Latest obession: dumplings.

Is it the chill breezes and slow, drifting orange shower of leaves that make me want my bread cooked right in the pot with whatever stew I'm concocting?

Guess so.

Remember these, from last year? 'Member? MEMBER? Well, I've gone and lightened them, FREED them, if you will, from their cheesy shackles, but instead - a little pureed almond, some lemon, nutritional yeast (ye holiest of holy flavorings), a slow bake in a warm oven, and we're still tasting salty, stinky parm. In the dumplings, and on top, deeeeelish. Go ahead. Sprinkle it onna pizza.

Minestrone Stew with "Parm" Dumplings

You'll need:

A batch of delish minestrone stew a la this recipe

And for the dumplings:

1.5 cups flour (GF flour works fine - just add a tsp of xantham gum and up the liquid a couple of tablespoons, dearies)
4 tablespoons vegan margarine, very cold
2 tsp baking soda
Pepper
Finely minced parsley and scallion
1/3 cup rice or almond milk, unsweetened
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup vegan parmesian - recipe follows

Flour in a bowl, of course - add baking soda and salt - then all spices, sans cheeze. Mix well. Get a pastry cutter out and go at the margarine, just long enough for it to disperse and look breadcrumby. Add your parm. Add milk, a little at a time, and test dough by gathering it - you want it soft, almost sticky. If you need a few more drops of milk to reach the right consistency, go right ahead. Divide dough into 10 balls, about 2/3 the size of a golf ball. Dust them, and your bowl, with flour as you go, until the dough is gone. Set aside.

Bring your delicious stew to a boil, drop your dumplings in, one at a time, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 8-9 minutes.

No toast needed. Ladle soup, then a dumpling or two or three in a bowl, then another ladle of soup on top. Dust with another generous pinch of Parm, and you're golden.

Vegan Parm

1/2 cup almonds, blanched
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
Dash toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon salt
Soaking water, 1/3 cup or less

Soak your almonds in just-boiled water for 30 minutes to an hour. Drain, reserving some liquid.

Get out your big blender, and pour the soaked almonds in. Add your lemon juice and salt, and start that motor running.

Add some liquid - you want the almonds to be pureeing, with the least amount of liquid added. Scrape down the sides, if they need some help. Add a little more soaking water, if you need to.

When a smooth consistency is reached, add the remaining ingredients, and whirr a few more times to combine.

Lightly oil a baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 250f.

Scrape the pre-cheese out and spread it 1/2 inch thick in a corner of the baking sheet. Stick her in the oven.

Check and stir every 15 minutes or so to prevent browning. Eventually, it'll start to crumble. Keep going until the granules form naturally into small, parmesan-esque textures.

Enjoy :)

Out of Hand Sick Delicious Corn Chowder

You know that saying, Party in the Mouth? Welcome to the corn crammed, summer infused, super creamy awesome division of PITM central.

It's vegan, which makes it even better. And it has delicious cashew puree in it, like (srsly) half the stuff I've made over the last month. I'm really lucky I'm not allergic to that most delicate of tree nut. Who knows, tho - I keep eating 'em at this rate and I might be soon! When I fall in love, I fall hard.

You guys know the drill - you want to creamify a soup without dumping 1k worth of butterfat calories in the pot, you have several options:

Immersion blender - make sure your potato content is high for this technique
1 block silken tofu
Almond/Soy/Rice Milk

Done them all, multiple times in triplicate - and I wanted something new.

Of course, there was a huge pile of cashew puree waiting to become cheeze sitting in the fridge. And so, the creamiest chowder I've ever made vegan-style came about.

Pay close attention to the multiple blender steps for maximum smoothness!

Cream of Corn Chowder
makes 1 medium pot - or 4-6 bowls.

1 bag frozen corn OR 6 ears worth of freshly-boiled corn
4 tbl EarthBalance
1/2 red pepper
1/2 green pepper
1/2 poblano pepper
2 fresh jalapenos, minced
4 small white potatoes, diced medium-small (peels on for vitamin content!!)
1 red onion, chopped
10 cloves garlic, minced
2 ribs celery, diced
1 small calabaza squash or zucchini, triangled (halved, then sliced lengthwise into three triangle-shaped strips, then chopped)
4 small carrots, diced
6 cups vegetable or faux-chicken stock
1 cup cashew butter (or cheese a la this recipe - adding cashew cheese will lend a more sour-cream flavor - regular pureed cashews, just a sweet, nutty note)
1.5 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
Dash agave

To serve:

1 fresh tomato, diced fine
Minced cilantro and scallion
Chipotle hot sauce, to taste


Right. So.

