Stay at Stove Dad

Chicken Soup Time, If You Know What I Mean

We’ve been lucky this winter, and none of us have been sick, but the bill for our good fortune just came due. Nina vomited last Thursday. Pinta had a stomachache on Friday. Santa Maria was waylaid with a fever and congestion, and then all hozzawatza-broke loose Saturday night when most everyone was very ill.

I say most everyone, because, fingers-crossed, I seem to have escaped the worst of it. Or have I? I’m not sure. There’s a scene in the “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which we watched Sunday afternoon while convalescing, in which the Fox and his family and all the other animals are flooded out of the tunnel in which they’ve been hiding. As the scene unfolds, you wonder—will they make it out alive?  I feel a bit the same way, wondering: will that norovirus or whatever the hozzawatza has been wrecking havoc on my family have a turn with me?

So I haven’t been cooking much. Santa Maria made her signature chicken soup a few days ago, and we’ve been living off it. I recommend it, whether you are sick or not: 

Chicken Soup

• 1 1/2 to 2 cups brown rice
• 1 onion, diced
• 3 carrots, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1 chili pepper
• 3 cloves garlic, diced
• One three-to-four-pound chicken
• 1 lemon, halved and juiced
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried sage
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• pepper to taste

        Put the rice on to cook. Add a bay leaf or two and salt if desired.

        Heat some olive oil in a tall stock pot.
        Add the onions, carrots, and celery.
        Saute until the onions are translucent.
        Add the garlic and chili pepper.
        Saute until the garlic is soft.
        Rinse and add the whole chicken to the pot. 
        Add enough water to the pot to cover the chicken.
        Add the bay leaves, lemon halves and juice, and other spices.
        Cover and bring to a boil.
        Reduce to a simmer.
        Cook for about an hour, or until the chicken is cooked through.
        Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon. 
        Remove the lemon halves, chili pepper, and bay leaves.
        Pick the meat from the chicken and return to the soup. 
        Stir in the rice.

        Notes: Remove the chili pepper earlier if you want the soup less spicy. The soup freezes well.

Grilled Cheese and a Poor-Man's Croque-Monsieur

One of the go-to weekend lunches around the Stay at Stove Dad household is the old grilled cheese. I love them because they’re quick and easy, and my girls love them because, well, who doesn’t love a grilled cheese.

They like them open faced, with cheddar, and it takes about ten minutes (sometimes less) under the broiler to get them finished. Do you really want me to tell you how? Okay, I will: lay the bread on a cookie sheet, put slices of cheddar on top, and run under the broiler until melted. There, you’re done. You could probably cook it faster than it takes to read this post.

Sometimes, I’ll play around a bit with the grilled cheese, and Nina will ask for a Croque-Monsieur. She had one a while back at my workplace cafeteria, and she loves them. The version I make is a bit of a lie. It’s more a poor-man’s Croque Monsieur than anything else, but she still likes it.

I basically make a closed-faced grilled cheese and put some frizzled ham (ham that I’ve fried up in a pan) in the center of it. I used to make it with Gruyère, but I’ve since started economizing, and have resorted to using cheddar.

A true Croque-Monsieur is a thing of beauty. A crunchy, savory, and succulent sandwich. It's mouthwatering. Am I using too many adjectives? I wonder, but writing this entry is making me hungry for one right now, and while hunger may be a good seasoning, it’s not exactly an aid to thinking or writing.

The origins of the Croque-Monsieur are a good story, though. According to legend (and this About.com French Food Site), “The Croque Monsieur, or “Crispy Mister,” appeared on Parisian café menus in 1910. The original Croque Monsieur was simply a hot ham and Gruyere cheese sandwich, fried in butter. Some believe it was accidentally created when French workers left their lunch pails by a hot radiator and came back later to discover the cheese in their sandwiches had melted.”

Today, the Croque-Monsier is a bit more elaborate. Ina Garten, of the Food Network, has a tasty recipe here, and the online recipe site Epicurious has one here. They both involve making sauces, and with two kids running around that’s kind of a far-fetched idea for me. But you might feel differently. And if you’re looking for ways to spice up a plain, old grilled cheese, last month’s Food Network Magazine had fifty different ways to do so. 

