CafeChatNoir

Original recipe from allrecipes.com – my changes and such italicized. Makes between 4 and 5 quarts, so have some containers handy for freezing the leftovers. I think it would be great with cornbread.  ETA: Next day leftovers are more of a “casserole” consistency – the rice soaks up so much of the liquid, you end up with rice, beans & sausage vs. a “soup”.
1 tablespoon olive oil skipped this – the bacon created enough fat/grease for the rest of the saute
8 ounces bacon, cooked and cubed – I think next time I will skip this or cut it in half and up the andouille a little bit
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 tablespoon minced garlic – used 2 decent sized cloves
4 bay leaves
6 ounces sliced andouille sausage
1 small smoked ham hock
2 cups dry kidney beans, soaked overnight (or quick soaked) I think this could go w/2.5 – 3 cups, I ended up adding some canned kidney beans towards the end. Did the quick soak w/no problems.
1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
8 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon salt I think this could be skipped w/no issues
1 1/2 cups cooked rice – I made 2 cups, it was just easier to measure out…
6 tablespoons thinly sliced green onion

1. In a large pot over high heat, heat the oil. Add the bacon and saute for 2 minutes. Add the onions, bell pepper, garlic, bay leaves, sausage and ham hock and saute for 2 more minutes.

I precooked the bacon in the microwave for a couple minutes, and skipped the oil for sauteing it.

2. Add the beans and saute for 2 more minutes. Stir in the Cajun-style seasoning, Worcestershire sauce and stock. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

3. Add the salt, cover the pot and simmer for an additional 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and allow the pot to sit, covered, for about 20 minutes. Discard the ham hock. And bay leaves.

4. Ladle soup into individual bowls. Top each serving with 1/4 cup rice and 1 tablespoon green onion. Went ahead and just dumped the rice straight into the soup so it was more of an actual “red beans & rice soup” vs. “red bean soup with rice on top” and let it sit for another 10 minutes.

It’s on the “will do again” list.

Stumbled across this recipe for Herb Monkey Bread this morning in the subscriptions, which reminded me of a very similar recipe I’ve got that is even easier that I needed to get saved before I lose the piece of paper it’s written down on.

Mini Herbed Rolls/Pull Aparts
3 T butter
2 t dill seed
1 t poppy seed
1 T dried minced onion
1/4 t celery seed
1/4 c grated Parmesean cheese
1 12oz. can fridge biscuits

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Melt butter in 8 inch round pan, and sprinkle onion & herb seeds evenly over the butter.

Separate the biscuit dough into 10 biscuits, then quarter each one.

Place dough pieces & cheese in a bag and shake until the pieces are covered with the cheese.

Place the dough pieces in the pan, banke 15-18 minutes until golden brown.

Flip out onto a plate and serve warm.

Can be made ahead and refrigerated before baking – just remove from fridge 15 minutes prior to baking.

I stumbled on this recipe for Lobster & Beer Risotto. There must be something like “lobster appreciation day” or some such nonsense that would warrant making this… Hell, I’ll probably just settle for, “The sun came up this morning, there is reason to celebrate.”

ETA: Link working now.

After making folks put up with the myriad of appearing, disappearing and reappearing test posts, here’s something with (hopefully) some redeeming value. I got this recipe from the lovely Ms. Holly Orberg when she was my cube neighbor back at AT&T and got a craving for it the other night. It makes ~2 cups, but I don’t think there be an issue w/cutting it in half if you’re just snacking on your own.

1/2 # tiny salad shrimp*
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 c. mayonnaise
1-2 stalks green onion, chopped**
2 T ketchup***

Combine everything but the shrimp, and the fold in the shrimp. Let chill/setup in the fridge for about an hour, serve with crackers or chips. (It’s really good with Fritos.)

* If you can’t get salad shrimp, which I could not, you can go with small/medium shrimp and cut them up into little pieces. However, if you’re buying raw w/shells on and cooking them, you’ll need more than 1/2#. I used 31-40s and I’d say 3/4# (raw/uncooked) would have been better.
** I think fresh chives would also work nicely for this..
*** I use cocktail sauce, I also think that chili sauce could work too.

Success! I wrote everything down as I went along and I’m glad I did, cause I definitely will use this again someday and I’m sure I won’t remember what I did. However, I think less corn next time or skip it altogether. Still quite good!