Melt your EB in a large soup pot. Add  your onion, carrot, celery, peppers including jalapeno, and garlic. Saute over medium heat for 5-6 minutes, until onions are translucent.

Add your squash and potatoes. Add your corn now, if using fresh - hold off till the end, if using frozen. Cook 4 minutes or so, until squash has softened just a bit.

Add your stock and a little water if need to just reach the top of your veggies. Add pepper and agave. Cover and simmer 20 minutes, until potatoes are soft at center.

Grab your blender. With a ladle, spoon off as much liquid as possible from the soup. No biggie if you get some veggies in there - you're going to puree some of them next! Add your cashew butter, making sure the total volume in your blender does not exceed your maximum line. Blend for 6-8 minutes, adding a teeny bit of water if needed, until the soup is super super smooth. Pour back into the pot.

Now, ladle more of the soup back into your blender, paying careful attention to getting as many potatoes as possible (leave a few tho, yum!). Puree again until super smooth. Add the puree back to the pot. Taste for salt and adjust as needed.

If you're using frozen corn, add it to the stew now, and heat until cooked through.

Ladle, garnish, and serve! Perfect with toasty french bread and a simple salad with lemon dressing.

Bon Appetite!

Dunno how I feel about White Chili, but here we go.

Hey, I like creamy, saturated-befatted foods as much as the next, but for chili... it seems odd. Which is hilarious, since I've been known to spoon copious amounts of sour cream atop a bowl of steaming red.

But since I cook for the lovely ladies of Huntersville, and someone had a craving, I did the deed - White Chili with Tofu and Pinto Beans, and it was pretty interesting.

Since this was such a brothy, creamy bowl, I'd thrown together some faux-Pusas to balance it out a bit - kind of like a South of the Border Biscuits n Gravy plate. It was much improved - the soft corn and bite of tomato balanced the jack-cheese-creaminess. Were I to do this chili again, I'd totally try a Mex-themed spoonbread, perhaps, as well.

White Chili with Tofu and Pintos

1 large onion, chopped
10 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, diced
1 calabaza squash, cut to triangles
1 carrot, peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, diced
Handful of mushrooms
1/2 stick unsalted butter
3 tablespoons corn starch
1/2 pound Pepper Jack cheese, grated
6 cups water mixed
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon scallion, chopped
1 small handful cilantro, chopped
2 cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 block firm tofu, torn to bite sized pieces
1 cup TVP
1 cup frozen corn
1 cup half n half
Salt and pepper to taste
Dash cumin
1 tsp habanero powder or cayenne (for ze spice!), more to taste
Dash sugar
1 small can hatch chilis (TJ's has this covered - look in the spice section)
1 small container sour cream

Melt the butter in a stock pot and add onion, garlic, pepper, carrot and celery. Saute until onion is translucent, 4 minutes. Add zucchini and mushrooms, toss, and cook another 3 minutes.

Add water, nutritional yeast, beans, cumin and habanero, herbs, chilis, TVP, salt, and sugar - stir well and simmer 20 minutes, until all veggies have softened. At this point, add your tofu - I fried mine in a little vegetable oil and drained it before tossing it in the pot for texture, but either way works just fine.

Remove the pot from the heat. Add the frozen corn. Toss your cheese with the cornstarch. Add in handfuls at a time and stir to melt. Ladle a small bit of broth into a measuring cup and mix your sour cream into it until well-blended, then pour into the pot. Add half and half a little at a time until the chili is the right consistency and taste for salt and heat.

Garnish with cilantro and chopped jalapeno, or with fresh salsa. Serve with papusas or corn bread, if you'd like.

Sick Hubby Soup

More soup? More soup.

This is one of the first things I "came up with", not that it's a particularly adventurous recipe, but anyways - probably in January or February, when it got cold and damp in the city and either one or both of us caught something nasty. I've since gotten a tad bored of it, but this is what Erk wants whenever he's sniffly, which he was this past week. With toast and EarthBalance, he goes through quarts of it!

I also used to drop 3 bucks worth of faux-chicken bouillon cubes into an 8-serving pot, which frustrated me, so the recipe below contains my approximation of this brand. Tastes very similar and is much, much cheaper. Yay!

