As winter drudges on I find myself spending my lunch hour curled up by a space heater at my desk oggling photo after photo of soup on pinterest. One recipe in particular kept stopping me in my tracks, a cluster of vegetable based soups in bright technicolor that promised to detoxify my liver. Since I have been forced to adhere to high carb diet, our pantry was stocked with sweet potatoes so I thought I’d try my luck with this alluring orange number.
I’ll cut straight the chase on this one before we dive into the particulars. When you see a bowl of food this beautiful that also promises to rid your body of any number of toxins, the author probably hasn’t actually eaten it. If they have, I’m not really sure what their definition of “soup” is. I will categorize this more as “healthy” mashed potatoes, a little too sweet for my tastes with a one note flavor that had me fantasizing about Hearty Cheeseburger Soup by the time I’d made it through a quarter of the bowl. Yeah, thats right, Hearty Cheeseburger Soup.
We made a few alterations to the original recipe as we went along, the most important of which was the cook time and temperature of the vegetables. The original recipe called to cook for 20 minutes at 329*, which after the timer went off I realized was completely insane. We upped the temperature and roasted for an additional 40 minutes. I’d recommend starting off at 400* and roasting for an hour at a minimum.
In the end I wish we had introduced more liquid and more heat to the soup. A little cayenne went a long way on making it more palatable, and I wish I had had the foresight to blend in more stock or coconut milk to improve the consistency. Overall I think it is a promising base that, while easy on the eyes, could use a bit of massaging before I’d recommend it as a memorable soup.
Fresh parsley, 1 teaspoon coconut milk, to garnish
Instructions
Heat the oven to 400*
Line a baking sheet with baking paper, add the sweet potato, carrots, parsnip, onion, and garlic, season with salt, chili, turmeric, and cumin, add the coconut oil and toss to combine.
Roast for 1 hour then transfer into the blender.
Add the warm vegetable broth, grated ginger, and cooked red lentils into the blender and process to obtain a smooth cream.
Sometimes it’s -4 degrees outside and the majority of the food in your posession is the very stale loaf of bread on your counter. Transform your odds and ends into this comfort food hit packed with kale!
¼ cup dried shitaake mushrooms (rehydrated in red wine)
1 tblsp truffle oil
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cut the bread into 1″ cubes and place in a large mixing bowl.
In a small saucepan, melt the butter and carmelize the onion.
While your are carmelizing the onion, beat eggs until they are a creamy yellow. Add buttermilk, truffle oil, salt, pepper, dill, and red pepper and whisk until incorporated.
Add carmelized onion, kale, rehydrated mushrooms, and goat cheese to the bread. Toss until evenly incorporated and move bread mixture into a heavy baking dish (we used a dutch oven).
Pour egg mixture over bread and bake covered for one hour.
½ tsp ground nutmeg, to taste (I used freshly grated)
½ tsp salt
2⅔ cups all-purpose flour
For Glaze
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
maple syrup for thinning
Instructions
Set oven to 350F
Melt the butter. Beat in the oil, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla until everything is well mixed.
Sift in the dry ingredients and mix until just blended. Do not over mix.
Grease donut pan and spoon batter into a large ziplock baggie, and cut off a ½ inch tip from one corner and pipe the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 15 minutes until risen and cooked through, you can use a toothpick to check. They will still be pale, so don’t judge by the color.
Let the doughnuts cool for a couple of minutes before removing them to a cooling rack.
Make the glaze by slowly adding maple syrup to the sugar to achieve a thick glaze texture. You can always adjust the glaze by adding more sugar or more syrup. Add the extract and stir well.
While the doughnuts are still slightly warm, dip them into the glace, headfirst, and give them a little twist as you raise them up out of the bowl. Set them, glaze side up, on the rack to dry.
Enjoy quickly, these beauties are best the day of!
We’ve made a tradition of staying in on Valentine’s Day, avoiding the crowds and lousy pre fixe menus and using the day as an excuse to splurge on food we ordinarily wouldn’t buy. This year we spotted a few pounds of duck breast at Wild Purveyors and decided to keep it simple with a recipe that left ample time to enjoy a couple ChefSteps chocolate soufflés.
I used the cook time and temp that Polyscience recommended for the duck breast. Once we pulled it from the bath, Ed crosscut the thick fat layer and seared it on high for a few minutes rendering out some of the fat. We tossed the dried sour cherries in the duck fat with a bit of balsamic and used that as a glaze for sliced duck. Please note: a little goes a long way with the cherry glaze, but sure not to go overboard and mask the great flavor in texture of the duck. We also plated the dish with a few leaves of baby arugula and a sprinkle of goat cheese for added depth.
The duck was great, but the real star of the night were the soufflés we made from a favorite ChefSteps recipes. I recommend that you if you haven’t tried these, you make them immediately (again and again and again). Some of the commenters seemed to take issue with the amount of salt used in the original recipe, but I’m sticking with the experts on this one and vouch for the original ingredients.
A simple preparation that lets the natural flavor and texture of the duck breast shine. The sour cherry glaze provides a great contrast to the tender duck. A decadent meal for a night in.
Author: Disturbing the Peas
Recipe type: Entree
Serves: 2 servings
Ingredients
1 duck breast
1 pinch salt
1 pinch pepper
2 tbls dried sour cherries
2 tbls balsamic vinegar
1 tblsp goat cheese
1 handful baby arugula
Instructions
Set immersion circulator to 57C
Once water bath is up to temperature, salt and pepper duck breast, seal in a vaccuum bag, and cook for 45 minutes
After duck breast has been submerged for 45
In the dripping from the turkey breast, combine cherries and balsmic and reduce slightly
Slice breast into ¼" slices, top with cherry glaze and sprinkle with goat cheese
