French Fridays with Dorie: Asparagus with Bits of Bacon

Oh my. Its been a month since I’ve posted anything. I have lots of excuses reasons for that,  work, busy, projects, blah, blah, blah. You get the idea. I did manage to make this week’s recipe – and how could I not since it includes my favorite ingredient, bacon and my favorite spring vegetable, asparagus. Asparagus is spring to me: I’ve picked the fresh sprouts directly from the ground in a childhood friend’s garden and I remember my mother showing me how to carefully clean and peel them (since the asparagus we got was generally gritty with sand and dirt). My favorite risotto was always a simple one of parmesan rice and asparagus, with asparagus stock as the base and lots of parmesan stirred in. The green stalks are going to find their way into a dish for my Easter guests: a primaverde pasta salad using some of the fresh vegetables I found at the farmers market this morning; arugula, cucumbers, fresh herbs, along with some slow roasted tomatoes.

Dorie’s recipe is very simple and lets the few ingredients shine. Steamed asparagus is dressed with a little lemon and oil, topped with bacon bits and onion. Fresh, tart, smokey and salty – very enjoyable flavors to go with just about any protein such as grilled or roasted pork, beef or chicken. Last night however I had a bag of shrimp to use up, so I improvised a Cajun inspired dish. Recipe is below and it includes some spiral sliced ham, so add it to your list of ways to use up Easter leftovers.

Notes:

Other Dorista’s who dislike raw onion, take note, the finely chopped onion was sauteed in a bit of bacon fat before tossing onto the asparagus.

I normally have thick cut bacon on hand, but instead I had a bit of leftover jowl bacon and some regular sliced center cut, so this bacon is a combination.

These thin asparagus were on sale at Food Lion this week for 1.49 a pound!! They were steamed, not blanched, for my version.

Cajun Shrimp Saute

2 lb raw shrimp, thawed if frozen, tail on or off

1 cup of chopped ham, or some other smoked pork product like sausage

2-3 teaspoons of Cajun spice or blackening spice

2-3 T bacon fat, or your choice of oil

1 medium onion, diced

3 stalks of celery, diced

1 bell pepper, diced

1-2 cloves of garlic, minced

Heat 1 teaspoon of oil in a large saute pan. Cook the onions and celery until soft, about 10 to 15 minutes. Add the bell pepper and garlic, cook another 5 minutes. Add ham and cook until heated. Remove these ingredients from pan and set aside. Heat rest of oil, add drained shrimp and Cajun spice. Saute until shrimp are cooked, around 3-5 minutes, add rest of cooked veggies and ham, mix together and serve immediately.

In the hopper is a post on the Oscar party we hosted in February and it includes recipes that I’ve promised my guests, so look forward to that one next.

French Fridays with Dorie: My Go-To Beef Daube

I didn’t want to let another week go by without making a recipe from Around My French Table. This month’s recipes so far have not been easy to adapt to a diet without  grains and legumes, and eating dairy only every other week.  In last week’s dish, the lentils really were the focus, even though it included roasted salmon and this week the onion biscuits look great, so I look forward to messing around with a paleo-ish low-carb gluten free version sometime in the future.

It might have been the last blast of cold weather earlier in the week, but on my trip to the store, the beef stew meat was looking particularly good. The thought of a comforting slow simmered stew to warm a cold night was too much to resist. While Dorie mentions in her recipe for My Go-To Beef Daube (a French beef stew) that you should buy a beef chuck roast and cut it into larger 2-3 inch cubes, I’ve successfully made similar long cooking beef stews with smaller 1-2 inch cubes.  Of course, by Wednesday when it was cooking, the weather had warmed back up. Ah, March in the South – t-shirt one day, hat and gloves the next.

The stew uses several items I’ve come to associate with French stewed meats: cooked bacon, which is then simmered with the meat, shallots and garlic, and a bottle of red wine as well as some Cognac. Dorie mentions using a fruitier wine, like a Syrah. I took this as a sign to use up party leftovers, three partial bottles of wine from the fridge, a Shiraz, a soft red, and an Australian sparking white. Side note: Did you know that some sparking wine is coming with re-sealable “corks” called Zorks? What a fantastic idea! When I popped the cap off the sparking white, it was still as bubbly as when it was opened. I poured myself a glass and put the rest in the pot.

