Portuguese Cauliflower Soup

When I visited Lisbon, I had delicious soups of a kind I had never tasted. They had a smooth, creamy consistency and subtle flavors. When I asked my hosts, they explained, in words and gestures, that the white one was cauliflower. It was a lot like potato soup.
When I got home I looked up how to make it, and was pleased to find that it fit my two criteria for cooking dinner: it costs less than five dollars, and it takes less than five minutes to prepare. The only really necessary parts of the recipe are boiling and blending the cauliflower, though you at least need some kind of spice or it's too bland. This is my way of making it.

1 head of cauliflower
1/3 stick of butter (2 or 3 tbsp)
garlic salt
pepper
dried onion bits
1 cube of chicken bullion in gold foil
1 cup milk

Start some water boiling. Chop the cauliflower into half-inch pieces or smaller. Drop it in the water and boil for four minutes. Strain the boiling water and drop all the cauliflower in the blender.
In a glass two-cup measure, mix the rest of the ingredients and microwave for two minutes and stir. Pour this in the blender with the cauliflower. Blend on high until it is all looks like foamy mashed potatoes.

McIntosh Apples

McIntosh is by far the best variety of apple that is widely available. The flavor is tart, almost as sour as a Granny Smith (which would be, perhaps, a less ironic choice for a Scottish moniker), but unlike a Granny Smith the flesh is the tenderest of any variety, and the skin is the thinnest. McIntoshes are juicy: when you bite into one the skin tenses and gives way with a satisfying pop of flavor. They are round but somewhat oblate, with only a shallow impression at the calyx end.
The color is patchy, freckled light-green and red, a natural appearance that brings to mind songbirds or traditional Raku pottery. As the poet-monk Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:

Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.

 They are in every way the opposite of that most pernicious and ubiquitous breed of apple, the Delicious; whose uniform color, hard or woody texture, thick skin, and flavorlessness are the antithesis of every quality that makes an apple good to eat. In their sourness, irregular coloration, small size, and susceptibility to bruising, McIntoshes are closer to the wild apple than the artificiality of many other breeds.
The very delicacy of the McIntosh makes them difficult to store. The process of bringing them home from the store in a bag is often enough to bruise them. For that reason, you rarely can find good McIntosh in stores out of season (late September). In its peculiar way, this very rarity enhances their appeal; like eggnog, it is a seasonal treat one looks forward to and then longs for, and is all the sweeter for it.
However, the reason I am writing this is that I frequently find that what is marketed as McIntosh is no true Scotsman, as it were. Frequently they tend toward more yellow coloring, a sweeter flavor and a firm texture more reminiscent of a Jonathan or Gala.
I recognize that categories are defined by their members, and not a single ideal (as Plato would have it) of which the members are imperfect copies. Surely the people selling these apples are more expert in the lineage and cultivation of apples than I am, and can say with more authority to which variety their apples belong. On the other hand, there must be strong financial pressures to sell as the authentic McIntosh hardier forgeries. So which is it, dear reader? Am I mistaken in taking a preferred subvariety as defining the variety as a whole, or have I fallen victim to some dark conspiracy of greed and deceit among apple growers? Is the industry, I must ask, rotten to the core?

Rachel's preferred hummus

I'm posting this because Rachel's copy of the recipe is getting so filthy that I can hardly read it.

2 19 ounce cans of chickpeas drained and rinsed
1/2 cup tahini
1 tablespoon olive oil
Three cloves garlic
Juice from 2 to 3 lemons
3/4 cup water

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Place chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, and garlic in food processor, then process until smooth. Next add lemon juice, then add water until desired consistency is reached. Then add remaining ingredients. Process again until smooth, scraping sides occasionally. 

Instant Apple Pie

I like pie a la mode. Here's my instant recipe:

Cut up an apple
put a couple spoonfuls of sugar on it
and some cinnamon.
Microwave it for one minute
top with a scoop of ice cream
and Golden Grahams for the crust.

