White Bean and Vegetable soup

White Bean and Vegetable Soup Recipe

courtesy of simplyrecipes.com

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INGREDIENTS

• 2 15-oz cans cannellini or white kidney beans (or 1/2 lb dried beans, soaked overnight in water), drained
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 large yellow onion, chopped
• 1 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/8 head of green cabbage, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
• 2 celery stalks, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 1/2 carrots, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 5 cups (or more) vegetable stock or canned vegetable broth
• 1 medium potato, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1/4 head of red cabbage, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 2 zucchini or summer squash, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• Tabasco sauce (optional)

METHOD

1 Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onion, thyme, and garlic. Sauté 5 minutes. Add green cabbage, tomatoes, celery, and carrots. Sauté 10 minutes.

2 Add beans, 5 cups of stock, potatoes, and basil. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for one hour.

3 Add red cabbage and zucchini. Add salt. Cover and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes longer. Stir in cheese. Sprinkle in a a dash of Tabasco hot sauce if you want to give the soup a little zip.

Serve with ground pepper and bread.

Yield: Serves 4-6.

White beans and Kale

This week I cooked up a large batch of white beans and have been looking for ways to use them all.  We've also recently become HUGE fans of kale at our house.....so naturally, this recipe is a new favorite!  I usually leave the sausage out but it does add a nice flavor.

Kale with Sausage and White Beans Recipe

courtesy of simplyrecipes.com

• Prep time: 10 minutes
• Cook time: 20 minutes

We used curly kale for this recipe, but you could use any kale, as well as chard, turnip greens, beet greens, or collards. A splash of vinegar (sherry, red wine, cider) is a nice touch right at the end of cooking.

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INGREDIENTS

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 pound bulk sweet Italian sausage, or other sausage (use gluten-free sausage if cooking gluten-free)
• 1 onion, sliced thin (about 1 1/2 cup's worth of sliced onions)
• 2 large garlic cloves, sliced thin
• 1 pound kale (1 large bunch), center thick rib removed, leaves roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock
• 1 15-ounce can of white beans, rinsed and drained
• Salt and pepper

METHOD

1 Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat and add the bulk sausage; if you can't find bulk sausage, remove the casings on the links. Cook for 3-4 minutes, then add the onion slices and turn the heat to high. Cook until the edges of the onions brown, about 3-4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

2 Add the kale, sprinkle salt over everything, then add the chicken stock. Cover the pan, lower the heat to medium and cook for 2 minutes.

3 Uncover, mix everything well (the kale will have cooked down by now) and add the beans. Cover the pot again and lower the heat to low. Cook another 5 minutes, then turn off the heat. Let stand 5 minutes, then serve.

Yield: Serves 4-6 as a side dish.

Purple Cauliflower Soup (Vegan)

This is taken from "Andrea's Easy Vegan Cooking".  To see more of her great Vegan recipes (some of which I definitely plan to try out soon!), look here.













Fall weather always makes me crave creamy soups. Maybe it's because they're so comforting and I need reassurance to face the long winter ahead. Whatever the reason, my youngest son and I decided to cook together, and the menu was to be soup and sweet potato fries. Because we are eating from our CSA box, and because our farmer loves to grow purple cauliflower, that's what I used for the soup. I was more than a little skeptical about what it would look like—I'm used to creamy white cauliflower soup—but game. I cooked it in my pressure cooker, and even though I knew I was cooking a purple cauliflower, when I opened the pot I was still surprised to see deep purple liquid and lavender cauliflower pieces. I went at it with the immersion blender, and it blended into a nice shade of purple.



The next surprise came when I added fresh squeezed lime juice (we have a lot of limes from our CSA fruit share) and as the juice hit the purple, it turned a bright magenta. This was getting interesting. I tasted and seasoned and wrote down approximately what I did. We ended up with a great tasting pot of weird looking soup.

Jordan made our usual oven sweet potato fries, with the addition of spicy chipotlépowder, and they were superb. In fact, we ate them before I remembered the camera!

Creamy cauliflower soup (in the pressure cooker)

• large head of cauliflower (white or purple), separated into medium chunks
• medium onion, sliced
• one stalk celery, sliced
• 2 to 3 small white potatoes, peeled and cut up (for body)
• water
• one clove garlic, minced fine
• 1/2 teaspoon of either truffle oil, olive oil, chili oil or no oil
• one lime, juiced
• sweet white miso, to taste
• salt and pepper to taste
• thinly sliced green onion, parsley or other green for garnish

1. Sauté the onion and celery in a small amount of olive oil in the pressure cooker until the onion is translucent.
2. Add the cauliflower and potato and enough water to come about 3/4 up the cauliflower.
3. Bring up to pressure, turn the heat down and cook at pressure for 4 minutes.
4. Run cool water over the lid to bring the pressure down. Open the pot and add the miso, lime juice and oil. Blend in the pot with an immersion blender, or in batches in a conventional blender. Stir in the garlic. Adjust seasonings. Garnish. I used baby arugula because that's what I had on hand.

