Egyptian Red Lentil Soup

I have always loved lentils. Among my early memories, I remember my mother serving us lentil soup, which I devoured. In the years that have followed, I have learned that there are different types of lentils, with different qualities. While living in New York City, I came upon red lentils and decided I needed to cook with them. They were too pretty to leave in the store!

With some help from the Google, I came upon a recipe on the blog Dove's Eye View, which came from Claudia Roden, an Egyptian Jewish food writer now residing in Britain. I have tweaked it slightly, something to which this recipe lends itself very easily. Play with it. I have in the past used chicken stock at some times and veggie at others, with bouillion cubes at others. If you're not concerned with making this vegan, the addition of some rinds of parmigiano reggiano is quite tasty. Make it your own!

And without further ado, here is my basic recipe:

- 1 large onion, chopped as finely as you can get it (I generally can't get it too fine, thanks to the tears!)

- 1 3/4 cups red lentils

- 7 1/2 cups meat or chicken or veggie stock or water (if you use the water, add a couple of bouillion cubes for flavor as you will need it)-- I've used the Kitchen Basics line of unsalted stocks, and their veggie stock gives this a lovely, deep color.

- salt and pepper, to taste

- 1 tsp cumin

- juice of 1 lemon

- about 2 tablespoons of olive oil (more if you'd like to drizzle some extra virgin olive oil on top)-- you can also do half olive oil, half butter

Using a minimum 2 1/2 quart pot, add the olive oil or olive oil/butter to the heated pot. Add the chopped onion and saute until it is translucent.

Add the liquid, lentils, and salt and pepper. Bring up to a simmer, then cover and let simmer on low for 30 minutes, or until the lentils have mostly fallen apart.

Check for seasoning, then add the cumin and lemon juice. Serve!

Makes 6 servings.

Sugo alla Bolognese (Bolognese Sauce)

While I'm a huge fan of meals that can be quickly and easily prepared while still tasty, there are some culinary delights that cannot be rushed. A good Bolognese is one of them. I made this for the first time on a snowy Manhattan day and have been playing with the recipe ever since. It's comforting, warming, and delicious. Have this one in your repertoire, and you'll make a lot of friends.

This recipe requires some up front work as well as some babysitting along the way. You can multiply it very easily, freezing what you don't eat right away. As with all the recipes on this blog, play with it and make it yours. I changed the original recipe to use ground beef and ground pork, adding lots of flavor.

This is adapted from a recipe by Kyle Phillips, which I found on About.Com. Since I've moved from an area in which I had access to butchers, I recognize that the ground beef and pork will most likely have to be bought in one pound minimum packages. If you don't want to double the recipe, take half a pound of each and place them together into a freezer bag, leaving you with just the right amount of ground beef and pork for the next time you make the sugo!

And now, without further ado:

Sugo alla Bolognese

- 6 ounces (half a pound) ground beef-- not too lean!

- 6 ounces (half a pound) ground pork (if you can't find ground pork, then go for a full pound of ground beef)

- 6 ounces (half a pound) pancetta, minced-- look for the pancetta cubetti, which is already minced for you and is not too fatty; if you can't find pancetta at all, then increase the ground meat

- 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil (eyeball this as you might not need this much, depending on how fatty your pancetta is)

- half a medium onion, minced

- one carrot, minced

- one large (about 10 inch) stalk of celery, minced

- 1/2 cup dry red wine-- I use Chianti

- 3/4 cup crushed tomatoes

- 1 carton beef stock or broth (Kitchen Basics makes a really good one, which you can also get unsalted and have no loss of flavor)

- A pinch of kosher salt

- freshly ground black pepper

- A pound of pasta (penne rigate or farfalle work very well)

- Grated parmigiano

If your pancetta is not already minced, mince it and the veggies. Heat the olive oil on medium heat in a Dutch oven, then add the veggies and pancetta. Saute until the onion is translucent.

Add the ground meat and brown. Add the wine, scraping to deglaze the pan. Simmer everything until the wine has reduced.

Add the tomatoes and about a cup of the beef stock. Add the pinch of salt and some black pepper. Reduce the heat to low (as low a flame or setting as you can get and still be cooking) and cover.

I check it roughly every 30 minutes, stirring and adding more stock (or water if you use your full carton of stock) if the sugo starts looking as if it's drying out.

It needs to cook for at least 2 hours. It will have thickened significantly when it's done, and its color will have gone from bright red (from the tomatoes) to a brownish red. You can taste when it's done. Don't worry about letting it cook for more than 2 hours as it will get richer and tastier. I let my last batch cook for 4 1/2 hours.