Sick Hubby Soup
makes 8 - 10 servings, or enough to fill a small dutch oven

3 medium carrots, peeled and diced
3 medium stalks of celery, diced
4 scallions, minced, white and green parts
1/2 handful fresh parsley, minced, or 1 tablespoon, dried
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp white pepper
1/2 block extra firm tofu, diced (you could instead stir 2 eggs in during the last 5 minutes of simmering if you'd rather not eat ze soy)
1 1/2 cup small noodles like ABCs, Crushed Fideos, Ditalini
8 cups water
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 tsp brown sugar or palm sugar (something with a deep flavor)
2 tablespoons sea salt, or to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup frozen peas

Easy peasy. Heat your oil in a soup pot or dutch oven and saute carrots and celery until carrots soften a bit, about 6 minutes. Add scallions and garlic, cook two minutes more. Add water, salt, garlic, herbs, nutritional yeast, sugar and pepper - simmer 4 minutes until the yeast has completely dissolved and mellowed. Add your tofu and noodles and cook 4-6 minutes if eating immediately, 2 if making ahead (let the noodles finish cooking in the pot on the stove on their own - it's easy to turn them to mush if you aren't careful!). Add the peas at the end.

Serve with toast and orange juice. Good for what ails ya!

Minestrone with Parmesan Dumplings

Another belly warmer, this. I'm moving from wonton obsession to dumpling obsession, thanks to a meal at Zum Schneider whilst up in NYC last weekend, and by meal, I mean single bite - that's all it took to get me dumpling crazed.

I've omitted pasta from this soup recipe because of the floating bread balls - but you could forgo dumplingville and stick some elbows, orzos, rotini, anything you'd like in there instead. Or even have both. Oh my.

NOTE: In honor of Ye Olde Top 9, I'm adding a Gluten Free dumpling recipe to this! Find it below the standard dumplings. They're very similar!

Winter Minestrone with Parmesan Dumplings

For the delicious stew: (makes 8-10 single servings)

1 large can chopped/crushed tomatoes
2 small cans tomato paste
2 zucchini, chopped
1 large red onion, chopped
10 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons freshly minced parsley
3 tablespoons freshly minced chives
Tons of black pepper
1 large bunch kale, sliced to ribbons
6-8 baby carrots, chopped 
2 large ribs celery, chopped
1/2 cup good quality olive oil
1/2 cup bitey red wine
2 cans cannelini beans, well drained and rinsed (I dump them into a colander and rinse under the faucet)
1 can garbanzo beans, see above
1 red pepper, chopped
8 ozs mushrooms, chopped
Handful frozen green beans, chopped
1 tablespoon + more sea salt, to taste
10 cups water


For the (regular) dumplings:

1 cup high-gluten flour, like bread flour
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 scant tsp baking soda
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1 tablespoon dried chives or chervil
Freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter, melted, mixed with 1/2 cup milk or water

I usually make my dumpling mix first, and chill it, giving it time to glue together a bit. So go ahead and mix your dry ingredients in a medium bowl, wet ingredients in another smaller bowl, make a well in the center of your flour mix, and while stirring if possible, add your wets to your dry, mixing until un-lumpy. Cover and set in the fridge.

If you're making GF dumplings: 

1 cup GF all purpose flour
1 scant tsp xantham gum
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 scant tsp baking soda
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1 tablespoon dried chives or chervil
Freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter, melted, mixed with 1/2 cup milk or water

Follow the directions above and proceed with the directions below. They'll be slightly more dense, but deeeelicious!


In a large soup pot, add your olive oil. Over medium high heat, saute your garlic, onion, peppers, carrots and celery for 5 minutes, until onions are translucent. Add zucchini and mushroom - cook another 3 minutes, until mushrooms begin to soften. Add kale, stir, cook one minute more. Add your wine and turn heat to high for 2 minutes, until it has reduced a bit, then add water, tomatoes, tomato paste, beans including green, herbs, pepper, and salt, stir well, and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook 20 minutes, until all your lovely veggies have softened. (If adding pasta, add 15 minutes into your simmer). Taste. You'll probably need to add a little salt at this point - and maybe a dash of sugar to bring the sweetness of the green beans out - but it's totally up to you.

Now, I'm going to say it - it's almost always best to cook dumplings in the soup you're eating them with. They absorb all the awesome flavors you've been stewing up, and the only trade off is a little cloudiness/ spare floaters in your brew. Some dislike this and would rather cook them separately, in their own little pot of boiling water, and if you'd prefer, go right ahead.


Meanwhile in Julialand, it's time to dump those suckers on top of your stew, so grab your batter from the fridge, get a large, round spoon, moisten one hand, and while the soup is gently simmering, drop one spoonful of batter at a time onto the top of the soup, using your moist finger to push it off of the spoon. Quickly form the rest of the dumplings in this same way and cover your pot. Simmer 8-10 minutes, or until dumplings have just solidified in their middles.


