Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup

If you're looking to cut back on the amount of meat in your diet without sacrificing flavor, I find that soups are usually a good place to find a ton of flavor packed into a few vegetables (and maybe a fungus or two).  In this case, I found a great soup recipe from Cooking Light Soup in need of very little modification to make it quite hearty.  It's not fully vegetarian, nor would I want it to be, but I suppose you could make it so by swapping the chicken broth for vegetable stock.

Not only is there a fungus in this soup, but there's also a bunch of grass.  Wild rice isn't a grain like regular rice - it's actually a grass, mostly grown in North America and traditionally harvested by paddling a canoe around and knocking the ripe heads off into the boat.  That's why the stuff is so expensive.  The good stuff has a nutty taste and takes forever to cook, so don't expect it to be ready in 20 minutes like white rice.  The bad stuff is cut with regular rice and sold as a 'wild rice blend', often including seasoning salts and other nonsense, and usually containing not much more than about 10% actual wild rice.  The EXCELLENT stuff is still harvested by hand from the Great Lakes region, mostly from Minnesota, and can cost you well over $10/pound, but I hear that it's worth it.  If you want to go all out, get some from Zingerman's up in Michigan.  I found a bag of the decent stuff at Trader Joe's for a decent price.

Grains of pure, unadulterated wild rice, marching off on their final mission

This is how your wild rice used to (and in some cases still does) get to your plate.  Be grateful you stayed in school - this could be you.

Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup
From Cooking Light Soup, modified by me

• 2 tsp butter
• 8 ounces button or baby portabella mushrooms, sliced
• ½ cup chopped carrot (1 medium)
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, thinly sliced (~3/4 cup)
• 1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 14 oz cans chicken broth
• 1 cup uncooked wild rice
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour, lightly spooned into dry measuring cup
• 2 ¾ cups 2% milk
• 2 tbsp dry sherry
• ¾ tsp salt

I always buy whole mushrooms and slice them myself - much more fresh that way

All you need now are the holy trinity of vegetables, plus some fresh rosemary

Melt butter in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Add mushroom and sauté for 5 minutes, stirring often, to brown the mushroom slices.  Add carrot and next 5 ingredients; sauté 8 minutes or until tender.  If necessary, add another teaspoon of butter to promote cooking.  Stir in broth, scraping pan to deglaze browned bits.  Stir in rice and bring to a boil.  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 75 minutes or until rice is tender.

You want to deglaze all of that browned deliciousness from the pan with the broth - see the bubbles in the bottom right? That's flavor country.  I'm going to repost another picture when I make this in my new enameled dutch oven, which will make this even better.

Combine flour and cold milk in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk.  Add to soup mixture.  Cook out raw flour for 10 minutes until soup is thickened, stirring frequently.  Stir in salt, kill heat, and either pour in sherry or drizzle individually over each bowl.  Serve immediately.

Drizzle the sherry in at this point, and you're done!

Fettuccine with Pesto and Summer Squash

Okay all, here's a quick and easy recipe I think I came up with a while back, trying to find a use for some zucchini.  If you're like me, every summer you end up with too much of the stuff, and you're desperately trying to find a way to use it.  And you can only grill so much of it before you want to gag, so you start looking for new and creative ways to give it different flavors.  This one uses a pesto and ricotta cheese to give it both a sweet creamy texture as well as that pungent herb taste, and it comes together incredibly fast.  If you got really crazy you could make your own pasta or pesto, but for this one I'm using store bought ingredients (although they were both fresh, not dried or canned).  This dish is arguably similar to this one which I posted last year, but with a lot more flavor going on, and a few more ingredients.  It is also distinctly non-vegan, for those of you who live by that code, whereas the other one might have been.

Always on the lookout for good uses of squash - this one hit the mark

Fettuccine with Pesto and Summer Squash

• 1 pint (2 cups) fresh zucchini or other summer squash
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 pound fettuccine, dried, one 1/2 pound container of fresh fettuccine from the refrigerated section, or equivalent volume homemade pasta
• 4 ounces pesto
• 1/4 cup ricotta cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Peel your tomatoes by blanching in a large pot of hot water (check here for detailed instructions).  Reserve the hot water for boiling your pasta - you can use that water again, making this more time efficient.  After shocking in ice water, coarsely chop tomatoes and set aside.  Chop the zucchini into bite-sized pieces, no larger than 3/4" to a side.  If using dried pasta, begin to boil now and follow package instructions to cook until just shy of al dente - maybe 30 seconds short of done.  If using fresh, read on.

Prep your ingredients - I used local mini squash, which have less bitter seeds

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the zucchini and cook until starting to brown, then shake / flip and cook other side.  When you flip the zucchini, add the onion, and stir around to saute lightly.  Saute the garlic for just a few seconds.  If using fresh pasta, add to pot of boiling water now, and cook for the 60-90 seconds recommended by the package, or whatever you feel comfortable with for homemade.  

Back in the skillet, lower heat to medium low, add the tomatoes with any juice that may have accumulated, and cook for 30 seconds.  Add the pesto and stir to combine, and keep warm.  Drain cooked pasta, reserving up to 1/4 cup of the cooking water, and add pasta to the sauce.  Stir to combine, adding water a little at a time as needed to reach the consistency you like.  The starchy water will help partially thicken the dish while creating more of a sauce, as well as help finish the pasta (which you cooked to NOT QUITE al dente, right?) by cooking it in this sauce.

Toss the sauteed vegetables with the pesto and partially cooked tomatoes.  Don't keep the heat on too high at this point or you'll lose some of the subtlety

To serve, plate pasta into 2-3 servings, and garnish each with 2 tbsp of ricotta cheese.  If you want to get crazy, add a chiffonade of basil threads (see Wikipedia for a nice picture of this).  Eat it, love it, feel good about yourself for eating healthy.

