Butterbean Soup

I can't believe how the last few weeks have flown by! I have not had time to do much cooking at all, and, obviously, no blogging! Well, I'm back again, and I've got some new recipes in mind with the holidays coming up, so I'm going to try and get back on track, starting with this recipe.

Back when I was just someone's ambitious girlfriend, and still learning to cook, I often experimented with ingredients I wasn't familiar with. When I first met Matt, I decided to try butterbeans. I had never had them before, but they looked kind of like lima beans, which I was familiar with and enjoyed growing up. Being the naiive little aspiring cook that I was, I thought they could just be warmed and eaten as a side dish. Matt was a trooper (should have written THAT date on the calendar!), but clearly I was on the wrong track and I did not try them again.
Down the road, we moved back to Matt's small-town home and his mother couldn't wait to take me to their local chili parlor. I can honestly say I was less than impressed with the "famous" chili (if you have to spoon a layer of grease off the top of the bowl before you eat it, I'm really not interested), but I was intrigued by another menu item. Butter Bean Soup. Now, I am a soup girl, no doubt about it, but I had never heard of butter bean soup. Over the years, I have come across a number of recipes for it, and this one is the closest to the real deal that I have found. Although I still don't eat the chili there, on the occasional rainy day (like today) I will run over there and pick up a large bowl of Butter Bean "With" (meaning I want a dollop of their seasoned chili meat plopped in the center of the dish for extra flavor) and it really hits the spot. Hearty, with just a little bit of a kick, its a great cold weather treat.

Butter Bean Soup
5 cans of large butter beans
1 can tomato sauce
2 sticks of butter
3/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon white pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and let simmer for a couple of hours. Although it is just fine right out of the pot, it will thicken up in the fridge and is much better the next day. Since it started raining around 7:00 Sunday morning and is predicted to keep it up for the next few days, I made a pot of this on Sunday afternoon for us to eat on all this week.

I topped this with a spoonful of chili dog topping. The same chili parlor markets their own brand, but you can find many other varieties readily available on the market as well.

Cook the Books - Poulet a la Creme for French Lessons

With the impending demise of Tyler Florence Fridays, and the fact that my ever-expanding waistline will no longer allow me to participate in My Girl Paula!, I was very excited to discover two cooking clubs that I can have more bloggy fun with. The first is I Heart Cooking Clubs, which right now is featuring Nigella Lawson. The second, is Cook the Books. This club chooses food-related novels to read every other month, and then each member aims to make a dish inspired by the book. I was anxious to get started, but had a bit of trouble getting a copy of the most recent selection and was worried that I might not make the November deadline.Not to worry, my bloggerriffic friends! I enjoyed the book so much, that I tore through it in just a few days and have two recipes selected to highlight. The first, I will post today, while the second will depend on the availability of the ingredients I need.French Lessons, by Peter Mayle, at first struck me as an arrogant account of one man’s travels through France on a no-holds-barred mission to eat and get drunk, with a seemingly limitless line of credit. However, the more I read, the more I enjoyed his tongue-in-cheek style and laughed out loud at some moments I could totally relate to. Mayle dedicates each chapter to a specific foodie subject matter, generally centered around a celebration, fair, or eating competition. In his chapter on the famous chicken of Bresse, he describes a meal he and his cohort enjoy at a local restaurant. Poulet a la Crème. I have no doubt that it was amazing in its own right and that I can in no way compete with the Bresse Chicken, however, I had to give it a shot. Any recipe that calls for an entire quart of cream is okay by me. I was intrigued. I managed to find one site (Colloquial Cooking) online that had a reasonable semblance of a recipe to follow, which, in turn, turned out to be almost identical to the brief description of the dish in French Lessons, which I imagined to be far too simplified.

I was mistaken. This dish is entirely too easy to make, and amazingly delicious. I’ll give you a brief rundown of how I made mine.

