café-style grated carrot salad
For dessert, I baked Brown Sugar Bundt Cake, a recipe from her Baking: From My Home to Yours. This is a versatile cake, not choosy when it is served, and is perfect for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or bedtime snack. The leftover cake made its way through the neighborhood to very good reviews. Find this recipe here and here.
Brown Sugar Bundt Cake
It’s Springtime. The farmer’s fresh vegetables made this all-in-one-meal quite special and tasty. A winter dish? Wasn’t mentioned. I heard no complaints.
Last night, while mid-way through a bowl of French Onion Soup, my favorite taster, critic and dinner companion remarked,
“I’ve eaten all kinds of French Onion Soup in my life but nothing has ever tasted this good.”
Wow, that’s some compliment, I thought. What a massage to my Ego.
Then, the next remark, “Dorie really hit it out of the ballpark this time!”
Ohhhhhh.
Little credit, please.
What could taste better on a February evening than French Onion Soup with Sancerre.
Délicieux. Merci, Dorie.
Many amateur chefs approach making French Onion Soup, this week’s choice for French Friday with Dorie, with trepidation. What’s so difficult about throwing a few onions in a pot, adding some broth, wine and cognac and topping it with bread and cheese? As my favorite little eight-year-old, Clara Place, says, “It’s twicky, really twicky.”
Primary Ingredients: Garlic and Sweet Spanish Onions. (In 2002 this onion was named Utah’s state vegetable. Honest.)
Cut onion in half from top to bottom. Cut lengthwise, in half, again, leaving root intact. Then thinly slice crosswise.
While not prepared to give Ms. Greenspan all the credit for this marvelous recipe, it is a great opportunity to raise the cognac snifter (well, someone had to drink the leftover cognac) and toast Dorie for her beautifully clear and well-written cookbook. Dorie takes you through each recipe, explaining very succinctly and better than most, the basic steps to a successful result.
For example, regarding onion caramelization, she writes, “Have patience: depending on the heat and the onions, this may take an hour or more. And don’t be tempted to try to speed things up, because if you burn the onions, your soup will have a bitter taste. On the other hand, if you don’t get the onions really brown, your soup will be pale in both taste and looks.”
It took one-hour and twenty-minutes for my onions to reach a perfect deep caramel color. Patience is a VIrtue.
Here’s some good and bad news about french onion soup. First, the bad. Not only did the French not invent french fries, they also cannot claim the rights to onion soup. The ancient Greeks enjoyed onion soup as did the Romans. Various versions even marched onto the pages of the more modern English and colonial American cookbooks. Onions were easy to grow, cheap, nutritious and considered poor people’s food.
A littler cognac, toasted baguette slices, Gruyère (a little extra, maybe) and ready to broil.
What the French can be credited for is adding cheese and bread. If the Greeks could construct the Parthenon and the empire-building Romans could pillage and conquer, why wouldn’t they have thought of that? This delicious addition was probably left to the Canuts, the laborers who did the weaving and screening of silk that sustained Lyon’s’ most famous industry. And, that’s the reason its official name is Soupe à L’oignon à la Lyonnaise.
The ingredients are already staples in your kitchen, basically, onions and garlic, oils, chicken broth, bread and cheese (I used a smoked Gruyère).
It’s your call whether to add the wine, during cooking, and cognac, before serving. Mix in, and these are the must-include ingredients, time (who has extra time???) and, patience (not part of my DNA). The result via Dorie is perfection.
This week I am in Aspen, tying up the last-minute details on my condo’s re-model, in anticipation of Winter’s skiing rentals. I’ve traded my apron for a tool belt and couldn’t join the other Dorista’s to make the past two weeks’ recipes, Spiced Squash, Fennel, and Pear Soup and Braised Cardamon-Curry Lamb. Sound delicious. Check-out those recipe results at http://www.frenchfridayswithdorie.com/.
What I did make, however, was Stone Soup (Spur-of-the-Moment Vegetable Soup, carrot version, via Dorie, p. 74). For those of you who do not know this folk tale, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_soup.
I know what George is thinking. “Is this REALLY part of my Job Description?”
I made two different versions, one with chicken and served as is, just chopped and sliced. The other, I pureed, plunking a dollop of sour cream on top. Then I started prowling the 143 condo units here at The Gant, to find George, who has headed The Gant’s Engineering Department since my arrival seven years ago.
George has been my Go-To guy (and, everyone else’s) and there is nothing he cannot fix nor replace nor install nor tear apart and re-build. He’s done all that and more for me. He’s what you would call, a “Keeper”, a very nice guy. But, here’s his best-kept secret. George hailed from Guilford, Maine, where he owned a restaurant called “Flatlander’s”. He’s an extraordinary Chef who has been donating and sharing his culinary talents for the eleven years he’s lived in Aspen. So, it’s not-for-nothing that I chose him to taste my Stone Soup.
Everything in my ‘fridge went into my soup pot: carrots, onions, celery, Yukon potatoes, and yams. Garlic and fresh ginger were the spices-of-choice. Chicken broth, my base. After separating out the to-be-pureed batch, I tossed in slivers from half a roasted chicken.
The Stone Soup with Chicken was so hot, George stepped outside for a cool-down.
Caught in the Act – Complimenting me on “just the right spices”.
George took his job seriously, trying the chicken version on the porch, it was steaming hot! I think he favored the pureed version, which he said was flavored perfectly, because he had two bowls. This Stone Soup teams perfectly with a Sterling Vineyards “Merlot”, 2008, which we drank, off-camera. Although George had clocked out, he still maintained his standards, after all!
Oh, yes, another good thing about him? George is a very Good Sport.
