Cassoulet-Inspired Stew

For some reason a few years ago, I got obsessed with cassoulet.  Not sure why; occasionally, I just fixate on a dish.  I read about eight recipes and then seared some sausage and chicken in the same pot and made a soup.  

Authentic, non?

Over time, this cassoulet-inspired stew has taken on an ultra-flavorful life of its own.  There are so many flavor notes in this thing I barely know where to start.  As an added bonus, I will also tell you that if you’ve roasted a chicken lately, the two thighs and other remaining meat on your carcass will be a perfect amount of meat for this stew—and since you’re already cleaning off that carcass, throw it in a pot and get yourself some stock base too.

This stew is also chock-full of protein, which is important to me as I lift weights and muscle growth means lots of protein intake.  It’s also on the rich side—the sausage fat gets folded back into the sweating veggies but you can skim it easily when cold and the reheated portions get better and better.  Or, if you're really kicking it in the gym, enjoy your slick of savory yum.

Cassoulet-Inspired Stew

2 sausages, sliced in to ¼ inch rounds*

½ onion, diced

1 large carrot, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 ½ cups chicken stock

1/3 cup white wine

Bouquet garni  (several springs fresh parsley, 5-6 sprigs fresh thyme, 2 bay leaves)**

½ tsp celery seed

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 (19 oz) can white kidney beans***

1 ½ cups chopped, cooked chicken

Parmesan rind, optional

2 cups (loosely packed) rough chopped kale

Extra chopped parsley, for serving

Cook sausages in large soup pot on medium-low heat.  I didn’t specify because almost any type of sausage would work here—I prefer bratwurst as that sage-y stuff is my favourite.  Allow some fat to melt before the meat really gets its sear on.  When cooked, remove sausage rounds from the pot and set aside; retain rendered fat.  

Place onion, garlic and carrots into the pot and sweat for 8-10 minutes, or until they’re golden, soft, and their juices have cleaned up most of the brown scrummies on the bottom of the pot.

Return the sausage to the pot (and any accumulated plate juices); add the next six ingredients.  Bring the pot to a gentle simmer, uncovered, and cook for another 30 minutes, skimming occasionally.  Allowing it to stay uncovered means it will reduce just a little and thicken up.

In the last five minutes of cooking, grab your kale and stir it into the stew.  When it’s cooked down and wilted, pull the bouquet garni but if you’ve used parmesan rinds, leave them in until the soup’s done.  It’ll just ooze salty cheese taste into the soup indefinitely.

For serving, sprinkle on the extra parsley.  A crusty, seedy loaf goes really well with this broth.

*Tip: To make this easier and keep your knife less goopy, freeze sausage for approximately half an hour before slicing.

**Bouquet garni are just a bundle of herbs.  I place mine in a tea bag rather than tying them up as it’s neater.  I didn't chop the herbs into the soup to keep it a little clearer but that's definitely a fine alternative.

***You could substitute nearly any bean here but I prefer a light-colored variety for aesthetics.  In the version pictured above, I'd used canned chickpeas as they were what I had on hand.

Seafood soup

I am pleased to announce that I'm getting good enough with my cooking to ad-lib a fair number of dishes.  For instance, the braise holds no fear for me.  The sear is my friend.  If I read several renditions of a single recipe, I can usually fake it pretty well directly after.

So, inspired by various turns on cioppino, I decided to tackle a seafood soup of sorts.

The name still bothers me, I admit.  Not appetizing at all.  So try not to read the title and keep looking at that photo instead.

Seafood Soup 

4 Tbsp butter
1 shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup fennel, diced
1/2 Tbsp sweet paprika
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups fish stock
1 Tbsp tomato paste
glug white wine
1 cup bell pepper, diced
1 jalapeno, minced
1/4 lb 30-40 shrimp, shelled
1 fillet barramudi, diced to approx. bay scallop size
1/2 lb bay scallops
2.5 lbs mussels, cleaned
parsley, for garnish


Add butter to pan, gently softening shallot, garlic and fennel for a few minutes.  Add paprika and seasonings, stirring another minute until fragrant.

Add stock and remaining ingredients, minus mussels and parsley.  Cook at a gentle simmer for 4 minutes.  Add mussels, cover and cook for another six minutes. 