Both D and I enjoyed the the stew, me perhaps a bit more. While it was browning, the pan  developed a wonderful dark patina that deglazed into the cognac and wine to form the base of the stew. It smelled great even uncooked. Once it had finished stewing for about 2.5 hours, D noted the “tangy” flavor of the wine as being more pronounced as the dish was consumed, something that put him off a bit (note we both had second helping though ). I loved the beefy-ness of it, without having used any beef stock of beef bullion, and thought the wine brought out the rich flavor of the beef very well. A few notes:

• We love bacon and I bought my favorite, jowl bacon, chunks of cured bacon made from the jowls of the pig, to use in this dish. I cut it in thick slices, and fried it until brown. The jowl bacon I buy has a milder, less smoky, less salty, taste than some other bacons and I prefer it for cooking stews.
• Given our love of pig, I left the bacon drippings in the pan to cook the beef and aromatics.
• I used the carrots (for flavor and for D), but not the parsnips. This is another good place for diakon radish chunks, if we’d had any in the house.
• Next time, given how long the stew cooks, I may just put in whole peeled garlic gloves rather than a halved head. The head broke apart, scattering the unpeeled cloves through the dish. It would have been difficult to remove them all even if we wanted to, but we would rather eat the peeled cloves than pick out peelings from between out teeth.
• I used my big daddy 13.5 quart Le Crueset, mainly because I had four pounds of beef and wanted to make sure the browning in batches did not take all night. I did not seal the top with foil, though in hindsight, perhaps I should have. Much of the liquid – really all wine, cooked off and I did have to add some water at the end to make the sauce. It tasted great regardless.

The French Fridays with Dorie cooking group cooks a recipe each week from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan. This week they made saint-germain-des-pres onion biscuits named for Dorie’s neighborhood in Paris, a wonderful blend of American pastry with French flavor.  French Fridays are not publishing recipes (though if you click on the link in the second paragraph, you’ll find the beef stew), but you can pick up a  copy of AMFT online, in bookstores, or take a peek via your local library.

French Fridays with Dorie: Onion Soup and Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux

Along with this week’s recipe for onion soup,  It seemed fitting to make roast chicken for les paresseux (lazy people) since I confessed to mostly being a mostly lazy cook in my post on Southwest Chicken. Both these recipes are simple, though browning onions for the soup requires both patience and attendance. It always seems to take forever for onions to turn nutty brown; often they soften and the bottom of the pan begins to go dark before they are sufficiently caramelized. I worked on another dish that required a lot of chopping (Thai Chicken Cups) while the onions and garlic took their sweet time getting dark enough to provide that deep sweet and savory flavor base to the other simple ingredients of wine and stock in the classic French onion soup.

The resulting soup was, in my initial opinion, not “beefy” enough. Which makes perfect sense given that Dorie uses chicken stock in the recipe. Somehow it didn’t quite meet my expectations even though recipes for French onion soup call for using all sorts of different stocks. I set the pan in the fridge to think over whether or not I would serve it as is, or add some beef bullion later. Several days passed where we ate out (do really good take-out hot wings count as eating out?) partly due to a heavy work schedule and partly to celebrating our Anniversary with dinner and taking in the live Portlandia show.

So once again, Thursday arrived and blog posting is Friday. Procrastination reigns! I threw together the ingredients for the roast chicken; an easy one with the herb garden still growing green all winter and the root veggies on hand. Then heated the soup. Whatever the result of the soup tasting, I knew from reading the other French Friday blogs that the lazy roast chicken was a winner. D’s soup was topped with Parmesan cheese, mine naked (no dairy for me the past two weeks, so I opted not to pick up any additional French aged cheses). The verdict: D loved the soup and after my first spoonful, I settled into enjoying the prominent flavor of the onion and wine, which may not have shone through a heavier beef stock. The chicken was tasty, fragrant with herbs and some sharpness from the garlic placed inside the body and in the pan. The vegetables roasted in pan juices brought back memories of Sunday roast dinners with my grandparents.

If I have any complaint about the chicken, its the length of cooking time and the oven temperature. I roasted at Dorie’s recommended 450 degrees, but cut the time from 90 minutes at  to 80 and even then I think I could have gone with 70 minutes. Generally when roasting chicken in my electric oven, I find that with the dry, even temperature, higher heat and longer cooking times just dry out the chicken meat. Next time I might stick with an upper temp of around 400 (usually I roast chicken at 375) or pull the chicken out after 70 minutes. Notes are below.

