Tag: Beans

Weekend Finds 4:27:14

It has been a delicious week. I cooked some awesome food, some of which I’ve shared, and some of which will be coming up shortly. Spring is upon us, and I’m starting to see it creep into the grocery stores and some of my favorite recipe resources. Something I’m particularly looking forward to? Trying some new savory rhubarb recipes, and the weather slowly getting warm enough to crank out some ice cream again. In this weekend finds, I’ll show you what I’m talking about.

1. Toasted Sesame Seed Ice Cream

Toasted Sesame Ice Cream on Weekend Finds // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
I can’t wait to try this toasted sesame ice cream from Milk and Honey.

I feel like there were certainly a few recipes that I found this week that left me feeling like I wasn’t sure if it would be delicious or totally weird. This recipe from Milk and Honey may be one of them. The toasted sesame part sounds good, but then when I think about adding tahini, my brain and tastebuds get all confused. I guess I’ll just have to try it.

2. Rhubarb Baked Beans

Rhubarb Baked Beans on Weekend Finds // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
Feeling uncertain about these rhubarb baked beans, but I’m going to give them a shot.

There are some great looking savory rhubarb recipes out there – specifically those that involve roasting meats or sauces. On the other hand, there are these rhubarb baked beans, which, I admit, sound weird. I have purchased the ingredients to make these curious (and, admittedly, unappetizing-looking) beans. I’ll let you know how it goes, I guess…

3. Thai Salad

Thai Salad from The Roasted Root on Weekend Finds // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
This bright, delicious salad made for a scrumptious lunch.

Today, after going climbing (for the first time in… over a year), my roommates and I were STARVING. So we made some Thai laarb and this salad from The Roasted Root. Both were a big hit, and I will definitely be using this salad again in the future. It’s beautifully colorful and I love the varied flavors, and it’s filling but also still healthy.

4. Mango, Yogurt, and Cardamom Ice Cream

Mango, Yogurt, Cardamom Ice Cream on Weekend Finds // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
I love the mango-lassi like color of this ice cream.

Sorry, I got distracted for a moment by things that aren’t ice cream. Back in the sweet lane, this ice cream from Yotam Ottolenghi (genius, duh) had three things I really truly love: mango. greek yogurt. cardamom. Can’t wait to make this. I am thinking I need to have an ice cream party in order to make all the bizarre flavors I’m itching to make. Pretty sure my friends would be into that.

5. Eating Alone

Dining Alone at Eenmaal in Amsterdam on Weekend Finds // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
Maybe dining solo will be a new trend?

So there’s now a restaurant, Eenmall, where there are only 1 person tables. That’s it. No Wi-Fi either. Great? I think so. Do you ever eat out by yourself? While I always have to take a deep breath before I do it (yeah, sometimes it’s a little scary to just be with yourself for an hour without a computer or phone or book in front of you), I always feel like my mind has cleared after the fact. So while only having a table-for-one option is a little different, I think eating alone is something we could all benefit from every once in a while.

Stale Bread Soup (Ribollita)

Stale Bread Soup // Serious Crust by Annie FasslerStale Bread Soup // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler

I realize that at this point you might be sick and tired of hearing us harp about how great Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal is. But hear me out one more time. Everyone has stale bread. Or at least everyone who has bread at some point and does not eat it all eventually has stale bread lying around. And most of the time it gets thrown away, or responsibly composted. If you are culinarily educated, dear reader, you may already have known of stale bread soup; but as I read Tamar’s book, I was astounded to find out that not only does such a thing exist, but there is a long and ancient tradition of creating soup from leftover bread (Ribollita in Italian).

There are a few things that should be said about stale bread soup. First, it is not a soup in the same way that chicken noodle is a soup; stale bread soup is usually much thicker and feels more like a hearty chili. Second, stale bread soup is more of a general idea and a starting point than a recipe. It is meant to be made with whatever is around, provided you have some stale bread (otherwise, you will be making whatever-is-around soup – which could turn out to be vegetables-in-water “soup” if you don’t have any broth lying around).

The recipe below is adapted slightly from Tamar’s recipe for Ribollita in An Everlasting Meal. In usual Tamar fashion, you will use A LOT of olive oil in this recipe. We have made stale bread soup twice now, so I’ve noted the different things we used.

