Brunswick Stew - The Daring Cooks challenge

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

This was a very good challenge for this month as I have been on a soup and stew kick these past two weeks. One thing I should of realized before making this is how much stew it makes!  Seriously look at the picture of the pot full of stew, I should of invited my sister over for dinner...and her neighbors.  We have tons of frozen leftovers in the freezer, actually there is no room for anything but stew in the freezer right now :)

The original recipe called for rabbit but since that is not very easy to come by here without going out into the woods and bopping little bunny foo foo yourself I chose to use a pork roast.  Also for the chicken I bought 4 bone-in chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken, I was in the mood for more white meat than dark.

Enjoy!

Brunswick Stew

Ingredients:

• 1/4 lb (4 oz) slab bacon, rough diced
• 2 Serrano peppers, stems trimmed, sliced, seeded, flattened
• 1lb pork 
• 1 4-5lb chicken, quartered, skinned, and most of the fat removed
• 1 Tablespoon sea salt for seasoning, plus extra to taste
• 8-12 cups Chicken Broth
• 2 Bay leaves
• 2 large celery stalks, chopped
• 2lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, or other waxy type potatoes, peeled, rough diced
• 1 ½ cups carrots (about 5 small carrots), chopped
• 3 ½ cups onion (about 4 medium onions), finely chopped
• 2 cups frozen corn kernels, derosted
• 3 cups butterbeans
• 1 (35oz) can whole, peeled tomatoes, drained
• ¼ cup red wine vinegar
• Juice of 2 lemons
• Tabasco sauce to taste

1. In the largest stockpot you have fry the bacon over medium-high heat until it just starts to crisp. Transfer to a large bowl, and set aside. Reserve most of the bacon fat in your pan, and with the pan on the burner, add in the peppers. Toast the peppers until they just start to smell good, about a minute tops. Remove to bowl with the bacon.

2. Season liberally both sides of the pork and chicken pieces with sea salt and pepper. Place the pork pieces in the pot and sear off all sides possible. You just want to brown them, not cook them completely. Remove to bowl with bacon and peppers, add more bacon fat if needed, or olive oil, or other oil of your choice, then add in chicken pieces, again, browning all sides nicely. Remember not to crowd your pieces, especially if you have a narrow bottomed pot. Put the chicken in the bowl with the bacon, peppers and pork. Set it aside.

3. Add 2 cups of your chicken broth or stock, if you prefer, to the pan and basically deglaze the4 pan, making sure to get all the goodness cooked onto the bottom. The stock will become a nice rich dark color and start smelling good. Bring it up to a boil and let it boil away until reduced by at least half. Add your remaining stock, the bay leaves, celery, potatoes, chicken, pork, bacon, peppers and any liquid that may have gathered at the bottom of the bowl they were resting in. Bring the pot back up to a low boil/high simmer, over medium/high heat. Reduce heat to low and cover, remember to stir every 15 minutes, give or take, to thoroughly meld the flavors. Simmer, on low, for approximately 1 ½ hours. Supposedly, the stock may become a yellow tinge with pieces of chicken or pork floating up, the celery will be very limp, as will the peppers . Taste the stock, according to the recipe, it “should taste like the best chicken soup you’ve ever had”.

4.  With a pair of tongs, remove the chicken and pork pieces to a colander over the bowl you used earlier. Be careful, as by this time, the meats will be very tender and may start falling apart. Remove the bay leaves & peppers and discard.

5.  After you’ve allowed the meat to cool enough to handle, carefully remove all the meat from the bones, shredding it as you go. Return the meat to the pot, throwing away the bones. Add in your carrots, and stir gently, allowing it to come back to a slow simmer. Simmer gently, uncovered, for at least 25 minutes, or until the carrots have started to soften.

6. Add in your onion, butterbeans, corn and tomatoes. As you add the tomatoes, crush them up. Simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring every so often until the stew has reduced slightly, and onions, corn and butterbeans are tender. Remove from heat and add in vinegar, lemon juice, stir to blend in well. Season to taste with sea salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce if desired.

7. You can either serve immediately or refrigerate for 24 hours, which makes the flavors meld more and makes the overall stew even better. Serve hot, either on its own, or with a side of corn bread, over steamed white rice, with any braised greens as a side.

Broccoli and Spinach Soup - Happy Birthday to me!