Discard mussels that do not open and distribute soup to plates, garnishing with parsley.

Serve with crusty bread (covered in garlic?!) for sopping.

Stocks

I love fall. More, I love cooking in fall. It feels like my element. I can roast poultry and vegetables and make hot bean soups. I think I'm able to throw together some chop for a salad fairly well, but it's not the same as having a steaming bowl or plate of warm waiting for you at the table.

On that note, I've branched out in the world of stocks; I made a seafood stock. I'm not going to give you the recipe for it. Stock recipes, to my mind, are counter-productive. For one thing, you can throw just about anything in a stock pot and it fits the bill, including apple or pear peels if you were feeling ambitious enough. What I will talk about are some basic ingredients for a stock and what you might desire to get the general flavor. You should always, however, branch out. I threw a whack of diced fennel into my seafood stock, for instance, because it had tasted damn good with the mussels I'd eaten originally. Keep in mind, too, that stocks and broths are not just for soups! Add them to rice, a casserole or use to poach instead of water.

A note--I will not mention bay leaves, salt or pepper below. They should probably be added to all of them. (A note on pepper, though: Add whole peppercorns rather than cracked pepper or ground pepper. Unless you want to strain your stock with a coffee filter, too much of that pepper will stay behind.)

Technique:

A brief thought on how. Old-school stock making is slightly more time-consuming when you have to dip and scoop foam off the top of the pot all the time. If you have a slow cooker you can literally dump ingredients and forget about them forever. Whatever you're cooking will only get better and if you want to get rid of fats from meat stocks, skim the fat off the top once it's cold and solid, if you must. Otherwise, fats provide a nice protective layer over the rest of your stock.

Vegetable:

I would encourage you to save all your vegetable scraps for vegetable stock. Not even just for vegetable--save it all for any stock! I recently purchased a whole chicken and after eating the breasts, the bones went in the pot and the dark meat was torn up to go into pot pies. Everything but the skin off the back half of the chicken was used and reused--feels good! Onion and garlic skins and everything can be saved.

Now, I have heard people classify vegetable stocks into light and dark...

(Which, by the way, I should be calling broths. Small tidbit that I wasn't aware of until last year: Stocks are the ones that go gelatinous when they're cold. Their jello-ness comes from the fact that there was bones or joints or some other such in the pot. If you haven't been able to get to the gelatinous stage, some people suggest cracking small bones open or adding chickens' feet to the pot. Personally I couldn't be bothered and mine always come out fine. Stocks supposedly contain more nutrition, though I fail to see how pure vegetable stocks (sorry, 'broths') would not be nutritious seeing as you've boiled up a bunch of veggies. Anywho. I'm no scientist, I suppose. Broths are the ones that are lighter, thinner, free of gelatin and supposedly less nutritious. I might be missing some definitive markers in here, but that's the gist of it.)

Light stocks might include things such as onions, garlic, bits of fruit, carrots, mushrooms, celery, etc.

Dark stocks might include heavier vegetables such as portabellos, turnips, etc. Dark stocks would also benefit from your roasting the vegetables before you boil them to death. Enriches the whole thing.

One thing to avoid may be cabbages. I've never tried them myself as I've heard they have a rather overwhelming flavor and will take over a stock if given the chance. Personally? Unless I'm trying to recreate a vegetarian stock to sub for a beef stock as in when I try to make my sister French Onion Soup, I just mash it all together, roasted or not, 'dark' and 'light', and let it simmer a good long time. Or, now that I have my slow cooker, let it slow cook overnight, for instance.

Chicken:

I'm less variable with chicken stocks. Chicken is a primary, of course. Carrots, celery, onion, garlic. I'm actually a big fan of leeks rather than traditional onions in chicken stock. Have an idea for a spicy soup eventually? Throw in some whole dried chilies. Also, don't get rid of the "garbage" pieces! For instance, when I spatchcock a chicken, I save that backbone for the stock pot.

Beef:

Being that we almost never make red meat in this house, it's rather more difficult to tell you what to put in a beef stock. I would probably treat it the same way I treat pork stock. If I'm making pulled pork, I'll put the roast in the slow cooker, slice up an onion in large rings to dump over it and cover it all with water. Very basic, but a beautiful, rich stock at the end. Likewise, I've boiled hamhocks into times unknown with awesome results. Perhaps for a Split Pea Soup?


