Easy Tomato Soup

For these winter months a nice, warm soup is always good but can be time consuming. Those are the days that I end up making this simple tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich for our dinner. It shouldn't take more than half an hour, and even less time if you have an immersion blender. It also only uses one pan, which means less washing up. 

                                                                          Ingredients: 

Onion

Garlic

Ground Turkey

Tomatoes

Chicken broth

Spices to taste

Dash of cream

Start by browning up ground meat (I use turkey) in a 
heavy pot. Turkey meat is great because it isn't too greasy like ground beef tends to be. Remove that and place in a bowl set aside.

Roughly chop an onion a couple cloves of garlic and add it to the pot you browned the meat in, then let them get just a bit browned as well. This will be a creamy soup so no need to cut them too small. Chop your tomatoes in half and add them to the pot. I usually use a couple pounds at a time but this can easily be scaled up or down as needed. Then you add chicken broth or stock just until the tomatoes are almost covered. Toss in whatever spices you like.. salt, pepper, oregano, basil are all good. 

Let your tomatoes simmer for about 10 minutes. They should be quite mushy at this point. Use an immersion blender to make it smooth. A regular blender works as well if you don't have an immersion blender, but for around $30 an immersion is a great time saving investment! At the last minute when it is almost complete I like to toss in some fresh parsley, and a bit of fresh basil if I have it on hand and blend one last time. It gives it a nice bright flavor. 

At this point, you are basically done. You stir in the turkey meat you set aside and let it come back up to temp, and add a dash of cream if you want to give it a richer flavor. 

Neglected blog and juicing

Due to a very busy schedule and getting sick.. a lot... my poor blog has been neglected. I'm not making any promises, but will do my best to get back to at least a post or two each week!

My most recent kitchen adventure has been juicing. My SIL's gave me a giftcard for my birthday which was perfect timing since I've been wanting to try out juicing. After reading a few reviews and knowing I didn't want a super cheap one just a fairly inexpensive one that works well, I chose this.

                                                      

Pretty, isn't it? It's the Cuisinart Compact Juice Extractor and costs right around $100. Or $80 if you use a coupon at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I was a little worried about quality since it is one of the cheaper ones but I've used it a couple times and have zero complaints. Easy cleanup and it chews through everything. Even hard, woody beets go through it like it's nothing! So here are the things I've juiced so far, and my ratings for taste.


★ Nectarines-I love fresh nectarines but the juice was not something I would do again. Some people might like it though.

★★★ Celery/carrot-Turns out I just don't like carrot juice.

★★★★ Apple/pineapple-Pineapple by itself was too acidic, added apple and YUM! It just missed a five star rating because of being a bit too sweet.

★★★★★ Beet/celery-Sounds gross, right? Wrong. Absolutely delicious. Definitely my favorite. Beet by itself is too strong, but adding the celery made for a nice light juice without tasting watery.

If anyone has suggestions for what I should toss through there next, I'd love to hear it.

Veggie Pasta!

A while ago my CSA had mentioned making zucchini pasta with a spiral slicer on their Facebook page which got my brain spinning with ideas. I promptly ordered a World Cuisine Spiralizer and Laguna Farm sent me some very nice large zukes in my next CSA box. I had saved the turnips from the week before because I thought they would work well together. Here's the result, and how I got there.

I started by setting up the spiral slicer, which has three plates for different sizes so I chose the smallest since Matt prefers a thinner pasta. I also prepped my veggies all at once so I could just run them through quickly.

Zucchinis and turnips, ready to go!

I found that the soft veggies like zucchini hold better if you just chop in the middle and stick the untrimmed end on the spikes. You have less waste that way too.

How pretty is that?!

Once my veggies were all sliced and then separating the zucchini from the turnips (I realized the turnips would need to cook longer) I started some butter heating in a ceramic coated cast iron pot. Any heavy skillet or pot would work just fine. I added chopped onions and minced garlic to the hot butter and browned it to just about this point.

After that I added the spiraled turnips and let them cook until they were fairly soft since they have a lot of bite to them otherwise. Once they were soft I quickly threw in the zucchini strands and gave it a swirl, pretty much just getting it barely heated up and then turned off the stove.

Luckily there was frozen simple pesto that I keep in the freezer and replenish every time the basil gets too big or someone gives me a bunch of it (simple pesto recipe at the bottom). About three ounces of that went in as well as some chopped tomatoes and salt and pepper to taste. Put it in a bowl with a little chiffonade of basil on top since we love basil in this house, and it's done! The whole thing took less than half an hour and was a hit! It was good as a cold pasta the next day too.

The only thing I would change the next time I do it is to rough chop the veggies after spiral cutting them. Some of those strands were about four feet long which isn't exactly easy to serve or eat! I had figured they would break up while cooking... they didn't.