Yesterday was my birthday and Jeff created a feast for me!  I also received the most awesome birthday present from my sister, a brand new KitchenAid Classic Mixer, and had to take it for a test drive (I've wanted one of those for sooooo long). She included in the present all the ingredients for bread so it was a no-brainer what we would make - Jeff took the reins on making the bread and it came out so good with such a smooth texture.  Needless to say the bread slowly disappeared while the rest of dinner was cooking.  Next time bread gets made last :)

 

Must....Eat.....Bread....Now....

Jeff also wanted to cook me something all on his own with no help from me, I admit it's hard for me to sit still when he is in the kitchen.  For those of you who know Jeff he is definitely not someone who likes or wants to cook. Before we met his idea of slaving in the kitchen for dinner was making boxed Mac-n-Cheese. So I was thrilled he wanted to try and make something on his own. My friend Jen gave me the cookbook Therapeutic Chef so we chose the Broccoli-Kale Soup, which of course the store was out of kale so we substituted spinach. Below is the recipe as we adapted it to what we had in the house :) . I have to say that if you make this be ready for it to taste healthy, hee hee, which I guess is the point of the book.
(forgive my obsession with taking pictures of Jeff cooking - had to preserve this precious moment)

Broccoli & Spinach Soup

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, pressed
• 1 pinch red pepper flakes
•  3 cups vegetable broth
• 1/2 head of cauliflower, cut into pieces
• 1 bunch of broccoli, cut into pieces
• 1/4 cup cashews
• Handful of fresh spinach
• 1 lemon zested and the juice from half

1. In a large heavy soup pot saute the onions in the olive oil over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for 1-2 minutes more.

2. Slowly add the vegetable broth while stirring and bring to a boil.  Add cauliflower, broccoli, and cashews and cook covered for about 10 minutes till all tender.

3. Remove from heat and let cool before blending.  Add lemon juice and spoon about 1/4 of it into a blender. Puree and repeat with remaining soup.  Serve hot with a small sprinkle of lemon zest.

For the main dish we also had the "Jacob" meal I made a while back.  Mmmmm....meat & potatoes, homemade bread, & soup.  What a wonderful evening!

Grandma's Chicken Spinach Soup

This recipe comes straight from the grandma herself!  Raising 5 kids on a dime made her come up with a simple, fast, healthy dinner that is still requested to this day.  Now she used frozen spinach and sometimes canned chicken but in all respect I just can't bring myself to use frozen spinach in this soup, fresh gives it such a nice texture and flavor and just pops with color.  If you want to go with the can-o-chicken fine, I'll look away, but I take my spinach seriously!

If a picture is worth a 1000 words then this recipe would be a whole encyclopedia set. I just couldn't put the camera down (step away from the soup...). One of the reasons for all the pictures is that this recipe was passed on to me with the measurements "handful of this, a dash of parm, and some of this...".  I thought it would be fun to keep the whimsy of making this soup intact but for those who want a visual of what a "handful" is to me just check out the storyboard below :)

Grandma's Chicken Spinach Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 (32oz) box of Chicken broth, low sodium preferred (try to use a box-o-broth as the canned broth tends to leave a metallic taste in this soup)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1-2 large chicken breasts
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 handfuls of fresh Spinach
• 2 eggs
• several good size dashes of Parmesan cheese 
• 1 fist-full of whole wheat Spaghetti (reg. ok)

1.  Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper and cook in a skillet with a little bit of oil over medium heat till done (about 3-4 min each side). Set aside.  Meanwhile place a pot of plain water on the stove on high heat to cook the spaghetti separately.

2. Pour the chicken broth and 1/2 cup of water into a separate saucepan on medium high heat.

3. Chop the spinach (removing any large woody stems) and dump in pot with the chicken broth.

4. When the plain pot of water comes to a boil take the handful of spaghetti, break it into fourths, and add to the boiling water. Cook according to the package directions to "al dente".

5. While pasta is cooking cut the cooked chicken into chunks. Add to the simmering chicken broth pan.

6. When pasta is done drain and add to the saucepan with the chicken broth.

7. Whisk eggs in a bowl and add Parmesan cheese.  Season with fresh ground pepper to taste.

8. Bring the broth pot back to a boil with the added spaghetti and chicken.  Turn off heat and carefully drop spoonfuls of the beaten eggs into the soup. 

