Cooking Marathon Mondays

So this semester I have Mondays off (yay!), so I try to plan my menu in such a way that I can do my more labor intensive cooking on Monday, before my school week starts. I'm at the beginning of a new menu cycle, and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen today, absorbed in preparing broccoli-potato soup and sausage cassoulet. I had to hang around the apartment anyway, because the annual termite inspection guy was going to show up. He surveyed my (luckily clean and tidy) apartment for all of two minutes with a flashlight. No termites. That's heartening news of course, but as I am going to be moving soon, I wasn't overly concerned with the termite population. As to the moving soon, more about that in a future post.

First I need to rate the recipes from my last menu.

Miso Shrimp and Rice:

This was something I threw together with things I had on hand, and it was OK, but doesn't merit a recipe.

Convenience: 5

Deliciousness: 3

Value: 4

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 4

Roasted Potatoes in Romesco Sauce:

I adapted this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, and I must admit I was a bit in over my head here. The Romesco sauce was complicated but ultimately amazing; the potatoes a hot mess. Prepared properly, the deliciousness quotient would certainly be more on this one.

Convenience: 2

Deliciousness: 3.5

Value: 3

Left-over worthiness: 3

Good for you-ness: 2

Pork Carnitas Tacos:

Convenience: 2

Deliciousness: 5

Value: 3

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 2

Spinach and Mushroom Frittata:

Convenience: 5

Deliciousness: 4

Value: 4

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 3

Baked Polenta with Mushrooms:

Convenience: 4

Deliciousness: 4

Value: 5

Left-over worthiness: 5

Good for you-ness: 3

Skillet Black Beans and Potatoes:

Now, I will probably post the recipe for this eventually, because the first time I made it I was so pleased with the results. It was one of those meals that I was sad about when there wasn't any left. This time around I made it with presoaked as opposed to canned black beans, and I really didn't prepare the beans that well. The result was disappointing. However, I know the potential is there.

Convenience: 3.5

Deliciousness: 4

Value: 5

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 5

Patchwork Pasta (Penne with Chicken and Spinach):

This reheats pretty well; the only negative is the spinach--pleasantly wilted on the first go--is listless and sad on subsequent re-heatings. I added a little bit of fresh spinach to my leftovers to brighten it a bit.

Convenience: 4

Deliciousness: 5

Value: 4

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 4

Here's my menu for the next two weeks. I am incorporating made-from-scratch recipes with frozen leftovers, in an effort to clean out my freezer as much as possible pre-moving day:

Broccoli-Potato Soup x 4

Sausage Cassoulet x 4

Achiote Chicken and Rice (made with frozen achiote paste from Puerco Pibil) x 4

Ethiopian-style Yellow Split Peas (repurposing frozen Yellow Split Pea and Sweet Potato Soup) x 2

Broccoli and Sausage Strata x 4

Onion Galette x 4

Cheesy Polenta with Roasted Root Vegetables x 4

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchiladas (premade, frozen) x 2

As I mentioned above, my day was mostly taken up in the preparation of two rather labor intensive but satisfying culinary endeavors: Broccoli-Potato Soup and Sausage Cassoulet. Here are recipes for both.

This soup is at once light and healthy as well as pleasingly rich and creamy, thanks to pureeing, without the addition of any milk or cream. It's also quite easy to prepare, provided you have a food processor or immersion blender. It can be made vegetarian or vegan by subbing vegetable broth for the chicken broth, olive oil for the butter, and omitting the Parmesan cheese. A tasty vegan alternative to the cheese might be a topping of crushed toasted almonds or some kind of nut cheese.

Broccoli-Potato Soup

2 cups broccoli stems, peeled and diced into ½ inch chunks

2 cups red potato, peeled and diced into ½ inch chunks

2 Tbsps butter

1 onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups chicken broth

3 cups water

¼ cup almonds, toasted and ground in a food processor or spice grinder

2 cups broccoli florets, finely chopped

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, divided in half

Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large pot and sauté the garlic and onion about five minutes. Add the potatoes, broccoli stems, chicken broth, water, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat; simmer about ten minutes, or until the broccoli and potatoes are “crisp tender”; that is, tender but not mushy. Using an immersion blender, or in batches in a food processor, puree the soup to your preferred thickness. Stir in the broccoli florets, almonds, and half of the Parmesan cheese and simmer for five more minutes. Serve garnished with remaining Parmesan. Four servings.