Onion Soup:

• You know by now that I had to modify the recipe a bit. I’m not eating grains, so no flour or bread slices. I used a tiny bit of xanthan as a thickener. But the amount of cooked onions seemed to thicken the soup well on its own.
• My pan was getting quite brown on the bottom, yet the onions themselves had not acquired that rich brown flavor the recipe called for, so I added half the wine in two stages to help deglaze the pan so it did not burn and allow the onions to keep browning.
• For serving, D dropped grated Parmesan directly on top. I went with plain soup.

Chicken:

• I used about 1/3 cup wine and 1/3 cup water, even so, the wine did burn a bit on the sides of the pan – but the pan juices did not seem too affected.
• Once again diakon radish cut in half moons substituted for potatoes we don’t eat. With the open pan roasting, they acquired a nice brown color from the wine and pan juices.
• I used the option of a quartered onion, but given that we served this with onion soup, the shallot option would have been nice (If I had any on hand!!)

Every week the French Fridays with Dorie group cooks up a recipe from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan. We don’t publish recipes, but trust me investing in a copy of this cookbook is well worth it.

Thai Chicken Lettuce Cups

It’s not unusual in Kitchen Mayhem to find myself in the middle of cooking dinner, a dinner I’ve thought over, using a cookbook or ingredient to inspire, only to find that half the ingredients I need are not in the pantry. Things get lost in there; this kitchen is larger than many I’ve had over the years, but despite that, there is never enough storage for the equipment, the china, the ingredients. They all fight one another for space and lately the food is losing. Cans piled upon cans, bags and boxes and bits of things left from a dozen different meals. Compounding the problem, I’ve joined a couple of big box discount stores in the last three years and how do you pass up sales on two for one cases of organic canned diced tomatoes, I ask? Sigh. Generally, I follow the “use it, replace it” rule: the next grocery trip replaces whatever items were used so we always have certain “basics” on hand. Of course, our basics include things like kaffir lime leaves, tree ear mushrooms, three kinds of paprika, diet tonic water, and gelatin packets.  Even with a list, it’s inevitable that something will be forgotten.

Which brings us back to the Thai Chicken Cups; I had planned to make a something like a cross between the Asian chicken lettuce cups at PF Chang’s and larb/lob, a Southeast Asian ground meat dish using some Thai seasonings, chunks of chicken thigh, and a few additions like water chestnuts, green onions and celery. Well, that is until half those things were missing. It does remind me though that good food can be cooked from the most basic of ingredients. Below, you’ll see a list of optional ingredients that will enhance the flavor, but if left out, will still result in a dinner or lunch with a nice balance of salty, tart, savory and sweet.

Thai Chicken Lettuce Cups

8-10 skinless boneless chicken thighs, or the equivalent in chicken breasts, or ground chicken

1/4 cup tamari (a strong fermented soy sauce made without wheat), if you use another type of soy sauce you made need to add more to get the same flavor.

juice of one lime, or half a lemon if limes are not available

1-2 Tablespoons of Thai red curry paste, depending on how much chili heat you enjoy (if you prefer milder food, substitute an additional clove of chopped garlic and about 2 teaspoons of chopped or grated fresh ginger)

1 clove garlic, chopped fine

1 Tablespoon of fish sauce

2 cups of any of the following: onion – chopped small, green onion – white and green parts chopped, celery – chopped small, water chestnut – whole or slices chopped, grated carrot, shredded cabbage

1 teaspoon of sesame seeds

white pepper and salt (if needed) to taste

few sprinkles of xanthan,  or an appropriate amount of another thickening agent as needed

fresh cilantro leaves

1 large head of fresh whole lettuce leaves, bib, butter or leaf lettuce are best

1-2 Tablespoons of a neutral tasting oil for cooking: coconut, light olive, canola, etc.

