Creamy Broccoli Soup

OK, so it's got a lot of vegetables other than broccoli in it, but this recipe has been a big hit any time I've served it.  It's also a *great* way to get nutrients into someone who isn't feeling well.

You can thin it a little (if it's too rich for someone convalescing) by just adding some milk instead of cream or half & half, and the flavor doesn't suffer a bit.  I don't recommend over seasoning the soup, because the blend of vegetables really makes up most of the flavor profile in the dish.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

1 bunch broccoli (2-3 stalks) diced into small florets -add as much stalk as desired

4 stalks celery with lots of leaves - chopped

2 large leeks - diced (both white and green parts)

2 carrots - diced

6-7 large mushrooms - chopped

3 bay leaves

marjoram to taste

2 cans vegetable broth (or chicken)

1 can water

Combine all above and simmer covered until vegetables are tender.

Then:

1/3 c butter

1/3 c flour

2 c half & half

Melt butter in saucepan.  Add flour and cook 1-2 minutes. Slowly add half & half and mix until smooth, slightly thickened.  Pour into vegetables and heat.  **If you have a hand blender, using it to chop the veggies down a little further before adding the creamy mixture makes for a smoother soup.

Congo Bars

I got this recipe from my friend Janys, and I haven't made a single change to it because it doesn't need it.  When you make these (and you will), you're going to have a tough time resisting the urge to dive into them because the aroma is so very intoxicating.  With regard to the orange peel, I used the zest from 2 oranges, and I use a microplane grater because it makes it so easy/quick to zest citrus.  You'll need to eat or juice the oranges because without the zest they tend to dry out, so use the orange pieces in a spinach salad with some thinly sliced fennel bulb or something while you wait for these to bake.

Congo Bars

Preheat oven to 350

Line a 15x10 jellyroll pan with foil

Ingredients

½ cup butter at room temperature

2 cups packed dark brown sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 tablespoons grated orange peel

¼ tsp salt

2 ½ cups flour (all-purpose)

2 tsp baking powder

¾ cup chopped walnuts

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Beat butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, orange peel and salt til light and fluffy.  Add flour & baking powder, beat until blended.  Stir in nuts and chocolate.  Spread evenly in foil lined pan.  Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.  Cool in pan, then cut into bars.

Honey Oatmeal Bread

This recipe is fantastic for company, especially the overnight variety.  Say you've got guests arriving Friday night, staying over.  Make the dough up Friday before they arrive and stick it in the refrigerator to rise.  Saturday morning, as you start the coffee or teapot, take the dough out and preheat the oven.  Bake the loaves while you cook breakfast, and voila!  Warm bread with your breakfast!

Honey Oatmeal Bread

1 C boiling water

1/4 C butter (soft)

1/3 C honey

1 C sour cream

1 1/2 C oatmeal

3 tsp salt

1/2 C warm water

2 envelopes yeast

2 eggs (room temperature)

2 C flour

4 - 5 C flour

In a large bowl, combine the boiling water and the butter.  When the butter's melted, add the sour cream, oatmeal, honey and salt.  Stir well. 
In another large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water.  Add the eggs and the 2 cups of flour.  When mixed well, add the yeast mixture to the oat/honey mixture.  After blended completely, add 4 cups of flour.  Add additional flour if necessary. 
Knead for 10 minutes on a floured surface.  Cover and let rest for 20 minutes.  Divide into 2 loaves and place in greased loaf pans.  Put the pans in plastic bags and refrigerate 2-24 hours before baking. 
To bake, preheat oven to 375 and take the bread dough out of the refrigerator 10 minutes before baking.  Bake for approximately 40 minutes until golden in color.  The loaves should sound hollow when tapped.

Alan's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies

I can't take credit for creating this recipe.  My mom got it from the mother of a high school friend, and I've been making these cookies since I was in high school.

I've taken them to work, parties, and even delivered them warm to some friends who were working at my morning radio station - still warm.

They're almost an instant bliss hit, especially for hung over comedians.  (She was at the radio station, and she said on the air "These cookies are so good I want to mount the whole tray".)

Now for some words of warning - don't eat the frozen dough.  Not because anything bad will happen, but I've known people to eat an entire batch of raw frozen cookie dough and they never got a baked cookie out of it.  Don't make these if you're on a diet, either.

If you have tremendous willpower, these are great to have in the freezer so you can just slice two off and bake them in the toaster oven.  If you let them rest on paper towels long enough, they'll get chewy and stay that way forever.  If you want them crispy, put them in an airtight container as soon as they've cooled off.  And lastly, make sure they've cooled off enough so you don't burn your tongue or the roof of your mouth on the melted chocolate.  It may be worth it, but it still hurts.

So, here you are:

Alan’s Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup solid white Crisco (do NOT substitute)

1 cup granulated white sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp vanilla

1 ½ cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

3 cups uncooked oatmeal (not the quick-cooking/instant kind)

8 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips (I use Ghirardelli double chocolate ones)

½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Mix first 3 ingredients together until fairly smooth.  Stir in eggs and vanilla.  Sift the 3 dry ingredients together and stir well.  Mix in the oatmeal.  Then mix in the choc chips and nuts.

Shape dough into rolls, wrap in wax paper and freeze at least 2 hours before baking.

Preheat oven to 350.  Slice dough into ½” thick rounds, place on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden.