To serve, ladle a chunk of dumpling into the middle of a bowl and spoon soup all around. A little extra grated cheese on top should do the trick. Ah yes, that feels lovely in the belly, doesn't it?


Cheers!
 

Wanton Wontons - take two

As awesome as the mini samosas were, I think I like this recipe better.

Mostly because it's a hearty soup and hell if Charlotte hasn't been completely laminated by snow and ice this week - also, because it's relatively healthy and has a full range of vitamins in every bowl - but mostly, because it contains cabbage, and I have the Cabbagewinter gene - when it's cold out, I want to eat copious amounts of it.

But where the samosas were cute - this stew most def is not. Erk commented while finishing his bowl - "Dude, it looks like we're eating tiny brains. Gross."

The man still managed to power through and inhale his rather large serving, so it can't look too bad, eh?

A couple of short comments on prep - because I really want you guys to give this one a whirl, but there were several frustrating moments for me:

Wonton construction: like the samosas, we're going to fold these over corner to corner, but then take the extra step of folding the two corners of the long edge together, making a nurse's hat. This makes these denser, more dumpling-like, instead of floppy-ravioli-ish.

Burp the wontons of air as you construct, or you'll end up with little soup mines that'll explode as the air inside them heats. Yowza.

Make these RIGHT BEFORE cooking them. Wonton wrappers are super sticky. They don't do well on a plate in the fridge overnight.

Cook them all at once in the pot with the soup, stirring gently but constantly to keep them separated. They might clump up a little bit with the cabbage et all, but trust me, if you cook them by themselves in boiling water, they're like little magnets, and find each other, clump up, forming one large mass of dumpling. Delish, but individual pockets of yum are waaay more fun. And easier to serve.

Ok. Hope I didn't scare anyone with that description of cooking fail. There's lots of it in my kitchen ;) Also, you guys know by now there's no real sausage in this recipe - but you could totally use pork to great success if that's how you roll!

Sausage Wontons with Cabbage, Carrot, and Pea Stew

20 wonton wrappers
10 ozs vegetarian sausage, cooked, minced

2 tablespoons butter
1 small head cabbage, peeled of its first layer, then sliced thin
1 medium onion, minced
4 medium carrots, peeled, chopped
Tons of black pepper, at the beginning and end of stewing
Parsley, 1 tblspoon, minced plus 1 tsp reserved
Vegetable broth, 10 cups or:
1/2 cup tamari soy sauce, 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast, 1 tablespoon miso mixed with 9 cups water (taste and salt/add more miso if needed) 
1 cup frozen peas


In a large soup pot, melt your butter. Add onion and carrot and cook 10 minutes, cover on, until carrot softens a bit.


Add cabbage, stir, cook 2 minutes. Add broth, parsley, black pepper. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until cabbage is almost tender, about 45 minutes.


Meanwhile! Make your 'Tons. Like I described last time, I like to do this over the sink with a cutting board, wetting my fingers as needed to seal each wonton. So lay a wrapper out on your board and carefully wet around the edges. Pile about a tsp or tsp + 1/2 in the center of each wrapper and fold the corners together to make a triangle, making sure to work any air out as you go. Pick the wonton up and pull the two corners of the wonton's bottom together, pressing the edges together firmly, one on top of the other, to create a lopsided donut shape. Place on a dry plate and repeat until your filling is finished (I made it to 20-22).

Once your cabbage is fork-tender, it's about time to toss in the dumplings. Make sure there's a fair amount of liquid around the carrots and cabbage - add a little more water if needed and taste for salt. Carefully drop the dumplings in, stirring to make room for more, and cook, covered, 3 minutes. Remove from heat, uncover, add peas, and let coo1 5 minutes. 

Ladle 4 dumplings into a bowl and cover with soup. I thoroughly enjoyed mine - I hope it gets your tummy all warm and cozy too. The next day, the dumplings had fallen apart a bit - but this was just fine, as it distributed the chewy pasta and faux-sausage throughout. Yum.

Decadent Broccoli Cheese Chowder

I loved Broccoli and Cheese so much that as a kid, I dressed up as it for Halloween. I'm serious.

Over the years my passion has mellowed a bit, but I'm still the one nibbling at the last couple of florets on Fondue Night and I just about lost it when I found out Gramma had made Broccoli Cheese Casserole (in all its mayonnaise-drenched, condensed soup goodness) for Christmas Dinner. Yeah, I ate some of what I cooked - but at least as much BCC went down the hatch.

Since I cook for a couple of gluten-free women, I wanted to try different thickeners, instead of flour - cornstarch seemed an obvious choice, but maybe I could minimize the starch by using goat cheese and extra potato?