Seafood:

I'd never tried to make a seafood stock before. But after making two pounds of mussels it seemed to me a rather damn shame to just toss out all the scraps. In this case, my scraps were the emptied shells (a few with bits of meat still in there) and a few mussels that had been broken or already dead and open or what have you. I've been dreaming of a couple chowders I'd like to make and it seemed stupid to dump chicken stock into a chowder when I had all the fixings for a good seafood base. A caveat about using mussels, however: make sure your mussels (particularly the broken ones) are very, very clean. You may have to strain this one through a coffee filter anyway as it's rather difficult to be sure you've gotten all the grit out of a broken mussel. I had rope-cultivated mussels which were very clean to begin with so I was relatively safe. I've also done this with uncooked shrimp tails and fish scraps if I've trimmed down a fillet or some such.

I don't think you'll see many recipes for seafood broths anyway, but I threw all the mussels in there, onion, that fennel bulb, a few grape tomatoes that had nearly spoiled, garlic, some carrot tops... A lot of the usual basics for a stock, plus some thyme and parsley. Always add a spice you find familiar to the family of flavors you're building if you have it. Preferably whole, so you have less mishegas to strain out.

One last tip: In the case of stocks/broths I've done where the smell isn't quite right? Not deep or rich enough? I'll actually use that liquid as part of the covering liquid for another batch of broth/stock with, say, more chicken if they previous one hadn't quite smelled chicken-y enough. If the smell doesn't come through, the taste won't come through.

Any secret ingredients you really love in a stock?

Choc-a-block Chicken Soup

Mother Nature, if your intent with this wicked-bad non-spring-ish weather was to make me desire one last giant pot of soup, then you have succeeded. Frankly, if it wasn't, I don't know what the point is because I'm sure you don't like seeing us miserable. You wouldn't've made such fine and beautiful things come out later in spring if you liked miserable.

Or, and here's a theory, maybe you knew I had some cooked chicken meat that needed using up.



Chock-a-Block Chicken Soup

I cannot make a small soup. I am incapable. I thought, before starting this, "I'll just make enough for tonight, lunch tomorrow and maybe one more to freeze."

Hah. I should've never believed me.

This soup ends up being pretty thick with stuff (it's chock-a-block, duh), although I still wouldn't classify it as a stew--the broth's too thin, in my mind. As with all my soups, this one is a gigantaur. Feel free to adjust.

6.5 oz egg noodles (or 180 grams)
water
1 Tbsp oil
2 cups (1 large) leeks, thinly sliced
1 cup diced carrots
salt
5 cups broth
3 cups water
1 1/2 cup chopped, cooked chicken
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 medium zucchini, diced
5 mushrooms, quartered
1 cup frozen corn niblets
2 Tbsp fresh thyme, minced
1/2 Tbsp dried parsley
1 tsp red pepper flakes
salt & pepper
squeeze of lemon

Bring the water to a boil.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a big ol' saucepot and add the leeks and the carrots. Salt them now, as it'll help them sweat a bit. I like leeks for a few reasons--they're mild, their smell evokes chicken soup to me like no other, and they're much prettier floating around in soup than their diced white counterparts. The measurement sounds like a lot. This was a big leek. Plus, they break apart and fluff the second you move those pretty rings. Stir occasionally over very low heat; the idea is not to brown, for once.

Stirred to softness? Good. Your water's probably boiled, so go dump the noodles in.

Add broth and water to your aromatics, then the chicken and garlic. Black pepper it. Stir, then bring this to a simmer for ten minutes or so.

Take your noodles out at about half that time, five minutes. They're a little al-dente at this stage but that's good--you'll cook them a little when they're added to the soup (don't add them straight in; you'll loose too much liquid) and probably cook them again when you rewarm the soup some later day.

Now that we've simmered, add the quick-cooking vegetables and the herbs: the zucchini, mushrooms, frozen corn, thyme, parsley (note fresh vs. dried amts!), red pepper flakes, and that squeeze of lemon. Fear not--the red pepper flakes are not enough to make a vat of soup this size truly spicy. Rather, they lend warmth. But you're gonna reduce them anyway, so whatever, go ahead.