Salt and pepper four skin-on chicken breasts and four thighs.Melt an entire stick of butter in a large skillet.
Brown the chicken, skin side down first, being careful not to burn the butter.Turn the chicken, and add one large onion, roughly chopped, four cloves of garlic, smashed, some mushrooms (if you’re not allergic, like I am) and a bouquet garni (mine had chives, sage, and oregano, because that’s what is still alive in my garden).Brown the chicken on the second side, then remove to a pan while you make the sauce.If there is too much butter left in the pan, spoon it out. Deglaze the pan with a glass of white wine, scraping up all the brown bits.Let the wine cook down for a moment, then return the chicken to the pan and pour in the entire quart of heavy cream.Cover and let simmer at least 30 minutes, or until your chicken is cooked through. (mine took closer to an hour).
Remove the chicken and add the juice of a small lemon to the pan. Let the sauce simmer and reduce until it thickens slightly (and I mean, slightly. I couldn’t get much reduction at all. And, really, at this point, you don’t care, it smells so good you’ll be tempted to just stick your face in the pan and lap it up).
Serve the chicken up with rice (if you have it, if not, just tear the bone out of it, as my husband would say). Drizzle the chicken with the sauce, or do like I did and serve a dish of the sauce on the side and dunk your chicken bits as you pull them off the bone.All I can say is “wow”. This was crazy good, although I don’t think I can make it often or I may start to look like Peter Mayle. If you’re not on a diet, give this a try, and feel just a little bit French while you’re wandering around the kitchen finishing the rest of the bottle of wine...oh wait, maybe that’s just me....

Jo will be hosting the roundup for French Lessons. Check back after November 8th to see the roundup!

Anyway, just a small note, I would recommend eating this straight out of the pan. It is pretty decent reheated, but you know how cream sauces can get kind nasty and separated. It was definitely better the first night. Bon Appetit!

Because I am such a bad influence on Ginny, she felt compelled to make this dish, too, and sent me a picture of her results!She also made a lovely cauliflower gratin she found on the same site where I got the chicken recipe.

Sausage Hoagies

Here is a super easy weeknight meal that my husband always looks forward to. I'm sorry, but even a monkey can make this, if I monkey would use a knife.

What I do:
Take two packages of Johnsonville or other "italian" sausage links. I usually get one Sweet and one Hot, so there is some variety in the pot.
Cut each raw link into four chunks and put in a crock pot.
Slice one medium onion, and put it in the pot.
If I have them, I slice two bell peppers in various colors (red and green are very festive) and throw them in, too.
Top with an entire jar of your favorite pasta sauce.
Fill the same jar halfway with water (at the same time, rinsing the jar for the recycle bin!) and pour the water in the pot.Cook on low while you're at work.
Come home to a house that smells like a great little corner deli and serve your sausage up on hoagie rolls with parmesan cheese. Yum!
Its a perfect meal for a cold weeknight. Makre sure you check the pot as soon as you get home, and don't go shopping after work or anything, because if you leave these in too long, they will scorch and be less appetizing.

Tyler Florence Fridays - Farewell Roundup

Sitting back, remembering all the fun I had making dishes to submit to Tyler Florence Fridays, I felt like taking a look back at all the mouth watering recipes I put together. I thought as one final "hurrah!" for TFF, I'd do a little roundup of my own, showcasing all the best pictures of those recipes and links to each of the posts. I did have a few other Tyler Florence recipes thrown in here and there, but these are the ones I actually submitted to the weekly roundups. I hope you've all enjoyed it as much as I have! Thanks for coming along for the ride!

Tolan's Pregnancy Pasta
This was my first entry to TFF, and it was so good, you could really say it got the ball rolling!

Arborio Rice PuddingRice pudding has long been a favorite dessert of mine, and this one did not disappoint.Braised Beef Brisket I had never made a brisket before and I admit it was a little intimidating, especially when I always thought of brisket as a cut that you smoke not roast. It turned out better than I could have imagined.Garlic and Herb Roast Lobster This was by far the most interesting entry I made. I do love some lobster, and for this one I was willing to butcher it myself! You can tell by the awful shadows that this was still before I built myself a light box.Penne with Spicy Italian Sausage One of the easiest recipes ever, and a big hit with the hubs!Baked Lime Pudding Cakes A fun twist on Tyler's recipe.Perfect Roast Chicken A classic menu item that in all my years of cooking and experimenting, I had never attempted. It was fantastic!Salt Crusted Porterhouse This one was for my husband. A special treat after a rough week.Thai Grilled Beef These little babies packed a punch! What a great treat for a summer evening.Roasted Tomatillo Salsa This salsa was the post that got me on Tyler's own blog! Just look at that gorgeous green!Greek Yogurt with Fig and Honey, Date and Honey Swirl Ginny and I made this one during one of her visits and it is still a favorite. What a rich little indulgence.Grilled Cheese (Smoked Mozzarella and Basil Pesto)and Roasted Tomato Soup with Fresh Basil These recipes were both good, although neither one blew me away.Grilled Honey Teriyaki Chicken Another success on the grill! For this one, I took over control of the "man zone" and wielded the tongs myself!French Onion Soup Possibly my all time favorite soup. What a great cool weather dish.Asian Egg Drop Soup Another recipe that definitely didn't rock my world, but we jazzed it up and turned it into something fabulous.Pasta Carbonara And finally, we're back to the beginning again with Pasta Carbonara revisited. We put a different twist on it and enjoyed it all over again. We came full circle!

