Cheesy Cauliflower Soup with Ham

It's embarrassing to see how long it has been since I posted here. The reality is that I've been finally been broken by my family. :-) I've been giving in to their desires for burgers and take-out pizza and and the other boring-but-easy foods that they prefer. However, it is really hard for me to resist a beautiful head of cauliflower, so last night I made a rich and delicious cauliflower soup. Here's what I did:

Cheesy Cauliflower Soup with Ham

1 large head cauliflower

3 Tbsp. butter

1 small onion

1 leek (white and light green parts)

1 carrot

1 celery stalk

1/2 bottle beer (about 1 cup)

6 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth

1/2 tsp thyme

1 cup diced ham

4 oz sharp cheddar

4 oz cream cheese

1 to 2 Tbsp. finely minced parsley

salt and pepper

Cut cauliflower into small florets. Finely dice or chop the other vegetables. Melt butter in large soup pot. Saute the onion, leek, carrot, and celery until tender, seasoning with salt and pepper. Add cauliflower and stir to coat with butter. When the cauliflower is hot and just beginning to soften, add the beer, chicken broth, and thyme. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer, partially covered, until the cauliflower is very tender. Roughly puree the soup with an immersion blender. Add ham and continue to simmer while you shred the cheddar cheese. Stir in the cheeses until they are melted. Stir in the parsley. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Eat.

I might have used dill, which I love, instead of parsley, but my daughter doesn't like it. A little mustard might be good in it.

Make your own soup. Have fun with it. Although I have written this down as a recipe, I didn't follow any recipe. It's more fun to just concoct your own soup based on what you have in the house. If you are new to soup making, read a few recipes so you get an idea of the appropriate proportions, then experiment a little. 

Perfect roast beef

When I was young, I used to save the recipe pages from the New York Times Magazine. I was hopeful and naive back then. I even bought some pomegranate molasses (it's still in my pantry, 15 years later).

The fact is, the New York Times Magazine recipe page usually has only a limp, dampish grip on reality. However, I have to report that not only was it useful for the first time ever, but it was transformative. I don't think I will ever make roast beef any other way again.

Roast beef (adapted from The New York Times)

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

Mix 1 Tbsp. kosher salt, 1 Tbsp. fresh ground black pepper, about 1 Tbsp. minced garlic (2-3 cloves), 1 Tbsp. olive oil, and about 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper.

Rub the mixture all over a 3 lb. beef roast (a cheap cut like bottom round, eye of round, etc.). Place it in a cast iron skillet, fat side up.

Roast for 5 minutes per pound. (I suggest you add a few minutes if the beef is straight from the refrigerator; I cooked a cold 3.2 lb roast for 20 minutes and it was perfect.)

The important part:

Turn off the oven.

DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN!

Leave the roast in the oven for 2 hours.

It will be perfectly rare all the way through, which is important for round roasts. They become tough if cooked to medium.

The Times suggested serving the roast with "Henry Bain sauce," a gussied-up steak sauce from Louisville. I made it because I had exactly 1/3 cup of chutney in my fridge. It was pretty good and should keep a while.

Henry Bain Sauce (adapted from the New York Times)

1/3 cup mango or peach chutney

4 Tbsp. A-1 steak sauce

4 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

4 Tbsp chili sauce

2 Tbsp ketchup

Few drops Tabasco

Mix everything together in a small pot and cook on medium heat until it thickens slightly. Cool and refrigerate.

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Pea Soup Anderson

I have no idea who "Pea Soup Anderson" was, but I am told that a neighbor called me this when I was about 3 years old because I liked split pea soup.

Well, I still like a good split pea soup, and here's the one I made last night, using the last bits of our New Year's ham. It was pretty darn good and I'm sure Anderson would approve.

Split Pea Soup

1. Rinse and pick over a bag of split peas (1 lb, I think, but I didn't check). Put them in a large pot with a leftover ham bone. Cover the peas and most of the bone with about 2 quarts water and a (14 oz) can of chicken broth. Bring to a boil.
2. While the pot is heating, dice 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 parsnip (or 1/2 of one if large), and 1 stalk celery, and mince a large garlic clove.
3. When the pot is boiling, skim off as much as possible of the scum that rises to the top, then add the vegetables and a bay leaf. Reduce the heat and simmer, partially covered, for about an hour.
4. Dice a large russet potato and whatever leftover ham you have (I had about 2 cups of diced ham) and add them to the pot, along with salt and pepper to taste (go light on the salt, because you are adding ham). If your ham bone was very meaty, remove it, cool it, dice the meat, and return both meat and bone to the pot. Cook at a simmer at least another half hour, uncovered. Remove bone and bay leaf and serve (or save for tomorrow; this is the kind of soup that tastes even better the next day).

   

Cooking up a storm (after the storm)

Sandy, Sandy, Sandy. You crazy gal. You wiped out our electricity for most of a week, and with it our refrigeration and our electric range. Luckily, the house was so cold that we really didn’t lose much food. I have eaten – and survived eating – shrimp in restaurants that were less fresh than the ones I cooked from our freezer the day after the power returned.

My first official act on the day the power came back was to put up a pot of beef stew. The miscellaneous meats that had been in the freezer were cooked over the next couple of days, including a big pork loin roast. Last night, as another storm raged, I made some delicious old-fashioned Cantonese-style pork chow mein. This is the soupy kind; if you want less sauce, reduce the amounts of chicken broth and cornstarch mixture by half.

