Tomato Cheddar Soup

Serves 3-6 depending on portion size. This is easy, fresh and delicious. If you have never had tomato soup made with fresh tomatoes, MAKE THIS RIGHT NOW.

Ingredients:

5 medium ripe tomatoes (I like roma tomatoes or fresh-on-the-vine)

half a head of garlic

6 leaves fresh basil

6 oz cheddar cheese

3 cups vegetable broth (I'm a big fan of Knorr's vegetarian vegetable)

olive oil

Salt, pepper, a little cayenne pepper if you're feeling it

Large splash of lemon juice

The best recipes are simple.

Get your broth going first. Heat in a small saucepan until bullion is dissolved or, if it's ready made broth, just until it's hot.

Slice your garlic up finely. Put it, and some olive oil, and your 6 basil leaves, ripped up, into a small saucepan on medium. Cover with a spatterguard OR with a cover that's not on all the way so steam can get out. When some of the garlic is golden brown, you're good to go. Add it to your broth.

Your tomatoes should be cut into medium-small chunks. Dump the tomato chunks into your blender and add maybe a cup of the broth--this just makes the blending easier.

Blend until liquefied. Add this to the rest of your broth in a pot. Add spices, lemon juice. At this point, by the way, you have an awesome base for ANY kind of soup if you like tomato-based soups.

Add your cheese, diced up into small pieces or grated. Cook on medium, stirring frequently and keeping loosely covered (some air should be able to escape so it doesn't boil over). Cook until the cheese is melted throughout the soup.

Ready to serve! Mmmmmmmmm.

Another Awesome Black Bean Recipe

Serves 2, or perhaps 4 if it's an appetizer.

Ingredients:

1 can of black beans (15.5 oz)

1 avocado (the smaller ones that look like reptile eggs, not the big bright ones)

4-5 cloves of garlic

Small bunch fresh cilantro (leaves from 2-4 stalks is good)*

Half a cup of cranberry wine**

Big handful of Queso Blanco, cubed***

Olive Oil

Black Pepper

Cayenne Pepper

Paprika

*Cilantro has a lot of personality so if you don't like it, leave it out or go for parsley instead.

**I just happened to see and buy cranberry wine last week, for the first time ever. You can substitute cranberry juice, but it needs to be the real deal--all cranberry juice, no added sugar or corn syrup.

***Or feel free to substitute with a cheese you like better. Firm and mild is good.

Chop up your garlic finely, and put it in some oil in a medium sized pot, over a medium sized flame. You want to let it bubble and brown but not get too burnt. You may want to put a spatterguard or cover it partially to avoid spitting oil.

When your garlic is brown, add your can of beans (don't drain) and your cranberry wine or juice. Add your cayenne pepper, paprika, pepper. I just used a few shakes of each. Turn on high for now to get it nice and hot, but once it starts really bubbling you will want to reduce the heat until it just simmers.

While it is simmering, slice up your avocado into small manageable slices, and chop up your cilantro very finely. The best way to do this is with a big sharp knife and a lot of small chops. (AND CAUTION, PEOPLE! Kitchen safety please.)

Let it simmer for 10 minutes or so, them remove from heat, add your cilantro and your cheese, and stir immediately so that the cheese does not glob together into a cheeseball of doom. Avocados go on top. Ready to eat!

Fried Portabello Caps

Things you will need!

Portabello mushroom caps (however many you & your food-eaters desire)

1/2 a small glass of red wine

olive oil

garlic, rosemary, cayenne pepper, black pepper

Wash your portabello caps!

Drizzle a little olive oil into a frying pan. Put your mushroom caps in the pan, top up. Shake your spices upon them. (You know by now I'm into being liberal with spices. Careful with the cayenne, it'll get hot fast since you're frying.) Drizzle a little more olive oil on top of them and pour half your wine over them. Medium-low heat, cover them. After a little while, turn them over and pour the rest of your wine inside them. When they seem done (smaller, darker, softer), spatula them out.

You can just eat these as a main thing, like a steak, with some salad and potatoes or something. Or, toss them with some pasta and garlic and oil. Or, throw them into your lunchtime salad. Or do all of these things.

Also, this recipe can be easily modified as an awesome vegan barbecue option. Season them exactly the same way, wrap in aluminum foil (shiny side OUT; aluminum's not the best for you and it's safer that way), throw on the grill and turn over now and again.

notyouraverageveggiesoup

So yesterday I was really hungry and I was all "I will make a soup that is both tasty and good for me!" and then I did and it was cool.  And I let my roommate know there was soup and then 20 minutes later there was a general facebook announcement that I was being locked in the basement so that I could make that soup for her every day.

