Make great soup from the odds and ends of your kitchen
The vacmaster is great in all but one way. You know the feeling that you should save scraps of stuff to make soup with later, that gets worse. a lot worse.
We cleaned out the freezer and found about a year’s worth of badly labeled and mystery bags of potential soup bases and finally tried it. There’s some country ham and barley stock, some cheese rinds, some ends of rye bread, carrot solids, pear juice, beef bones, country ham ends, etc.
We had some duck leftover from Valentimes Day, so that was going to be used too. We had carrots, jalapenos, and cilantro quietly waiting in the back of the fridge huddled together waiting for garbage night.
Nothing would be wasted tonight. We were finally making garbage soup. Sort of cheating though, since some of the the garbage we had was soup stock. oh well. From the stuff in the fridge, we decided to make it pho ish. but use whatever the stock came out as. I threw in some pho seasoning and dumped all the stuff into the pressure cooker.
About an hour later I strained out a delicious stock. Rich and meaty. Dense, hearty, crazy flavorful. Layer noodles, duck, soon to be rotten vegetables, pour over nearly thrown away stock and whoosh, you’ve got dinner for two days and lunch one day. The smug satisfaction from not wasting anything lasts forever.
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
Ed’s birthday finishes off the month January — just about the time my new years resolutions start to crumble and I’m trying to hold onto the last few strands of my dignified self by pouring over Goop recipes. Knowing in my heart that this is the year I will become Gwyneth, I did what every good girlfriend should do and bought him the present I’ve always wanted — a juicer. I made some concessions and ordered a very masculine black, only to find that my subconscious had gotten the better of me. So we are now the proud owners of a regal white Champion!
The struggle between Camp Blender and Camp Juicer is real. Not wanting to be disloyal to the years of service of the Vitamix, I’ve spent a long time preaching against all the measly yield and all the loss that juicers represent. When it comes down to it though, sometimes you just want the juice and straining fruit pulp through a sieve is a bitch.
The first test was an old favorite I’ve only had the pleasure of making in the centrifuge…so very slowly. Turns out Camp Juicer is just as great! Great yield and fairly easy to clean, but still a nagging amount of discarded waste. The waste lacked a lot of flavor, but I know that Gwyneth would NEVER throw away that pulp, so I did a bit of searching and found a few recipes for Juicer Pulp Muffins.
I’m a big fan of any recipe I make in the food processor, but ours is pretty hefty so you may have to break it up into batches. Recipe below is adapted from Plan to Eat’s Mighty Juicer Pulp Muffins.
Let cool for a few minutes before removing from the pan
Notes
I’ve made a few batches of these at this point, and they seem to hold up well with any number of juice pulps. Great and moist without any added oils, the recipe is really easy and makes enough for a good weeks worth of breakfast for two. Note: they’re even better topped with a bit of coffee butter…post on that to come.
We cleaned out the freezer and found about a year’s worth of badly labeled and mystery bags of potential soup bases and finally tried it. There’s some country ham and barley stock, some cheese rinds, some ends of rye bread, carrot solids, pear juice, beef bones, country ham ends, etc.
