Best New Restaurant: Petite Jacqueline, Portland, ME
Outstanding Chef: Melissa Kelly, Primo, Rockland, ME
Outstanding Restaurant: Fore Street, Portland, ME
Best Chef: Northeast
Tomato soup. One of my all time favorite soups. There is only a handful ingredients, but there are so many ways to get it right or not so right. The preparation of the ingredients makes all the difference between a so-so dish and a smack your lips gourmet soup. This is definitely the way to ‘do it right’. All the steps and the order are very important: plum tomatoes (out of a can, at this winter season) roasted in the oven with fresh carrots, shallots and a dash of brown sugar to get the deep, caramelized flavors, and starting the soup base with a tablespoon of butter (vegan or not, this is a must!), red pepper flakes brought back to life in the bubbling butter, garlic caramelized in the heated butter, all mixed up with some tomato paste and then thinned out with a jigger of lemon flavored vodka. The rest is easy. Salute!
Roasted plum tomato soup (makes 3 medium or 2 large servings):
Step1: Preheat oven to 400F. In a bowl, mix the plum tomatoes from the can (without their juice, save those juices for the soup or later!), the carrots, shallots, and brown sugar with a dash of ground black pepper, and arrange in a flat spread-out layer on a baking sheet lined with a silicone mat (or aluminum foil). Place in the middle of the oven and roasted for 30 min. The sugars likely caramelize not only on the tomatoes but also on the mat.
While the tomato mix is roasting, prepare the soup base. In a large pot, melt the butter on medium heat. Stir in the red pepper flakes, before the butter turns it color (it should NOT get brown). Now, add the micro planed garlic, and constantly stir. The butter and garlic will get slightly brown, but only saute for about 1 min and then add tomato paste and mix in until it is all combined (it probably comes together in a tomato paste ball). Cook it like this for about 1 min, constantly stirring and breaking it up. Take pot of the heat (you don’t want the vodka to suddenly ignite), and add the vodka, stir it in the sauce, and bring the pot back to the heat, constantly stirring and mixing, for about 1 min.
Now, add the can of crushed tomatoes (crushed, not diced! If they diced, puree them first). Mix it all until the butter-garlic-tomato paste-vodka mixture is well combined with the crushed tomatoes. Add 1 cup of water with some bouillon (or 1 cup of chicken or vegetable stock), and bring it to a simmer.
Once the roasted tomatoes are ready, add all of them and the onions and roasted carrots to the soup, and simmer for about 15min (last picture below).
Now, you can use an immersion blender and blend the soup or let it cool, and puree it in the vitamix, and then reheat. Once the soup is blended, stir in about 1 TB of creme fraiche or vegan sour cream or heavy cream. Serve with a dash of creme fraiche and pepitas.
Finest tomato soup, EVER.
Is your cat a game mouser? He/she might if you give them free reign to your IPad and load the Affection Collection cat app, which is supposed to keep cats entertained while you are detained otherwise (at work, for example). My mom told me about it and those kittens on youtube seem to have an awful lot of fun chasing the virtual mice. So, of course I had to download it and try it out on all of my kitties. Although, they all were enticed by the mice and the virtual yarn balls, only one was excited enough to actual try to paw-chase them. Maybe, it works better for kittens. At least, my IPad is still scratch-free.
Sunday! The official day off. I already went for a very chilly and icy walk, bundled up in my most serious winter clothes (almost floor length thick down coat, fur lined winter boots). The woodstove now is roaring hot and brings a cozy warmth to the living room and the kitchen. Chanelle relaxes on a whicker chair not far from the woodstove and takes in the warmth. Baby Cat snacks on organic, free range, freshly roasted chicken legs (and purrs while eating). The sun is slowly setting behind the trees, the TV is on and New England is ready to get game on.
The other day I came across the recipe for vegetarian meatballs from the Meatball Shop in Manhattan. Vegetarian is nice, vegan is better. So, I added my own tweaks and twists to the meatball recipe and made it vegan. And still very tasty.
Preparation of lentils:
Wash and rinse the lentils and chickpeas, and place in a pot with the water, the bay leaf and garlic. Bring to a boll, and simmer for about 1 1/2 hours on low (simmer only for 30 min if you soaked the lentils and chickpeas for 12h). There is likely little water left, but if there is then drain it. It should make about 2 1/2 cups of cooked lentils.