As a main course, this will serve about 4; as a first course, it will serve about 6.

Enjoy!!

***This sauce is also perfect for making lasagna.***

Strata!

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to a ladies' brunch. I thought, "What can I bring? Ah! Strata!" This is from a recipe given to me by my friend Stevie Toepke when I was providing Easter breakfast food for the parish choir. I am trying really hard to resist calling it something like Erik Egg-Strata (which obviously worked so well that I was able to resist putting it into the blog post...or not). Whatever you call it, it's easy and delicious and adaptable to healthier eating, too. Add veggies or another type of breakfast meat. You can use egg substitute, etc., to tweak for healthier eating. You can also go whole hog (pardon the pun). Whatever you do, make it yours and make it often. You'll thank me.

Without further ado...

Strata

-5 – 6 slices of bread (cubed)—I used a Tuscan style boule

-1 pkg ground sausage (I used Gunnoe’s Mild, but use one that tastes good to you!)

-2 c. grated cheddar cheese (I used Cabot’s Seriously Sharp White Cheddar, put in the freezer for a couple of hours, then cut into chunks and pulsed in the food processor)

-11 eggs (egg substitute works fine!)

-2 ½ c. milk (I used skim)

-1 ½ t. dry mustard

-1 t salt (and I added freshly ground pepper, so feel free to add some spices of your choice)

Cook sausage, drain and crumble.

Grease 9x13 inch pan and line pan with the bread cubes.

Layer w/ sausage and cheese.

Beat eggs with salt, milk, and mustard until foamy and pour over sausage/cheese/bread. (I sprinkled some shredded parmigiano reggiano on top.)

Refrigerate overnight. Remove 30 minutes before cooking and bake uncovered for 45 – 60 minutes at 350 degrees. It will be bubbly and beautiful.

Beef Stew with Cabernet

A cold, snowy day calls for some comfort food. As I was doing my shopping earlier today, I ran into one of my parishioners who was in search of beef stew meat. Call it a light bulb, a "Eureka!", or my stomach's articulating what it wanted, but beef stew sounded just perfect, and the store had stew meat! I quickly grabbed carrots, onion, celery, beef broth, and some wine so that I, too, could enjoy this cold-weather favorite. Jackie was going to use her slow-cooker, but I knew I wanted to first brown the beef and then cook it in my dutch oven, mainly because I lack patience for these sorts of things.

So here it is: Beef Stew with Cabernet. It's pretty free-form, with a few basics. the longer you cook it, the thicker it will get. If you're impatient like I am, cornstarch comes in really handy. I dried the cubes of beef with a paper towel and then rolled them in a mixture of flour-black pepper-garlic powder-kosher salt, shaking off the excess. I browned the meat before adding the remaining ingredients, but you don't have to, although it adds flavor.

Beef Stew with Cabernet

- 1.5 pounds of beef stew meat

- 3 ribs of celery, diced

- 1 onion the size of your fist, roughly chopped

-1/2 bag of baby Yukon Gold potatoes, or whatever small potatoes you'd like, cut into quarters (about 2 cups' worth)

- about half a small bag of baby carrots, each carrot cut into thirds

- 1-32 oz carton low sodium beef broth

- roughly 4 tbsp olive oil (enough to coat the dutch oven to brown the meat and then saute celery, onion, and carrot-- aka mirepoix)

- about 1/2 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, depending upon your taste and how much liquid you'll need

- flour for dredging (about 1/2 cup or so), plus whatever you want to use to season it

- salt and pepper to taste (and please use kosher salt as it is harder to oversalt as the grains are larger)

- 2 bay leaves

- cornstarch if you know you're short on time or impatient (about 3 heaping tsp)

Wash your veggies. Chop the onion and carrots, and dice the celery, placing them into a small bowl. Get them as close to the same size as possible. Quarter your potatoes.

Combine the flour and seasonings on a plate so that you can dredge the beef. Dry the beef cubes with a paper towel, then dredge them in the flour mixture. Place the dredged cubes on a plate or wire rack as you add olive oil to your dutch oven. Make sure to really get the excess flour mixture off as too much can lead to burning in the pan!

Add about 2 tbsp of olive oil to your dutch oven to begin over a medium-low (if you're using cast iron) or medium burner. Once it is hot, add several cubes of beef at a time to the dutch oven to brown, turning them with tongs after about 2 minutes. **Do not crowd the beef into the pan!!!** This will make the beef steam instead of brown, and that is not what you want. Patience will ensure some good-looking beef cubes. Make sure to keep an eye on the beef so that there is no burning, wiping the dutch oven with a paper towel to remove the excess flour if needed. When the cubes are browned, place them onto a plate.