Beef Stew

1.5# stew meat, if yours comes like it does here, you’ll need to cut it down into smaller pieces
1 c carrots, chopped
4 white potatoes, chopped into chunks
1/4 lg onion (softball sized), cut into large chunks
1 sm can (11 oz) sweet corn, drained
1 t thyme
1 t pepper
1/2 t salt
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
bay leaf
2T worchestershire sauce
1.5 c Guinness
1.5 c beef stock
3T AP flour
3T butter

Brown beef, and drain.
Melt butter over medium low heat, add flour and get your roux on.
Whisk in stock and beer
Add everything else.
Bring to a boil and let boil for 5 minutes.
Reduce heat to low, let simmer for 1 hour
Play the “where the hell did the bay leaf go” game and remove

Dumplings – straight from Bisquick

2 cups Original Bisquick mix
2/3 cup milk

Stir ingredients until soft dough forms.
Drop by spoonfuls onto boiling stew; reduce heat.
Cook uncovered 10 minutes. Cover and cook 10 minutes. (Note: This is a good time to clean the bowl you used to mix this up, I know from experience that it can and will turn to cement if not cleaned fast enough.)

The dumplings were a tiny bit on the gooey side – I forgot how much those suckers expand and the initial spoonfuls were a little too big.

As a child, I had the expected horrified reaction when I heard about “Welsh Rabbit” – you can’t eat bunnies! I was quite relieved when I found out that no cute bunnies come to a dastardly end in making this dish.

Decided I wanted something appetizer-y to go with the leftovers from last night and frankly was just looking for an excuse to make this. Now, this recipe definitely goes farther than just 4 pieces of toast – probably more like 8.

It’s goooooood. And the dog enjoyed it too, when he swiped one of the pieces of toast OFF MY PLATE. He loves cheese. He figured out the cheese that got flipped on the floor during the shredding also went into the pot on the stove and then over the toast. Points for being smart enough to figure it out. Bad dog for taking it off the plate. (He never does that.)

Recipe from Alton Brown

2 T butter
2 T AP flour
1 t dijon mustard
1 t worchestershire sauce
1/2 t kosher salt
1/2 t fresh ground black pepper
1/2 c porter beer (I used Guinness, though it’s not technically a porter, it seemed to work just fine.)
3/4 c heavy cream
6 oz (~1.5 c) shredded cheddar cheese
2 drops hot sauce (I used a garlic-chipotle hot sauce, and kinda went beyond 2 drops/shakes/shots, didn’t seem to be any adverse effects.)

Melt butter over medium-low heat, whisk in flour and cook/whisk for 2-3 minutes.

Whisk in mustard, worcestershire, salt & pepper until smooth.

Add beer, whisk to combine. (Let sit a couple minutes so it can heat back up.) Enjoy the rest of the beer while whisking and whisking some more.

Add cream, whisk to combine. (Let sit again.)

Gradually add cheese (small handfuls at a time) and stir/whisk constantly until melty/smooth.

Add hot sauce, one last whisk-in. Quick, start the toast!

Pour over toast and serve immediately.

It’s actually more the consistency of a chunky soup IMO, but it’s got a nice kick to it, and good on a freakin’ cold day like today. The original is over at Allrecipes.com, and below is my version.

1.5-2 T butter (for browning chicken, use oil if you prefer)
1.5# chicken breasts, cubed
1/2 c. chopped onion
1-1.5 c. chicken broth (divided, need 1 c. minimum)
1 4oz can chopped green chiles
2-3 15oz cans Great Northern Beans
3 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 t ground cumin
1.5 t dried oregano
1 t cilantro
1/2 t crushed red pepper

Brown chicken in melted butter over medium heat. Add onions and garlic, cook over medium low heat until onions are translucent/tender. Transfer to colander and let drain.

Add 1 c. of the chicken broth & the chiles to the pot, bring to a boil.

Stir in the spices, 2 of the cans of beans, and the chicken/onion/garlic. Bring to a boil again and let boil for 3-5 minutes. Reduce heat to low and let simmer 30 minutes.

Check it at about the 15 minute point, if too thick, add some of the remaining chicken stock, if too thin, add some of the remaining beans. If after 30 minutes it’s too thick/thin, you can still add the beans or broth then and just let it go another 15 minutes or so. Thick/thin is totally your call – just get to the consistency you like. If you think it’s too spicy, add more of the beans.

Any leftover chicken broth can be frozen and used later.

Tonight, satay, aka Thai-meat-on-a-stick. It’s usually an appetizer, but screw that, it’s good enough on it’s own for me.

