Deana's (soon to be famous) Cream of Broccoli Soup

This is from my friend Deana (whom I love!) who is always after me to post more. So here is her contribution to my recipe box, circa the early '90s. I hadn't made this in a while and was pleasantly surprised at just how satisfying it is, though quite simple. As you can see, the broccoli was bright green but when I added the carrots back in and pureed everything, the soup ended up having a slight orange tinge.

Vegetable stock:

1 tablespoon butter

2-3 carrots, chopped

2 small onions (1 medium?), chopped

(1-2 stalks of celery, chopped--my addition)

5 cups water

Melt butter in a large pot. Add carrots, onion & celery; cover pot and sweat vegetables for 10 minutes. Add water and simmer for 40 minutes. Strain broth, saving veggies.

Broccoli soup:

1 pound broccoli

stock/vegetables

3/4 cup milk

salt & pepper, to taste

Boil broccoli in vegetable stock until tender, but still green. Let cool. Throw broccoli, stock, and previously cooked vegetables (from stock) into a blender and puree. Serve as puree, or reheat with milk for cream of broccoli. As Deana says, "It's awesome!"

Egg & Bologna

I'm not sure how this story ended up here...I was writing up an announcement for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary and had also been thinking about recipes I grew up with and...voila!

So these are the facts: My parents were married 50 years ago on December 22nd, 1961, in Hudson, MI. Isn't the picture above cute?! Some time later I was born, and then my brother, and my mother hunkered down to make 7 dinners a week, 52 weeks a year. We didn't go out all that often because we lived in a very rural area and there weren't a lot of restaurants. I now feel somewhat sorry for my mother, having to sling out all those dinners, though I think she's gotten her revenge since my father now cooks at least as much, if not more often, than she does. In any case, I was raised on a handful of recipes, circa 1950s-'70s, and this one is sort of infamous. It was popular after Easter when we had an abundance of hard-boiled eggs. My dad called it SOS (shit on a shingle) and refused to eat it. But I have to say...I think it is a comfort food I would still eat today!

Basically you make a cream sauce:

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup milk

salt, pepper, paprika to taste

You know how to make a cream sauce right?! When the sauce has reached a creamy consistency, stir in the ground up egg & bologna...

2 hard-boiled eggs

3 oz. bologna

I do not have a food grinder, so I would just finely dice these things. Then serve the slop over saltine crackers. I kid you not, I used to love this SOS!

Here are my parents, 50 years later. Aren't they cute?! Maybe I will make some Egg & Bologna for them and my Dad will roll his eyes...

Masaledar Ublay Unday

I thought the Hindi name for this dish sounded better than "Hard-Boiled Eggs Masala." This is adapted from Quick and Easy Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey, a cookbook I had been wanting to get ever since I made another recipe, Stir-Fried Cabbage, which I loved immediately. When I finally got the cookbook about a year ago I decided to try EVERY RECIPE... well, except for the ones with chicken liver and cauliflower. There's only about 70 recipes, so the undertaking didn't sound that daunting. But after about 8 recipes, I had a bit of Indian overload. So I'm taking a break, but the mission will resume shortly!

The one recipe I kept thinking about in the meantime though, was this humble sounding entree. I don't usually think of hard-boiled eggs as part of an entree, but it works! I recently served this over some boiled potatoes and spinach and it made for quite a robust meal. The sauce is really astounding, in my opinion.

One unfortunate thing about this cookbook, however, is that even though it was recently re-issued with a spiffy new design, I don't thing the original 1996 text was updated. So they always put in parentheses after cilantro "Chinese parsley, fresh green coriander;" who the hell doesn't know what cilantro is in this day and age?! One of the recipes is called "The Most Delicious Meat Cubes," which is just wrong. And the amount of onion in this recipe is listed as "5 tablespoons (2.5 ounces)." Who measures an onion that way? I'm just going with one small onion!

OK, enough making fun of the text and on to this most delicious recipe...

1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon cayenne

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

3/4 teaspoon salt

freshly ground black pepper

Combine all of the above with 1 tablespoon of water and set aside.

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 - 1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 small onion, finely diced

1/2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated or finely chopped

1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and cut into halves or quarters

Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the cumin seeds. Cook for 10 seconds, then add the onion and ginger. Cook and stir for a few minutes until onions start to brown, then add spice paste. Cook for 15 seconds, then add tomatoes and sugar. Turn down the heat, cover, and gently simmer for 10 minutes. Uncover the pan and add the cilantro, then gently drop in the eggs and spoon some sauce over them. Simmer for 2-3 more minutes, then serve.