Crispy Chorizo, Quinoa, and Sweet Potato Salad

Sometimes cooking can be so easy that it boggles my mind. Take tonight’s dinner, for example. I simply brought together something from a new recipe and added it to an old recipe, and voila, I had a smashing new dish. Okay, it wasn’t completely, 100% new, but, then again, what actually is new? Is anything?

I took the crispy Chorizo sausage from my friend Aran Goyoaga’s sublime Brussels sprouts, sausage, pear, and black quinoa salad, and added it to my sturdy old sweet potato and quinoa salad. It was that easy.

The result was satisfying and delicious. I’ve always liked my quinoa salad, but I often felt it didn’t have enough heft. The Chorizo solved that problem on two accounts. It added a touch of spice and it added a huge hit of protein. Easy, I’m telling you. Go try it, and see for yourself. You’ll be happy you did.

Crispy Chorizo, Quinoa, and Sweet Potato Salad

• 1 cup quinoa, rinsed well
• 1 large sweet potato, scrubbed
• 1-4 links of chorizo sausage, depending on how many servings of salad are desired.*
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
• ¼ of a red onion, minced
• ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
• olive oil
• white wine vinegar
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cook the quinoa in 2 cups of water as you would cook rice, about twenty minutes. Set aside to cool.

Cut the Chorizo sausages in half lengthwise, and then cut into ¼ inch thick half moons. Add a little bit of oil to a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and crisp up the sausages on one side. Flip and crisp on the other. Drain on paper towels and set aside.

Chop the sweet potatoes into small squares, about a half inch each. Coat with a tiny bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and spread out on a baking sheet or in a large frying pan and roast in the oven until the potatoes are soft on the inside and slightly crispy on the outside, about twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Toss all the ingredients, including the sausages, and dress with the oil and vinegar.

Notes: Dress only as much of the salad as you would like to eat in a given sitting. The remainder of the salad will keep for days, so long as it is not dressed before consuming.

*Crisp up only as much Chorizo as you might like to consume in that setting. Figure one to two sausages per person (though that’s what I eat, and I eat a lot more than most folks).

This recipe makes about five to eight servings of the salad, depending on how large each serving is. Just keep in mind that it makes a lot of salad.

More Tales of the Chorizo: Spicing Up Lentil Bulgur Soup

One of the benefits of making meals for the family on a regular basis is that cooking begets cooking. What does that mean? Simply, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. You start to see ways to combine things and make old things new again. Take the my recent infatuation with Chorizo, the Spanish pork sausage. As I mentioned earlier in the week, I've been using it to transform various dishes. Here's the latest way.

Over the weekend, I needed a quick, no-hands lunch for myself. Santa Maria was out of town and I was on my own with the kids. I copped out and gave them canned lentil soup. Not the best thing in the world, but not the worst, either. I knew I had some lentil-bulgur soup in the freezer (that's the benefit of keeping a regular cooking schedule). It is one of my favorite soups, but it has an Achilles' heel: It doesn't have enough protein for me. I fixed that problem once before, with Andouille sausage, and I knew I could do it again, with the last bit of Chorizo I had in the fridge.

As with the other recipes, I cut the sausage in half-moon shapes, crisped them up nicely, and then put them atop the soup. It was super delicious. 

Lentil Bulgur Soup with Crispy Chorizo Sausage 

• 1 cup lentils
• 5 cups water (or chicken or vegetable stock)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Olive Oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• A dash cayenne
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup raw bulgur
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1 28-ounce can peeled plum tomatoes, chopped
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• Pinch of dried rosemary
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 1-3 Chorizo sausage, cut into half-moon pieces

Rinse the lentils and bring them to a boil in the salted water or stock. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, covered, for about forty minutes.

While the lentils are cooking, heat the olive oil in a heavy soup pot and saute the onions until they are translucent.