Spinach Salad with Roasted Beets and Bacon Vinaigrette

I found a version of this online somewhere, and modified ratios slightly to get the proportions I wanted.  The result was delicious, and although distinctly non-vegetarian, it was a very hearty salad.  If you haven't tried roasted beets before, I highly recommend giving this dish a shot as your first taste of them.  And if you don't like them, hey, at least there's bacon!

Roasted beets are delicious, and the golden ones look pretty cool too

Spinach and Beet Salad with Bacon Vinaigrette, Goat Cheese, and Hazelnuts

Serves 6 as an appetizer, 3 as a main course

• 2 large beets
• 8 cups spinach
• ½ cup crumbled goat cheese
• ½ cup toasted hazelnuts, chopped
• 5 ounces bacon, cut into ¼ inch cubes
• 1/4 cup good quality olive oil
• 2 tbsp good quality balsamic vinegar
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Wash and trim beets then wrap each beet individually in aluminum foil.  Roast the beets until a knife slides through, about 40 to 60 minutes depending on the size.  Once cool enough to handle, slip off the skins and cut into a ¾” dice.  Place in a bowl and set aside with the spinach, goat cheese, and hazelnuts.

To roast beets, just trim the ends, wrap in foil, and bake.  Then peel them once cooled slightly.

Cube into whatever size you like

Cook the bacon in a small sauté pan over medium heat in a bit of the olive oil until the bacon has rendered its fat and is slightly crisp.  Remove bacon to a plate and pour off all but 2 tbsp of bacon fat from the pan, then add the remaining olive oil and vinegar and season to taste with salt and pepper.  Whisk lightly to incorporate and continue to heat the oils lightly.  Toss the beets with a bit of the dressing and then the spinach, making sure you place all of the bacon on the spinach.  You may not need all the dressing – don’t use too much, or this will have a greasy feel to it.  Serve on individual plates with spinach first, topped with the beets, crumbled goat cheese, and hazelnuts.

Mushroom and Raisin Chutney

Poking through an excellent book by Jacques Pepin - Fast Food My Way, which is based on his public television series that brings a touch of European class to the quick and easy cooking style of Rachael Ray - I found a very bizarre sounding recipe for a mushroom chutney with raisins, tomato paste, and white wine.  It was almost like a quick pickling process, where you heat everything for a couple of minutes and then throw it into a mason jar to store in the fridge.  We served this with our Thanksgiving dinner, having made it the day before.  It was delicious, but I couldn't quite pin down the country that I thought this was from.  It almost had a Moroccan feel to it, but was made distinctly European from the addition of the barely simmered wine.  I highly recommend trying this out and serving either on its own or with some simple, roasted meat dishes.

Mushroom and Raisin Chutney
From Fast Food My Way, by Jacques Pepin

• 1 lb white buttom mushrooms, quartered
• 1/3 c dark raisins
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/3 c dry white wine
• 2 tsp chopped peeled fresh ginger
• 1 tbsp chopped garlic
• 1/2 c coarsely chopped onion
• 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp salt

A fairly simple list of ingredients with minimal prep

Not a lot to do, either - just throw everything in a pot for a few minutes

Put all ingredients in a nonreactive saucepan.  Bring to a boil, cover, reduce the heat to low, and boil gently for 5 minutes.  Cool.

Serve cold from the refrigerator or at room temperature.

Spring Minestrone with Chicken Meatballs

Saw this a while back and thought it might be a fun one to make.  Like an Italian wedding soup, this recipe is made with a bunch of miniature meatballs, although unlike the wedding soup the meatballs are browned first.  Because of the little meatballs floating in the soup, I'd wager that this would be a good way to trick kids into eating fresh vegetables without resorting to stuffing anything down their throats while they sleep, or bribery.  Use whatever vegetables you have lying around the fridge to make this - celery could replace leeks (though I'd shoot for the real thing), green onions can replace chives, and you could put in bok choy, or cabbage, or some turnips, or whatever else might be just past its prime.

Spring Minestrone with Chicken Meatballs
Bon Appétit, April 2012

• 6 ounces ground chicken (about 3/4 cup)
• 1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
• 6 tablespoons finely grated Parmesan, divided, plus more for garnish
• 4 garlic cloves, 2 minced, 2 thinly sliced
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives (I may have used green onions)
• 1 large egg, whisked to blend
• Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 leek, white and pale-green parts only, sliced into 1/4" rounds
• 5 cups low-salt chicken broth
• 3/4 cup ditalini or other small pasta
• 1 cup 1/2" rounds peeled carrots
• 1 cup (packed) baby spinach
• Chopped fresh basil

The setup

Mix the filling, then shape into meatballs

Mix chicken, breadcrumbs, 3 tablespoons Parmesan, 2 minced garlic cloves, chives, egg, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a medium bowl. Form into 1/2"-diameter meatballs (makes about 28).

Heat oil in a small pot over medium heat. Cook meatballs until golden all over, about 3 minutes (they will finish cooking in soup). Transfer to a plate; set aside.

Add leek to pot and cook, stirring often, until beginning to soften, about 3 minutes. Add 2 thinly sliced garlic cloves; cook for 1 minute. Add broth and 2 cups water; bring to a boil. Stir in pasta and carrots; simmer until pasta is almost al dente, about 8 minutes. Add meatballs; simmer until pasta is al dente, carrots are tender, and meatballs are cooked through, about 3 minutes.

Add your soup ingredients.  This is where you can take a bit of creative license.

Add the meatballs and cook them through

Add spinach and remaining 3 tablespoons Parmesan; stir until spinach is wilted and Parmesan is melted. Season with salt and pepper.  Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish with chopped basil and Parmesan.