Optional:

If you cut back on the red curry paste, add additional finely chopped garlic and fresh ginger root

2 finely chopped Kaffir lime leaves, add at end

Siracha sauce or other hot sauce as a garnish to bring up the heat level

Sprouts: mung bean, sunflower, broccoli or other micro greens add nice texture

Chop the raw chicken into small (1/2 inch or less) pieces. If you don’t enjoy handling raw chicken, you can chop it by pulsing in batches in the large bowl of a food processor. Do not pluse the meat too much or it will turn to paste. Pre-ground chicken meat works well too. Mix the soy sauce, curry paste, lime/lemon juice, garlic and fish sauce in a small bowl. Place the chicken in a bowl (or in a plastic bag) pour the seasoning blend over and mix well to coat all the chicken. Marinate for at least an hour in the fridge, up to overnight. Heat the oil in a saute pan or wok, briefly cook the 2 cups of vegetables in the hot oil (especially the onion to mellow the flavor), for about 5 minutes or less stirring to prevent any browning. Add the seasoned chicken and cook until no longer raw, but tender. Add enough thickening agent while stirring to the juices in the pan to thicken slightly. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Serve with lettuce and cilantro. Spoon chicken into leaves of lettuce, top with cilantro and fold leaves around to form a cup or taco shell shape for eating. Don’t spoon in too much chicken – cups should be able to be eaten in one or two bites.

Southwest Lime Chicken

Despite all the Frenchie recipes and the occasional elaborate dinner, at home I’m actually a lazy cook.  And the good thing about this eating plan is that being lazy really works. Can only eat 1/2 cup of vegetables? Why cook more than one veggie? Need to cook dinner? Toss a roast in the oven! The only problem so far is what I’ll call “Grocery List Bigger than Plan Syndrome.” My stomach, and to some degree my brain, has adjusted to eating smaller, measured amounts of veggies and fruits. (And I do find myself eating less, since there is nothing worse on the digestion than over eating protein.) But the grocery shopping me can’t quite understand that it will take me two weeks to eat four avocados…and by then they will be mushy black lumps only fit for the compost. Or that the five pound bag of Brussels sprouts is the equivalent of 3 weeks worth of veggie sides!

So, despite being a bit lazy we’ve been eating well. Friday night a week ago, D feted my return to eating regular meals with a perfectly rare beef rump roast along with oven roasted asparagus spears wrapped with bacon.  Saturday I made Southwest Chicken (recipe below) topped with avocado with a side of pan grilled bell peppers, Sunday morning avocado found its way onto a pepper/ham/asparagus omelet, then this past weeks Around My French Table recipe for mussels finished off a restful weekend, and Monday night I composed a small romaine lettuce and red pepper salad with leftover chicken, hard boiled eggs, avocado with a simple Dorie inspired vinaigrette (olive oil, sherry vinegar, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper).

Anyone in the Raleigh area want a perfectly ripe avocado?  You can use it to top this easy Southwest Lime Chicken.

Southwest Lime Chicken

8 chicken thighs – boneless skinless for a quick meal, bone in skin on for more flavor but longer cooking time

2 teaspoons of southwest spice mix or spice rub (I use one from Whole Foods called “Tequila Lime Seasoning” which contains neither tequila or lime – but a blend of chili powder, cumin, garlic, onion, salt, parsley, plus a little lemon and citric acid. You can make your own with a recipe like this one from Food.com)

Juice of two limes

additional salt or pepper as needed

1-2 tablespoons of oil for cooking the chicken – I’m using coconut oil for cooking since it takes high heat well.

Avocado slices for topping chicken

Sprinkle the spice rub on all sides of the chicken. Place in a plastic bag or bowl. Pour lime juice over chicken pieces and marinate for at least an hour, or up to two. When done marinating, heat oil in saute pan, add chicken. Cook on each side until done. For boneless skinless thighs, this will take about 15 minutes. For bone-in skin on, cook skin side down first, brown, then flip cook 5 more minutes and place in 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes until juices run clear when poked with a knife. Deglaze cooking pan with about 1/4 cup of water to make a spicy pan sauce to drizzle over the thighs. Top with ripe avocado slices.

French Fridays with Dorie: Mussels and Chorizo

This recipe for mussels and chorizo was eagerly anticipated this week – I was privileged to get to pick the seafood recipe from Around My French Table that the French Friday group would be cooking this month. But mixed in with the excitement was a bit of trepidation; I order mussels all the time in restaurants and love them, but I don’t think I’ve cooked them at home since the late 80′s (oh my) when I discovered that our local Asia Mart brought in fresh mussels to sell every Friday.