Yes I can, and did, and I gotta say - best B+C Chowder ever made by Moi.

Broccoli Cheese Chowder

1 small head brocolli
2 medium yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced largishly (my pieces were all about 1/2 inch wide)
1 small onion
2 carrots
2 stalks celery
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 scallions, minced
Small handful parsley, minced
1 cup milk or cream
2 tablespoons butter
4 ozs fresh goat cheese
A rather large amount of freshly grated black pepper
Salt to taste
6 cups vegetable stock or water and boullion equivalent
3/4 pound sharp cheddar cheese, grated, tossed with 1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp lemon juice
Scallions, shredded cheddar, hot sauce or Jalapeno Oil to garnish (recipe for Jalapeno Oil at page bottom!)

Let's do this.

Melt your butter in a medium stock pot and add onion, celery, carrot, garlic. Over medium high heat, stir veggies every 2 minutes while keeping pot covered until they soften, about 6 minutes. Covering the pot in between stirs helps to steam the veggies, thus quickening their cooking time.

Add your brocc, stir, cover once more and cook 2 minutes, until it has turned bright green. Add stock, potatoes, scallions, parsley, pepper, mustard and lemon juice, and simmer soup for 10-12 minutes, until potatoes are very soft. Remove from heat.

Use an immersion blender to carefully blend your soup to the desired consistency - I went for pretty well-blended with some large chunks for kicks. Return to the heat and add your cream, cheddar, and goat cheese. Stir well and let it all melt and blend. Taste for salt and add, if needed.

Sprinkle any remaining cheddar over the top along with parsley or scallions, and serve. If you want a little heat, try the Jalapeno Oil described below. Nom.

Jalapeno Oil

1 large jalapeno
1/2 cup flavorful olive oil
Parsley, scallions, garlic, whatever herb strikes your fancy

Put it all in a blender and whizzzzzz until everything's emulsified. Strain through cheesecloth or a fine-mesh sieve. Serve.

Off season cravings.

I must have put away at least 20 pounds of tomatoes this summer. One of my super-duper-favorite foods. Sliced, baked, roasted, pureed, cherry, heirloom, roma, whatevs, I love them all.

So it's always amusing to me when I get Cream of Tomato Souplust, because it's never during the summer, when it would be AWESOME. It's always Fall, often Winter, many times around Christmas. And once they start, they continue for months, and I pretty much eat a bowl a week (at least), with toast, or cheese sammiches, or Ritz.

So I'm left using canned 'maters to make this favorite soup. Which has made me a bit of a Canned Tomato fascist - to qualify for the Pot, you must:

Have no added herbs (I must have control! Aaaargh)
No added sugar
Little-to-no added salt
Minimal Citric Acid (which is often there to preserve redness, yeesh)

Hard to qualify, I know. Pomi used to be my brand of choice before moving South - but it's so damned expensive down here that I've had to explore other possibilities. And, once again, Trader Joe's saves the day by stocking organic, chopped tomatoes with little additives for less than I paid for Pomi up in NYC. So that's what I use. For everything red - pasta sauce, minestrone, lasagna, chili, all of it. Ah, TJ's, you make life easier.

Simple Winter Tomato Soup
6 servings, give or take

2 large cans chopped tomatoes, in juice, no additives
1 small can tomato paste (optional - just for thickness)
2 celery ribs
4 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion
6 cloves garlic
Dash white wine
5 fresh sage leaves
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1.5 tablespoons honey
1 2-cup veggie bouillion cube or 1.5 tablespoons salt
1.5 cups half and half or 1 cup heavy cream

Easy peasy!

Melt your butter in a small soup pot and add onion, celery, and garlic. Saute until celery softens, about 5 minutes.

Add your wine, stir, and cook 2 minutes. Add your tomatoes and juice, paste if using,  herbs, and bouillion cube. Stir well and cover. Bring to a simmer. Cook 45 minutes, stirring to prevent sticking.

Remove the rosemary and sage. Add you honey and taste for flavor. Salt should slightly dominate sweet. Remember that cream has a slight sweetness, so resist adding more honey.

Using an immersion blender if smoothness isn't a big deal, or a real blender if it is, puree the soup until smooth. In a blender, this will take 2-3 minutes, and you'll want to rinse out your pot before returning your pureed soup to it.

Ladle 2 large spoonfuls of soup into each bowl and carefully pour cream in a swirl over each serving (alternatively, you could just add all the cream to the soup in the pot and mix there. Swirls are pretty, though!). Serve with a starch of your choosing - toasty English muffins, cornbread, grilled cheese, it's all delish.