You Need Soup Today! (Tomato and Fennel Soup)

Here's a quick soup for this cold, rainy day that I am preparing for tomorrow's Healthy Vegetarian Soups class.  There's still time to sign up..

A watery fruit like tomatoes can be used like a stock.  Fresh or canned tomatoes combined with water and aromatic vegetables, quickly cooked, make a soup of surprisingly complexity.  There is no need to thicken this soup and it will be on and off the stove in under 30 minutes. 

Tomato and Fennel Soup

1 quart tomatoes, pureed and strained

1 head fennel, cored and sliced

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 quart water

3 tablespoons fresh mint, chopped

2 cups crusty bread, cut into 1/2 inch dice

salt and fresh black pepper

Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed stockpot.  Sauté the fennel over low heat for at least 5 minutes.  It should wilt and cook through, but not brown.  Season with salt and pepper.

Increase the heat to high.  Add the tomatoes and water.  Adjust the seasoning.  When the soup boils, reduce the heat to a low simmer and cook for 10 minutes. 

Serve the soup over crusty bread, garnished with mint.

Make Pasta, But Do It Right (spaghetti with fennel and Italian sausage)

Pasta is easy.  It really is however there are a few unbreakable rules.  The first is that you have to understand the noodle that you are using.  Generally, pasta has a neutral, pleasant grain flavor.  The flavors derived from carrot, spinach or squid ink are also understated.  Those ingredients are mostly there to contribute orange, green or black color.  I’ve never been a big fan of multicolor pasta, although there was a chef in Lambertville who served white and black angel hair with his zebra chops.  That seemed to be more of a laugh than a culinary breakthrough.

Shape matters.  Those ridges on your penne will hold the sauce.  That’s why rigatoni should be baked with sauce and messy cheeses (always plural), because it is smooth on the outside and will not sauce well.  Size is also important.  You should match the size of the flavoring ingredients with the size of the pasta.  That’s why bowties, farfalle, makes such great salad when combined with celery, red onion, pepperoncini, provolone and big hunks of salami.

Since it is such a simple thing to prepare, if it is not done correctly, the dish will be a complete disaster.  It’s rare that I will cop out and tell you to follow the manufacturer’s advice, but with pasta, their cooking directions are usually right on.  Again, you won’t hear me recommending avoidance of store brands often.  Name brand pasta, in my experience at least, tends to cook up more evenly and taste better than store brand.  It also only costs a quarter more, so this might not be a place to count pennies.

Pasta’s greatest contribution to a dish, much like tofu, is that it has a subtle, delicate taste and will soak up the flavors of whatever it is paired with.  That’s why tomato sauce and any of the cream sauces work so well with noodles.  Additionally, something simple like olive oil, garlic and basil, all strong flavors, elevate pasta to greatness.  I lived on that in college.

Today’s recipe is designed to show off a few things.  Pasta that is hot when combined with the sauce will soak it up more readily that cold noodles.  You’ll be making the sauce as the pasta boils.  Don’t worry.  It is a simple process.  We’ll also play with flavor, doing a spin on Carbonara, the classic egg yolk, onion, garlic and bacon sauce by instead using a whole egg, fennel, garlic and Italian sausage.  Using the same technique, while making a few substitutions creates a new dish that I hope you’ll like.

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Spaghetti with Fennel and Italian Sausage (serves 4 as an appetizer, 2 as a main course)

½ pound spaghetti

4 oz. Italian sausage, hot or sweet

2 eggs

1 c. fresh fennel, thinly sliced

1 c. heavy cream

½ c. Locatelli or Parmesean cheese, grate your own*

1 clove garlic, chopped

salt and black pepper

Following the directions on the package, boil a large pot of salted water and cook the spaghetti al dente, so that is cooked through, but still firm.  Begin making the sauce when the spaghetti goes in the pot.

Remove the sausage from its casing and brown it on a high heat in a large sauté pan.  Drain 2/3 of the grease from the pan.  Break the egg into the pan.  Scramble it, add the garlic and fennel.  Sauté these aromatics until the fennel has wilted.  Pour in the cream and 2/3 of the grated cheese.  Reduce the sauce by half.

By this time, the spaghetti will be properly cooked.  Drain it, then immediately add it to the sauce.  Stir it together, blending the sauce and the spaghetti.  Plate immediately, topping with the remainder of the grated cheese.

