Lamb and Adzuki Bean Chili

The nice thing about making chili in a slow cooker is that there’s less risk of burning the bottom of the pot and therefore less need to watch it closely. You can go about your afternoon and come home to a nice hot bowl of spicy, meaty goodness. It’s also pretty quick compared to other slow cooker recipes – 4 hours on high and you’re good.

In the winter, when fresh tomatoes are either not around or taste like cardboard, I like to use canned whole peeled tomatoes. A combination of beans is also a nice touch. Little adzuki beans are sweet and offer a nice contrast to larger red kidney beans in both taste and size. Another interesting flavor kick is the use of ground lamb along with the beef.

A note to the chili purists out there: I totally get that this is not an authentic, rancher-style, traditional-type chili. Adzuki beans are from Japan, not Texas, and the addition of lamb could potentially raise an eyebrow, but whatevs. I make no claims.

Lamb and Adzuki Bean Chili – serves 4-6

1 T cooking oil (canola or olive)
1 onion, diced
1 T tomato paste
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 green bell pepper, seeded and minced
1 – 28 ounce can whole peeled tomatoes
3/4 – 1 lb ground lamb
1 lb ground beef
1 – 15 ounce can adzuki beans, rinsed and drained
1 – 15 ounce can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 T chili powder
1 t cumin
1 t ground coriander
1 t paprika
1/2 t chili pepper flakes
1/4 – 1/2 t salt
cheddar cheese, grated
fresh parsley, finely chopped

Heat the oil in a skillet over a medium flame. Add the onion and begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste, garlic and peppers with the onions and stir to combine. Lower heat and continue to cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until the onion is caramelized and pepper is softened. Remove from heat.

Pour the liquid from the can of tomatoes into the slow cooker. Remove the stems from the tomatoes and loosely chop into 1/2 – 1 inch pieces. Add the chopped tomatoes with the kidney beans and adzuki beans to the slow cooker.

Combine the ground beef and lamb with the chili powder, cumin, paprika, salt and chili pepper flakes. Add the meat mixture to the slow cooker. Set to low  and cook for 4 hours or high.

Serve hot, topped with a good amount of grated cheddar cheese and parsley, and a nice piece of fresh crusty French bread.

Minestrone Soup

Minestrone used to be my favorite soup as a kid. There is something festive about its bright colors and varying textures. With harvest in full swing, we have an abundance of colorful vegetables kicking around. This soup is filled with the full spectrum. I like to throw in a red onion to complement the orange and green shades in the palette. Adding the vegetables in stages allows each to cook to its own ideal texture and it also allows the flavors to layer.

Orzo gives the soup a little heft and makes it more substantial than a typical vegetable soup. Kidney beans fill out the protein side of things, making this Minestrone an excellent choice for an simple and satisfying vegetarian meal, if using vegetable stock.

Minestrone Soup – serves 6 – 8

2 T olive oil
1 leek, cleaned cut into 1/2″ pieces
1 heart of celery
5 small onions (cipolline or boilers), or 2 medium onions, peeled and quartered
1 T tomato paste
2 carrots, peeled and chopped into spoon-sized pieces
2 parsnips, peeled and chopped into spoon-sized pieces
2 medium tomatoes, diced
3 T chopped fresh oregano
1 15.5 ounce can kidney beans
1 C dried orzo
4 C vegetable or chicken stock

In a stockpot over medium heat, saute onions and leeks in oil. Add carrots, parsnips and tomato paste. Lower heat and allow to condense for 5 minutes. Add the celery, toss to coat with the tomato paste and cook another 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, toss and cover. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally to keep the bottom from browning, 10 minutes

Add stock, beans and orzo. bring to boil, lower heat and simmer 10  minutes until the pasta is cooked. Season to taste.

Serve hot with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Chicken Barley Soup

The key to a good soup is to make your own stock. This is especially true for a chicken soup intended to help ease a cold or flu. Stock from a carton or can just doesn’t have the same anti-inflammatory benefits of homemade. There’s just something about the chicken fat that gets extracted from the bones and skin that makes homemade chicken stock into something of a high end moisturizer for a sore throat.

I’m one of those people who saves vegetable trimmings and herb stems for stock. This really only works for certain vegetables, however. Potato skins, onion skins, carrot and parsnip peels are great for stock, but leafy greens will turn the pot bitter, and beets will turn it oddly sweet and blood red. Keep in mind the flavor you’re trying to achieve when collecting your trimmings.

If you’re not into saving vegetable trimmings, that’s perfectly fine. Prepare the vegetables for this soup in advance and save the trimmings to add to the chicken as it simmers. Since the trimmings will be discarded anyway, I like to separate them from the chicken pieces by using a vegetable steamer basket. This way the chicken simmers on the bottom of the pot while the trimmings steep on the top. When the stock is finished, the basket can simply be pulled out and the trimmings tossed. Another benefit of steeping the veggies on the top bunk is that they carry away some of the fat that rises to the top of the liquid as the chicken stews.

I like to chop my veggies into narrow strips the length of a spoon. I just like the uniformity of the way they look more than having little carrot wheels and celery half-moons like cafeteria soups.

Chicken Barley Soup - serves 8

4 carrots
2 parsnips
12 large sprigs parsley (about a half bunch)
4 stalks of celery, plus leaves
5 green onions
1 whole 3 – 3.5 lb. chicken
6 quarts of water
2 C trimmings from potatoes, parsnips, carrots and herbs (optional)
3/4 C barley

Start off by prepping the vegetables.

