Rosemary Cracker Bread

It's sort of a strange thing, this bread...er, cracker. Bread? Cracker bread? I saw it over on Smitten Kitchen first, she referred to it as a Crisp Rosemary Flatbread, and apparently that's what they called it in Gourmet this summer. I don't know guys, I think it's too shattery to be called a flatbread. There's virtually no chewiness, and it makes crumbs like CRAZY. Crumbs like I only eat it standing over the sink in the kitchen, and then I clean the counter. Absolutely NOT the sort of thing you'd want to eat in bed.

But it is the sort of thing you want to EAT, period. It's flaky and crispy and salty, which I love, and the rosemary gives it a delightful herby punch. It comes together in approximately no time at all, and I bet it would be delicious smeared with goat cheese or sundried tomato spread or tapenade. I've been eating it instead of toast with my scrambled eggs all week! If you've got half an hour (including baking time!) you should give this cracker/bread a shot.



Rosemary Cracker Bread

1 3/4 unbleached AP flour
1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup oil plus more for drizzling
flaky sea salt (I used Maldon)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees with a heavy baking sheet upside down on the middle rack.

In a medium bowl, stir together flour, chopped rosemary, baking powder, and salt. Add water and oil and gently stir into flour with a wooden spoon until a dough forms. Knead dough gently in the bowl 4 or 5 times until the dough ball is cohesive.

Divide dough into 3 pieces and roll out 1 piece on a sheet of parchment paper into a 10-inch round or oval or whatever wonky puzzle piece shape you can. It should be thin, and you should keep the other pieces covered until you're ready to roll them out.

Brush the top lightly with additional oil and if you want, scatter small clusters of rosemary leaves on top, pressing in slightly. Sprinkle with sea salt (don't skip this part!). Slide round (still on parchment) onto preheated baking sheet and bake until pale golden and browned in spots, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer bread to a rack to cool, then make 2 more rounds (1 at a time) on fresh parchment, brush with oil and salt and bake each round. Break into pieces if you want.

If cooled completely, cracker bread will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for a few days.

Creamy Sweet Potato Soup

It's finally starting to get chilly on the regular here in Boston, and I find myself craving the old standby soup and crusty bread dinner at least once a week. I had picked up a few sweet potatoes on a whim at the farmer's market last week so I browsed around the interwebs for some ideas and decided sweet potato soup was just the ticket.

Loosely based on Elise's sweet potato soup from an old issue of Bon Appetit and cut way down in proportions, this warm and faintly sweet bowl of yum was *almost* exactly what I was after. I didn't have any maple syrup, so I added a tiny bit of brown sugar, but I think I added too much. I'm leaving it off the ingredient list here, but if you taste yours and it's missing something, try sweetening it up a bit. Next time I think I will also add more aleppo pepper or red pepper flakes to up the spiciness, which I find myself enjoying more and more lately.

This was also my first attempt at using plain soy milk in cooking, but I thought it would work since soup is generally forgiving. The sweet potatoes add body and creaminess to the soup when blended anyway, so I didn't need to add much. As a result of that substitution, I find myself with one of the few truly vegan offerings in my humble vegetarian/vegan label. Sweet.

Sweet Potato Soup
adapted from Simply Recipes

2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 lg celery stalk, chopped, leaves reserved for garnish
1 lg garlic clove, chopped
just over 1 lb sweet potatoes, peeled, cut into 1 inch chunks
2 cups vegetable broth or stock
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp aleppo pepper or crushed red pepper
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup soy milk

Heat the olive oil in a medium sauce pot over medium-low heat. Add the onion, celery stalk, and garlic and saute until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Adjust the heat down if necessary so the garlic doesn't brown. Add the sweet potato chunks, broth and spices and simmer over low heat, covered, until the sweet potato is tender all the way through, 15-20 minutes. Add the soy milk and taste, season with salt and pepper.

Turn off the soup and let it cool for 5-10 minutes before pureeing in batches in a blender. You could also use an immersion blender, if yours had not broken the second time you used it. Serve topped with chopped celery leaves

Serves 2-3

Boiled Kale

So I know this doesn't look much like a celebratory meal, but how about if I just tell you that on Tuesday we stayed up very late eating Hugh's crab dip and Adam's black bean dip and hummus and I put my hand upon your hip, when I dip, you dip, we dip so much DIP. Wow. That sentence really got away from me, huh? ANYWAY. Between planning for the people coming over to watch the election results and then watching the election results and then being really tired from staying up so late, I did not do a very good job documenting my meals over the last week. I made some turkey chili. It was ok.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I took Molly's advice: I boiled some kale. I toasted some bread. I fried an egg.

It was a cold night, and this was a soul-satisfying meal for such an evening. It was simple and filling. I won't tell you the method, because Molly does a better job of interpreting Zuni than I could, but I will suggest you give it a try. I'm heading up to Maine this weekend, but I will be back next week with plenty to discuss - Hugh and I are hosting a baby shower this month and I'm doing the food... chocolate peanut butter cake, anyone?

Go do it.

Impromptu Veggie Soup

Over the summer I took Kalyn's advice and pureed a lot of the bounty from my basil plant to stick in the freezer. It came in awfully handy last weekend when I made myself this tasty two-serving pot of soup for dinner. I realize it's sort of mean to tell you about that now since it's NOVEMBER OMG HOW'D THAT HAPPEN??, but the idea is if you have some tasty things around, soup is easy! Check your crisper for veggies. Saute said veggies. Add Some stock and maybe some canned tomatoes. Add beans. (Or leftover rice, or small pasta... you get the idea.) Taste and season and hey look! Soup!