Cranberry Salsa

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  Cranberry Cream Cheese Dip
  
  
  (Recipe taken from Jamie Cooks It Up - and you should go there to read the whole story - she is a hilarious writer and has quite the story about making this dip....)
  
  
  1  12 oz package fresh cranberries
  1/4 C green onion, chopped
  1/4 C cilantro, chopped
  1 small jalapeno pepper
  1 1/4 C sugar
  1/4 t cumin
  2 T lemon juice
  dash salt
  2  8 oz packages cream cheese
  
  
  
    
  1. Put your cranberries, green onions, cilantro and jalapeno in a food processor and coarsely chop together.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  2. When you are ready to serve, place your cream cheese bricks on a plate.
  
  
  
  3. Spread the cream cheese out as evenly as you can.
  
  
  
  4. Pour your cranberry mixture over the cream cheese.
  
  
  
  5. Spread it all around.
  6. Serve immediately with Wheat Thins, Ritz Crackers or Tortilla Chips.
    
  
  

Fresh Beet Carrot Apple Salad

Courtesy of Marvel Earnshaw







Ingredients:

1 lb of fresh beets

2 large carrots

2 granny smith apples

1 turnip

1 bunch fresh parsley (chopped)  I only used about 1/2 of the bunch)

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 Tbsp sherry vinegar (I used red wine vinegar)

1 large orange

1 lime

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Using a food processor, cut the following into a bowl (matchstick) 

First the beets, then the carrots, then the apples and lastly the turnip - you can cover and leave til the next day if needed.

Dressing  - use the zest of the lime and the orange and the juice of both also.  Add the olive oil and the  vinegar.

When ready to serve, pour the dressing over the beet, carrot, apple, turnip mixture and stir  - stir in the chopped fresh parsley.

Beet Soup

Beet Curry Soup

Note: Curry pastes differ, so start with a much smaller amount of curry paste, and add more if needed.

Beet Curry Soup
adapted from The NY Times
serves 6-8

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 large beets (2 1/2 pounds total)
4 tablespoons butter
1 medium sweet onion, finely chopped
2 apples, finely chopped
4 cups vegetable broth, more if needed
1 teaspoon ginger, grated
1 tablespoons curry paste
salt, to taste
yogurt or sour cream, (optional garnish)

• In a bowl, drizzle oil over beets, and toss to coat. Put beets on an aluminum foil-lined baking sheet and bake in a 350 degree oven for 1 hour, or until beets can be pierced easily. When cool enough to handle, peel beets and chop into large chunks.
• In a large pot, melt butter and saute onions until caramelized, about 10-15 minutes. Add apples, broth, ginger, curry paste, salt to the pot. Bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, or until apples are soft.
• Pour soup into a food processor or blender and puree until smooth. Adjust seasoning and add more broth if too thick.
• Garnish with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream.

Buttercup Squash Soup

Last week, I acquired some buttercup squash from a friend.  I don't believe I had ever cooked to buttercup squash, so I decided to give it a try - but I wasn't quite sure what to do with it.  So, naturally, I "googled" buttercup squash recipes.  Most links led me to recipes for 'butterNUT' squash - apparently a lot of people confuse the two.  But, one link (Dr. Ben Kim) actually led me to a recipe for Buttercup Squash soup.  I tried it - and it was a winner!  Even the kids gobbled it down!  So, it made it to my blog! (Only a fraction of recipes that I try actually make the cut!)  Without further adieu, here it is (courtesy of Dr. Ben Kim):

Here are the main ingredients: one buttercup squash, two sweet potatoes, two leeks, one yellow onion, two carrots, vegetable or chicken broth, extra-virgin olive oil, garlic, and sea salt and pepper.

Here's a closeup look at buttercup squash - it looks kind of like an acorn squash, but it's tastier than acorn by a country mile.

Chop butternut squash into quarters, the sweet potatoes into one-inch rounds, and roast in a baking pan or casserole dish at 400 F for a good 50 to 60 minutes or until squash and sweet potatoes are tender.

Next, you'll want to give your leeks a good wash to remove dirt that is typically embedded within its deeper layers. An easy way to do this while maintaining enough form to allow for easy chopping is to cut the leeks in half, then slice them lengthwise, and put them under running water for a few seconds. Here's how we do this:

Once your leeks are washed and ready to chop, dice up your leeks, carrots, and yellow onion, and saute in extra virgin olive oil over medium heat for about 15 minutes, or until everything is soft.

If garlic and/or ginger get thumbs up in your home, add as much as you'd like while the leeks, carrots, and onion are cooking down. This is also a fine time to season with sea salt and pepper to suit your tastes.

Once your buttercup squash and sweet potatoes are tender, peel their skins and add them to your leeks, carrots, and onions. It's easiest to wait until the squash and sweet potatoes have cooled down some before peeling their skins off.

Next, add three cups of vegetable or chicken broth. Transfer all ingredients to a blender or use a hand-held blender right in the pot to give things a whirl until you have your sweet and savory buttercup squash soup.

Though great as a stand-alone meal, if you want to add extra flavors and textures, try topping with fresh cilantro or avocado slices.