Add the garlic, cayenne, bay leaves, and bulgur. Stir, until the onions and bulgur are lightly browned.

Mix in the tomatoes and parsley.

Pour the cooked lentils into the pot.

Add the tomato paste and rosemary.

Simmer for another 15 minutes or so; until the lentils are tender. If the soup looks too dry, add some boiling water or hot stock.

When you want to serve the soup, crisp the sausages in a bit of oil in a frying pan, and drain of any excess oil

Serve the soup in bowls, with the sausages on top (figure about one to a person)

Note: you can also stir in fresh spinach and let it wilt in the soup first, for a completely nutritious meal. And this recipe makes a large quantity of soup; adjust the amount of sausage accordingly.

Mouthwatering New Cookbook

I’ve had a rewarding but exhausting weekend (compounded somewhat by multiple margaritas at a dear friend’s fiftieth birthday party on Saturday night) and Santa Maria kindly volunteered to write the lastest post, about a little brunch we threw on Sunday, a great new cookbook, and a stellar salad. I hope you enjoy it.

Stay at Stove Dad recently met the lovely author of the forthcoming cookbook “Small Plates and Sweet Treats," the gluten-free chef par excellence Aran Goyoaga, and for our pleasure cooked one of her superb salads today:

 “Warm Roasted Brussels Sprout, Black Quinoa, Pear and Crispy Chorizo Salad.” 

The occasion for the salad: Over a year ago, friends invited us over for a brunch the morning after our move into the neighborhood, correctly surmising that we would be exhausted and have a bare larder.

In their honor, SASD created a brunch to appeal to both carnivorous and vegetarian palates:  scrambled eggs with fresh dill; fresh Brooklyn bagels and cream cheese; and Aran’s yummy salad. It may have taken a while for us to get around to hosting the brunch, but, perhaps, this salad made up for it.

What is so amazing about the salad:  it’s ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS (granted, I’ve spent many years addicted to his other quinoa salad preparations). It has a point/counterpoint marriage of sweet (pear) and salty (chorizo), crunchy (quinoa) and tender (roasted Brussels sprouts) and the slightly bitter vegetal surprise of arugula.  Plus, it’s high protein, gluten-free (if that is important to you), eye-catching, and incredibly nourishing. Quinoa, a staple of ancient Incas and modern Brooklynites alike, has the highest protein of any grain. It is known as the “Mother Grain.”

I’m going to check with my friend Aran about posting the recipe. In the meantime, I strongly suggest you order a copy of her book. It’s a remarkable cookbook, and I’ll have more to say about it shortly, I'm certain.

Simple Sunday Lunch: Chicken Salad

Starting with Santa Maria’s party last week, I’ve been on a great run in the kitchen. That gumbo I made for that gathering was so remarkable, I’m still a bit stunned from it. There hasn’t been a flavor like it in the house before or since.

The party was so jumping, that I forgot to take a picture of the finished dish (that’s one of my failings as a food blogger, I tend to get too excited about eating to stop and photograph my meal). I don’t have time right now to do that gumbo justice, but I promise I will share that recipe with you very shortly (If you can’t wait, just go to page 202 of “Man with a Pan,” which is where I got the recipe in the first place).

This morning, I doubled down and made a chili—using a hand-scribbled recipe from my earliest days in the kitchen, well before kids, this blog, and “Man with a Pan.” I also relied on a distinct memory of smoky Spanish paprika, which makes all the difference in the world in that dish. I’ll have more about the chili soon, too.

I want to put off talking about those bigger meals because I want to take it easy tonight. Today, I realized that to survive as a parent and spouse I need to behave like a shark, and always keep moving (I made that chili, cooked pancakes, drew three cartoons, cleaned and put into storage three air conditioners, washed all our sheets, towels, and dirty clothes, went for a run, cooked spaghetti alle vongole for dinner, and put the kids to bed)—so I’ll just talk about my lunch.