I suppose a typical accompaniment would be rice, though, like I said before, I like it with potatoes and spinach--as if I was having a bit of samosa as well.

Chewy Molasses Cookies

No, this is not the same cookie I previously posted (see below), though they look very similar! I like the slight spiciness of these cookies--just a hint of black pepper on the back of your tongue--and they improve with age as the spices come out more. Adapted from the More-with-Less Cookbook, via the Kitchn.com website.

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup dark molasses

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 egg

2-inch knob of ginger, peeled and grated

2 + 1/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon powdered ginger

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

granulated sugar

Mix the butter, olive oil, molasses and brown sugar until fluffy. Add egg and ginger and mix until smooth. Add all remaining ingredients except granulated sugar and mix (or stir) until thoroughly combined. Dough will be soft; refrigerate for at least 1/2 hour and up to 3 days.

When you're ready to cook, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment. Take a tablespoon of dough and roll into a ball, then roll in granulated sugar. When sheets are full, bake for 12 minutes, rotating cookie sheets halfway through. Remove from the oven and let cool on the sheets for a few minutes, then finish cooling on wire racks.

Chewy Chocolate Cookies

The original recipe for this is actually a little too chocolaty for me--I am not of the "death by chocolate" persuasion--but I just love the texture. Feel free to increase the amount of chopped chocolate to your liking! This recipe is from Cook's Illustrated. I ran out of dark corn syrup and ended up using some molasses, which I thought provided a slightly more complex flavor, though CI does not approve of the molasses-chocolate combination.

1+1/2 cups flour

3/4 cup cocoa (orig. recipe calls for Dutch-processed)

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons butter, softened

1/3 cup sugar, plus 1/2 cup for coating

1/3 cup dark brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup dark corn syrup

1 large egg white

1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract

2 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped (orig. recipe calls for 4 ounces)

Whisk dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugars (only 1/3 cup of white sugar) until light and fluffy. Add corn syrup, egg white and vanilla, and beat until fully incorporated, about 20 seconds. Stir in dry ingredients and chopped chocolate, dough will be quite soft. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Grab enough dough to make a ball about 1.5 inches in diameter, and roll in remaining white sugar. Place on parchment-lined cookie sheet. Dough will spread so place about 2 inches apart, probably not more than 8 or 9 per sheet. Bake for 10-11 minutes, rotating sheets mid-way, until cookies have cracked, but still look wet in between the cracks. Cool cookies on the sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.

Chicken & White Bean Salad

When I started posting recipes I had no idea I'd end up with so many salad recipes. And really, until the past couple years, I was mainly just your basic potato salad-type of person; can't recall many others that I ate. But for whatever reason, I now seem to eat a lot of them! This one's from Cooking Light. I add the tomatoes in very gently at the end so they don't disintegrate.

Whisk together the following for the vinaigrette:

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

2 garlic cloves, minced

salt & pepper

Drizzle vinaigrette over the following and gently combine:

2 cups coarsely chopped skinless, boneless rotisserie chicken

1 cup chopped tomato

1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion

1/3 cup slivered fresh basil

2 16-oz. cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained

Chinese Chicken Salad

Is this really Chinese? I mean besides the soy sauce & sesame oil? Whatever...I fall for almost anything with sesame oil. Generously adapted from a Food & Wine recipe. The original recipe calls for the meat from a 2.5 pound rotisserie chicken, which would certainly be good. But I often buy several chicken breasts at once and then just quickly roast them. As long as you're careful to take them out just when they're cooked through--and not cooked to death--they are still quite juicy.

2 chicken breasts

1/4 cup rice vinegar

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 teaspoon sugar (or more, to taste)

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil

1 tablespoon sriracha, or other hot sauce (again, to taste)

1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 head cabbage, thinly sliced (I used Savoy--use whatever you like)

3 scallions, thinly sliced

2-3 carrots, julienned (or shredded, I suppose)

3/4 cup cilantro, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup (or more) roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

Sprinkle chicken breasts liberally with salt & pepper. Bake at 400 degrees until just done, 10-15 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

Mix next 7 ingredients for dressing. Adjust seasonings--it will need to be strong to cover all the salad! Dice or shred chicken and add to the vegetables and peanuts. Pour over half the dressing and toss. Add more dressing until salad is coated to your liking. Serve on lettuce or as is. I often end up just eating it right out of the bowl!