Squeeze a wedge of lemon in. No, seriously. It'll be nice. I'm debating just adding some of my minced preserved lemons next time.

Add the noodles. Stir, let this all simmer five minutes more.

Serve with some sort of bread.

Apolopeas and Ham for Radio Silence

Now, I didn't figure this was going to be the active-est of blogs, but I didn't expect myself to tumble into THIS kind of silence. Oopie.

As penance, I hand you probably my favorite soup, during one of your last chances to make those really long-cook winter meals.

I give you, my Split Pea and Ham Soup.

Or as it is now known, my Apolopeas and Ham Soup.

My husband does not share my adoration for beans and lentils and peas, and I won't tell you what he thinks they look like cooked, so this recipe is for me alone. This means that I have made an enormous vat of soup all for myself. Luckily, soup always freezes. Now, I've never made split pea soup until now as most every recipe I've come across requests that I use a ham hock for flavor and meat. I had yet to ever see something in the grocery store which called itself a ham hock and therefore I never made it, feeling that boiling a hunk of cooked, smoked ham would be somehow inadequate.

(Though, now having made pea/bean soup with both a ham hock and a hunk of cooked ham, I can tell you that the hock does lend a certain smoky flavor and the shredded, unprocessed meat gives the soup a far more traditional mouth feel. A rustic feel, you might say. I think it’s lovely, but the more processed, pre-cooked hams are not awful by a long shot.)

So I pined after the perfect split-pea concoction from a can for years, never finding it, and wishing, strangely, that Tim Horton's would just sell me theirs. (I'm a salt junkie; I'm sorry.)

A few days after we moved to our new home in Toronto, I went visiting the Culinarium. Amongst their gorgeous products (and produce), I saw, in the bottom right corner of a freezer, a triangular shape wrapped in butcher's paper labeled 'ham hock'. I knew, immediately, what I had to do.



Now, I need to explain to you that I bought this enormous hunk of meat without thinking about any recipe. When I got it home and realized I'd purchased a 3 1/2 pound hock and that it was too big to even fully fit in my soup pot, I was a little daunted. That said, I managed, and I will tell you just how so based on my experience. But I might recommend you look at getting a bigger pot or a smaller piece of meat. As it is, I have a bunch of leftover meat and four cups of beautiful, rich ham stock.

So, without further ado...

Split Pea Soup with Ham

Now, you are being warned--this is one of those recipes that I did not measure as I went. I am guesstimating the amounts I think I used here. If something looks wrong to you, adjust as necessary.

This is a half-day recipe for sure, if not longer, depending on your belly's noise levels. It is, however, a half-day recipe that doesn't need a lot of tending, so you can probably do as I did and get on with household chores in the mean time.

3 1/2 lbs ham hock
2 cups split green peas
3 smallish carrots
1/2 large onion
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp unsalted butter
3 bay leaves
splash of liquid smoke
ham stock
water
salt and pepper to taste

In the morning, start your stock. My hock stood up out of the pot by a few inches so I filled it with as much water as I dared and got it bubbling. Top off the water every couple of hours if necessary to get as much of the hock submerged as possible. Eventually, the meat at the bottom softens and you can push the whole thing down a little more (I never quite got the whole thing in, however). Let it simmer away, skimming occasionally, for approximately three hours or more. Remove hock from the stock and let it cool. Pour out the liquid into a separate container and reserve.

When the hock has cooled enough to handle, pull off and dice up 1 1/4 cups of meat. Reserve the rest of the meat for another use.

Dice the carrots, onion and garlic. Sautee in the butter for five minutes to soften. Please note I specify unsalted butter. The ham is already plenty salty. You probably don’t really need to add to it, and this is coming from a salt addict. Dump the rinsed split peas into the pot, the meat, the bay leaves and the smoke.

Pour in four and a half cups of stock and four cups of water. Stir everything up, cracking pepper over the whole lot. Resist adding salt until near the end so you can get an idea of how much the stock has flavored things. Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer for approximately an hour or more, or until the peas have cooked and disintegrated to your desired consistency (I prefer the whole thing to be very soft and not highly textured, so I cook it for a long time).

This soup will thicken again as it cools; add water back in as necessary.

And, as always, the really awful picture to go with it.
















(Do you like my staging? How I didn't even think to try to get this oozing green mash out of the messy pot?)