So, I made my baked potato soup last night (and had more for lunch today) and I’ve decided there is something just not quite right with it.  It’s certainly not bad, but there is something a tiny bit off.  I keep coming back to the basil & thyme.  Maybe it just doesn’t need them and the salt & pepper is enough?  Throw in some celery with the onions & garlic to add a bit more in the aromatics department to offset any “loss” from the basil & thyme?

I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time around.  And to cut the recipe in half because it makes WAY too much for two people!

The verdict? Nope, not Mom’s, but really good and absolutely perfect for a night when it’s 20 degrees outside. My brother said it was actually pretty close to Mom’s – I just don’t remember any carrots or celery in hers. But I really, REALLY enjoyed it! :)

Recipes after the jump:

Ham & Bean Soup

1 pound dried Great Northern Beans, soaked overnight or via the Quick Soak Method and drained. (Some say drain after soaking, others don’t, I don’t think it matters *that* much.)
1-2 ham hocks (depends on size, I used 2)
~ 3/4 c. chopped carrots (~1 medium carrot)
~ 3/4 c. chopped celery (~1.5 stalks)
~ 3/4 c. chopped sweet onion (I went with a somewhat large chop, and chose sweet over white since the white onions this season have been incredibly strong, and I didn’t want it to overpower the rest of the soup.)
~1-2 cloves garlic, smashed
2-4 c. water
2-4 c. chicken stock
1 ham steak, diced or shredded (optional, but that way you get more ham in the soup!)
ground black pepper

Sweat the onions, garlic and celery over medium low heat with about half the ham steak pieces. (The ham adds a little more fat for the aromatics to happily bathe in. Or, “it seemed like a good idea at the time!”)

Once the onions are soft, add the ham hocks, the rest of the ham steak, 2 cups of water and 2 cups of stock. (That was how much was needed to cover everything in liquid.) Bring to a boil. (Takes 10-15 minutes.)

Add the beans, carrots and a few shakes of black pepper, and if needed, a little more water if the beans aren’t covered by liquid. Give it all a good stir and bring to a boil again.

Reduce heat to low and cover. Check about every 30 minutes and add more liquid (half water/stock) if needed.

Simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours or until beans are tender. When the skin on the beans splits when you blow on them, they are supposedly done. However, the skins were splitting about an hour into it, and the beans didn’t taste “done” to me.

An hour and a half in, I took out the ham hocks and let it simmer on low for another 30 minutes uncovered. Up until this point, the soup hadn’t been very thick at all, and I was ready to add some cornstarch, but it decided to cooperate and thicken up nicely. (Probably because at this point the beans are technically overcooked, but who cares, they’re nice and soft and tasty!)

Assuming 8 one-cup servings: Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 280 Calories; 3g Fat (10.2% calories from fat); 24g Protein; 39g Carbohydrate; 12g Dietary Fiber; 26mg Cholesterol; 1282mg Sodium. Exchanges: 2 1/2 Grain(Starch); 2 1/2 Lean Meat; 1/2 Vegetable.

Cornbread Madeleines

I totally cheated on these and I don’t care who knows it. (Perhaps the bottoms sticking to the pan is karma getting back at me, LOL.) Good old Jiffy Corn Muffin mix, prepared as directed with a squirt of honey added for good measure. Baked at 400 degrees for approximately 8 minutes. Next time I need to get out the Baker’s Joy…

Defrosted and reheated it – pretty darn good!  Thicker than the original, and the beans were a little mushy, but it did hit the spot on a cold day.  The spices did mellow out a little, but it was still good.  It’s always good to know that something does defrost and reheat well.

Continuing the theme of “good food in the cold” I have a pot of beans soaking and tomorrow I’ll be attempting ham & bean soup.

Now, there are a million variations on it, and it was a favorite when we were kids.  My Mom never wrote down her recipe and I never paid terribly close attention to exactly how she made it.  And I am terrified of screwing it up.

I don’t know why, but it seems that trying to recreate the great comfort foods that my Mom cooked is more intimidating than doing some crazy elaborate recipe I’ve never tried before.

I’ve got some carrots, onion, and celery to toss in it, and smoked ham hocks.  Normally Mom always just used a lefotver ham bone, but I don’t have one of those, and I was lucky to even get the ham hocks – they were the last package in the store.  I think the smoked aspect of it will make it a little interesting.  I’ve also got a big ham steak to shred up and toss in as well.

Keep your fingers crossed!!