Stale Bread Soup (Ribollita)

Ingredients

Olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic
Celery, if you have it (I did not)
salt
1/2 cup chopped fresh herbs like parsley or rosemary or thyme (if you don’t have fresh, maybe do 1/4 cup dried?)
1/2 teaspoon chile flakes
Tomatoes in some form, if you want (3 peeled fresh tomatoes, or I used 1 can diced. Made it once without tomatoes as well)
1 bunch leafy greens (I used kale once and cauliflower greens once; other ideas are swiss chard, collard greens, radish greens, etc)
1/4 cup water
2 cups cooked beans (I used a can of black beans both times, Tamar suggests chickpeas or cannellini beans)
2 cups broth from beans or chicken/veggie stock or cans of tomatoes (I used a combo of all three, and you can make up any shortfall with water)
1 piece of Parmesan rind (Do this if you can, because it makes the soup soooo tasty and rich. Also, what else are you going to do with your Parmesan rind?)
2 cups stale bread, crusts removed, torn/cut into 1/2-inch pieces

Instructions

Heat 1/4 inch olive oil (this is just the beginning) in a big-ish soup pot. Cook the onion and garlic (and celery if you have it) until they soften. Add the herbs and chile flakes and a little bit of salt. Add the tomatoes and cook for a few minutes over medium heat.

Chop the greens (and remove from the stems) then add to the pot, and add the water. Cover and cook over low heat until the greens are wilted. Put in all your broths/waters/juices and the beans, plus the Parmesan rind.

(If you have a bunch of Parmesan left, make sure to cut the rind from the rest of the Parmesan. Otherwise, just save the Parmesan rind for when you will next make bread soup. Make sure your Parmesan is big enough that you can keep track of it, because you’re going to take it out later.)

Bring to a simmer, then add the bread and more olive oil (Tamar says to add 1/2 cup, but I was not brave enough and probably added about a 1/4 cup at this point). Cover and cook for 1/2 hour on low, stirring occasionally to make sure the bottom doesn’t burn. The bread will soak up the soup and then liquify into it.  Taste it, add more broth or salt or whatever you want, and then take it off the heat.

Add in another 1/2 cup olive oil (Tamar, are you crazy!?!? I probably added 3 tablespoons here) and take out the Parmesan rind. You can grate Parmesan on top and add some pepper to serve.

This soup is perfect for a windy, rainy, cold, or dark winter/fall night.

Mexican Bowls

Mexican Bowls

Mexican Bowls
Mexican Bowls

Mexican Bowls

The other night, dinner rolled around, and I was feeling incredibly lazy. Nothing that I could think of eating actually sounded good to me, so I put Jonah in charge. There’s a restaurant here in Portland called Por Que Non that has really good Mexican food. They have this dish called a Bryan’s Bowl that is just a bowl of delicious rice and beans and meat and cheese and guacamole and salsa and everything you could ever want in a little bowl. It’s incredibly good. So Jonah suggested making something like the Bryan’s Bowl, and I was not particularly optimistic, because usually when restaurants have something like that they have some secret delicious sauce they pour over it to make it so freaking good. And we didn’t. But…oh well. So he searched something or other on the internet and found this recipe for Cilantro Lime Rice to use as the base for our Mexican bowls. And man oh man, it made all the difference.

Mexican Rice Bowls

Ingredients

Cilantro Lime Rice

1 cup uncooked white rice
1 teaspoon butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp plus 1 Tbl lime juice, freshly squeezed is highly preferred
1 15-oz can vegetable or chicken broth
1 cup water
2 tsp granulated sugar
4 Tbl fresh chopped cilantro

Mexican Rice Bowl

Cilantro Lime Rice
Black Beans
Chopped Red Onion
Chopped tomato (or salsa)
Chopped avocado (or guacamole)
Sour Cream
Hot sauce
Lime wedges
Chopped cilantro
Tortilla chips

Instructions

Cilantro Lime Rice

Let’s start with the rice. Put the rice, butter, garlic, 2 tsp of lime juice, broth, and water in a pan. Bring the contents to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and cover and cook the rice until it’s tender (about 15-20 minutes). While the rice is cooking, mix the leftover Tbl of lime juice with the sugar and cilantro. When the rice is done, remove it from the heat and stir in the cilantro/lime mixture.

Mexican Rice Bowl

While the rice is cooking you can also prep the rest of your ingredients for your bowl. We drained the beans and just heated them in the microwave, chopped the onions, and got out the salsa, guacamole, sour cream, cholula, and some tortilla chips.

Now it’s time to assemble your bowl. I did mine kind of like you would if it were the filling of a burrito, making even layers of all the ingredients I wanted. I also used my bowl as kind of a layered dip and ate it with tortilla chips for an added bit of crunch. Oh man. I may not have been in the mood for this meal at the beginning of the evening, but it really hit the spot! Enjoy!