Zucchini and Turnip pasta recipe

3 large zucchini

3 medium turnips

1/2 of a medium yellow onion

2 garlic cloves

5 roma tomatoes

3 oz simple pesto

salt and pepper to taste

Simple Pesto Recipe

1 large bunch of basil

1/4 C olive oil

8 or 9 toasted almonds (optional)

salt and pepper to taste

2 cloves (more if you prefer) of garlic

salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste

You pretty much just throw all the ingredients in a food processor and process until you like the texture. I like to freeze it in small canning jars. Couldn't be easier. I started using almonds instead of the traditional pine nuts because we just don't like the flavor of pine nuts. I'm guessing you could use whatever nuts you prefer and it would taste great. I go a little light on the garlic because I almost always use sauteed onions or garlic in my cooking, but if you want to skip that step you can make a heavier on the garlic pesto.

Home Alone

When Matt isn't home for dinner, I usually cook foods that I like, but are not filling enough for Matt. The last time he was gone, this is what I made.

The potatoes were thrown in the oven first at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes. I drizzled olive oil over them and added chives, oregano, and lemon thyme from my herb garden. A sprinkle of sea salt and pepper and then popped it in the oven.

The green beans were just thrown in a nonstick small skillet with some grapeseed oil, salt, and pepper until they were tender but not squishy. I plated it and finished with drizzle of good quality balsamic vinegar  and toasted almonds (I keep a jar pre-toasted in the pantry).

For the cod, I just threw it in the same skillet with the grapeseed oil, added a tiny squeeze of fresh lemon juice, and some sea salt. With cod it seems to work best to cook it on a higher heat for a very short amount of time to avoid it getting dried out. For fish I find that sometimes keeping it really simple with the seasoning is best since it has such a good natural flavor.

Mini-post

Amid the bridal season rush in my shop, I am still managing to throw together some quick meals so we don't eat out a lot. We both prefer home cooking, no matter how simple it is. One of my quick and easy dinners last week was made because the CSA sent the first fresh basil of the year.. a huge bunch of it! I could smell it as soon as I walked out the door to grab my veggies from the bin.

I boiled up some homemade garlic fettucine (added garlic juice instead of water to make the dough pliable at the very end) that I had in the freezer from my last big pasta making session.
Threw the basil in the food processor with a little olive oil and sea salt. Stirred it into the pasta and threw some Pepper grilled shrimp on top. I just got a new Lodge grill pan and had to try it out! Quick, filling, and there was plenty of leftovers for Matt's work lunch.

The same thing would work with any type of pasta that you have on hand, but if you use a plain store pasta I'd probably throw a little garlic in with the basil for a nice balance of flavor.

Pantry Remodel!

Here is the pantry before.. what a mess, right??? It was about the size of a typical coat closet and just had kind of deep shelving. You know the kind, where everything gets stacked in front of something else and it can never be organized properly.

Then my very handy husband went to town on it.

He looks a little terrified.. turned out it was a much bigger job than expected!

But it all ended well.

I drew out a rough sketch of how I puctured it and he made it happen. There will be a few more shelves going higher, but we started with this since I'm under five feet tall. I can actually walk right into that low back section without ducking, in boots! The shelving is very narrow, but there is still more shelf space because of opening the wall.

Here are some closeup looks:

This is to the back left where you can't really see in the other photo, it's the empty space that was under the stairs. Bins for fruit and root veggies, packets, etc. rolling pin storage in the little cubes, top shelf is some of my molecular gastronomy supplies before I finished adding them in, second is pasta supplies and below we have cookie sheets, rolling pins, etc.

And all my little bale jars. Filling and labeling these was so much fun!...but I'm strange and love to organize.

And on the left side of the pantry I have a bunch of pop up containers by OXO. These things are awesome, they have an automatic airtight seal to keep things fresh. I still need to get a few more, once we add some more shelving.

Chicken and Veggies

Lemon Chicken

I used a vac-packer marinator to marinate the chicken in lemon and garlic for about an hour, but throwing it in for a couple hours not vac-packed works just as well.

Then it got salted and peppered and tossed in a pan with olive oil. Cooked on a low heat (olive oil has a low burn temperature) and served with the leftover tarragon aioli from this post http://morebasil.blogspot.com/2012/02/saucy-little-crabs.html
I had an entire jar of it left, so had to find a way to use it! It's only good for a few days after making since it does contain egg.  I put Matt on veggie duty which he was a little worried about since usually he just chops things for me. He used some chicken stock, pepper, and oregeno and cooked the cauliflower in it until it was just barely tender. Then added the chard until it was wilty. Good job Matt! It tasted great!