I had a great time making all of these great recipes, and I can't wait to move on as a part of I Heart Cooking Clubs, and Cook the Books. I am looking forward to trying lots of great new dishes and sharing them with you! I hope you'll join me in the fun!

Shepherd's Pie

Here is a recipe that I can't believe I haven't posted before. I have some recipes that are in regular rotation because they are ideal "construction worker" food. When the weather turns cold, I gotta feed my man with hearty dishes that fill him up at the end of a cold workday, and re-heat well enough to keep him going at lunch the next day. This is one of those dishes. It is a non-traditional take on the classic Shepherd's Pie, adapted from a Paula Deen recipe, made to fit the tastes of my picky eater husband.

Shepherd's Pie
1 container Country Crock (or other brand, like Bob Evans) prepared mashed potatoes
1 pound ground beef
1 can cut green beans
1 cup frozen corn (or 1 small can) or any other combination of vegetables you like
1 14 ounce can tomato sauce
2 cups Bisquick or other biscuit mix
1 1/2 cups milk
4 TB butter, melted

Brown beef in a large skillet (sometimes I also add some diced onion here). Drain, and mix in the tomato sauce, vegetables and salt and pepper.

Prepare the mashed potatoes according to the package and spread in the bottom of a deep casserole dish. Layer the meat mixture on top of the potatoes. Mix the Bisquick with the milk and pour over the top of the meat.Drizzle the melted butter over the biscuit layer and bake at 350 until the biscuit layer is golden and cooked through.Allow to cool slightly before serving (or the mashed potatoes will just ooze all over the place).Here it is, deconstructed. When I serve it, I like to take the biscuit crust off first, then dish out the meat filling, and finally the potatoes from the bottom so I have some of each on my plate. Plus, it just looks better that way, and you know that's what its all about, after all!

Cheeseburger Soup

Here is another cold weather favorite of my husband's. He is not normally a big fan of soup, but there are a couple that he is always happy to see in the meal rotation. One is my butter bean soup, the other is cheeseburger soup. This is a recipe that came from a lady I used to work with back in my fabric store days. I'm not really sure why she called it "cheeseburger" soup, because its really more of a steak and potato soup, but hey, who am I to quibble? It really is a meal in a cup, so no wonder Matt likes it. It could also have something to do with the large quantity of meat, potatoes, and Velveeta it calls for!

Cheeseburger Soup
1-2 pounds lean stew meat

1 TB minced garlic

1 Tb Italian seasoning

5-6 large potatoes, cubed

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

3 cups chicken broth

4 TB butter

1/4 cup flour

8 ounces Velveeta

1 1/2 cups milk

salt & pepper

In a large stock pot, brown the beef on all sides in a little oil with the garlic, then set aside. In the juices, saute the herbs and the onion until translucent. Return the meat to the pan, and add the potatoes and the broth. Bring to a boil. Cook until potatoes are tender. Melt butter and flour together; add to soup and bring back to a boil (add more flour if necessary to thicken).

Add cheese, milk, salt & pepper. Cook until cheese melts and soup reaches desired consistency.

Taco Casserole

You can tell the weather has turned toward fall. I'm starting to get back in the comfort food groove and have been putting together dishes geared toward my husband. This one is uber-simple, and if you cook your meat ahead of time, takes only minutes to prepare. I always keep the ingredients for this one on hand for a quick and easy dinner in minutes.

Taco Casserole

1 pound ground beef

1 packet taco seasoning

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (or more, if you like it really cheesy)

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

1/2 cup taco sauce OR Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce (yes, I know, not really a "taco" ingredient, but it is one of Matt's favorite things, so we put a twist on the taco concept.)

3 - 10 inch flour tortillas

Brown the ground beef and drain thoroughly. Mix in taco seasoning and 2/3 cup water.

In either an 8 inch square dish or a deep round casserole, layer the ingredients in the following order, using about 1/4 of each, per layer.

Seasoned beef

black beans

Country Bob's sauce or taco sauce

cheese

tortilla

Now, REPEAT!

Then, repeat again until you have used up all of your ingredients.

Cover with foil and bake at 350 until bubbly. Serve!

This is by no means an exact recipe. Its is easily doubled, and there is no reason you can't switch up the ingredients to your liking. If I wasn't feeding Matt, I'd put in fresh diced tomatoes and top it with sour cream. Sometimes when we're feeling the urge, I throw in a bunch of chopped jalapeños. Whatever your family likes, it will all work in here!