If you're unfamiliar with cassoulet, it's kind of a cross between a stew and a casserole. It's a hearty French peasant dish made with white beans and some kind of fatty meat (often a combination of duck and sausage). I adapted this recipe from Real Simple. This humble version, which takes advantage of inexpensive winter root vegetables, carrot and parsnips, is an easier take on the more complicated all-day-long version. Still, it's quite satisfying. It's very flavorful, perfect for a cold winter's day, and preparing it will make you feel like Julia Child.

Sausage Cassoulet

2 large sausage links, casings removed (I used Polish, but Italian would be fine, too)

3 cups prepared white beans, drained (about 1 and 1/2 cans)

2 medium carrots, peeled and diced

2 medium parsnips, peeled and diced

1 red onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup chicken broth

1/2 cup crushed tomato

1 tsp dried thyme

Dash of Cayenne pepper

Salt and black pepper to taste

1 cup buttered breadcrumbs (I used sourdough, which I recommend)

In a Dutch oven or lidded, range-top safe casserole dish, brown the sausage over medium heat, breaking it up with a spoon. When the sausage is browned, drain off excess fat. Add all remaining ingredients except breadcrumbs to the pot. Stir well to combine. If needed, add more chicken stock and/or tomato to the pot to keep the vegetables moist. Simmer covered until the carrots and parsnips are tender, at least 30 minutes. While the pot is simmering, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. When the vegetables are tender, top with the butter breadcrumbs and bake uncovered for 10-15 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are toasted. 4 servings.

As Julia Child would say, bon appetit!

Odds & Ends

I came home today after a five-hour grading marathon with no will to cook anything complicated for dinner. The solution: tuna melt and tomato soup.

Now, a tuna melt is like, cooking 101-type stuff, right? Well, I don't know; tuna melts, like pancakes and omelettes, are simple in theory but take some time and practice to master (or at least they did in my case). Also, anyone can open a can of tuna, mix it up with some mayo, slather it on some wonder bread and call it a tuna sandwich. But it doesn't have to be that way. The tuna/mayo base is easy to fancy up, and usually you can do it with whatever you have on hand. To cut fat and add a little extra kick of flavor, I usually substitute a little Dijon mustard for some of the mayo. Some things I commonly add to tuna salad include (not necessarily together, mind you): sliced green olives, red onion, green onion, celery, diced apple, capers, nuts, cilantro, pickle, etc, etc. In this case I had a bunch of celery left over from when I made red beans and rice, and some chopped green onion that I kept forgetting to garnish my leftover sweet and sour pork with. I dumped this into my tuna, along with about a 1/2 tablespoon of capers for tang and some chopped almonds for crunch. A good sprinkling of fresh ground black pepper is a must for my tuna salad; sometimes I add a little dill as well.

To make a tuna melt:

Melt a pat of butter in a wide skillet over medium-low heat. Add your bread to the skillet and rub it around a bit to get some butter on it, then flip it over and rub it around again. Let your bread toast on one side until it starts to get golden. Flip it over and carefully spread your tuna mixture over one of the slices. I usually add something on top of that, like sliced onion or tomato or some baby spinach. Because I have arugula right now, I threw a handful on top of the tuna. Place your slices of cheese (I used Monterey Jack this evening) on top, close your sandwich, and press it down gently with the flat of a spatula to smoosh the different layers together. Reduce the heat to low and cover. When the cheese has started to melt, carefully flip the sandwich. I use two spatulas or other utensils to do this, sliding one under the sandwich and pressing the top down with the other. Cook on the other side until the cheese is nice and gooey.

For me, a tuna melt isn't really complete unless there's a side of tomato soup to go with it. If you have canned soup, that's fine, but I almost never get canned tomato soup because it is so easy to make, and homemade is much better. It's also better for you, because you can control how much salt goes in. Even the low-sodium soup brands have a lot of salt in them. Tomato soup is one of those gloriously minimalist foods. All you really need to do to make tomato soup is take a little can of tomato paste, mix it up in about two cups of water, season with salt and pepper, and heat through. I like garlic so I usually add some garlic, which I saute in a bit of olive oil before pouring the liquid in the pan. Beyond that, you can add pretty much whatever you want to your soup. I had extra grilled onion from my dinner last night, so I chopped that up and threw it in, and spiced it up with some cumin and paprika. Instant comfort food.