Santa Maria took the kids out of the house this morning on a long excursion, so I could have time to do some drawing, so I made a simple meal for myself. I had a bit of cooked chicken left over from earlier in the week (I’ve gotten in the habit of roasting an extra bird each week, and using it to make lunches and dinners), and I thought a chicken salad would be nice.

I diced a stalk of celery, cut up a scallion, and chopped some fresh parsley. We don’t keep mayonnaise in the house, for reasons I’ve long forgotten (something to do with Santa Maria not liking it, and me having little or no use for it), but I needed something to bind the chicken with the other ingredients. I briefly contemplated making my own mayonnaise, but after getting the blender out, decided against it—I might want to be a shark, but I don’t want to be a crazy one: I had enough to do around the house as it was—and I simply whipped together fresh lemon juice and olive oil. I added a bit of feta and some black pepper, and placed it on freshly toasted rye bread. It was just the thing I needed.

Impromptu Chicken Salad 

• ½ lb. diced cooked chicken meat (ideally leftovers), and this amount can vary; adjust other seasonings accordingly.
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 1 scallion, finely sliced
• 1 fistful of fresh parsley or other herb, diced
• small bit of feta, diced
• ½ lemon, juiced
• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 to 4 slices of fresh bread, toasted

Combine in a bowl all the ingredients save for the olive oil and lemon juice.

Whisk together the lemon juice and the olive oil, and pour over the salad, and stir. Add pepper, and maybe salt, depending on how salty your feta cheese is.

Serve the salad on the toast and eat immediately. 

Poached Chicken For School Lunch

The first full week of public school wrapped up here recently, and in deft move by higher powers, the reward seems to be two days off—there’s no school Monday or Tuesday, because of Rosh Hashanah. So, just when I’m up to speed making school lunches in the morning, my services are not needed.

Not that I’m complaining. Making lunch every day is both a blessing and a, er, vexation. The clock is always ticking, and there never seems to be enough time in the morning. And finding the time to shop and make sure everything you need is on hand is a real labor. Having had a few years experience doing this, though, I have a few things down pat, and recently, I was asked by Saveur.com to write about what I make each day for my children. I talked about sandwiches—my salvation for the past few years has been the sunflower-butter sandwich (and more recently, a red-pepper-humus sandwich) that my girls would eat without fail. Every day.

I was slightly ashamed about serving them the same thing all the time, but the exigencies of the working life always trumped my culinary concerns. I mentioned this in the Saveur article, ending it by saying that “The lack of variety, though, is something I'd like to work on!”

The miracle of children, of course, is that they are forever giving us opportunities to work on things, and just after I wrote that Saveur item, Nina said to me that she’d like some other items in her lunch, such as cold chicken. I was a bit shocked that she would be so specific, but glad, too, to get such healthy direction from her.  I jumped on the case.

Lately, I’ve been buying an extra whole chicken each week, and cutting it up myself to make various dishes. It’s slightly more economical to do this (rather than buying pre-cut breasts or legs, for example), though buying organic, as I do, renders the whole idea of saving money a bit silly, but never mind that for now. So, I happened to have two breasts of chicken, bone in, waiting in my fridge when Nina made her request for cold chicken in her lunch.

I love poaching chicken breasts because the meat plumps up, stays moist, and takes on the flavor of the poaching liquid. I fill a pot with water, turn the heat to high, drop the meat in, and add the following:

 

I start with a good shake of dried thyme, as it’s something that I always have around the house, and it’s flavor can’t be beat.

 

Then I add salt; another good shake right out of the container is fine.

 

And, of course a good pour of white wine. It’s a nice way to use up a bottle that’s been open for a few days, and maybe on the edge of its drinkability.

I cover it, and once the water comes to a boil, I turn it down to a low simmer. The chicken is done when it’s internal temperature is about 165 degrees. It will take about ten to fifiteen minutes or so.

The cooking itself infuses the whole kitchen with some lovely scents. When I was making this last weekend, I brought Nina over to enjoy the aroma. I lifted the lid of the pot, and a nice cloud of wine and thyme floated over towards her nose. I said, “Do you know what that is?” She shook her head. “It’s thyme,” answered. Her face lit up, and she said, “I’d like to put some in my room so it would smell like that."

