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.

Sauteed or Grilled (Pork Souvlaki)

Any chef, at least out here on the US East Coast has a Greek chef or two in their lineage.  As I said in an earlier blog, one of my first important cooking gigs was at a Greek owned restaurant in Rochester, NY.  Christos Petsos taught me a bunch or early lessons and let me know that maybe, just maybe, I had what it took to be a professional chef.  When chefs get to late-night, end of shift boozing, everyone has a Greek chef story, most of them profane, however all of them filled with grudging respect, sometimes awe. 

You see, in the northeast, I don’t know about the rest of the country, Greeks run many of the restaurants that are low to mid priced, just perfect for a stoner to get a job where no obvious skills are required.  Sometimes all it takes is showing up at the right time, like say when the chef has just punched out a cook and thrown his tenderized body out on the loading dock to marinate in the blood and the muck and the garbage juices that collect there.  Who would you look at that scene and say, “Hell yeah, I wanna work here!!!!”  Well, I did.  That’s how I was hired at a diner in Saylorsburg.   Later, I was to be the guy doing the thumping, proving that chef DNA can be transferred by osmosis.  I’ve mellowed since then.

Pork Souvlaki can either be made in a pan, as a sauté, or more commonly grilled on skewers over an open fire.  This is serious street food.  The butchering and marinade is the same.  I’ll be preparing this version sautéed with onions and peppers, served over bread that was browned in the pan before cooking the Souvlaki.  It could also be served with pita bread and garnished with crumbled feta cheese and Tzatziki sauce.  If bamboo skewers are to be used, be sure to soak them in water for at least 30 minutes before skewering the meat.  Without soaking, they will quickly burn, making a big mess of your grill.    

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Pork Souvlaki (serves 6)

2 pounds pork country spare ribs, cut into 1 inch dice, ribs removed

3/4 cup olive oil

1 lemon, juiced, rind removed

4 cloves garlic, chopped

3 tablespoons fresh oregano, chopped (or 1 tablespoon dried)

1 Spanish onion, sliced

1 red pepper, sliced

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon fresh black pepper

Here's what you'll need for the marinade.  Fresh oregano, lemons, olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic.

Peel the lemon with a vegetable peeler, but not so deeply that you take off the bitter white pith.  Save the rind to cook in rice pilaf to serve with the Souvlaki.

 Combine 1/2 cup olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper in a large bowl to make a marinade for the Souvlaki.

Add the pork.  Mix to combine.  The acidic lemon juice will slightly whiten the pork.  Refrigerate for one hour.

Drain the pork.  You do not want to put wet meat cubes into a hot pan, because it will splatter and may flare up.  Heat a large sauté pan.  Add 1/4 cup olive oil.  When the pan is very hot, add the marinated pork. 

Turn the pork with tongs.  Brown each side.      

When the pork has cooked through, about 10 minutes, add to onions and peppers. 

Sauté for 2 minutes, until the vegetables have been cooked through.

We served the Souvlaki with sautéed kale and rice pilaf.

Tomatoes coming soon, but until then... (Black Bean Salad)

It is the very beginning of tomato season in southeastern Pennsylvania.  They haven’t turned up on most of the farm stands, however the mid size folks, those with a greenhouse to start the plants around March, will have beautiful, large tomatoes for you to enjoy.  Since the large volume, the mother lode of tomatoes isn’t here yet, try using them mixed in with other things, for example as a flavor component in a salad. 

Black Bean Salad is a good example of this.  Fresh tomatoes combine well with the other vegetables, while their juice, mixed in with lime, avocado and olive oil makes a fine dressing.  While I don’t always encourage this kind of thing, canned Goya Black Beans are a good product and will save the hassle of cooking dried.  After all, it is summer, we don’t want to spend these glorious days in the kitchen.  Serve the salad over romaine or with grilled chicken that has been marinated in lime, garlic, chilies and olive oil.