I would like to point out: (1) that we live in an apartment and don't have a basement and (2) that if we did, it probably wouldn't have a kitchen in it.  However, (3) thanks, Lisa.  In honor of her general plan of imprisoning me, I have let her title the soup, and she has: "notyouraverageveggiesoup".  (She possibly didn't mean for me to keep it all one word and lowercase like in her text, but HA HA HA I have anyway.)

Ingredients!!

half a head of garlic, chopped
5 oz mozzarella, diced 
Small amount of onion (maybe a quarter of a small-medium one), diced finely 
1-2 small spicey peppers, chopped finely 
2 nice sized mint leaves 
small bunch lime basil 
lemon juice 
6 medium white mushrooms, sliced 
1 crown broccoli, chopped into small florets 
2 cubes Knorr vegetarian vegetable bullion 
4 cups water 
spices: cumin, garlic powder, black pepper, ginger, thyme. 
olive oil 

Start off your garlic and chopped peppers (I used thai peppers from a friend's garden) simmering in a little olive oil.  You don't need a ton.  While this is going on, rip up your mint leaves and lime basil to release the flavor and add those in.  Then add your spices according to your taste, and finally add a few tablespoons of lemon juice.  I don't have a hard and fast rule about how much of what to add.  Go to your taste.  I tend to be liberal with my spices.  Also, know that a key thing is getting your lemon juice and your cumin into a good balance, and feel free to add additional spices and lemon juice as you're cooking.

Once you feel your garlic is nicely simmered, add 4 cups of water and 2 cubes of Knorr vegetable bullion (or just 4 cups of whatever type of bullion or soup base you choose).  Also toss in your mushrooms and your broccoli.  Cover it.  Leave it on medium and let it get bubbly.  Check it and stir it now and then.

Now is a good time to dice up your cheese and butter your bread, if you desire to have bread with your soup.  I enjoyed this particular soup with onion rye.  Pretty much, it's the best bread ever, after San Francisco sourdough.

Once you feel your soup is nicely cooked (your mushrooms and broccoli should be smaller and cookeder, your bullion should be dissolved, etc) it is ready to serve.  Your diced onions and cheese go as a garnish (that's right, the onions are raw on purpose, which is why we're not using so many of them) sprinkled into each individual bowl.  (Stir carefully when you add your cheese, so you can avoid it turning into a huge CheeseLump.)  

Soup is served!

Cheesy Yucca soup

So the story behind this is that I live in a really latino neighborhood and there are a lot of very exciting roots in my grocery store. Like, there's the produce section, and then there's an equally large "bins of roots" section.

It is a goal of mine to learn what the heck to do with them all. Knowing my friend Michelle knew how to cook yucca, I invited her over to my house to teach me. Which she did; however, this is not the story of HER yucca recipe because that would be stealing. Rather, this is the story of "Why did you buy so much yucca, rorie?" and what I did with the remainder.

(For the record, I bought so much yucca because there were so many different sizes a root could be! She told me to buy two roots, but not knowing what size of a root she was referring to, I bought one small, one medium, and one large and felt pretty good about it. In closing, I still have a lot of yucca lying around.)

Anyway, we boiled two big yucca roots, chopped up, and only ended up frying and eating one of them. So I had all this boiled yucca in my fridge. And thus was born...

Cheesy Yucca Soup

Serves, I'm going to say, 3-6 people depending on your serving size

Ingredients:

1 medium(I guess?!?!) yucca root, boiled for 20-25 minutes*

Half a vidalia onion

Half a head of garlic (look at me showing restraint with garlic)

A few tablespoons of flour

Butter & olive oil (enough for frying & to make a roux)

Cheese of your choosing (I used 4 ounces of cream cheese & 5 slices of American)**

2.5 cups of bullion broth (I use Knorr's vegetarian vegetable & usually put in an extra cube)

half a cup of milk

quarter of a cup of Vermouth (if you don't have it don't sweat it)

A hand blender (that's not an ingredient, but it is something you'll need)

Spices:

A few shakes each of Garlic powder, black pepper, ground oregano,

Cayenne pepper to taste

2 teaspoons Soul Seasoning

*I think the best way to chop and peel a yucca root is to invite your friends over to teach you to make yucca and let them do it while you do other preparatory things. But in essence, the way to do it is to hack all of the waxy root skin off with a knife, then cut it in half lengthwise (pretty difficult), then yank/hack all of the strings in the center out, then chop it into medium-sized chunks that you will boil. DON'T HURT YOURSELF. I'm serious.

If you fear or can't locate yucca, you can always make this with potatoes instead (but that's kind of wussy).

** If you opt for something fancier in the cheese department, I imagine your soup will be that much better. In a perfect world I would have skipped the American and gone for an equal amount of cheddar. That cube cheese with the happy cow on it would probably also be great.

First you're going to make your roux. Have I told you how to make a roux yet? I don't think I have.

