Cream of Cauliflower Soup with Red Beet Chips and Banana Bread Pudding

It's been a while since my last post, don't worry I am not giving up.  It's been really cold so I decided to try to make a dent in the soup recipes and tackle the cream of cauliflower soup with red beet chips and the banana bread pudding.

To start the soup base, I sauteed the chopped cauliflower with leeks, onions, and curry.  The book calls for the use of a "parchment lid" in quite a few recipes.  You basically make a steamer lid with a hole in the center to cover the pot while the vegetables cook.  It allows the steam to escape through the hole in the center and since the rest of the dish is covered, prevents the liquid from evaporating and the vegetables from caramelizing.  I have been a little wary of the parchment lid because I can just see it coming off the pot and catching on fire on my gas stove, but I decided to give it a try.  It did work, the cauliflower and other vegetables cooked evenly and did not brown.  After the vegetables were ready, I added milk, heavy cream, and water to the soup and pureed it with an immersion blender.

The next step for the soup was the red beet chips to garnish.  I have never cooked with a beet before and boy are they messy.  My hands looked like I had soaked them in red wine after I had finished.  I peeled and sliced the beet and fried the chips in peanut oil until they were crispy...well I was shooting for crispy, mine were soggy.

 I then sauteed cauliflower florets in butter and white vinegar for the finishing garnish.  This is the finished soup...

The soup was a thicker, creamy soup and it was very flavorful.  The dish was pretty filling even though there was no protein.  The red beet chips were not that great.  I may should have sliced the beet chips a little thinner to allow for them to crisp up during the frying process.  The soup wasn't that difficult to make and the recipe could be adapted to use different types of vegetables.  I mean let's face it, if you put enough heavy cream in anything, it's going to be good.

 The banana bread pudding was a strange recipe.  I'm still not convinced that I didn't mess something up.  I started out by making a custard over the stove of milk, cream, and sugar.  I toasted bread slices in the oven and submerged them into the custard in a pan.  The way the recipe read you basically have one layer in the middle and the custard all the way around the pan.  It called for a 9 x 13 baking pan but only a layer of two slices.  The bread pudding recipes in the past that I have tried called for cubed bread that filled the whole pan.  I basically ended up with two banana sandwiches submerged in a baking dish of custard.  It looked odd.  Nonetheless, I baked the dish in the oven for about an hour and fifteen minutes until it looked like the custard was set.  Into the fridge it went for six hours.  After refrigeration, I had to cut the dish into squares and then reheated the squares in butter over the stove...kind of like french toast.

I was very skeptical of this dish.  It was messy and the pan of bread pudding looked awful.  However, after cutting out two squares to actually warm in the butter, it didn't look half bad.  The dessert was pretty tasty as well, kind of a cross between bread pudding, banana pudding, and french toast.  I think I just totally misunderstood something in the process.  It was so unappealing looking that I will just post a picture of the finished dish!

I know I cheated a bit this week.  I promise a protein next weekend!

Recipe Countdown:  62 of 251 recipes

Pan-Roasted Chicken with Sweet Sausages and Peppers

Snow Day...or rather Ice Day!  Middle Georgia doesn't get much snow or ice so when we do, the whole town literally shuts down.  A one dish meal sounded pretty good after a day of no power and board games. 

This recipe sounded easy but once I started looking at the components including peperonata rustica..soffrito (which takes six hours to make)....I figured I better start early.  I made the soffrito and roasted the peppers which were used in the peperonata rustica on Sunday to assemble the components needed.  The chicken also calls for a twelve hour brine and since I started late on Sunday, I decided to assemble everything I needed that night for the next night's dinner after a work day.  Mother nature had different plans and I ended up having all of Monday at home.  I can't say it still wasn't nice to have everything I needed for dinner despite being home all day.  Lately most of my free time has gone to assembling dishes from Ad Hoc so it was nice to have everything already prepared.

The first step was making the soffrito.  I diced Spanish onions and cooked them very slowly in oil for about two and half hours.  The onions caramelized and started to separate from the oil.  I then added a puree of plum tomatoes and cooked for two and half more hours.  The finished dish after draining the oil off, which separates, is soffrito.


I roasted a combo of red, yellow, and orange bell peppers in the oven for the peperonata rustica, peeled them, and cut them into strips.