No, it's not a real pie. But is a pie really what you wanted? What you really wanted was to spend time reading about Aztec philosophy, while eating baked apples and ice cream and Golden Grahams.

Pineapple upside-down cake

Pineapple upside-down cake was invented in the U.S. sometime in the 1920s, I think. Basically it was just skillet cake that used the new invention of canned sliced pineapple for a pretty, easy pattern. I kind of associate it with the whole 1950s fascination with Hawaii (not that it is authentic Hawaiian anything, but then, 1950s cooking wasn't really about authenticity anyway. Picture women's home magazines, ward dinners, etc...) Mom used to cook it, and I'm pretty sure La Fawn and Helen did, too, so you can call it an old family recipe.
It's pretty easy to make. Get a glass or aluminum pan, and cover the bottom with a mixture of melted butter and brown sugar. Maybe half a cup? It should be about a quarter inch thick on the bottom of the pan. Lay canned pineapple slices in a symmetric arrangement over the brown sugar. If you have maraschino cherries you can put those in the middle of each ring.
Then make up a yellow cake mix from a box (the kind where you add eggs, oil, and water. Betty Crocker or something like that.) But instead of using water, use the liquid from the pineapple can. Pour the batter over the pineapples and sugar. Then bake it how it says on the cake box. I'm guessing 350 degrees for 25 minutes? I guess it depends whether you made a short fat cake or used the biggest glass pan you have and made it really flat.
It tastes best when you eat it hot, maybe with a little vanilla ice cream or a glass of milk.
The key to the flavor is that the brown sugar becomes caramel in the cooking process, and the flavors of the pineapple, sugar, and butter all kind of soak into the cake.
If you cut half of it off and put it inverted on the other half, you can have pineapple inside-out cake. But this is messy and is really done just so you can say that silly phrase.

Cajun rice and sausage

I made rice and sausage the other day with kielbasa instead of ground sausage. I chopped up a bell pepper with the celery. I added some thyme and cayenne pepper (maybe 1/4 tsp) and a bay leaf to make it more cajun-y. We liked it a lot.

summer tomato soup with shrimp, zucchini, and corn

I found this in a magazine last summer and I loved it. I've decided poblanos are my favorite pepper. They're not too hot, but because of them and the onions/garlic you only need to add salt and pepper for seasoning.

Here's a link to the original recipe.

INGREDIENTS

1. 2tablespoons olive oil
2. 2poblano peppers, seeded and chopped
3. 1large onion, chopped
4. 3cloves garlic, sliced
5. Kosher salt and black pepper
6. 2small zucchini, chopped
7. 128-ounce can diced tomatoes
8. 1pound raw medium peeled and deveined shrimp
9. 2cups fresh (from 4 ears) or frozen corn kernels, thawed

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.
   Add the poblanos, onion, garlic, and ½ teaspoon each salt and black pepper.
   Cook, stirring, until softened, 10 to 12 minutes.
   Add the zucchini and tomatoes (and their juices).
   Cook, stirring, until the zucchini is crisp-tender, 12 to 15 minutes.
   Add the shrimp, corn, and 3 cups water. Bring to a simmer.
   Cook, stirring occasionally, until the shrimp are white throughout
   and the corn is tender, 5 to 6 minutes.
   Sprinkle with black pepper and serve.

Dill Mushroom Rice

I took all the about-to-go-bad ingredients from our fridge this week and put them in a pot with a few other ingredients. Lo and behold, it turned out tasting pretty great! (This is according to Rachel, not just me, so yes you can trust that assessment.)

Ingredients:

One bunch of fresh dill, chopped fine

One bunch of fresh cilantro, chopped rough
One medium brown onion, halved, then sliced the other direction to make a bunch of c-shaped onion pieces
6-8 oz of fresh button mushrooms, sliced
1 medium tomato, smashed
Two cups of white rice
1T butter
2 t vegetable oil
1 bouillon cube, vegetable or chicken (I actually used some leftover packets of flavoring from two kinds of ramen noodles, but I think the boullion cube would approximate it pretty well)
In a separate sauce pan, melt the tablespoon of butter on medium heat
Add the dill, cilantro, and bouillon, then sautee the onions and mushrooms for three minutes.
Add the cooked rice and vegetable oil, and mix well.