Place the celery and leaves, green onion trimmings, parsley stems and carrot and parsnip peels and optional added trimmings, if you have them on hand, into a steamer basket.

If the chicken came with the little baggy of innards and the neck, set the liver aside and add the gizzard, heart and neck to the veggie basket. (Bonus Recipe: It’ll be a long time before this soup is done and you’re most likely going to want a little nosh. While this thing simmers, take a tablespoon of butter, melt it in a small frying pan and saute the liver in the butter until it’s no longer pink in the center. Enjoy on toast with a little blue cheese and bask in the horrified stares of onlookers.)

Chop the veggies as desired. Cover and refrigerate.

Bring 6 quarts of salted water to a boil.

Meanwhile, cut the chicken into pieces. Drop the pieces  into the simmering water. Place the veggie basket into the water over the chicken. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 2.5 hours.

By this point the meat will be falling off of the bones. Remove the vegetable basket and discard contents. Carefully remove the chicken pieces with a tongs or a slotted spoon. Strain the stock if necessary to remove any runaway bones.

Allow the chicken pieces to cool enough to handle. The bones should slide right out of the meat. Go through each piece to remove any cartilage or other gristley bits.

Chop any larger pieces into 1 – 2 inch cubes. Cover and refrigerate.

You should now have a big pot of dense, fragrant stock. Add the barley to the stock and simmer 15 minutes. Add the prepared vegetables to the pot and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add the chicken to the pot and simmer for another 15 minutes.

Serve hot.

Grilled Turmeric Salmon

Whenever we had fish when I was growing up my father would turn to me and say, in a feigned serious tone, “You know what they say about fish, don’t you? It’s brain food.” Oh yes, that’s right. It is.

Well, so are some spices. Turmeric, high in curcumin, the compound that gives curry its yellow hue, is said to potentially stave off Alzheimer’s and certain cancers. In fact, societies that use turmeric in their cuisine are known to have lower rates of Alzheimer’s than those that don’t. Whether it will save my memory or not, I like to use turmeric where I can. It adds flavor and color to boot. Adding spice is also a great way to avoid the need to add salt.

We just had a lovely weekend of warm weather, and so we decided it was time to bust out the grill for the first time this season. If you like fish, a fish broiler, also called a fish grill basket, is a great tool to have on hand for barbecue season. It allows the fish to grill over an open flame without falling apart when flipped or falling through the grates. The only other tool I would recommend is a grill thermometer, so that you know when the coals are hot enough to cook.

Turmeric adds a mellow flavor to the salmon and the grill does there rest.

Grilled Turmeric Salmon – serves 2 – 4

1 lb salmon fillets
2 T olive oil
1 t turmeric

Using a brush or your hands, coat the salmon wit olive oil. Dust the fillets with turmeric. I like to use a sifter to avoid clumps and get an even distribution.

Either secure the fish in a grill basket, or make a little pan out of tin foil.

When the grill is heated to 400 degrees, place the fish over the coals, skin side down, and cover for 5 – 7 minutes, checking once or twice to see that it isn’t burning. If using a basket, flip the salmon. If not, move it to a cooler part of the grill and cover another 3 – 5 minutes. It’s okay if the skin get a little charred. The meat is protected buy the skin, so charring will not effect the flavor.

The salmon is done when the meat just begins to seep white. Remove from heat. Place the basket, skin side up, over a dish or cutting board. Open cage and, allowing gravity to do its job, gently lift the top side of the cage. If the fish sticks, carefully press the fish from the top of the cage, allowing it to release.

Plate and serve with grilled vegetables.

Ingredient origins: Salmon – Alaska (I know, I know, I know. I live in New England, so why not go for Atlantic Salmon? Because it’s over fished and farmed salmon is just awful for the environment and for us); Olive oil – Italy, Turmeric – India

New England Boiled Dinner

There’s always all kinds of hubbub over corned beef and cabbage this time of year. My grandmother used to make New England Boiled Dinner, which is similar. Made with more winter vegetables, it’s a whole meal in itself, including potatoes, parsnips and carrots.

The cabbage and potatoes take on the corned beef’s brininess, which is complemented by the sweetness of the carrots and parsnips, making this one-pot meal a perfect spectrum of flavor.

New England Boiled Dinner – serves 4 – 6

4 medium boiling potatoes
2.5 lb gray (nitrate free) corned beef brisket
1 small head cabbage
4 carrots
water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Place the corned beef brisket in a large oven safe dutch oven and just cover with water. Place on a burner and bring to a simmer over high heat.

Meanwhile peel the potatoes and cut into quarters. Cut the cabbage into eight wedges and remove the core.

Cover the beef with the cabbage and potatoes. Transfer the dutch oven to the oven and cook, covered for 1 hour.

Using tongs, gently lift the potatoes out of the liquid and submerge the carrots and parsnips. Cover again with the potatoes, being careful not to crush them. Return to the oven and cook for 1 hour.

Remove the corned beef and transfer to a cutting board. Allow to rest 10 minutes before slicing. Plate with cabbage, potato, parsnip, carrot, and little bit of broth. Serve hot.

Ingredient origins: Nitrate free corned beef – Massachusetts; Parsnips – Massachusetts; Potatoes – California; Organic Cabbage – Mexico, Carrots – California