*Yes, grate you own.  Read the packaging on the pregrated stuff.  Unless you think that eating “powdered cellulose,” sawdust, is a good thing, you should take the 30 seconds it’ll take to grate up some cheese.

Jack is home from India! (green pepper bean cakes, tomato and fennel stew)

Jack is home from India! 

Jack is home from India!!!!!!!

His mother is very happy!!!!!!!!!!!

My son has been teaching in Dhrangadhra in Gujarat for the past six months.  We picked him up this morning at EWR and drove down the turnpike home in complete joy.  We are very proud of the kid.  He went to the other side of the world to do a job that he had never done before and apparently did it well.  We got some stories out of him, but mostly we’ll have to wait until the jet lag wears off and he is a little more coherent.  So now, he has taken a shower and is resting.  For how long, dunno, he was pretty jangled before he stumbled upstairs. 

Readjusting to Pennsylvania in winter will be a challenge.  He said that it was awful cute that his students would show up for class wearing sweaters and gloves whenever the temperature in Dhrangadhra dropped below 65°.  Today was 20° and windy, with a covering from yesterday’s snowfall.  The bigger adjustment will be with food.  That part of India is populated by Hindus and some Muslims.  The diet is largely vegetarian with the occasional chicken, no pork and certainly no beef.  Jack lost 30 pounds.  And this is a kid that didn’t have 30 pounds to lose to begin with.  Someone asked me what his “re-entry” plan is.  I don’t think he has one, other than loading up on kielbasa from Czerw’s http://www.kielbasyboys.com/, Banh Mi sandwiches and strombolis from Romano’s http://www.romanostromboli.com/.  We’ll have a processed meat theme for the next few weeks, I’m sure.

Jack said that he learned some of his favorite recipes before he left by hanging out with the women in the kitchen.  He has to formally write up what they taught him and that might be tricky since they were teaching in Hindi or Gujarati and he was learning in English.  In spite of that, I expect some good meals. 

I don’t know Indian cooking; however I did spend almost a year solely cooking vegetables in a French place in Philly.  Vegetables are difficult to cook properly, less forgiving than say, a pot roast.  It takes surprising skills to make a vegetable preparation that has real depth of character.  There’s technique involved.  You can’t simply throw everything in a pot and stew it for an hour.  Following is a recipe for bean cakes with a tomato and fennel stew.  The absolute best thing about this dish is that you can make it ahead of time and reheat the thing in about 10 minutes.  Really!  And it is better reheated!  Resist the urge to use canned beans.  The texture will never be right.

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Green Pepper Bean Cakes

1# dried white beans

1 green pepper, seeded, roughly chopped

1 cup spanish onion, roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled

3 tbs olive oil

3 qts. water

salt and pepper

In a large stockpot, put the beans in water, season with salt and pepper and put on a low heat.  When it comes to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. 

After 30 minutes, the beans will have begun to swell and soften.  Add the green pepper, onion and garlic.  Continue to simmer the beans for a further 30 minutes.  By that time, they will have completely softened and started to break down.  The water will have almost evaporated.  The bean cake mixture will be the consistency of thin mashed potatoes.

Remove from the heat and add the olive oil.  The olive oil is added last to preserve its delicate, aromatic  flavor.  With a spoon or a hand potato masher, smash the bean mix until it has a consistent, lumpy texture.  It should resemble thick mashed potatoes.  Transfer the bean cake mixture to a plastic container and refrigerate until cold, overnight is best.

When it is time to serve the bean cakes, heat a large sauté pan or electric griddle.  Coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil and fry patties of the bean cake mix that are about the size of small, thick pancakes.  When one side has browned, after about 5 minutes, flip the cakes and brown the other side for a further five minutes.  Transfer to a platter for serving and top with the tomato and fennel stew.

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Tomato and Fennel Stew

1 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes

1 head fennel, sliced, about 1 ½ cups

1 cup finely diced onions

1 tbs. sugar

2 tbs. olive oil

salt and pepper

In a large sauté pan on low heat, fry the onions and fennel in olive oil.  Season with sugar, salt and pepper.  The sugar will help moderate the acidity of the tomatoes.

When the onions and fennel have cooked, becoming transparent, add the tomatoes, increase the heat and simmer the stew until it has cooked down to sauce consistency, similar to a chunky tomato gravy.  Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.  Serve immediately over top of the green pepper bean cakes or refrigerate to be reheated later.

Leftovers?  This will make a serious stuffing for a morning omelette.