Carrot Soup

This was an unusually good carrot soup, and incredibly simple, so I just wanted to record it so I remember what it was.

Ingredients

• 1 lb carrots, peeled and chopped into 2-3" pieces (large parts quartered)
• 1 small onion, roughly chopped
• 1 tsp dried ginger, or 1 tbsp fresh, minced
• 2c chicken stock
• 1 tbsp butter
• olive oil
• salt

Preheat the oven to 375. Toss the carrots in some olive oil, then roast for 60 minutes, flipping them about half-way through.

When those are nearly done, start the onion sauteing with the butter. When the onion is soft (and possibly a little caramelized), add some ginger. Then toss it around a minute or two. Then add the carrots and the chicken stock. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes.

Let the soup cool, then blend until smooth, adding more water as necessary. Return to the pot and salt to taste.

Thoughts: Very simple recipe, but the soup is really good, and very carroty. I wonder if it couldn't handle like 1/2tsp sugar, though, to bring out the sweetness in the carrots.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Blueberry Cherry Bourbon Barbecue Sauce

Ingredients:
1 cup fresh blueberries
1 cup fresh cherries
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp ketchup
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup bourbon
1/4 brown sugar
1/2 tsp cayenne, maybe more
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder

Combine everything in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes, until the blueberries have burst and the sauce has thickened. Blend it all using a stick blender. Put it on things. Eat those things.

Thoughts: Pretty legit.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Buttermilk Dressing

This is borrowed from Food52.com

Ingredients:
1/4 cup buttermilk
2/3 cup plain, non-Greek style yogurt
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
3 tbsp minced vidalia onion
1/4 cup olive oil
garlic, as much as you want
salt, as much as seems reasonable
pepper, all the pepper

Stir everything together.

Thoughts: We served it with a pretty legit corn/dill/cucumber/feta salad, and also used it to bind together cole slaw. Make it! It's delicious!

Disaster Index: 1/10

Watermelon Gazpacho

It's been forever since we've had time or inclination to put up any new recipes. But this isn't the first time we've made watermelon gazpacho, so I thought it was high time I blog this sucker. Maybe we'll get back into posting our recipes here.

Ingredients for the Soup

• 2 lbs of seedless watermelon, roughly chopped.
• Three medium tomatoes, stem bits removed, roughly chopped.
• 3c of crusty bread, crusts removed, rough chop
• A cucumber, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1/2c water
• 1/4c basil
• 1/4c mint
• 1/4c cilantro
• 1/4c olive oil
• 1 shallot, roughly chopped
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1.5 tsp salt
• Somewhere between 1/2 and 1 tsp of adobo seasoning (or just 1/2 tsp of cumin)

Ingredients for the Basil Oil

• Didn't realize we were going to get fancy, did you?
• 1/4c basil
• 1/4 olive oil
• Salt  & pepper to taste

Garnish

• Some little bits of cubed tomato, watermelon, avocado, and/or feta.

This is a pretty easy recipe, and the results are fantastic. So basically, blend together the basil oil ingredients in a blender, then set aside and rinse out the blender (doesn't need to be totally clean). Toss all of the soup ingredients into a bowl and let them sit for a little while (5, 10 minutes) and then blend those, too (in batches if you have to). Set in the fridge to chill for 20 minutes, then adjust seasonings.

To serve, pour some soup in a bowl and top with the garnishes and drizzle with basil oil. If you want to be really fancy, you could serve this as a shooter, actually, or you could put a pile of the garnishes in the center of a plate and pour some soup around it. But we weren't as concerned about that.

Thoughts: This is remarkably easy. It's good for summer, since it's like 97 degrees out and who wants to cook? And it's refreshing. I guess it took a little while to put together, bit if you make a smaller portion it wouldn't have to take very long. Honestly, you could skip the basil oil and just use some basil in the garnish. That would also mean you can dirty fewer dishes, and you can just toss ingredients into the blender as you go.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Swedish Meatballs

Ingredients

• 8oz ground pork
• 12oz ground beef
• 2 slices sandwich bread
• 1/3c milk
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped finely
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 5tbsp butter
• scant 1/4c flour
• 2c beef stock
• sour cream

Saute the onion in a tablespoon of butter until translucent and starting to brown a bit, about 5-8 minutes. Meanwhile, in the bowl of a food processor, add the bread (torn up) and the milk so that it can soak. You can also add the salt, cardamom, and nutmeg right now.

When the onions are done sauteing, add to the milk/bread mixture and toss the meat in there and the egg. Pulse the mixture until it comes together. You will probably need a spoon to kind of turn the mixture every so often between pulses.

Melt the remaining 4 tbsp butter in a wide saute pan (you can reuse the one you used for the onions). Form the meatballs to be about 1-2tbsp in size, placing them in the butter as you go. Keep the heat low-ish so that they sizzle a little but don't splatter. Also you don't want to burn the butter. Don't crowd the pan, you're going to have to do a couple batches. Turn the meatballs as they cook until they're pretty well browned. You don't need to cook them through at this stage. When you're done, fish them out and put them aside on a plate or cookie sheet and continue cooking the other batches until you've done all of them.

When the meatballs are done, set aside. In the pan, add the flour and whisk around in the remaining grease. Then add the beef stock and continue to whisk as you bring it to a simmer, scraping up the bottom of the pan.