Here's How to Make a Roux

OK, so you start off heating up some oil and/or butter in the pot you intend to make your soup in (it should, by the way, be a pretty large pot). Use enough oil/butter to cover the bottom of the pot, and get it reasonably hot but not so it's spitting at you (best done by putting it on high to get it hot, but turning it down to medium-low before it gets too hot). I usually throw in my spices at this point so they are in my soup from the very beginning (you can always adjust later, of course). Get the oil/butter nice & hot and add a heaping tablespoon of flour. You now want to stir/smush around very quickly with one of those flexible spatulas, so it becomes a paste without any lumps. (Some people prefer to wisk. I think they're weird, but you can do that if you want.) Continue with another tablespoon or two of flour. It will get crazy thick. You want it too. Just make sure it's evenly thick, and not lumpy. Then, VERY SLOWLY, add broth and keep stirring/smushing with your spatula or wisk. You need to be very slow, and very stirry, so you don't get lumps. Take your time until you have added all your broth.

-----

Add in your chunks of boiled yucca, and also your onion. Your onion should be diced as small as possible. Stir. Add your milk, and your vermouth, as well, stirring frequently.

Now you're going to let your soup do its thing on medium heat for a while, and you'll stir it here and there. While that's happening, slice up your garlic however you like and get it frying in some more oil. You'll want it to get golden-brown but not burnt. Keep an eye on it.

While your garlic is frying, add your cheese to your soup and stir. Once your garlic is ready, dump that in (oil and all) and stir a little more.

Now you're going to let your soup do its soup thing for another little bit. You can cover it, but make sure the heat isn't too high (medium is plenty) and stir it now and again. When all the cheese seems to be melted evenly, take it off the heat.

Wait for it to stop bubbling before you use your hand blender. Then, um, use your hand blender. Blend it to wherever you like; I like mine thick and a tiny bit chunky. Yucca can be sneaky, so make sure you find all your big chunks. Go slowly and don't start the hand blender until it's in the soup, so it doesn't spatter you.

Then you're done!

A dash of lemon juice is a great garnish to give a serving of this a zing. I would only add it as a garnish, not while you're making the soup. That's how I roll.

Pasta with Red Pepper Pink Sauce

So my friend Larrin introduced me to Aunt Suzie's in Park Slope (and if you're in Brooklyn and it's date night and you feel like reasonably-priced yumtastic Italian food, you should go).  They have this awesome red pepper dipping sauce that they serve with their bread and butter and it's like, the best thing ever that happened.  I ate there recently and it got me to thinking.  "Red peppers!" was what I thought.  And I kept thinking it, for a while.  And so a sauce of my own was born.

Ingredients:

-1 or 2 fresh red bell peppers

-a 16-ozcan of Hunt's tomato sauce*

-A pint of heavy cream**

-half an onion or one small onion

-some butter and some olive oil

-some fresh garlic (half a head of regular garlic is now my standby)

-black pepper, paprika

-pasta obviously (shells or rigatoni are good for this)

*I like Hunt's because they don't add anything; it's just pureed tomato, not random spices not of my choosing.  You could use something else if you want.  But I'd be a little sad.

**Dude, organic is so much better I can't even tell you.

OKAY SO!

Start your pasta.  Just make it how you make it or follow the directions on the box.  But don't leave it in forever and let it get all mushy, that would be Sad.  

Chop up your garlic rather finely.  Also, cut up your red pepper.  I like to cut into kindaskinny strips and then cut the strips in or thirds.  It gives you a nice size that's not unmanageable.  

Put some olive oil and some butter in your saucepan and put it on a lowish heat and put in your peppers and your garlic.  After the butter has melted sprinkle on a generous amount of paprika too.  The whole point of this sauce is to be Sweet Red Peppery.  Cover it.  Let it simmer.

While you're letting it simmer, chop up your onion.  Add it whenever you're ready.  Let it simmer a while more (don't let things stick to the bottom though, be mindful and have a spatula around).  Let your red peppers get a little bit soft before continuing.

Also, check your pasta while all this is happening!  The pasta can sit and wait for the sauce if it gets done first.  Don't let it get mushy!  I won't tell you again.

Add your cream, and then your tomato sauce. Also sprinkle on some black pepper (like half a teaspoon? Sure).  Turn heat up to medium and stir well and let it simmer.  At this point it's good to have the pot partially covered; like mostly covered but with a crack for steam to escape.  Keep an eye on it, you want it to simmer but not really boil and you'll probably have to turn the heat down fairly soon to accomplish that.  Also stir from time to time. 

You want to let your sauce simmer for a while (I say ten minutes should be good) so your flavors get all nice and mixy.  Then take it off the heat and pour it over your pasta and mix and serve.  

This is nice with fresh steamed broccoli.