Directions:

-Cook the rice

-In a separate sauce pan, melt the tablespoon of butter on medium heat
-Add the dill, cilantro, tomato, and bouillon to the butter, then sautee the onions and mushrooms in it for three minutes.
-Add the cooked rice and vegetable oil to the sauce pan, and mix well.

Salmon and root Vegetables in Creme sauce

So sorry I didn't get a photo of this: it was delicious.

We have church from 2 to 5.  We usually get home about 6 or 6:30.  It is so nice to have dinner ready and hot.  But today's dinner was going to be salmon and I didn't want the fish overcooked.  

So, I cut up potatoes, peeled carrots and peeled sweet potatoes. I put them all in a bread pan and added 2 T olive oil, and some broth made with Knorr Delikatess Bruhe, a soup base made from all veggies and herbs.  I baked those covered with foil for one hour at 170 degrees C. 

Then I cut the salmon in half, laid it on the veggies, put some onion slices on top and replaced the foil.  This I put in the warm oven, but TURNED OFF THE HEAT.  And we went to church.
Upon arriving home, we found the salmon was perfectly cooked all the way through, not raw but flaky.  And really nice and moist.  I thickened the soup/sauce with  Saucenbinder (für Helle Saucen)  Gravy (for Light sauces), which is similar to cornstarch, but I don't think it is corn.  After it thickened, I removed it from the heat and stirred in 2 heaping T of Creme Fraiche.  Oh, my goodness. 

We are definitely having this again.

Doug's fancy chicken soup for lazy people

Ingredients:
1 package chicken flavored instant ramen
1 scoop Cape Cod Chicken Salad (from Costco)

Put water, noodles, flavor packet, and the scoop of chicken salad in a pot and boil it until the noodles are soft enough. It has chicken, oil, celery, cranberries, and walnuts. All of which are good in chicken soup!
It's kind of similar to the orange chicken soup recipe, but doesn't require any crazy things like putting an entire chicken in a pot and waiting for the flesh to fall of its bones, or peeling carrots or anything at all, really.

Roasted Vegetable Enchiladas

mine looked kind of like this, but with corn tortillas

2-3 sweet potatoes, peeled and diced into half-inch cubes

2 zucchinis diced into half-inch cubes

1 green or red bell pepper diced into half inch pieces

2-4 cloves garlic, whole

1 onion diced

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

1 can red enchilada sauce

corn tortillas

Jack or Pepper Jack or Jack/Cheddar shredded

cilantro, avocado, and sour cream for serving

1. Preheat oven to 400*

2. Toss sweet potatoes and garlic cloves with enough olive oil to make them glisten. Sprinkle with salt. Roast for 15-20 min until soft enough to poke with a fork, but not mashable. Dice garlic finely,

3. Toss zucchini, peppers, and onions with enough olive oil to make them glisten. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 10-15 min until soft enough to poke with a fork.

4. Turn oven down to 350*

5. Mix all the vegetables, beans, 1/4-ish C of red sauce, and a couple handfuls of cheese together.

6. Fill tortillas with scant 1/4 C of mix and a sprinkle of cheese. Roll them up and lay them seam side down in a pan.

7. When your pan is full, pour some enchilada sauce over the enchilada sauce and sprinkle with more cheese. Bake for 25-35 min until everything is bubbly. Immediately top with chopped cilantro. Serve with avocados and sour cream. 

Makes about 2 9x13 in pans of enchiladas. I think total there were 26 enchiladas. My kids ate 1-2 and we ate 2-3. 

I made one pan and froze the rest of the mix and kept the second half of the enchilada sauce in my fridge. The next week I thawed the veggie mix, added some left over rice that had no other destiny than the trash can, and filled some more tortillas. I've made similar enchiladas with a cup of frozen corn I tossed on with the roasting veggies. You could also roast a jalapeno or anaheim if you want more heat. You could add some spinach.