Lentil walnut porcini meatballs:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare a large baking sheet with some olive oil so that the meatballs won’t stick. Set aside.
Prepare the flax eggs by combining the ground flax seeds with hot water, and set aside. The mix will gel.
Add the olive oil to a frying pan and sauté the onions, chopped carrots, minced garlic, thyme and reconstituted mushrooms over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, for about 5-7 min. Add the tomato paste and red pepper paste and continue to cook for about 2 minutes, until all the ingredients are mixed well and the liquid is absorbed. Transfer the mixture to a food processor, and let cool in the food processor for about 5 min.
Add about 75% of the cooked, and slightly cooled lentils/chickpeas to the vegetables in the food processor, and chop coarsely until all the ingredients are well combined. (It will be quite mushy, that makes the lentil balls even more sticky and hold together). Add the mixture to a large mixing bowl.
Add the flax egg, regular bread crumbs, panko bread crumbs, chopped walnuts, BBQ sauce and the salt to the pureed mix as well as the non-pureed cooked lentil mix. Mix with a spatula until thoroughly incorporated. Let sit for about 10 min (for the bread crumbs to soak up the liquid and bind the meatballs).
Use a small ice cream scoop and scoop out ping pong ball sized meatballs. Place the lentil balls in the prepared baking sheet, allowing 1/4 inch of space between the balls and in even rows vertically and horizontally to form a grid.
Roast at 400F for 30 minutes, or until the meatballs are firm and cooked through. Allow the meatballs to cool for 5 minutes in the baking dish before serving.
We are in the deep freeze here for 2 weeks already, temperatures in the low teens, and now a handful of snow. The good about the snow is that it allows for a whee bit of rigorous outdoor exercise again such as gliding through the sunny, cold woods on skis and still feeling warm. Warm is good.
It is continuing to be cold, very very cold and even some snow on the way. The woodstove is fired up day and night to keep us warm, and anything reminding me remotely of summer and warmth is welcomed. The grocery store had a delivery of beautifully looking strawberries from Florida that had the wonderful aroma of just ripe strawberries, an aroma so good that it convinced me to buy them out of season (for Maine, at least) but at least national and east coast (all depends on the scope of local, right?). They were a great addition to the sunburst salad the other day, rounded out with mixed lettuce, orange bell pepper, goat cheese and toasted pine nuts with balsamic vinaigrette.
101cookbooks is one of the first blogs I’ve ever read, and it is still one of my favorite ones. Heidi posted a recipe of a black bread in the last few days, and as bread enthusiast I planned to try it. The ingredients sounded esoteric for bread (cocoa? espresso? molasses?) but it could really work for a dark rye bread, which I love. Since I am rather busy and have little time to babysit a bread right now, I made it using the breadmachine. My breadmachine makes 1-1 1/2 pound loaves so I halved of the ingredients. Verdict? It is delicious!!
Find the original recipe here!
Hey there! How is your new year going so far? Resolutions, plans, a clean canvas? Busy? When I walked along the river yesterday I saw the handywork of some really busy beavers…
There was a time when garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas) were mostly of the white variety. Then came the black garbanzo beans, which are really more brown. Rumor has it real black indeed exist. But searching for my beloved petite frozen brussels sprouts at WholeFoods brought about a new variety: frozen green chickpeas.
Green chickpeas are basically young chickpeas that -- when left to mature on the plant -- turn into the blonde variety that is dried. They are like edamame, and they do taste like peas rather than regular chickpeas. Nevertheless, off to trying them out, although I cringed at the cash register at the steep price tag ($4.69 for a small bag), but then what is not expensive at Whole Paycheck.
Green garbanzo beans are basically raw garbanzo beans and do not take very long to cook. I put them in the microwave for about 3min with some water and they were ready to go. WF conveniently offers a few recipes for green chickpeas such as green hummus and chickpea guacamole, but I think I will eat them as a salad ingredient.
The days between Christmas and New Year are spent by many people at either one of 2 locations: the cold mountains, skiing, snowboarding, Aspen and the like, or at a warm beach, like St Barts or Miami. Yesterday, I took my last trip of 2011 to the ocean at Mount Desert Island, and I did not have to choose, I had both, the ocean, the beach and the snow and the ice. A beautiful atmosphere.
Vacation includes fine dining. Mine was tapas at the ever beautiful Cleonice in Ellsworth.
