Ingredients
3 c. water
2 c. whole milk
3 black tea bags
2 whole cloves
1/8 to 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
1/8 to 1/4 tsp. ground true cinnamon
1/8 to 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
3 Tbsp.jaggery, or to taste
Method
Add all ingredients except jaggery to a sauce pan, bring to a simmer, being careful not to let it boil over and make a mess of your stove. Reduce heat and cook for about five minutes. Stir in the jaggery.
Strain and serve hot in large mugs. Enjoy!
Notes: For whatever reason, I rarely have ground cloves, so I use whole ones. If you have ground cloves, do use a pinch of them instead.
You can also use a chunk of fresh ginger, cardamom pods, and cinnamon sticks rather than ground versions of these spices, of course. This is just what I typically have on hand in my kitchen. You can use brown or even white sugar, but jaggery is so freakin’ delicious it’s totally worth finding some. If you don’t have access to an Indian grocery you can order it from Amazon.
In which there’s THE BEST tomato soup recipe ever. You’re welcome.
There’s a recipe for homemade tomato soup online that’s written very strangely. It has half the necessary tomatoes and six times the olive oil and it confuses the hell out of people. I’m posting my adaptation of that recipe here, because prepared this way it’s my favorite tomato soup recipe evar!
Tomato Soup
Ingredients:
1 28 oz. can chopped or diced tomatoes
4 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 stalk celery, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2-1/2 cups broth (I use water and a Knorr bouillon cube, but you can use chicken broth)
1/4 c. white wine (I just use the cheap boxed pinot grigio usually in my fridge), optional
1 large bay leaf, torn
1 tsp. dried basil
2 tablespoons butter
Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 450F. Strain the tomatoes, reserving the juice, and spread them onto a baking sheet. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with half of the olive oil. Roast until caramelized, about 15 minutes.
I don’t know if the roasting step is crucial to the deliciousness of this recipe or not, because I’ve never skipped it, but I do know it’s a good way to warm up the house on a chilly day. (I imagine you could roast the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic along with the tomatoes and skip the whole sauteeing step, below, but I’ve never tried that either.)
In a saucepan, heat remaining olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the celery, carrot, onion and garlic and sautee until softened.
Add the roasted tomatoes, reserved tomato juice, broth, wine (if using), bay leaf and basil. Simmer until vegetables are very tender, about 15 to 20 minutes.
Add the butter and stir until thoroughly incorporated.
Remove the bay leaf. Puree the soup with an immersion blender until very smooth. Return to low heat until desired serving temperature is reached, adjust seasonings as needed, and serve in warmed bowls.
Optional:For cream of tomato soup, reduce the broth by half a cup. Stir in 1/2 cup of heavy cream after pureeing and reheat gently over a low flame.
In which there’s a soup recipe that freezes really well!
I made this soup a couple weeks ago and froze some of it. Friday I pulled some out of the freezer; Saturday I re-heated it and ate it and it was brilliant! I love this soup! It satisfies that “I really want a creamy chowder but I don’t want flour or potatoes” issue one has when one goes off refined carbs.
Not all soups freeze well, either. Some, especially those with dairy, separate and end up being really gross after a stint in the ol’ freezer, but this one holds up wonderfully.
Parmesan-leek ‘chowder’
Ingredients:
butter (2 T.)
olive oil (~2 T.)
leeks (2, halved, washed and chopped)
broth (5 c.)
cauliflower (1 head, chopped)
36% heavy cream (~1 c.)
basil (~1/2 tsp., dried)
parmesan cheese (1/4 c., grated)
salt and pepper (to taste)
Method:
1 – Sautee leeks in butter and oil until tender.
2 – Add broth and cauliflower. Add basil.
3 – Cover and simmer until veggies are soft.
4 – Remove from heat. Add cream, stir; add parmesan and stir well until it’s incorporated — making sure to do so off heat so the soup doesn’t separate.