Damn-the-Tornadoes Corn-Tomato-Feta Salad

When I was in Alaska recently, we had some nasty weather, which isn't surprising given we were in a rainforest, but nothing compares to what we just had in New York City, where two tornadoes swept through the outerboroughs. Up North, there were clouds and showers every day, but the dramatic setting and the great company made up for it. I was joined by a bunch of really entertaining food bloggers—Cannelle et Vanille, Family Fresh Cooking, A Less Processed Life, Sippity Sup, La Tartine Gourmande, and The Wicked Noodle—who have already (or will soon, I suspect) start telling their versions of the trip, and I encourage you to check out their postings.

I’ll be telling my Alaskan tales soon enough, but what I want talk about today is something that the two chefs on the trip, Dan Enos, of The Oceanaire Seafood Room, in Boston, and Patrick Hoogerhyde, of The Bridge, in Anchorage, kept mentioning. And that is “Flavor Profiles.” They kept saying that each fish or mollusk had its own flavor profile, and that was what mattered most.

Restaurateurs, of course have their own set of concerns, such as how to satisfy each “guest,” as they kept calling their customers. Home cooks who work full-time have another set of concerns, such as how to remain employed and find the time to shop, or how to use up that feta you happened to have bought too much of and that is at risk of going to seed in the back of the fridge. Home-cooking working parents have yet another set of concerns, such as how to do all the above and not end up with TMJ, an ulcer, or divorce.

I kept the idea of balancing flavor profiles in mind on Saturday morning when I was rushing to make lunch for a quixotic trip to the beach. We thought we could enjoy one last summer day at the shore, but it ended up raining on us, which reminded me of my trip to Alaska (and those two twisters made me think of Kansas).

I made simple sandwiches for Nina and Pinta, but I wanted something savory and satisfying for myself and Santa Maria. I had a bit of corn on the cob left over from the night before, and I had that aforementioned feta. Also, I knew I had an extra tomato, so I was three-quarters of the way to a decent salad. I added some olives to give the salad a bit of salt, and I dressed it with a cider vinegar to give it a bit of sweet acid. To give it a bit of a bite, I tossed in dried oregano and thyme, but if I had any fresh herbs on hand I would have used those instead. Finally, I finished it with olive oil, because that is good on everything.

We ate the salad in the car after giving up on the rainy beach. The dressing had collected in the bottom of the container, and once the salad was gone, we sopped it all up with ends of fresh bread. Like Alaska, it didn’t matter that it had rained—the food was so good.

Quick Damn-the-Tornadoes Summer Feta Tomato Salad 

• 1 ripe tomato, chopped
• An ear or two of cooked corn, kernels sliced off the cob
• Feta to taste, chopped
• ¼ to ½ onion, diced
• A handful of black olives, cut into quarters.
• Dried oregano and thyme, to taste (or other fresh herbs if available)
• Cider vinegar and olive oil, to taste.

Combine the ingredients in a bowl, and serve with fresh bread.

 

Memorial Day Surprise: Limes in my Dhal

Santa Maria's company, ParentEarth.com, makes videos about food and families, and this past weekend we traveled to her alma mater to give a talk during reunion weekend. It was called “7 Secrets to Transforming the Way We Eat -- in Our Kitchens and in Our Country,” and my half of the talk featured many of the cartoons I’ve posted here, along with many of the tips I’ve mentioned, including the following: "Secret Number 2: Keep a Fully Stocked Larder."

So, you can imagine my surprise and chagrin this morning when, back at home and halfway through my favorite dhal recipe, I had to stop cooking because I was short two key ingredients. The only ginger I could find in the fridge was a shriveled piece that looked more like a witch’s knuckle than anything I could cook with (the bit of green mold was a nice touch). And I was fresh out of lemons.