Living in a landlocked part of the country, the only really good fresh seafood to be found was either priced out of my budget, or consisted of locally caught freshwater fish like lake trout or perch.  And as D points out those latter items are not seafood. “Its not from the sea.”  Smarty pants. But that’s what I get for living with someone born and raised near to a coastline. And even though I want to rush in and defend the great fish I grew up eating (Smelt! Eat them tails!), I have to admit, in the end, one of the reasons I moved here was that finding and eating good fresh seafood in all its forms is simply a given; from shrimpers selling on the side of road with a hand made sign out of a pickup truck with the tailgate down, to the uber-fresh tuna in the grocery store, to the packs of “spot” from your friend the seasonal angler who simply can’t fit another bag in the spare freezer in the garage.

So back to those mussels. This was also a great opportunity to try out the 5 pound bags of mussels our local Costco brings in on the weekends along with crab, clams in the shell, fresh shrimp, lobster tails, scallops, and salmon. The mussels are Canadian and farmed, and while I like buying local seafood, and do my best to do so, I must admit I also like the Costco price of $1.99 a pound. In the freezer I had a couple of links of leftover Spanish chorizo, the firm, slightly smokey, spiced pork sausages that you might find flavoring a rice dish like paella. And all the rest of the ingredients like garlic, thyme, peppers, tomatoes, are things we keep on hand – what an easy dish for us!

I’m glad Dorie mentions in the Around My French Table recipe for moules mariniere (fisherman’s mussels) a few pages prior to this one, that she uses whatever white wine she has on hand or open in the fridge and sometimes goes with a softer white, one that’s not “exceedingly dry.” I love recipes that use up the odds and ends of wine that always seem to be left in our fridge after a party.  In this case, I ended up with a mix of about one-third white zinfandel and two-thirds vino verde, both softer but still dry.

The dish went quick, as long as you ignore the point at which I realized my 5.5 quart Le Creuset was not going to fit the 5 pounds mussels and had to switch to the “big daddy” pot, the 13 quart. At some point, I’d love to have a dutch oven of an in between size, since “big daddy” weighs more than 20 pounds empty (still coming in slightly smaller than their 15 quart “goose pot,” but not by much!) and the whole pot won’t fit in our sink for washing!  (yet another reason to remodel the kitchen ) After switching out the pans, sauteing the vegetables and aromatics, tossing in the chopped chorizo, adding the washed mussels and then the wine might have taken all of 20 minutes total, plus 5 more for the steaming.

I’ll admit, I scrubbed and picked over the mussels extra carefully, making sure they were clean and not broken, but really trying to make my fingers reach for some distant physical memory of those oh so long ago bivalves that would fire my cooking synapses and reminded me this recipe was going just as expected. In the end, it eluded me, but I tossed the tightly closed shells in the pot, then the wine, shut the lid and hoped for the best.

Worrying was all for naught; the shells opened up beautifully. The sauce was piquant with wine and tomatoes, but not too sharp, mellowed by the sweet mussel juices, onions, peppers. The chorizo added a smoky salty flavor with just the right touch of spice. The thyme was subtle. D bumped chicken with cognac out of first place and declared this one the best Dorie recipe yet, and I have to agree.

If you are so inclined, check out what the other chefs had to say about this recipe at French  Fridays and since we are not publishing recipes, you should check out Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan where ever good books are sold.

Homemade Chicken Soup for Body and Soul

Today is my last day of the two week healthy eating kick-off. I’ve been thinking of it as a re-boot. Shut things down, start them up fresh, let go of what you were doing before and look ahead (but not too far ahead – got to focus on one thing at a time!). As a refresher, for the past two weeks I’ve been eating a calorie and carb restricted meal plan consisting of three whey protein shakes (any two meals and a snack) and a single meal consisting of protein, measured amounts of vegetables and fruit and some additional fat like butter or a little cheese. It allows for some low carb grain products in very limited amounts, like a single low carb tortilla, or 3-4 gluten free crackers, etc. For the most part I skipped those items, but then, on Tuesday after being sick for 4 days, I got it into my head to have a toasted low carb tortilla with a bit of butter to have with my hearty chicken soup I’d been eating to fend off all those microbes.  The recipe for the soup is below, it’s a favorite, even with D who often says he’s not a soup fan, but more of a stew fan. This one is hearty and chunky enough to be called a stew; adding a bit more stock makes it more of a soup – your choice.