9. Remove from heat and (this is my favorite part) stir with a large serving spoon.  So much fun to see the eggs take over!  :)

 

Kale Soup with Sausage and Chickpeas

This is my first attempt at making Kale Soup and I was surprised at how easy and versatile this dish can be.  My initial fear was that the tomatoes would come out too chunky and overpower the rest of the soup but they cooked down to be tender and delicious.  The original recipe is from Kalyn's Kitchen and I only did slight modifications. Its worked out great too cause I had enough of the ingredients to make this soup again a couple of days later...and trust me it was wanted again!
This was a great lunch, I went for seconds and Jeff went for thirds!

Kale Soup with Sausage and Chickpeas

Ingredients:

• 1-2 tsp olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 tsp fresh rosemary or 1/2 tsp dried rosemary (if using dry kinda crush the big pieces)
• 2 tsp fresh sage or 3/4 tsp dried sage
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups chopped sausage links (I found a wonderful Italian seasoned Chicken sausage)
• 5 cups chicken broth
• 1 (14.5 oz) can of diced tomatoes (no salt added preferred)
• 1/4 cup tomato sauce (save the rest of the can for spaghetti later)
• 1/2 tsp seasoning blend, like Mrs Dash (optional)
• 1 small bunch of Kale
• 1 (15 oz) can of Chickpeas (Garbanzos)
• fresh ground pepper to taste
• sprinkle of Parmesan cheese for serving (optional)

1. Heat 1 tsp olive oil in heavy frying pan over medium heat.  Add chopped onion and saute for 3-4 minutes until onions are soft (not browned).

2. Lower heat a little and add minced garlic, rosemary, and sage and saute 2-3 minutes more.  Pour mixture into large soup pot with chicken stock and start to simmer.

3. Return frying pan back to medium heat and add sausage, cooking till browned. Add to soup pot.

4. Add to soup pot canned tomatoes with juice, tomato sauce, black pepper, and seasoning blend. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes over low heat.

5. While soup simmers wash kale and cut into bite sized pieces.  Drain chickpeas in colander and rinse very well, removing any loose shells.

5. After soup simmers for 30 minutes add kale and chickpeas and simmer for 45 minutes more until kale is completely softened.  Serve hot with grated parmesan.

Butternut Squash Soup

We had a great thanksgiving!  We spent it at my sister's house and her husband's family was in town so it really felt like a big family celebration.

The best thing about the food at thanksgiving is being able to have all your traditional comfort food...and eating lots of it!  We were so stuffed hubby & I both fell asleep on the couch (ironically when dishes were being done...don't know how that happened!). 

I made my homemade Butternut Squash Soup and little french bread loaves.  It was really hard driving all the way to Vivi's house with fresh bread in the car but somehow we survived.  I'll post later my recipe for french bread :)

I love this recipe for the soup.  Its a one-pot easy soup that when you freeze it to store it tastes even better.  I usually this time of year buy up lots of cheap, in-season squash, make a big batch of soup, and freeze it in small containers as a quick meal for months to come.  Trust me, the soup with bread is enough of a filling meal to satisfy even Jeff's appetite.  And even better it's super low in calories.

Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients: 

• 2 Medium Golden Delicious Apples
• 2 Medium butternut squash
• 2 Tbsp vegetable or canola oil
• 1 small purple onion
• 1 can (14 1/2 oz) vegetable broth
• 1 1/2 cups water
  
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 cup half-n-half or light cream

1. With a large sharp knife peel and slice into chunks the butternut squash.  Chop the onion and peel, core, & chop into medium pieces each apple.

2. In a large pot heat the oil over medium heat; add onion and cook till tender (but not browned)

3. Stir in broth, water, thyme, squash, apples, salt & pepper.  Heat to boiling over high heat.  Reduce heat to low; cover & simmer, stirring frequency, 20 - 25 minutes until squash is tender. (don't worry when you first add the liquid that it isn't enough - the veggies will cook down into it)

4.  Remove from heat and spoon mixture into a blender (you may want to cool slightly before).  Set blender to puree and blend till very smooth.  Repeat with remaining batch.

5. Return puree mixture to saucepan, stir in half-n-half, and heat through over medium heat, stirring constantly.  Be sure not to let soup come to a boil!

When I reheat this soup from frozen I either place in fridge the day before or I put the frozen container in a  pot of cool water for a couple of hours to help thaw.  When reheating its important not to let soup come to a boil or the cream will separate from the soup.  Use a whisk to mix up the soup when heating.

I had to show a picture of how cute all the bread loaves looked.  I meant for them to be smaller but they got a bit bigger than I planned....no complaints from anyone though.
:)