The Kitchen Made

I was browsing my aunt’s copies of People magazine and found this John Besh recipe for red beans and rice in the Sept. 28, 2009 issue.  I’ll be honest, I have/had no idea who John Besh was, but my friend tells me he was on a television show of some sort.  Top Chef?  I forget.  The recipe was billed as this great way to cook a meal for four people that is under $10.  I’m sold…I love cheap food and challenges.  I’m a chronic ingredient substituter, and I had to vegetarianize the recipe (ham hocks?  Yuck!) so in the end my version didn’t really resemble his.  However, it was delicious so I’m happy to pass it on!

You can find his original recipe here at Experience Life Magazine (I googled to find the recipe).  My recipe (as much as I can remember…I usually start randomly throwing things in after the first taste test) is as follows:

2 onions, diced

1 orange bell pepper, diced (didn’t have green)

2 stalks celery, diced

1 pound mixed dried beans (some Trader Joes thing…17 bean and barley soup mix which included these: baby lima beans, black turtle beans, blackeye peas, dark red kidney beans, garbanzo beans, great northern beans, green lentils, green split peas, large lima beans, light red kidney beans, navy beans, pink beans, pinto beans, red lentils, small red beans, small white beans, yellow split peas, pearl barley)

3 bay leaves

2 cloves garlic

2 “links” Trader Joes vegetarian italian “sausage”, diced

6 small kale leaves, chopped thinly (center stalk removed)

1/2 tsp (and then some) cayenne powder

salt and pepper to taste

2 roma tomatoes, diced (garnish)

2 stalks green onions, chopped (garnish)

handful Italian flatleaf parsley, chopped (garnish)

sour cream (garnish)

guacamole made with avocado, salt/pepper, roma tomato, fresh garlic, green onions and cilantro (garnish)

2 cups brown rice

I recommend using a large soup pot to cook this, FYI.

Saute the white onions, orange pepper, and celery in butter until the onions are clear.  Add bean mix, cayenne, bay leaves, and enough water to cover the mixture in two inches of water.  Bring to a boil, then change to medium-low heat and cover, stirring every 10 minutes or so.  I cooked this for about an hour and had to add water twice to keep water over the beans.  In a separate pan, brown the “sausage” and add to the beans along with the garlic.  Add kale once you’ve tested the beans and verified they are done, then cook for 5 more minutes.  Remove bay leaves, and add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve over a bed of brown rice and garnish with roma tomatoes, fresh flat leaf parsley, green onions, sour cream, and guacamole!

This recipe is hearty and filling, but I’m not sure it was under $10 with the sour cream, guacamole, and italian “sausage”.    Regardless, it was very tasty!

October through December is the most exciting cooking/baking time of the year.  We all associate certain dishes (pumpkin anything, turkey, stuffing, gingerbread cookies, sugar cookies) with Fall and Winter, and I failed to post anything! In fact, I didn’t even make pumpkin pie, stuffing, or any type of holiday cookie this year (or turkey…but I’m a vegetarian).  I’m putting my blogging failures behind me and I’ve committed myself to resurrecting my drowning blog, starting now.  I’ll do a catch up post or two and then hopefully steam right along at full speed, cooking my way into the new year.

I can’t remember where I got the idea to make guacamole in my food processor, but I’m sure it was from some foodie blog I was perusing.  Gone are the days of fork-whipped guacamole that took me 15 minutes to make!  I’ve ushered in the 5 minute press-button guacamole era.  My mother’s guacamole “recipe” is something I had followed for over 15 years, but threw it out in favor of something I stole from the ingredients list on the bottom of some deli guacamole.  No more mayo in my guac!  Of course there are no measurements, but I’m not really much of a measurement person…I like to taste my way to culinary greatness.

Basic guacamole ingredients: avocado, tomato, red onion, green onion, garlic (powder sometimes works better just because the real deal can overwhelm…not that it prevents me from doing it), sea salt, pepper, lemon juice, hot sauce.

Hack everything up into chunks and throw it in!

In this instance I used jalapeños and red pepper in there (and no red onion) and if I recall correctly, I lost some hair after eating it.  Next time I may take out some of the jalapeño seeds.  I recommend pulsing the food processor when you chop this…avocado puree is not guacamole.

Oh so easy!!  And oh so delicious….

Before peaches disappeared from the farmer’s market I decided to make a peach pie.  I used Martha Stewart’s Pate Brisee (Pie Dough) recipe but in my mixer instead of food processor.  Martha’s recipes never seem to fail me, and I appreciate her for that.  I will certainly be going back to this pie crust recipe in the future!  I used Joy of Cooking’s recipe for the filling, and listen when I tell you to leave on the peach skin!  I’ve never understood why people take it off, it is by far my favorite part, and provides such great color to the pie innards!

It’s the second pie I have ever attempted and I think I did a good job!  Well, if you don’t mind the edges.  I fail at edges.  Unfortunately I couldn’t think of something beautiful to cut into the top (I’m about as non-artistic as possible).  So I just wrote “Pie”.

It was heavenly.  :)

I’m not a fan of taking pictures of food yet.  I love other people’s food photos…I just don’t like to stop cooking to snap a picture, nor have I figured out how to overcompensate for the unnatural lighting (I’m not a post-processor by nature!).  I’ll have to work on this.

Speaking of Martha…this pumpkin spice cake with honey cream cheese frosting is to die for!  Highly highly highly recommend!  I’ve made it twice now and my oh my is it delicious.

The glutton living in my stomach who is related to the enabler in my eyes tells me I should double the frosting recipe, but it really is adequate as-is.  ;)  Whichever of Martha’s minions created this honey cream cheese frosting should be knighted as it is magically delicious.

I am blessed to have an “in” at the local farmer’s market in the form of my lovely friend Cat who is all-knowing Vegetable Duchess in blogland.  She brings me overflow from Frog Song Farm (Mt. Vernon) and Flying Tomato Farm (Snohomish), both based here in beautiful Western Washington.  She has a key to my home so every now and then when I get back from work I will open my fridge door to find it stuffed to the gills with delicious organic vegetables.  Yesterday she brought this beautiful haul:

In the far back is some local celery!  Cat tells me they don’t grow quite as large here in Washington as they do other places.  The result is a more fibrous and flavorful midget-size version of what you buy at grocery stores.  I am ashamed to admit that I’ve never cooked with shallots before so I was excited when she brought me some.  Also pictured are delicata squash, zucchini, Japanese salad turnips, easter egg radishes, stupice tomatoes, Italian flatleaf parsley, and jalapenos.

What to do with all these vegetables?!  I poked around online looking for recipes and discovered the glory that is Choosing Raw (blog).  I have never been inspired to attempt raw “cooking” but I am really going to try incorporating more into my diet.  Through her blog I found my way over to Kristen’s Raw and a recipe for harvest soup.  I knew what I was going to make for dinner!  I don’t have a large food processor so I blended this in my trusty Oster blender and it wasn’t as finely pureed as I would have wanted it, but I guess this just means I will have to go buy myself a fancy food processor.  Darn!

My four year old was less than pleased with the outcome, but he was a trooper and ate it with some toast.  Here is the recipe from Kristen’s site with my substitutions:

Kristen Suzanne’s Harvest Soup
Yield 6 cups

1 cup water
1 large zucchini, chopped
3 medium tomatoes, quartered
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 cups carrot, chopped
1 tablespoon agave nectar
1 small shallot
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup olive oil
Blend all of the ingredients, except for the olive oil, on high speed in your blender. Then, while the blender is running on low speed, add the olive oil. Continue blending, at a higher speed, for another minute or less. Enjoy!