Back to that tortilla. I’m not sure of your spiritual leanings, but some folks read a lot into common occurrences as signaling some divine message (whichever divinity that might be).  I do this myself on occasion since its never a bad thing in my mind to have a little extra help in a chaotic world.  But you know what happens in many of those stories as well as I, the listener ignores the message.  You may think you know where this is going, but no, no sign of the face of God or Goddess on my tortilla. Unless of course you count that I burned the heck out of it. Not, oh-it’s-a-little-charred-let-me-scrape-that-off-and-eat-it-burnt.  We’re talkin’ flames. On FIRE. Completely black and on fire inside the toaster oven!  I actually thought for a brief moment that I might be able to just blow out the fire and toss it on the compost pile. Then I had a sickening moment as I grabbed a hot pad, hastily opened the door, yanked out the little pan with my tortilla on it and tossed it under running water that I realized I had no idea where our fire extinguisher was and even if I could find it would it be working after all these years and would baking soda work on a burning toaster oven the way it does on a grease fire?  Thankfully, while the oven was utterly blackened by soot from the charcoal-ized tortilla, the appliance itself, being mostly metal, was not actually on fire.  It was however, toast.

If you’ve never burned a tortilla, really burnt one up, go try it now. (Kidding. It’s that reaction like when someone says, “Ugh this smells awful”  and shoves it at you saying, “Here, try it.”). It smells worse than any other burn smell I can think of at the moment. There was no way I was going to try and scrub out the soot and risk re-heating that toaster oven to release that evil.  So, we’re in the market for a new small toaster oven. Not the worst thing ever: the toaster and timer setting broke a long time ago. And we’ll be picking up a new fire extinguisher as well.  After opening all the doors downstairs, then gently toasting another tortilla in a cast iron pan on the stove, the normal way (Sigh. was it that hard to go the extra step and get out a pan?), I sat down to a nice, if late, lunch.

Here’s the part where the sign comes in. My stomach was upset all night. I do have mild wheat and rye intolerance/allergy. I can eat things with it in them, and most of the time it causes little trouble, though as I always say, I feel better overall when wheat is not on the menu.  After not eating it for about 12 days however my body was not happy with this tortilla working its way through my gut. I was already feeling crummy and then tossed and turned with stomach pains and bloating all night.  Should have just counted myself lucky with that fire and ate my soup. It’s with this that I’m looking forward to the next several weeks and possibly the next few months (depending on my goals and how the tests go) of eating a dairy and grain free low carb diet.

For an overview, the next two weeks of the plan (starting Friday) are three meals a day of 1)any kind of protein in reasonable amounts for one’s body mass, but not measured, 2) small measured amounts of low carb high nutrient vegetables, 3) healthy fats which includes animal, olive, avocado, nut, 4) some very limited types and amounts of fruit, and additional proteins and fats as needed if I get hungry between meals.  It’s effectively a so called “paleo” eating plan focused on the kinds of foods our hunter-gather ancestors would have survived on and our bodies evolved to eating.  There are some exceptions during this phase, since the detoxing/de-fatting of the liver and other vital organs is well underway, you can add back a cup of caffeinated beverage daily (which I don’t plan to add in) and 2 measured low carb alcoholic drinks per week total .  Clearly, still very limited in what you can add back in at this point, but having done that work to get off all of it including the added calories and carbs, its worth being careful about indulgences. Alcohol in particular – in social settings it can trigger an urge to eat more or eat things you didn’t plan to (as every late night grocery frozen pizza eater knows.)

Having been away from the low carb community for a while (while still low carbing), one thing that has blossomed is the entire paleo and primal eating movement.  Its always been around, but it’s gotten more mainstream (read accessible and adaptable). Picking around blogs this week in anticipation of where this eating plan is going, as well as searching for things like “gluten free tortilla recipes,” I’ve come across a lot of new and helpful info on getting the junk out of your everyday diet.  But things seem to have come even further along with all the inspiriting recipes, blogs, cookbooks and products out there to bake and cook gluten-free. There are a number of interesting gluten free low carb flour substitutes made of nuts, coconut and low carb grains that chefs were just beginning to experiment with when I ventured away from the online and low carb blogosphere.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be adding some new blog links to a separate section on Low Carb/Paleo/Gluten Free.  There’s nothing I like better than home cooks being inventive!