When the gravy comes to a simmer, re-add all of the meatballs. Turn heat to low and cover the pan to cook for another 8-10 minutes. Then you can add sour cream to the gravy (if you're feeling decadent) - go for about 1/3c, tops, though.

Serve with mashed potatoes, black pepper, and lingonberry jam.

Thoughts: Nailed it. We really wanted comfort food tonight, and I think we did it. This is probably our most successful meatball recipe yet, also. This makes enough to feed about 4, but we made it for 2 with a lot of leftovers, as it should be.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Pan-Seared Duck with Cherry-Port Reduction

A fitting 350th post! This was the inaugural dish for using our new Wusthoff steak knives (thanks Paul and Erin!) and it was also New Year's Eve, so we kinda went all out. This was actually the second course (after a cream-based oyster stew from Saveur) but I kind of procrastinated on that, and I know we made some significant modifications but I can no longer remember what they were. I may blog it anyway and kind of make it up. That's the kind of quality you can expect at DCCDI.

All of this was served with some rustic bread and truffle butter. We're so fancy.

Edit: I guess this is the 350th post, but not the 350th PUBLISHED post. We have 9 unpublished drafts. Whatever. It's still impressive.

Ingredients

• duck breasts
• 1/2c pitted cherries. We used sour cherries, which I think is better, though some use sweet.
• 2tbsp tawny port
• 1tbsp honey
• one small-medium shallot, finely chopped
• 1/2c chicken broth
• salt

Start out by preparing the duck breasts. Take a sharp knife and score the skin side in a diamond pattern. You're aiming to cut all the way through the skin without cutting through the meat. Do this across the entire duck breast. Pat the duck breasts dry.

Preheat the oven to 400. Now take a clean, dry pan. Place the breasts in the pan, and put over medium or medium-low heat. I know, right? The thing is that you want to render the fat out of the skin so you have a really crisp skin, and that takes a lower heat. So what you do is cook the breasts on the skin side for 15-20 minutes over this low heat. As the pan fills with duck fat (and it will SEVERAL times), you should pour that off into a separate container - you'll want to save that. You don't want too much more than 1/8" of fat in the bottom of the pan at any time. Also, move the breasts around from time to time so they don't burn and so they brown evenly.

Once they're a deep golden brown on the skin side (and 115* on a thermometer, apparently, though we eyeballed it) you want to flip them to the non-skin side and cook for 30 seconds. Flip them BACK to the skin side and pop them in the oven for about 5 minutes (in the pan if you're using stainless steel or cast iron). You're aiming for an internal temperature of 125, though we just did 5 minutes. Take the duck breasts off the pan and put them on a rack to rest (or at least set them aside on another plate).

Now create the sauce. You should pour off all the remaining duck fat in the pan so you have just enough to cook the shallots. Toss the shallots in there and cook until they're getting translucent, then add everything else (cherries, port, honey, broth). Bring to a simmer and reduce to a glaze, then salt to taste.

Thoughts: We didn't hit "rare" for the duck, or even a "medium rare," but more like a "medium." Which was fine, though - the duck was still fantastic. The skin was really delicious (so success there) and the duck was still tender and flavorful. I was surprised how easy this was. When I get duck in a restaurant, they usually sear it quickly rather than with this method, so the layer of fat on top is actually quite thick - I think I like this method more, actually, because you can theoretically get that crisp duck skin and still have rare or medium-rare duck. We just need to work on the timing. Also, the steak knives made short work of this. A testament to our cooking skills, or the sharpness of the knives? Not sure.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Naan

We were making Chicken Tikka Masala (from Cook's magazine - awesome recipe!) and needed something to go with it. So instead of rice, we went for naan.

Ingredients

• 2 tsp yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2c warm water
• 2.5-3c flour (until the dough is about right so it doesn't stick to absolutely everything - we did about 2.5c then used an extra 1/2c for kneading
• 1tsp salt
• garlic powder (we used like 1/2-1tsp), or any other flavorings you might want
• 1/4c vegetable oil
• 1/3c greek yogurt (we used nonfat and it worked perfectly)
• 1 egg

Combine water, sugar, and yeast. Set aside. Combine all the other ingredients except the flour, then add the water/yeast/sugar mixture. Mix well, then add about 2.5c flour and fold together with a wooden spoon or your hands or whatever. Turn out onto a counter and knead for 3 minutes, adding as much flour as necessary to make this possible. Grease the bowl you were using originally and toss the dough back in there. Let it rise for about 45 minutes to an hour.

Now, without punching the whole thing down, grab a chunk of dough (as large as you want to make the naan - about 3" diameter will make about a 6" naan) and press / roll it out to about 1/4" thick. Spray a frying pan with cooking spray (you REALLY don't want too much oil here!) and heat until just smoking, then add the naan. You can kind of start the pan heating while you roll out the naan. Anyway, once the naan is on the pan, turn it to low and cook for 3-4 minutes, then flip it and do the same. You can flip it early if you think the naan is getting browned a little early - it will depend on how hot your stove is. If you flip it TOO early, you can always re-brown that side (we did this several times). Repeat with the remaining dough. sprinkle with salt as they come off the pan.

Thoughts: The texture of these was really great. I think they could have used a bit more salt, personally, and I think Claire agrees with me on that. In the future, it would be cool to add chopped chives or something. But otherwise, these turned out great. I would do this again.

Disaster Index: 1/10