Roast pork chow mein

8 oz Cantonese dried egg noodles

Peanut oil

About ½ lb roast pork

1 small onion

1 clove garlic

8 oz mushrooms, rinsed and wiped dry (try to use large ones)

1 small head bok choy

1 can sliced bamboo shoots

1 can low-sodium chicken broth

salt to taste

2 Tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in ¼ cup cold water

Soak noodles briefly in cold water (I don’t know why, but the package said to do this!), then cook them for 2 minutes in boiling salted water. Spread them out on a large plate to cool and dry.

Meanwhile, slice onion in strips. Cut the pork into strips about the same size. Mince the garlic. Remove any coarse stems from the mushrooms, slice them horizonally into disks, then stack the disks and cut them into strips. Wash the head of bok choy, then slice it horizontally. Open the cans.

Heat about 3 tablespoons of peanut oil in a large nonstick frying pan or wok. When the oil is hot, add the noodles. Cook them until they are crispy and golden on one side, then turn to cook the other side. The noodles on the inside should remain soft. Remove the noodles to a plate.

Add a little bit of oil to the pan if needed. Saute the onion briefly, then add the pork, garlic, mushrooms, bok choy, and bamboo shoots. Stir-fry until the vegetables are wilted, then add chicken broth and salt to taste. Stir up the cornstarch mixture, then add it to the pan. Cook, stirring, until the mixture is thickened. Serve it on top of the noodles with soy sauce to taste.

Cheap? Check. Fast? Check. Good? Maybe.

The family and I seem to be parting ways on the Cheap. Fast. Good! Cookbook. I  cooked from it the past two nights, and while I thought the results were very tasty family meals and lived up to the cheap and fast qualification, my daughter rejected both and my husband ate them with no comment, picking out the vegetables. My son, of course, wouldn't go near either.

The first was "Souped-up Chicken Stroganoff," basically just a nice, easy, doctored-up-canned-soup sort of dinner.

Souped-up Chicken Stroganoff, adapted from Cheap. Fast. Good! by Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross

1 lb. fettuccine
2 cups cooked chicken, cut in bite-size chunks
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
8 oz. fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bag (16 oz) frozen broccoli spears or pieces (I used spears)
2 Tbsp. dry sherry, Marsala, Madeira, or port wine (I used port because my husband drank the cooking sherry!)
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1-2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2/3 cup sour cream (I used reduced-fat)
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Boil water in a large pot and cook fettuccine according to package directions. You can add the frozen broccoli to the pasta after 7 minutes of cooking as per the original recipe and then continue cooking until the fettuccine is done (about 6 minutes). However, I found that the fettuccine didn't cook well that way, so I suggest cooking the broccoli separately, perhaps in the microwave.

Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet on medium heat. Add the onions. When they begin to soften, stir in the mushrooms and garlic. When all the veggies are soft, add the wine and cook for 1 minute. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Stir in the mushroom soup and Worcestershire sauce, then add the chicken and cook until the mixture is well heated. Stir in the sour cream. If the sour cream is reduced fat, do not let the mixture boil after it is added. Season to taste with salt and a LOT of black pepper. (Trust me on this.)

Drain the pasta and broccoli. Place pasta on each plate, arrange broccoli spears on the pasta, then top it all with chicken and sauce. Alternatively, if the broccoli is in pieces, just mix it in with the chicken and sauce.

Serves 4. (I hate when a recipe says 4 servings and it only means 4 servings for not very hungry people or 4 servings if something else is on the menu. This will serve 4 hungry people. I have a lot left in my fridge.)

If you want to try this one, I think wide egg noodles would work better than the fettuccine. Also, I would just throw it all together and not have to worry about the noodles sticking together. I think the amount of broccoli is a little high; a 10 oz box should be fine. The amount of chicken and everything else is flexible, of course.

Last night, I made "Fisherman's Seafood Creole" from the same book. It doesn't have the depth of flavor of Emeril's Shrimp Creole, which is pure heaven - I made it myself for my birthday this year - but it doesn't have the stick of butter either. (I don't think that's a coincidence.) It would also be better with shrimp, but my husband is allergic.

Fisherman's Seafood Creole, adapted from Cheap. Fast. Good!

1 1/3 cups rice
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
2 celery ribs, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped (I used red, because I had it)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp finely chopped cooked bacon
1 bay leaf
1-2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 (14 oz) can stewed tomatoes (I used diced + a little sugar)
1 (8oz) can tomato sauce
12 oz firm fish fillets, boned and skinned
1 cup frozen sliced okra (optional; I used more like 2 cups because it was what was left in a bag in the freezer)
Tabasco sauce to taste

Bring 2 2/3 cups lightly salted water to a boil; stir in rice, cover, reduce heat to low, and cook 20 minutes.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion, celery, and green pepper, and cook until the onions are translucent and the veggies are beginning to soften. Stir in garlic, bacon, bay leaf, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper, then tomatoes and tomato sauce. Heat to a boil.

Cut the fish (I used frozen individually-wrapped tilapia fillets from BJ's) into chunks. Add the fish (and okra, if using) to the skillet, cover it, and cook about 4 minutes, or until the fish is nearly opaque. Season with Tabasco to taste, then reduce heat to low and simmer until the rice is done.

Spoon rice into large shallow bowls and top with the seafood mixture. Those who like more heat can add Tabasco at the table.

Serves 4, but not if they really like it and are hungry. You'll have to give them a big dessert. :-)  See, isn't that more helpful? Actually, I would suggest adding more fish; the amount fairly skimpy as written.


As I said, I thought both these meals fit the bill of cheap (even the one with fish was probably less than $10 total), fast (neither took more than half an hour) and good. As for my family, maybe I just have to go back to expensive, slow, and only so-so.