If you want to use the drop cookie method and avoid the freezing time, it works well too.

Cinnamon Biscuits

While I made these over the weekend, I wanted to hold off on blogging the recipe until I knew how they were the next day.  If you live alone, or your housemate(s) aren't voracious eaters, there will be leftovers and I thought it important to taste-test them at all stages.

Happy to report, they're awesome fresh out of the oven and they're also good at room temperature the next day without anything extra on them.  I left off the frosting idea, because I had a hunch they'd be sweet enough on their own, and I was right.  I plan on using the same biscuit recipe for something savory at a later date, because it was pretty awesome on its own.  Here you are:

Whisk together in a large bowl:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder

Add 6 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces.

Cut the butter into the flour until it's the size of small peas (pastry blender for the win!), and add:

3/4 cup half and half  (note, I didn't have half & half, I used 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 cup whipping cream)

Stir the moo juice (hey, you try describing it any other way) into the butter/flour mixture until it all comes together.

Turn out onto a lightly floured board, and roll out into a rectangle about 1/2 and inch thick.

Brush lightly with a tablespoon or two of room temperature (ie softened) butter.  Sprinkle some brown sugar over it, and sprinkle cinnamon over to taste (I used a lot but didn't measure, be creative).  Roll the dough up on the long edge.  Seal the ends, and cut into 1 inch pieces.

Put on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, and into a 400 F degree oven for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden.  The cinnamon smell is going to make you nuts, thankfully it doesn't take that long.

And there you have it.  If you eat one too soon, you're going to burn your mouth (voice of experience), but you can knock these out in a jiffy.  Remember, it *is* a biscuit recipe so they won't be light and fluffy cinnamon rolls, but good heavens it's certainly a worthy substitute when you don't want to wait for yeast to rise!

Bon appetit

Potato Salad with Bacon

So, that's not really what it's called.  It doesn't have a name.  In our family it's just "potato salad", and it's what I grew up with.  A family friend, "Uncle Don" made it and refused to tell my mother and grandmother the recipe, so they sat down and analyzed the flavors.  This is their re-creation of his recipe.  There are no measurements really, so you'll have to play with proportions until you find what you like, but I'll try to approximate measurements for what I did.

Ingredients:

2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed
1/2 package really good quality bacon
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 cup thinly sliced celery (I think)
Splash of cider vinegar

Mayonnaise:

1 egg
1 cup canola oil
a few dashes of dry mustard powder
pepper to taste
a few dashes of garlic salt

Method:

Chop and cook the bacon, cook the potatoes in a pot of water.  When the bacon is crisp, take it out of the pan to drain, and put the chopped onion in the bacon grease to cook until golden. Take out of the pan and let drain and cool off, you don't want *too* much grease in there.  When the potatoes are falling off a fork, they're done, take them off the heat and drain, rinse with cool water to stop the cooking and let them finish cooling off.  If you can hold and eat a piece without hurting yourself, it's almost cool enough to finish assembling the potato salad.

While all of the above is cooking and doesn't really need your attention, slice as much celery as you want, I prefer mine thinner sliced instead of chunky, so maybe 1/4 inch or so.

To make the mayonnaise, you really need an immersion blender, also called a stick blender, and a container tall and narrow enough to use it in without having anything splash.  Put the egg, oil and spices in (you can add more spice to taste, above is just what I did) and put the blender into the oil and turn it on.  It should whip everything together in about 5 seconds.

After that's done, time to put it all together.  Put the potatoes (should be barely warm) in a big enough bowl with the bacon, onions, celery and mayonnaise, and mix gently.  Grind some fresh pepper on to taste, add a splash of vinegar and mix one last time.  Taste test it before anyone else gets it so you can see if it's to your liking.  (Hey, you went to all the trouble to cook it, you should get the first taste!)

It's good immediately, it's also awesome cold.  And yes, I've had it for breakfast.

Oh, and you *can* use mayonnaise you bought at the store, but it's so easy I just thought I'd try it myself this time.

Bon appetit!

Back in the saddle again with stuffed peppers

So, a week after gallbladder surgery, I'm finally back in the kitchen.  Orders from my doctor were to keep things as low fat as possible, but I didn't want to get ridiculous about it.  Total props to Ellie Krieger, my Food Network Queen of Healthy eating compromises.  I took her recipe for Greek-Style Stuffed Peppers (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/greek-style-stuffed-peppers-recipe/index.html) and adapted it to Italian with what I had on hand.

My only regret is that I didn't have larger peppers  :)

My changes to her recipes:

I only had 2 red bell peppers, so I had leftover stuffing that I just plopped in the pan as meatballs (thanks to my ice cream scoop).

I included some crushed fennel seeds in the mix.

No feta cheese (which would contradict the doctor's orders) so I used a *very* light sprinkling of parmesan on top for flavor.

Didn't have bulghur, so I used the wheat germ I did have.

Didn't have a zucchini, so I skipped it and added some chopped (frozen) basil in with the spinach, in addition to a clove of crushed garlic.

Didn't have stewed tomatoes, used a large can of tomato juice and it was fine.

The result:

Next time, needs more garlic, definitely more pepper, and while the meatballs were good it was much better inside the red bell peppers.  All in all, worth recycling.

(For those of you who don't know, when I say "recycle" a recipe, I mean tweak, repeat, reassess as needed.)