Satay

1# chicken, cut into strips (can also use flank steak)
Marinade:
2t creamy peanut butter
1/2 c. soy sauce
1/2 c. lime juice (lemon can be used, lime is just a little better)
2t curry powder
2 cloves chopped garlic
1t hot pepper sauce (I just use thai chili sauce, could pretty much use any hot sauce)

Combine the marinade ingredients, dump in the chicken, cover and refrigerate overnight (if possible – minimum 2 hours)

Put chicken/steak on skewers, grill on high heat 5 minutes on a side. (Same if using broiler inside.)

I also usually cut up a bunch of big chunks of onion and marinate & grill them along with it.

Sauce – you can get the peanut sauce in most grocery stores anymore, if not, just melt some peanut butter in a small saucepan and gradually add red pepper flakes until it gets to your desired heat level.

So happy to be back in the kitchen. Part of it is just being happy to be in the kitchen, the other part being that I don’t feel like crap anymore so I actually feel like cooking again.

Made lumpia tonight – basically Phillipine eggrolls, but much, much better. Had them the first time when we were overseas, and they’ve always been a favorite of mine. The wrappers are thinner and fry up smoother than eggroll or springroll wrappers and well, they’re just better, you’ll have to trust me on this one. Little labor intensive getting them wrapped up, but worth it.

Lumpia (Phillipine eggrolls)

1# ground pork (can use ground beef, half beef/half pork, or the beef/pork/veal mix usually marked as “meatloaf mix” in stores)
2-3 cloves crushed garlic
1/2 c. chopped onion
1/2 c. minced carrot
1/2 c. chopped green onion
1/2 c. thin sliced cabbage
1 t. ground black pepper
1 t. salt
1 t. garlic powder
1 t. soy sauce
~20-25 lumpia wrappers (hard to find anywhere but an asian market, but worth it)

Brown the beef/pork/whatever, set aside to drain, leaving some of the oil in the pan.

Saute the garlic & onion until tender.

Add the beef/pork back along with all other ingredients. Reduce heat to low, cover and let sit 5-10 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool to the point where you can handle it without burning yourself.

Take a lumpia wrapper, put an oversized teaspoon of the filling in and pretty much just wrap it up like you would a burrito. Seal the edges with water. Once everything is wrapped, fry in hot oil (veg is fine) 1-2 minutes until golden brown.

These can be frozen before they are fried up and will do fine defrosted and fried later. Can also be put in the fridge before frying for a day or two.

Sauce – basically nothing more than a sweetened, thickened soy sauce. I usually toss some soy, brown sugar and cornstarch in a small saucepan and let it go on low heat until it’s the way I want. I’ve not used the recipe below, but it looks like it should work:

1 c. sugar
3 c. water
3T soy sauce
3T cornstarch
1.5 t salt

Melt sugar in saucepan. Make pase of the soy, cornstarch, salt and some of the water, then add the rest of the water and add it all to the sugar. (All over low heat.)

So, I was watching Alton Brown the other night and he did a cheese soup and it just looked really tasty so I decided to make it tonight. Of course, me being me, I didn’t exactly follow the recipe – cut it in half cause I don’t need *that* much cheese soup, dropped the celery and carrots, added some beer, and ended up using a different cheese…but it came out wonderfully. Wegmans had demi-baguettes today, don’t know if it’s new or they just do them occasionally or what, but I grabbed one of those, sliced it up and have been dunking them in the soup…

It’s very rich, but not “heavy” at all. Definitely think I’ll be doing this one again with different cheeses just to see how they come out.

Cheese Soup, adapted from Alton Brown’s Good Eats Recipe

2T butter
1/2 c. diced onion
bit of salt for sweating the onions
3T AP flour
1 14oz can chicken stock/brother, plus a splash of beer to bring it to ~2 c. total. Heat to a simmer.
1 t minced garlic (couple cloves)
1 bay leaf
1/2 c. heavy cream
5 oz. cheese (used a maple smoked cheddar, originally called for fontina, but I couldn’t find it right off the bat and when I saw the smoked cheddar , it just seemed to good to pass up)
1/2 t marsala wine
1/2 t worcestershire sauce
1/4 t hot sauce
1/4 t white pepper

Melt butter, add onions & salt, sweat onions for 5-10 minutes.

Sift in flour and stir in.

Stir in chicken stock/beer, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, add garlic and bay leaf and let simmer 30 minutes.

Turn off heat, remove bay leaf

Blend in cream.

Blend in cheese, small handfuls at a time to let it melt.

Add wine, sauces and pepper. (I didn’t really much measure on the wine/sauces, just a small splash of each and a little bit of ground cayenne cause I had no hot sauce)