The original is over at Allrecipes.com, and below is my version. It’s more of a thick soup consistency to me, and great in the winter. Though I normally eat it “naked”, I’m betting it’s one of those soups that would be good with a dollop of sour cream on top. There is a nice heat to it, but not to the extent that you won’t be able to taste anything else for the rest of the evening. The jalepeno cornbread I snagged at the market worked well with it, but I think plain cornbread would be perfect for the next time.

Also, if chopping onions and garlic while standing next to open containers of crushed red pepper and cumin doesn’t clear your sinuses – you need to see a doctor.

It really hit the spot, and will be making a repeat appearance tomorrow evening. (It’s just as good, if not a touch better the next day!) A small container has been stashed in the freezer for future colds. ;)

Full recipe and another pic after the jump.

1.5-2 T butter or oil for browning
1.5# chicken breasts, cubed
1/2 c. chopped onion
1-1.5 c. chicken broth (divided, need 1 c. minimum)
1 4oz can chopped green chiles*
1-3 15oz cans Great Northern Beans (depends on how much you like beans – I start w/1 can and add if needed)
1-2 small white potatoes, diced (optional – if you don’t like potatoes, then go with more beans)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 t ground cumin
1.5 t dried oregano
1 t cilantro
1/2 t crushed red pepper

Brown chicken in melted butter over medium heat. Add onions and garlic, cook over medium low heat until onions are translucent/tender. Transfer to colander and let drain.

Add 1 c. of the chicken broth & the chiles to the pot, bring to a boil.

Stir in the spices, 1 of the cans of beans (with the liquid), the potatoes and the chicken/onion/garlic. Bring to a boil again and let boil for 3-5 minutes. Reduce heat to low and let simmer 30 minutes.

Check it at about the 15 minute point, if too thick, add some of the remaining chicken stock, if too thin, add some of the remaining beans. If after 30 minutes it’s too thick/thin, you can still add the beans or broth then and just let it go another 15 minutes or so. Thick/thin is totally your call – just get to the consistency you like. If you think it’s too spicy, add more of the beans.

Tonight when it hit the 15 minute point, I decided it needed more liquid, but also wanted it a touch thicker – but it had plenty of beans in it already. So, I defrosted some frozen stock I had in a small saucepan, added more spicing to it, and whisked in some cornstarch and added all that to the main pot. Result: more liquid and just the right thickness.

Any leftover chicken broth can be frozen and used later.

*Whole green chiles are fine, just make sure you realize you’re getting whole ones so you’re not doing a mad dash slice & dice when you open the can and realize they’re not already chopped. :)

Bubbling goodness:

Go over to Running with Tweezers, read up and enter!

Go.

Do it.

Now.

So Saturday morning I got up and headed over to the kitchen at the Left Bank restaurant. If you ever have the chance to muck around in a commercial/pro kitchen – do it. Gas ranges! Convection ovens! Prep bowls and spatulas as far as the eye can see! Tasting spoons! (I no longer feel like a freak for the fact that I routinely go through half a dozen spoons in the course of cooking something.) Seriously, I was in heaven the minute I walked in.

Chef Christine put the menu together based on what’s in season (or coming into season very soon) and we had an absolutely fantastic lunch as a result. The two main items were rockfish and soft-shelled crabs. She pulls the crabs out and they’re in a metal dish and iced down. She takes off the ice and is talking about something when someone says, “Um, are the crabs…moving?” Yup – still alive! Which makes perfect sense, but it was just wasn’t something anyone expected.

The kitchen was pretty decent sized, but there were 12 of us and the Chef, so we were a little cramped to start with, but quickly got to the point where we were working around each other very well. It was easy to be able to keep an eye out and see what was going on in other parts of the kitchen, so even if you were working on one thing, it was not a problem to see how something else was being made at the same time. Oh, and good for grabbing spoons and tasting things as we went along, too.

Basically everyone paired off and grabbed a recipe and went to town. Jo (my partner) and I started with cleaning the crabs – no one else really wanted to do it, I think because of the “still kicking” part – I got over the entire “meeting my lunch before I eat it” problem in about a minute… Pull the tab, clean the gills, cut off the face, next!

Once we got done w/cleaning the crabs, we passed them off to another pair for dredging and sauteing as they were already doing the sauce for them as well. We discovered that no one had taken on dessert yet, so that would be all us. It was a variation on strawberry shortcake – a orange-strawberry compote on orange poppyseed biscuits.

The chef had gone ahead and made the biscuits beforehand for time’s sake, which was very helpful. :) I looked at the recipe and realized this definitely couldn’t be a “prep as you go” thing given the cooking times and the order and timing of everything going in. Off to the racks in the back for prep bowls! I am a total mice in place* kinda gal anyway so the whole prep & staging before actual cooking comes naturally to me, and I honestly think it makes it easier when you actually start cooking anyway. I will say that I think it is definitely more difficult to try and prepare the same dish with another person vs. doing it on your own – especially if you’ve only met the person 15 minutes beforehand and have no idea what their kitchen work style is like. Fortunately it worked fine and no saucepans were thrown at each other in the course of making dessert.