Add the onion, carrots, and celery to the pan, adding a bit of olive oil beforehand to make sure they have enough to saute. Once they are colorful and the onions translucent, add about a cup of the wine and deglaze the pan, using your tongs to scrape up all of the good bits.

Add the beef and potatoes to the dutch oven along with the beef broth, salt, and pepper. The liquid should cover the beef and veggies, but if it doesn't, add some water. Add about another cup of the wine, then cover the dutch oven and bring to a boil for about 10 minutes.

Stir the mixture, then reduce the heat to low. Cover and let the stew simmer for about 30 minutes. Check to see how it is thickening and check the seasonings. Adjust accordingly, then set your timer for another 30 minutes. Follow this procedure until the meat is fork-tender, the stew is seasoned as you want it, and it is as thick as you'd like.

I find the meat is as tender as I like it after about 2 hours of cooking, but I thicken the stew with cornstarch. The way to do this is to add a teaspoon (or a heaping teaspoon in my case) to some cold liquid, mix well, then gradually add it to your hot stew. Bring it to a boil, then let it cook for a bit. I did two heaping teaspoons of cornstarch in water (making a slurry) after about an hour and a half of cooking, then let it cook for a half hour longer. At that point, I mixed another heaping teaspoon of cornstarch with a cup of wine, adding it as I had the previous cornstarch slurry. Let it cook for about 10 more minutes, and then you should be good to go!

Adjust the seasonings per your preference. Enjoy!

An Apple a Day...

I went to the mountains a week ago and stopped at an orchard on my way home (among other places, but the orchard was much more exciting than Home Depot!). After hearing of friends' success with making applesauce, I decided that I needed to try it. On a recommendation from the multi-talented Beth Somers, I bought York apples, and then I didn't touch them again until my friend Sandy arrived on Friday. Per his request, we had a culinary adventure in making applesauce, with such success that I will keep this one in my repertoire! Easy and good, you can tweak it to be sweeter or more savory. Mark Bittman of the New York Times says it's good to mix horseradish with applesauce if you're serving it with pork. While I did not do that, I did play with it quite a bit. Here it is.

ALW's Applesauce
- 4 good-sized York apples (if you're at an orchard or reputable produce place, ask what would substitute if they do not have any Yorks, or use the Interwebs to find a comparable apple)
- water to cover
- juice of one lemon
- 1 tbsp of good unsalted butter (I used Kerrygold, and I do think it makes a difference!!)
- 2 pinches of salt
- 4 tsp of brown sugar
- cinnamon to taste


Start by filling a bowl with water, juicing the lemon directly into it. Watch out for seeds!

After thoroughly washing the apples, core and cube them, placing them into the lemon water. You do not need to peel them as the skins will pretty much dissolve as the apples cook. Place the entire contents of the bowl into a minimum 2 quart pot with a lid, along with the 2 pinches of salt. I used my Le Creuset (naturally) multifunction pan, which is a 3 quart pot.

Turn the heat to medium (if using cast iron, higher if using aluminum or another type of pot) and bring the mixture to boiling. I covered the pot during this stage. When it begins to boil, turn the heat to low and let it simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure that the apples do not burn to the bottom of the pan!

The apples are ready for seasoning when they have gotten soft, and the peels have largely disintegrated. This will give your applesauce a beautiful pink color. Add the butter and brown sugar at this point, tasting to see if it is to your liking. Add cinnamon if desired. Play with your flavorings!

Let it cool a bit before serving initially. This is so yummy when still a bit warm, and the flavors have even more of a chance to meld.

Makes 4 servings.

Chicken Piccata

I have been negligent in posting this recipe, but I assure you that it will be delicious! It is easy and tasty and easily expanded for company. For those who are gluten intolerant, you could use something else to coat the chicken before cooking it. Trader Joe's now has almond flour, and that might work (and up the nutritional factor!). Whatever you do, feel free to tweak it to your tastes. I began with a recipe from The Stuffed Cougar and adjusted it to my preferences. Add additional seasonings. Make it crispy! Do what you want. As long as it tastes good to you, great. I'd love to hear your tweaks!

Here it is, at long last...chicken piccata. This recipe makes one serving (just because it's easy quantities). Multiply as needed.

Oh, and this is not a lowfat recipe, but it surely is good. It's one of my treats!