Aside: Not that you could POSSIBLY forget what tomorrow is, unless you've been under the proverbial rock for the last two years, but DON'T forget to vote. Seriously. It's important.

Clean out the crisper veggie soup

2T olive oil
1 rib celery, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
2 small carrots, sliced into rounds
1 sprig of thyme, leaves only, minced if you like
1 14 oz can tomatoes, diced (I used fire roasted)
3/4 can white beans
1/3 c basil puree
2 c chicken stock

In a medium pot over medium heat, cook the celery, carrots and onion until the onion is translucent. Add the tomatoes and stock, turn heat to medium-low and simmer until the carrots are tender but not mushy 10-15 minutes. Add the thyme leaves, basil puree and white beans plus salt and pepper to taste and let simmer until heated through, about 2 minutes.

Serves 2-3 (or if you're home by yourself on a Sunday, 1 big dinner and 1 lunch.)

Lemon Risotto with Shrimp

Aah, risotto. You've had it before, right? So creamy you think they MUST have dumped half a gallon of heavy cream in, salty and just a touch chewy and all around delicious. I freaking love the stuff. The best part is that it's SO much easier than you think. Time consuming, yes. Challenging, not so much.


Ok sure, it takes a little while, but it's such a neat process. Look at that photo above: grains of rice swimming in chicken broth. Now look at the one below it: creamy and smooth. And the RICE did that. Not me! I swear I only added a little cheese at the end, and no cream! You don't have to use arborio or carnaroli (two types of short grain white rice) but they're easy to find (especially arborio) and they're the standard rices for this particular application. Oh, and don't even THINK about throwing out your parmesan rinds. Stick 'em in a bag in the freezer when the cheese is gone, and drop one in the pot with the rice. (See the triangle in the photo above.) You'll get every speck of creamy delicious cheesiness out of it before you throw it away.
Plain risotto made with an onion, chicken broth, and a little parmesan cheese is all well and good, but it also makes an excellent canvas for whatever flavors you're in the mood for. The other night, I wanted something light tasting and fresh, so I added the juice and zest of a lemon and some herbs. On top of the rice went some simple sauteed shrimp et voilà! Dinner, she is served! (YES I know this is an Italian dish. Whatever dudes, I'm feeling the French at the moment.)

Lemon Risotto with Shrimp
serves 4
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
5 c chicken broth
one small onion, finely chopped
olive oil
parmesan rind (optional but highly recommended)
1/2 - 3/4 cup grated parmesan
salt and pepper
one lemon, juice & finely chopped zest
1 T mint, finely chopped (or basil, but I had mint on hand)
3 T parsley, finely chopped
Peeled, deveined shrimp, 5-6 per serving, sauteed
Heat the chicken broth in a medium sized pot over low heat, just to keep it warm. Add a couple tablespoons of olive oil to a large pot over medium heat, add the onion and saute a couple of minutes until the onion is translucent but not browning. Add the rice and saute for about two minutes until you can smell it getting nutty. A few touches of gold on the grains is fine, but keep the rice moving at this point so it doesn't brown.
Add the parmesan rind (whole) and a ladelful of chicken broth to the rice and stir it in. Leave it alone for a couple seconds and stir again. At first the rice will absorb the broth quickly. When you scrape the spoon against the bottom of the pot and no liquid rushes in to cover it, you need to add more broth. Continue adding broth a ladelful at a time until the rice is creamy, 25-35 minutes. It may take longer depending on your exact heat level, your rice, and your stirring. Just go till it's done, and if you run out of broth use water - you can add more salt at the end if it needs it.
Meanwhile, chop the herbs and zest the lemon. Reserve a little bit of the herbs and zest for garnish if you like. Saute the shrimp in a touch of olive oil in another pan towards the end of the cooking process and cover to keep warm.
When the risotto is creamy (taste it to be sure the rice is cooked to your liking), add the grated cheese, lemon juice, lemon zest and herbs, salt and pepper to taste. Taste it again and adjust seasoning if necessary. Serve on a plate or in a shallow bowl with shrimp on top and garnished with reserved herbs and lemon zest.

Brussel Sprouts are NOT icky.

Things are getting slow at the Farmers' Market in Government Center. A lot of the vendors pack it in at the end of October, but the heartiest will stick it out until Thanksgiving. I'm pretty bummed out about the idea of five months without super-fresh-just-picked vegetables, but I'm making the most of what's there now, and that includes Brussels Sprouts. Now don't run screaming for the hills you big baby - they're delicious! You just have to be nice to them.


I picked up a branch of these eensy weensy specimens last Wednesday. The small ones, once trimmed, were the size of my thumb nail, so I just threw them in the pan whole, and I cut some of the larger ones (large being totally relative here, they were still no bigger than a ping pong ball) in half so they would be closer in size.


Roasted in the oven with simple seasoning and oil, these mini cabbages make for a totally delicious and unbelievably good for you side dish. This bowl above was full, but I only remembered half way through that I wanted a photo of the finished goods. If you can't find dollhouse sized sprouts, just cut the regular ones in quarters.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Brussels Sprouts
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Wash the sprouts, removing any tough or discolored outer leaves. If you bought them on the branch, be sure to trim the stem end off as well. If using regular sized sprouts, cut them in quarters or in half. Place in a pan, season generously with salt and pepper, and toss with a few tablespoons of olive oil. Roast until golden brown with darker spots, stirring once, at lest 20 minutes. Larger sprouts will take longer.