Vegetable Stew with Dumplings

I like challenges, especially food ones that involve coming up with a meal based on what's already in the kitchen. Maybe its because I'm lazy or maybe I'm just creative. Yes, I'll go with the latter! Anyways, I had a variety of frozen vegetables and a craving for some kind of stew or homemade pot pie, i.e. comfort food. Then I flash backed to my youth when my mom and both my grandmothers made chicken with dumplings, which I loved simply for the dumplings. So scratch the chicken and add a variety of vegetables and voila, I present vegetable stew with dumplings!

Gazpacho

Its atrocious outside. All week its projected to be in mid 90s. Seriously, where is the blizzard (the one that forced me to focus on this blog) when you need it? But since no snow or cold is insight, the next best thing to cool off is a cold and refreshing meal. So today's idea was gazpacho - I conveniently had all of the necessary ingredients. This will take about 15 minutes to prep, but then it needs to chill for an hour or so, just enough time to get in a run before the storms come!

Ingredients:

• red tomatoes (3 large, diced)
• cucumbers (2, diced)
• orange bell pepper (1, diced)
• green bell pepper (1, diced)
• jalapeno pepper (1 or a handful of slices from a jar, diced)
• minced garlic (1 tbsp)
• lime juice (1/3 cup)
• honey (3 tbsp)
• salt and pepper

This is the point where I promote one of my favorite gadgets, the Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender (pictured below). I used it, with the chopper attachment, to dice up all of the vegetables to save myself some time.

First up the peppers.

Add to a large mixing bowl. Then dice the tomatoes and add to the bowl.

Dice the cucumbers and add to the bowl.

Chop up the jalapeno slices.

Once all of the vegetables are in the bowl, add 3 tbsp of honey.

Add the lime juice. (Note that I used more than the 1/3 amount - I blame my inability to focus on Deadliest Catch - that show is sooo addicting!)

Use a food processor or the hand blender and process all of the ingredients until desired consistency. Some people prefer it chunky, others want it smooth. Its up to you!

Chill in the refrigerator for an hour. Ladle soup into bowls.

Gazpacho I think is normally more red, but I used more orange bell peppers and less tomato so mine turned out somewhat orange-ish. Either way, it was good. and healthy! And I bet if you ate this for a while, you'd lose crazy weight!

Cream of Cauliflower Soup with Red Beet Chips

I tried my first recipe out of Thomas Keller's ad hoc at home. If its any indication of how great the rest of the book is, I and whoever I am cooking for are in for a treat! Since its still winter and cold, I decided to try the soup section simply because the pictures are amazing. So first up, cream of cauliflower soup with red beet chips. I don't even really like cauliflower or beets, but like I said the pictures look great.

Carrot Soup

I was trying to come up with a soup to make for one of my friends so I decided on this because i've never made carrot soup because it doesn't make me say "yes please" right away. But then i remembered past soup successes, most notably an asparagus soup. I had a lot of asparagus and needed to find a way to use them, i invited several people over to test and they all were VERY skeptical. To cut to the chase, the soup was bangin.' so this brings me to carrot soup and my latest challenge. My friend's first response when hearing what I was making: "um i don't like warm carrots." If I was a cartoon character a little bubble would have popped above my head with a caption of "WTF, *&$#@!*" But no worries, once it was ready, my friend was lovin' it. My smart-ass was thinking "time to reconsider warm carrots, my friend. time to reconsider."

The recipe is originally from Simple Pleasures by Alfred Portale, but seeing that I don't have the patience to follow a recipe line by line and I didn't buy all of the ingredients, its been doctored.

What you need: carrots, salt & pepper, unsalted butter, onion, leek, chicken stock.

Melt the butter (1tbsp) in a deep pot, toss in onions (1/4 cup thinly sliced), leek (1/4 cup thinly sliced) and some seasoning (salt, some kind of Italian seasoning or saffron) and saute for like 5 minutes. peel and thinly slice 5-7 carrots and add to the pot. also add in the chick stock (4.5 cups) and bring to a boil.


Once boiling, reduce the heat and cover and cook for 35 minutes or until the carrots are tender. Once the carrots are ready, use a slotted spoon and transfer the carrots to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Pour the remaining broth into a bowl. Add the pureed carrots back into the soup pan and stir the broth into the puree (not all at once! but pour enough broth in until you get the right consistency). I let mine simmer for another 5-10 minutes. Serve and season with salt and pepper if necessary!