The next step was to make the Ad Hoc chicken brine of honey, salt, herbs, and lemons.  I then cut my whole chicken into eight pieces.  Let me just say here that I have always had a horrific time trying to butcher a whole chicken.   Well, I am so happy to report that I wasn't the problem at all...it was my poor, cheap, dull knives!  My in-laws gave me an awesome Christmas present which was a new Chef's knife and two ceramic knives.  I pulled that chef's knife out and cutting up that chicken was a breeze.  I am so glad it's not me! 

I brined the chicken for twelve hours and was ready to get to work on dinner.  The peperonata rustica is assembled by combining the roasted peppers, the soffrito, chicken broth, and piment d'Espelette which is ground dried Chile peppers from Spain that had to be ordered over the Internet.  The mixture is simmered over the stove for thirty minutes and is ready for serving.  

I browned the chicken in canola oil with sweet Italian sausages.  The browned chicken and sausages are added to the peperonata rustica and finished off in the oven.  The finished dish was topped with parsley and chives.

For so many steps, I was a little disappointed in my presentation.  The 1/2 cup of soffrito which was used in the pepper dish, which then became a component of the chicken and sausage dish took six hours so I guess I had higher expectations.  Despite the presentation, the flavors were really nice.  I love roasted peppers and the combo of the sweet peppers with the chicken and sausage really accentuated one another.  The chicken was delicious and I am definitely learning the benefit of using the brine in the chicken dishes.  Even the white breast meat is juicy after using the brine and it is usually the most prone to be dry.  While the exact steps of these recipes may not be something I would repeat for time's sake, I think the same dish could be assembled fairly quickly with similar results as long as you used the brine. 

Quail with Lemon and Herbs and Glazed Sweet Potatoes

This was a quick weeknight dish and while I didn't take many pictures of the process, it's two recipes so it does count!  I marinated the quail for about six hours in a marinade of scallions, rosemary, thyme, parsley, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice.  I then cooked the quail in a skillet until brown and finished off in the oven.
The sweet potatoes were cut into wedges and cooked in butter in the oven.  I then sprinkled brown sugar on top and caramelized them under the broiler.

This was probably the shortest menu time-wise yet.  Start to finish (not including the marinade time), dinner was ready in thirty minutes.  Thomas Keller isn't exactly one to publish a thirty minute meal book but if he did, this for sure would be in it!  The quail were juicy and lemony like roast chicken.  This recipe is a keeper for all of those birds Matt brings back from his annual hunting trip.  The sweet potatoes (missed getting a good picture) were also really good.  The wedges were tasty and had a crispy topping from being caramelized.   

Recipe Countdown:  57 of 251 recipes

Blowtorch Prime Rib Roast, Potato Pave, and Braised Artichokes

Tonight we cooked the blowtorch prime rib roast with horseradish cream along with the potato pave and braised artichokes for my mother-in-law's birthday.  The roast recipe calls for a 2-bone center cut rib roast.  This one was fun to prep as you actually sear the meat with a blowtorch before roasting in the oven.  This starts the fat rendering process and caramelizes the surface before roasting.  I then roasted in the oven until medium rare.

I also made the potato pave dish.  I sliced the potatoes into thin rounds, dunked them in whipping cream, and layered in a baking dish to bake in the oven.  The finished dish looked like scalloped potatoes.  I then refrigerated the dish for a day, inverted the dish, and cut into squares which were browned in oil with garlic and thyme.  The layers of the potatoes become crisp and it's almost like a potato pancake. 

The braised artichokes...where to begin.  Trimming an artichoke is not easy.  You have to pull the leaves (which are prickly), trim the stem and the dark green leaves, and then try to get the fuzzy choke out.  It is a major pain.  Not to mention an artichoke turns brown quickly so trying to do all of this before ruining the artichoke is a challenge.  After finally getting six artichokes trimmed, well five...one was butchered so bad it went in the trash, I sauteed chopped carrots, fennel, and onions in a little butter and steamed the artichokes on the bed of vegetables.

I then added the braising liquid which consisted of white wine, stock, olive oil, and water and cooked until the artichokes were finished. 

To serve with the beef, I made the horseradish cream which is basically whipping cream whipped with horseradish.  The finished beef sat in the oven and was slightly more done than medium rare which I would have preferred but nonetheless, the flavors were spot on.  The fat rendering process seemed to make the beef really juicy.  The potato pave was my favorite.  Even though I had to start a few days ahead of time to get it ready, the steps were fairly simple and it was an excellent potato dish.  The artichokes were also really good but I don't know if they were worth all of the work!  Here are the finished dishes...

Blowtorch Prime Rib Roast...

Potato Pave...

Braised Artichokes...

 

Recipe Countdown:  59 of 251 recipes