5 – Cool until it can be handled; puree in batches in a food processor or blender until fairly smooth.
6 – Add salt and pepper to taste.
Variation: Add one clove minced garlic to the sautee phase and omit the basil.
Variation: The parmesan may be replaced with gruyere.
Other than containing some fat, this soup doesn’t really do much nutritionally. You’ll want to enjoy it with some serious protein!
In which I record my first-ever bread baking experience in great and tedious detail! Yay!
I am not a baker. I have never made a loaf of bread in my life (except for in a bread machine, and that can’t possibly count for anything). In spite of this handicap, I am going to bake a loaf of bread. And live-blog it. And hopefully be able to eat it.
In November of 2006, a recipe for bread was printed in the New York Times. It sparked some kind of bread revolution, apparently. There are thousands and thousands of blog entries about it, there are entire websites dedicated to variations on the method, tons of pictures abound online, and you can spend hours watching people on YouTube gush about how awesome it is.
I don’t know how much of a pain in the ass kneading really is, but judging from the response to this recipe, it’s freakin’ bad. Anyway, here’s the vid that sparked a baking revolution:
After my last post, I went to the kitchen feeling poor and dejected. I knew I had corn tortillas, some cheese, and half a can of refried beans in the fridge. I figured I’d nuke the beans and have a taco or two. AGAIN.
Instead, I made enchiladas!
Not only was there half a can of refried beans in the fridge, but also milk and most of an 8 oz container of sour cream, and some grated Parmesan that was just about expired. I also had a can of fire-roasted chiles in a cupboard.
I nuked three tortillas to soften them, put in some beans and rolled them up. Then I covered them with a chile cream sauce and nuked them, finishing with some leftover salsa and a chopped green onion.
The sauce loosely follows the one in this recipe, but made use of what I had lying around, so it contained Parmesan and cumin instead of Swiss.
Not only was this totally delicious, but I have enough sauce leftover to pour over eggs on toast in the morning. Yum!
In which we talk about breakfast! Yum! Because while I read a lot of involved, uplifting, active, and self-referential blogs, personally I’m just not that interesting. Plus: there’s a bunch of food porn!
Yesterday I was craving a big old bowl of the Egyptian breakfast food known as ful medames. The stuff is just so delicious I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Since my shift today didn’t start until one o’clock, I got up and took myself to the grocery store this morning. I didn’t go to Loney’s because they don’t carry fava beans and I never can find any pita bread there. Instead, I took my brother’s truck and went over to Super 1. It was gigantic:
There, I spent about two million years fifteen minutes looking for fava beans and pita bread. They were there, but not where I thought they would be, and I must have covered two thirds of the store’s square footage before I located them.
Then I went home and watched this video again on my iPod Touch, because it’s my favorite recipe for ful and I couldn’t remember how much lemon juice to use:
After that, I cooked up a big old batch of beans with garlic and lemon and garnished it with olive oil, parsley, tomato, radish, hard boiled egg, green onion, picked vegetables, and olives. It looked really pretty plated up:
And then?
And I eated it! With whole wheat pita bread! OMG teh yum!
(G’ma said the concoction “looked pretty, but didn’t taste all that good.” This is because I did not salt it per about ten recipes I’ve read which don’t call for salt. At all. Apparently you’re supposed to salt at the table. Which I did!)
The last time I had ful was in Brooklyn, in an Egyptian place around the corner from Deboka’s brownstone. It was freakin’ delicious there, too, and came with a giant squeeze bottle of tahini (!!!) and even had green peppers in it.
The time before that, I made a batch myself and packed it in a bento box with some falafel:
And here’s an entire gallery of fuul porn, just in case you doubted the status of my fandom for this dish! (Go look. Srsly. I’ll wait.)
Ful is the bestest, cheapest, fillingest breakfast ever. Bonus: it has the added benefit of giving you garlic breath first thing in the morning!
And yes, apparently I did just write an entire post about beans. Guess who needs to get laid?
Method