I hope this won’t turn off any of my French Friday/Dorie Greenspan readers: I’ve been cooking without sugar for a long time, and doing very limited baking even when I was baking sugar free and low carb. Once the more restrictive phases of this eating plan are behind me, I’ll be able to experiment with some of the new techniques and ingredients and hopefully be able to join in the desserts and sides in Around My French Table, as well as other blogs, with some grain-free adaptations.  Meanwhile, here’s my homemade chicken soup to help cure what ails ya.

Homemade Chicken Soup for Body and Soul

This is a two-step soup; making a stock, then making the soup itself.  I usually make them at separate times, freezing the stock for making soup at a later time, but it’s possible to make them over one day if you start first thing in the AM.

Make your stock:

Every good soup starts with a homemade stock. Mine tends to evolve in the freezer over time: I collect up onion peelings and trimmings, carrot peelings, ends and tops of celery, and parsley stems in a freezer bag. In another bag I collect up all the unneeded chicken parts: necks, backs, wing tips, carcasses left from roasts. When I have about a bag of each, I get out the big crock pot, dump in all the veggies and chicken parts, add a couple of garlic cloves and a few black peppercorns and then cover the parts with water – about 3 quarts or more.  Don’t simply add more water to make more stock – it just dilutes the flavor.  Ideally you are aiming for a stockpot full of parts and scraps, covered with enough water so that it circulates around the flavorings and bones. Most slow cooker directions suggest you should thaw frozen items before cooking, so you avoid any bacteria and subsequent toxin buildup when the outside cooks and the inside is cold/lukewarm. Unless all your items have frozen into a solid 5 pound block, I don’t usually bother to thaw them out.  However, to be on the safe side, thaw raw chicken parts in the fridge before making the stock. Let the stock simmer for 8 hours on low. Strain off all the vegetables, bones, any remaining meat bits, etc. and discard them. If you want a really clear clean stock, strain the remaining liquid through cheesecloth or a coffee filter draped in a strainer. I filter mine through a Chemex brand coffee filter fitted inside a large strainer. Depending on the size of your batch, it might take two coffee filters – the upside is that the Chemex filter tends to strain out much of the fat which you can then choose to save for other uses or toss.  Another option is to cool the stock overnight in the fridge: the stock should have turned mostly gelatinous when cold. The fat can be scraped off the top and most of the particulate will have settled to the bottom where it can be ignored/discarded.  You will end up with anywhere from 3-4.5  quarts of stock, depending on the starting amounts of chicken and veggies.

Make your soup

1 whole roasting chicken, 2.5 pounds or so (you can use a pre-cut one, but why pay more?)

½ onion, chopped  or  1 leek, tough leaves and tops removed, then sliced finely and washed a second time to remove any remaining grit

5 oz mushrooms, sliced. I prefer baby bellas/cremini

4 stalks of celery, about 1-1.5 cups chopped

1 small/ ½ large diakon radish, cut in quarters length-wise, then chopped. You should end up with about 1.5 cups

2 garlic cloves, peeled and cut in half, NOT chopped

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper

Additional water if needed

Place the chicken in a soup pot large enough to fit the chicken covered with stock. Pour in your stock, if you don’t have enough you may add enough additional water to cover the chicken, then toss in the bay leaf along with some salt.  Cook the chicken until tender, and can easily be pulled off the bone – but not until it has lost all its flavor and turns to mush.  Pull out the entire carcass/parts and cool until they can be handled.  While this is cooling, re-strain your stock. [Yes, this is labor intensive.  You could have just cooked some chicken and put it in your already cooked stock, but I’m telling you it won’t taste as good.]  Sauté your onions/leeks, mushrooms and celery in a tablespoon of olive oil or butter in a sauté pan (or the bottom of the empty stock pot if you have not poured the stock back in). Cook until wilted, but not browned, then add to the stock. Add the chopped diakon and garlic halves. Put soup on a low simmer. Pick all the meat off the chicken bones and discard the skin and bones. Tear or chop the larger pieces or meat so they are more bite sized, but still chunky.  At this point you can determine how stew or soup-like your chicken soup will be. I like a ratio of about 1/2 – 2/3 chicken and veggies to stock. This is quite a bit more hearty than your average soup, so you may choose to set aside some of the chicken meat to use in another dish.  Check the soup for saltiness, add salt as needed. Add pepper to taste.  Check the doneness of the veggies – they should be tender, but still hold their shape. Add the chicken meat at the end.  Serve. Freeze remainder for the next cold/flu outbrerak.

Stocking up.