David's Favorite Asparagus Pie

PISTACHIO PUDDING DESSERT

1 stick butter 1 c. flour 1 c. chopped nuts FILLING: 1 c. powdered sugar 1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese 1 c. Cool Whip 2 pkgs. instant pudding 3 c. milk Mix butter, flour, and nuts; press into 9 x 13 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Cool. Mix powdered sugar, cream cheese, and Cool Whip; spread on cooled crust. Beat together pudding mix and milk until thickened. Spread on cream cheese layer and top with a layer of Cool Whip and chopped nuts. Refrigerate.

spaghetti sauce

I've been making this for about 4 years, but recently had a dry spell with it while meal planning was an afterthought to a new baby. I made it again last night and was reminded how much I love it, and how worth the effort it is.

1 29oz can diced tomatoes (or whole tomatoes)
1 14.5oz can diced tomatoes or tomato sauce
1/2 an onion (or a whole small/medium one)
5 Tbs butter
a grind of black pepper

1 lb Italian sausage (we like both mild and hot)

optional:
bell peppers, carrots, garlic, herbs (oregano, basil)

1. Put the butter, half onion, pepper, and tomatoes (and/or sauce), undrained, in a big sauce pan. Add dry herbs or garlic now. 
2. Bring the tomatoes to a simmer on medium-high heat.
3. Turn the heat down to medium/low and let it simmer till the butter has incorporated into the tomatoes and the whole thing is saucy, about 30 min. Smash down the tomatoes with your spoon and stir it occasionally.
4. While the sauce is cooking, cook your sausage and crumble it (take it out of the casings if you can't find ground sausage). Chop your bell peppers or grate a carrot if you're using it.
5. Dump the cooked sausage into the completed sauce.
6. Take the onion out of the sauce and chop it up. Add it and your chopped veggies to the pan you cooked the sausage in and fry them for a minute or two. Dump it in the sauce.
7. Add some pasta water to the spaghetti sauce to make it smoother and stick to your pasta better.
8. Add any fresh herbs and stir them in.

We like to eat this on thick pasta like cellentani or linguini or fusilli that's had plenty of salt in the water. And freshly grated parmesan is delicious, too.

Adapted from smittenkitchen.com

Berry Smoothie

Fill the blender 3/4 full of frozen strawberries, slightly thawed. Fill the rest up with fresh raspberries. On the last day of June, there will be so many raspberries that even though you've been picking them every day and having a bowlful with cream, and so has your wife, there will still be two bowls leftover that you need to make into smoothies. There might be a Japanese beetle in there, or a really tiny caterpillar, or a harmless sort of green spider. Bending over to pick that many raspberries can get tiring, so you get someone to bring you a chair. And another bowl, because this one is full. If you work quickly, most of the mosquitos won't have time to find you. Add in a half cup of white sugar, and a tablespoon of vanilla extract. Then blend it up. It's summer, this is summer food.

Orange Chicken Soup

Mike and Miriam made Orange Chicken soup with cranberries and almonds for us years ago.  I love it and make it a couple of times a year.
This week I made it - well, with alterations using leftovers from Sunday dinner since we are leaving for Macedonia this week and don't want leftovers in the refrigerator - for a Frankfurt Senior Missionary FHE.
Everyone wanted the recipe, so I typed it up and decided to post it here.

Orange Chicken soup

Put a chicken in a pot, covered with water.  Add some chopped up celery and onions.

Cook until the chicken falls off the bones.  Strain off and keep the liquid. Debone the chicken and cut the chicken pieces up into bitesized pieces.  Toss out the celery and onions and all the chicken bones, gristle and skin.

Meanwhile, boil some chunky pieces of potatoes and carrots in chicken broth until tender (or use leftover potatoes and carrots from dinner on Sunday like I did).

Next, coarsely grate 4 peeled carrots. Add to the broth.  Chop up an onion.  Add to the broth.  Chop up 6 stalks of celery.  Add to the broth.  Add one package of dry chicken noodle soup with tiny noodles.  Add 2 tablespoons of chicken soup base.  Add one half of a package of spaetzle  or kluski (polish) noodles: cook only until tender. DO NOT OVERCOOK THE NOODLES or they will turn to mush. 