Santa Maria was out on a bike ride, so I frantically texted her. She picked up the ginger, but the coop didn’t have any lemons. There must have been a memorial-day run on lemonade. Or maybe it has been the warm winter and early spring that has caused a shortage. Apparently, the weather has caused massive troubles for Good Humor, which, the Wall Street Journal is reporting, has run out of its famous Toasted Almond Bar for the whole summer. Because of the high demand during the warm spring, their whole supply is gone. 

But I wasn’t going to let global warming stop me from making my dhal. Luckily, I had limes on hand that I could substitute, and they worked just fine. I used them same way as the lemons, but took them out a bit earlier to keep the soup from getting bitter. 

Red Lentil Dhal

• Olive oil
• 1 onion quartered lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise 
• 2 bay leaves 
• One 2 inch or so cinnamon stick 
• 2 teaspoons (or more) of minced fresh ginger 
• 3 cloves of garlic 
• 1 dash of cayenne pepper 
• 2 cups small red lentils, about a pound, rinsed
• 1 lemon, halved and juiced (seeds removed) or a lime!
• 3 or 4 cups of chicken stock 
• 3 or 4 cups of hot water  
• 1 teaspoon salt 

Heat the oil in a heavy sauce pan

Add the onion, bay leaves, and cinnamon stick

Saute until the onions are translucent

Add the garlic and the ginger and the cayenne

Continue cooking another few minutes

Add the lentils and stir to coat them with oil

Add the chicken stock and the water

Add the lemon juice and the squeezed halves of the fruit

Add the salt

Bring to a boil

Reduce to a simmer

Cook for about a half hour, until the onions mostly break up and the lentils more or less dissolve. If it looks like it needs more water, add some. 

Notes:

This freezes remarkably well. It is best served with rice. To make it more fancy, caramelize some onions to go on top, along with some plain yogurt, and some chopped cilantro. 

 

Lentil Bulgur Soup with Andouille Sausage

I think of my freezer as a metaphor for my life. Recently, I reorganized it, and I can now see clearly what’s going on there. In the freezer, that is. Not my life. I'm still working on that. 

I have my bread lined upon one side of it, my prepared foods (Bolognese, dhal, black beans, etc) on another. I put all the loose little bags of frozen corn, peas, and other vegetables in a clear plastic bread bag, and I gathered my stock of frozen salmon fillets into another one. I put all my meats together, and now everything is in its place.

My little exercise paid some benefits—I discovered a lone D'Artagnan Andouille Sausage, left over, presumably, from making black-eyed peas at New Year’s. I love that sausage, and I always thought it would go well in my lentil-bulgur soup. I love that soup, but my metabolism has always demanded that I eat more that it at one sitting. I figured the sausage would cure that.

Adding the sausage is a bit of a sacrilege, of course, because the recipe for the lentil-bulgur soup comes from "Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant," a vegetarian cookbook classic. But I’m not actually a vegetarian, so I didn’t hesitate. For me to worry about adding meat to the soup would have been a little like an atheist worrying about not getting into heaven.

So I whipped up a batch this morning. That sausage is so spicy and smoky it made the soup into something more like a chili. And one bowl left me more than satisfied. This is what a bit of clarity brought me today. 

Lentil Bulgur Soup with Andouille Sausage

 

• 1 cup lentils
• 5 cups water (or chicken or vegetable stock)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Olive Oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• A dash cayenne
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup raw bulgur
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1 28-ounce can peeled plum tomatoes, chopped
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• Pinch of dried rosemary
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 Andouille sausage, cut into pieces

 

Rinse the lentils and bring them to a boil in the salted water or stock. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, covered, for about forty minutes.

While the lentils are cooking, heat the olive oil in a heavy soup pot and saute the onions until they are translucent.

Add the garlic, cayenne, bay leaves, and bulgur. Stir, until the onions and bulgur are lightly browned.

Mix in the tomatoes and parsley.

Pour the cooked lentils into the pot.

Add the tomato paste and rosemary.

Simmer for another 15 minutes or so; until the lentils are tender. If the soup looks too dry, add some boiling water or hot stock.

Add the sausage and cook for about five more minutes.

Remove the bay leaves and serve, stirring in fresh spinach if you have it.