Something I realized after the fact was that while I was having an absolute blast, I was also in complete “work mode” – we had to feed 12 people dessert, we had a great recipe, excellent ingredients and absolutely no reason whatsoever that this shouldn’t kick ass and dammit, it would. Totally in the zone. Chop, zest, juice, stop and think and look around and make sure the answer isn’t right in front of me before bothering Chef with a question, get everything staged in the order to be used, make sure I’m thinking a couple steps ahead so as not to forget anything, and most important, don’t do anything that would make Chef think I am a complete fuckup. Mind you, this was in no way any kind of a boot camp class or anything like that, but I still was in work mode anyway…and was loving it.

So, Jo got going on cutting up a ton of strawberries, while I fought with the oranges. (And won.) Chef did show me a much faster way to section them, which was a godsend, because while I do know how to do it, I just don’t have the mad skillz to do it quickly. Well, I didn’t before this weekend. Then it was cook, add something, stir, cook, make sure it’s not burning, stir, cook, add something, cook, done! Off to the racks in the back again to find the right container to put it in an ice bath, since there was no way it was going to cool down fast enough on it’s own. While we were waiting for it to get to a useable temperature, it was time for the whipped cream. Snag the mixer, cream, sugar and vanilla. Or, not… Check the prep table where Christine had put out the ingredients we’d be using, checked under the table, looked around the rest of the kitchen – no dice. Snagged Christine and asked where it was hidden – I was SO sure it was probably right in front of me the whole time, but turns out it hadn’t come over from the other kitchen. So, we skipped the vanilla in the whipped cream with no adverse effects, and I took care of that while Jo did the garnishes for it. After what seemed like forever trying to get the cream to soft peak stage, we finally got to put everything together. Have to say, it looked awesome when we got it all together.

By some awesome miracle (well, thanks to the excellent direction of Chef Christine), everything came out wonderfully and at the same time. We had enough food for a small army and it was all spectacular:

– Herb crusted rockfish. Awesome.
– Soft shelled crabs dredged in cornmeal and sauteed and served on a roasted corn sauce that was just to die for.
– Oven dried tomatoes – again, what a difference very fresh tomatoes make.
– Bacon cabbage slaw – the recipe we have can be made w/ white wine vinegar or champagne – we went w/the white wine vinegar. I think I’d go w/the champagne when I make it, because it was a touch vinegary to my taste, but still really tasty.
– Cream of asparagus soup – another super dish.
– Chilled asparagus salad with strawberry vinagrette and vanilla strawberries – can you tell asparagus and strawberries are in season? Also, just fantastic.
– Orange-Strawberry shortcake. Given that I had the recipe, cooked the stuff and put it all together, I knew exactly what it was supposed to taste like, and it tasted exactly the way it should, but it was still kind of overly sweet to me. But, everyone else devoured it, so it’s all good.

While we had our lunch, the sommelier, Lynette Sumner, gave us 4 different wines and went over pairing wine with food. This gal seriously knows her stuff – and if she wasn’t so incredibly nice, she’d be very intimidating. After about 5 minutes, I realized the most intelligent thing I could say about wine was, “I like red wine!”

Everything was just spectacular and everyone had a terrific time. I ended up getting a sandwich from Tommy’s Market for dinner, cause there was absolutely no way on earth I could finish another full meal after lunch.

Originally posted at Cafe Chat Noir on 4/30, so if it looks familiar, that’s why.

3 T butter
1 c diced onion
1-2 cloves minced garlic
2 T AP flour
4 c chicken broth
2 c water
1/4 c cornstarch
1 1/2 c instant potato flakes
1 t salt
3/4 t pepper
1/2 t basil
1/8 t thyme
1 c half & half
2 potatoes
1 can corn (optional)
1 c diced ham (optional)
Garnish
Shredded cheddar cheese
chives, chopped
Bacon, cooked & crumbled

Bake potatoes @400 degrees for 1 hour, let cool and chop into bite sized cubes. (Skin on/off, your choice)

Melt butter, saute onions & garlic until tender, add flour for roux.

Add everything except the potatoes, half & half, ham and corn.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and let simmer for 5 minutes.

Add potatoes, half & half, corn & ham, bring to a boil again, reduce heat to low and let simmer another 15 minutes.

Garnish with the cheese, chives & bacon