Next add 3-4 Tablespoons of Stephens’ Orange cider mix (or more to taste). Add some pepper.  Add the cut up chicken and heat it all through.

If you cook the noodles separately in water, then you can add them just before you are ready to eat the soup.

An alternative version of this leaves out the carrots and potatoes.  You add sliced almonds and dried cranberries instead for a really great unusual soup.

rice omelet

1 bowl microwave rice
1 can corn (or fresh asparagus or mushrooms would be nice)
2 tbsp butter
5 eggs
sliced cheddar cheese
salt
parsley

Heat up the veggies and butter in the pan. Add the hot microwaved rice bowl. Stir. Add five eggs. stir. Add salt. Cover with cheese slices. Add parsley. Wait for the cheese to melt.
Total preparation time: 5 minutes. Serves two or three people.
Growing up I would have called this quiche, but it's not reaaly much like quiche. It's just an omelet with rice in it. 

Donut Bread Pudding

Makes 6 really big servings or 12 reasonable sized servings. This is a very sweet and tasty dessert. It's basically like you mixed vanilla ice cream up with donuts and cooked apples.

Ingredients:
------------
One dozen glazed donuts (they don't have to be particularly good donuts. They can even be stale.)
3 cups heavy whipping cream (or you could use condensed milk from a couple of cans.)
5 eggs (you could get away with fewer)

3 tsp cinnamon (maybe other sweet spices as well?)

3 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
2 or 3 diced, skinned granny smith apples (or a few cups of raisins or blueberries, if you prefer.)
maybe some grated orange peel

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a greased 9 x 13inch pan, tear up the donuts into bite size pieces. You will have to wash your hands again at this point because they will have icing all over them.
In a large bowl, mix up all the rest of the ingredients. Pour the mixture over the top of the donuts. Maybe squash them down a bit so they sponge up some of the liquid. This isn't the prettiest dish. But it does make your house smell nice.
Cook uncovered for 40 minutes. It should still be kind of soft on top when you are done, not crisp. If it is black you have left it in for too long.

anytime American curry

This recipe takes ten minutes to prepare, and you don't have to have gone to the store any time recently.

2 microwave rice bowls (microwave 90 seconds each)
3 blocks of Japanese curry base (about 36 cubic centimeters total)
Here is a picture of what I mean by blocks:

2 cups water or milk
1 apple (or can of pineapple chunks)
1 stick celery (or can of corn)
1 can of chunk chicken breast
it looks like this:

spices (curry powder, coriander, cinnmon, marjoram)

Boil the water. Break up the curry block and drop it in the water. Cut the apple and celery into little chunks. Add the fruit, vegetables and meat to the boiling curry and stir. Let it sit long enough to get warm, but not long enough for the apples to break down. The curry should come out thick, not runny. Spice to taste.

You can add other things like potatoes or carrots but you would have to boil them for a few minutes before you added the curry or they would be too hard. Of course you can make rice in a pot or a rice cooker, but that would take a lot longer.
It will end up looking something like this:

serves 2 or 3 people

Blue Macaroni and Cheese

You make regular macaroni and cheese from a box, and then melt blue cheese over the top. It's very sharp. I got a block of blue cheese at Costco for about the price you usually pay for cheddar.
It's fun because it's at the same time really low class and high class food. It's like putting caviar in your instant ramen. Except I've never had caviar so I don't know if that would be any good. 

A modest proposal

For a Halloween-themed dessert:

Ingredients:
1 20 oz. bag of assorted Mars candy bars
1 10 oz. bag of M&Ms

Unwrap all the candy bars. Dump them unceremoniously into a heavily buttered 8-inch cake pan. Create the top crust by dumping all the M&Ms on top. Bake at 110 F for 30 minutes. Allow the dessert to rest at room temperature until solid. Serve with a garnish of Karo syrup (optional).