Easy Tomato Soup

Tomato soup with grilled cheese.  Is there anything better?  Anyone?  I didn't think so.

This homemade tomato soup was delicious, easy, satisfying, quick.  I just sort of threw it together and it was inspired.  Minimal effort, minimal ingredients, minimal cost.  Lots of love, lots of tomatoes, lots of left overs.  Yes. 

(by the way the grilled cheese you see above is a recipe I got from A Cozy Kitchen for comte and pepper grilled cheese. it was da bomb.)

Ingredients:

2 T oil
1 small onion, chopped
3 small carrots, chopped
1 tsp garlic, minced
2 cans (28 oz) whole plum tomatoes with their juices, chopped
1 can (15 oz) fire roasted diced tomatoes, with juice
1 T tomato paste
1 T brown sugar
1 T fresh thyme
1 T dried basil (or use fresh if you have it!)
3 cups chicken stock
1 T. salt
1 tsp. black pepper

Love.

Instructions:

Saute onion and carrots in oil over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until soft.  Add garlic and cook for 1 to 2 minutes.  Add canned tomatoes, tomato paste, brown sugar, fresh thyme, dried basil, chicken stock, salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, and then simmer over low heat 30 to 40 minutes.

Eat with crusty bread or grilled cheese.  Enjoy!

Stuffed Shells

Yum!!! This was so delicious.  Serious comfort food.  I think I might even like stuffed shells better than lasagna (what?! you say)  I know! But they are really good, fun to make and something about them just makes me like really happy.  But I am easily pleased.  I adapted this recipe from one I found on the pioneer woman's site.  I didn't have any fresh basil, which she uses in her filling, and probably would have been awesome, but it didn't really suffer.  Brandon and I got 3 dinner's and a lunch out of this dish (and we ate a lot so normal people might get even more!).   Here's how you make this.

Ingredients:

8 oz jumbo pasta shells

Filling:

30 oz (weight) whole milk ricotta cheese
8 oz (weight) grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1/2 cups grated Romano cheese
1 whole egg
2 T. minced parsley
(12 basil leaves, chiffonade)
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce:

2 T. oilve oil
1/2 whole medium onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 pounds italian sausage
(1/2 cup red wine) (optional - I did not use)
1 whole 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 whole 15 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 T sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
generous pinch hot red pepper flakes
2 T. minced parsley

Instructions:

1.  Cook pasta shells for half the cooking time.  Drain and rinse with cold water and set aside.

2.  Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium heat, add onions and garlic and saute for a few minutes, until unions are soft.

3.  Add italian sausage and brown, breaking up into small pieces with a flat wooden spoon.

4.  Add crushed tomatoes (I used fire roasted. sooo yummy!), sugar and salt and hot red pepper flakes.  Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to low.  Cover and simmer 30 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

 5.  While sauce cooks, make filling by combining ricotta, half the Parmesan, Romano, egg, salt and pepper, basil if using (I added some dried basil), and 2 T. Parsley.  Stir until combined.

6.  Assemble!  Preheat oven to 350.  Coat bottom of baking dish with sauce (I used a 9 X 13 inch glass pan).

Fill each half-cooked shell with ricotta mixture (that is NOT my hand by the way!) (Brandon helped)

Place face down on sauce.  Repeat with remaining shells until cheese mixture is gone.

Cover with remaining sauce.

Sprinkle with remaining shredded Parmesan cheese

7.  Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, or until hot and bubbly.  Serve with garlic bread or other crusty bread.

Enjoy!

Homemade Hummus

I see no reason to ever buy store bought hummus again.  I mean that.  Will I ever do it?  Yeah, probably.  And I will kick myself for it. At the store, in the checkout line, on the drive home, as I peel back the plastic, and with each bite.  Why such strong feelings? Because this is SO SUPER EASY to make.  And it just tastes sooo much better made at home.  Really.  The only special ingredient you need is Tahini.  And you can keep that in your fridge for awhile.  And if you live near an Indian grocery store, you can get it for soooo super cheap for a huge thing.  DO NOT BUY IT AT A REGULAR STORE! They will overcharge you!

Ingredients:

2 cans garbanzo beans, drained (reserve liquid from one can)
2-4 Tbs tahini (to taste)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tsp. salt
2 (or more) garlic cloves

optional additions:

pinch cayenne (I used)
pinch cumin
roasted red pepper

Put all ingredients in food processor and blend.  Add reserved liquid from chickpeas until hummus is desired consistency.

Top with some good olive oil, chopped parsley and paprika.  Serve with raw veggies or toasted pita chips (TOAST THEM THEY ARE SO GOOD THAT WAY!)

Enjoy!

Carrot Walnut Currant No-Knead Bread

This is one of my favorite recipes from Jim Lahey's book.  Fresh squeezed carrot juice (I buy organic carrot juice and use that but it would be even more awesomer to make your own!) is subtle and it combines with the currants and walnuts for a rich flavor that is unusual and so satisfying.  It is also crusted with cumin seeds which adds another something something. LOVE IT. 

Here's what ya need:

3 cups bread flour
1 1/4 tsp table salt
1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups freshly squeezed carrot juice
3/4 cup currants
3/4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
additional flour for dusting
1 T. cumin seeds

Here's what you do (so simple!). Combine flour, salt and dry yeast, then add carrot juice...

Mix that together with a wooden spoon or your fingers

Add nuts and currants.  Mix that in.