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Mexican Black Bean Salad (serves 6 as a main course)

2 15.5 ounce cans of black beans

2 large tomatoes, peeled and diced

1 green pepper, diced

1 red pepper, diced

1 red onion, diced

1 bunch scallions, sliced

1 avocado, scooped and roughly chopped

1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped

4 tbs. olive oil

the juice of 2 limes

2 chipotle chilies in adobo sauce, chopped (La Costeña is a good brand)

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Open the cans of black beans, place them in a colander and rinse them with cold water to wash off all the juice.  Allow them to drain completely while you assemble the salad.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the tomatoes, red and green peppers, onions, scallions and avocado.  Season them with salt and pepper.   Make the dressing in the same bowl by adding the olive oil, lime juice and chipotle chilies.  Again adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.  Allow the salad to rest at room temperature for 10 minutes so that the flavors of the vegetables and dressing will marry.

Stir in the black beans.  Mix to combine everything, check the seasoning and make any final adjustments, then cover the salad and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

Mythology, Tomato Sauce and Your Italian Grandma (Tomato Sauce)

Our first cooking class is scheduled for next Saturday, March 28th at 1:00.  You'll find a full schedule at http://www.freshfunfoods.com/schedule/

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The mythology around tomato sauce is extensive.  Sworn essential ingredients are too numerous to list.  I have to use veal shins?  You certainly need olives, pork, Vidalia onions, use Chianti, no Barolo, at least two kinds or oregano, really?  Simmering times that must be adhered to vary from minimal to “I’ve had shorter vacations.”  And the key ingredient, as we all know, is an Italian Grandma’s stockpot.  An anthropologist studying foodways has a field day with this kind of stuff. 

Here’s the thing, like everything you do in the kitchen, use your head. 

Fresh is always better.  Buy tomatoes in season and make puree or diced tomatoes to can or freeze.  I’m still mourning the last of the tomatoes that my friend Jim Markowski got for me in August.  If you don’t have a connection like Jim, high quality canned tomatoes will work.  I like Furmano’s. 

Shorter cooking times are probably better.  Tomatoes are acidic.  If you simmer them for 24 hours, the sauce will be…acidified. 

Good booze is always better than cheap booze.  While you don’t need to reduce a great Bordeaux for sauce, go a step up from New Jersey plonk.   It might make sense to use an Italian style wine. 

A simple, clearly explained recipe is always better than the nonspecific, “whisper down the lane” family recipe.  That said, maybe you should find some time to cook with Grandma and write down her recipes.  That goes for Grandpa too.  He probably knows a trick or two. 

Still, with all that behind you, you will need to understand some basic technique to make a great red sauce.  Follow the directions below.  Take your time, enjoy how the smell of the various ingredients fill your home as you build the sauce and develop layer after layer of texture, aroma and flavor.

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Tomato Sauce (three quarts)

4 tbs. olive oil

1 green bell pepper, diced

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 tbs. fresh oregano, chopped

2 tbs. fresh basil, chopped

1tbs. flat parsley, chopped

2 c. dry red wine

6 oz. tomato paste

3 28 oz. cans of petite diced tomatoes

salt and fresh black pepper

In a large heavy bottomed stockpot, heat the olive oil on medium.   

Add the green pepper and onion.  Season with salt and fresh black pepper.  Sauté for five minutes, until the aromatic vegetables begin to wilt, but not brown.  Add the garlic, oregano, basil and parsley.   

  

Cook while stirring just for one minute, and then add the wine.  Increase the heat to high.  Reduce by half.

Reduce the heat to low, stir in the tomato paste and mix until it is smooth.   

Add the diced tomatoes, season with salt and fresh black pepper.  Add one can of water.  Increase the heat to high, bringing the sauce to a boil, adjust the seasoning with salt and fresh black pepper, and then reduce the heat to a low simmer. 

Simmer the sauce for 20 minutes only.  In that time, the sauce will have reduced slightly and will still taste light and fresh.