Chicken Piccata
- 1 chicken breast (preferably thinly sliced or pounded to a nice thinness and not too big since you want it to cook quickly)
- enough flour to very lightly coat the chicken (about 1 tablespoon), seasoned with whatever you choose since it'll be really bland otherwise. (I recommend seasoned salt and garlic powder)
- bread crumbs to coat the chicken, with seasonings added, about 1 tablespoon (again, seasoned salt and garlic powder work nicely)
- 3 tablespoons butter (or less if you do not like butter, but I am partial to butter, and adjust the salt if you use unsalted)
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon dry white wine (make sure it's one you would drink and not swill)
- half a lemon (or more if it's not juicy since you need to end up with about a tablespoon)
- 1 tablespoon capers (more or less depending upon your taste for capers)

Start by letting the chicken come up to room temperature.

Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a skillet with the olive oil. If you're using enameled cast iron or the like, medium heat is what you need. If it's not, then you might have to go hotter in order to get a really good browning of the chicken.

Dredge the chicken lightly in the seasoned flour, shaking to remove the excess, then dredge in the seasoned bread crumbs. Getting the excess flour off is really important as too much makes the chicken gummy. Make sure to press the chicken into the crumbs so the breast is really well-coated.

When the butter is fully melted, place the chicken breast into the pan. Cook it for about 4 minutes on the first side, then flip and do about 3 minutes on the other side. Check for even browning. When both sides are nicely browned, remove the chicken from the pan.

Deglaze the pan with the white wine and lemon juice, scraping the browned, chickeney bits from the bottom of the skillet. Taste for seasoning and add as needed. Add one more tablespoon of butter and the capers and check for taste again (especially if you get some of the brine into the sauce). If needed, add the final tablespoon of butter to round out the sauce. It should taste rich, lemony but not too tart, and a bit buttery.

Add the chicken back to the pan to warm it through, turning it to coat it in the sauce. Serve it on a plate that can hold the sauce, or if you choose to serve with pasta or rice, in a bowl. Mangia!!!

Spicy Roast Chicken with Grape Tomatoes and Marjoram

...aka my go to dish for company!

I found this recipe originally in my Bon Appetit calendar and thought it sounded delicious. Trial proved that right! I've made a few changes, namely putting the quantities for serving two people. The original recipe also called for cherry tomatoes and for using a baking sheet, which I can't imagine as you'd risk losing some of the sauce. The tomatoes get extra sweet and intensely flavored, and the garlic and marjoram provide a nice balance.

If you can't find fresh marjoram (and it must be fresh), use oregano since they are similar in flavor. I was able to find a nice little marjoram plant at Whole Foods the other day, along with some exquisite Hanover grape tomatoes.

You'll need a small or medium glass baking dish (which will hold two chicken breasts plus a pint of grape tomatoes), a garlic press (mine is Zyliss-- reasonably priced and works very well), and crusty bread to sop up the sauce (or use rice if you have someone with a gluten allergy). Tweak the amount of salt to your taste and dietary needs. This has always been a hit in my experience!!

Words cannot express how good this dish is so make it straight away. You don't have to tell anyone how easy it is!!

Spicy Roast Chicken with Grape Tomatoes and Marjoram
- 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts-- not too big!! Cutlets would also work. Make sure to let them come to room temperature before cooking!!
- 1 pint grape tomatoes (Lucky you if you can get some yummy local ones!!)
- 1/4 cup olive oil plus 2 tbsp (add more if you feel you need it)
- 3 garlic cloves, pressed (chopped will not work anywhere near as well so don't even try it, and don't go overboard on the garlic as there is such a thing as too much of it in this recipe)
- a palmful of crushed red pepper flake (adjust to your desired spiciness)
- 1 tbsp fresh marjoram, chopped (plus more if you want some for garnish)
-salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Season your chicken breasts with salt and pepper on both sides, placing them in your baking dish.

Wash your tomatoes and marjoram, draining the tomatoes and letting the marjoram dry on a kitchen towel.

Place the 1/4 cup of olive oil in a mixing bowl. Press your garlic cloves right into the bowl, scraping every bit of garlic into the bowl. Measure a palmful of crushed red pepper flake and crush with your thumb to release more of the heat. Add a bit of salt and pepper to your liking. Add the grape tomatoes.

Chop the marjoram. A mezzaluna works really well for this, and I recommend getting one if you don't have one. Throw it into the mixing bowl, reserving what you want for garnish. You will want at least a tablespoon's worth in the tomato mixture.

Toss the tomato mixture and then pour over the chicken breasts, making sure to spread the tomatoes out as evenly as you can get them. Drizzle a bit more olive oil over the top and then place the baking dish in the oven.

Bake at 450 degrees for 35 minutes. It will not dry out, thanks to the olive oil and tomato mixture!

Serve on plates or in pasta bowls with crusty bread alongside. Enjoy!!