Let dough sit in a warm, draft-free spot (to the extent you have one in winter!) and loosely cover it with plastic wrap or a dish towel, for 12 to 18 (ideally 18) hours until the surface is dotted with bubbles and it has more than doubled in size, like so:

Turn it out onto a generously floured work surface, using a bowl scraper or rubber spatula to get it out in one piece.  Using lightly floured hands, or a bowl scraper, lift the edges of the dough in toward the center.  Nude and tuck in the edges of the dough to make it round, like so:

Place a kitchen towel or tea towel on your work surface, generously (really generously!!) dust it with flour and sprinkle on the cumin seeds.  Gently place the dough on the towel, seam side down (so it is being coated in cumin seeds).  Dust top with flour and loosely fold ends of towel over the dough to cov er it and place it in a warm draft free spot to rise for another 1 to 2 hours.

Half an hour before the end of the second rise, put a covered 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 quart heavy pot or dutch oven on the center rack of the oven and preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Using pot holders, carefully remove preheated pot from the oven and uncover it. Unfold the tea towel and quickly but gently invert the dough into the pot, seam side up.  Cover pot and bake for 25 minutes.  Remove lid and bake until bread is a deep chestnut color but not burnt, 15 to 20 minutes more.  Use a heatproof spatula or pot holders to carefully lift the bread out of the pot and place it onto a rack to cool completely. 

 Slice and enjoy!

Sour Cream-Blueberry Bread

So I love love love banana bread.  Really any breakfast bread or muffin or scone, but especially good banana bread.  This recipe (from Williams-Sonoma) just took banana bread and like ELEVATED IT.  Just when I did not think that was possible.  Yes.  It has banana.  And blueberries.  And pecans, man.  And sour cream.  This is like really really good stuff.   I could write an ode to this bread.  Oh bread of banana and blueberry and pecans... how you make me long for you... (hahah OK enough).  Here's the deal with this bread.

You need this:

2 medium ripe bananas
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
1 heaping cup fresh or frozen blueberries
1/2 cup chopped pecans


You do this:

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a 9 X 5 inch loaf pan.

Mash up the bananas with a fork and measure out 1 cup.

Melt the butter.

Sift together the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, baking soda).

Whisk together the eggs,  sour cream, vanilla, cooled butter, and mashed bananas.

Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.

Mix until just combined.

Add the blueberries (if using frozen, toss in a bit of flour first so they don't clump)...

And the pecans, and fold in gently.

Pour batter into greased loaf pan.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (this took about 70 minutes in my oven).

Cool in pan on rack for 30 minutes.   Run a butter knife carefully along edges of loaf, and turn loaf out onto rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

Pies, Pies, Pies! (and animal cuteness)

Finally! My Thanksgiving pie recipes are posted!  This was a project.  Scroll down to check them out!  There is a Pear Cranberry Almond Tart recipe (OK yes yes yes that is a TART not a PIE but still), a Sweet Potato Pie with Spiced Pecans recipe (yum), and a Bourbon Pecan Pie recipe (with chocolate or without):

Yum! True, none of you will want to make these now but maybe next year you will remember and come back for the recipe... or perhaps I will remind you then!  On to Christmas cookies, let the baking begin!

Some pics of the animals are long overdue:

Lupa does not know what to think about the air popper.  How ADORABLE!

Aww!

Pear Cranberry Almond Tart

Isn't that pretty?! This tart was MY special Thanksgiving dessert this year and the one that I was excited to eat.  I tend to find pecan pie too rich after the huge meal and although I love the flavor of sweet potato or pumpkin pie, the texture is not my FAVE.  I prefer fruit pies --- I usually would make apple, but my dad was making an apple crisp so I wanted to do something different this year.  Knowing I loved the Pear Almond Tart I made recently, but not wanting to have something so labor intensive or rich, I decided to do a spin on that, adding a cranberry layer for tartness and using a less rich tart crust.  I turned out wonderfully and was unusual and so pretty!

Instead of using a usual tart crust recipe, I omitted the egg and ground nuts that I use in the Pear Almond Tart recipe and instead made a simple pate sucre -- simply adding a tablespoon of sugar to a half recipe of Butter Pie Crust.  This decreased the richness of the tart and tasted great.

I freezed the pie shell for 30 minutes, then prebaked it for 20 minutes in a 375 degree oven lined with foil and filled with pie beans, and then removed the foil and beans and baked another 10 minutes. There she is:

To make the cranberry jam layer, I used 12 oz of fresh cranberries, 3/4 cups of water, 6 Tbs sugar and some minced ginger and sauteed it over medium heat for 20 minutes or so.  Transfer it to a bowl and  let it cool on a rack.   Check out the color!

For the almond filling layer, I used the same almond filling recipe as I did in the Pear Almond Tart.  I made that ahead and refrigerated it for a couple hours, although I am not sure how necessary this step is.

 I sliced up some bosc pears (2 large or 3 small), like so:

Once crust and cranberry filling are pretty cool, you can assemble.

First, lay down a layer of cranberry jam:

Top it with almond filling:

Decoratively arrange pear slices on top.  (I think this part is so fun and it is really easy... and it looks so professional after you finish and people are so impressed and go "WOWWW!!" and you can feel rewarded and super cool even though all you did is slice some pears and make a circle)... anyways...

Paint it with some hot water and honey glaze (mix 2 Tbs each to combine):

And bake that beauty for 45 minutes to an hour.  The almond filling should be golden and the pears cooked.  YUM!

Serve and enjoy!

-- Anya