Deb's Lunch ... and dinner and breakfast too » soup

Recipe work

DebS — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:31:09 +0000

Reading this article by Marcelle Richards of Gastroapocalypse Test Kitchen, on working up a recipe for parsnip-pink-peppercorn cake, inspired by carrot cake, made me realize that I haven’t been working on recipes much recently. I’ve been making little tweaks, but not putting a couple of patterns together to come up with something new. Maybe the last time was the turkey meatballs, that were a merger of matzoh balls & meat balls, and then I put them in the broth for Ovens of Brittany Turkey Almond Soup.

I am feeling kind of tired and uninspired. Work has been just way too busy, and I don’t feel like doing much when I get home. The joy of the just-finished dinner series has been more in creating menus, putting dishes together, than in developing recipes for the individual dishes.

Tonight’s a case in point. I’m home alone, with Mark & Ethan off to Badger hockey, Al at O’Hare waiting for a flight to SF, John in Milwaukee, and the new foster kid at a friend’s. For early dinner with Mark & Ethan before the game, I made chicken bbq sandwiches, with meat I cooked in barbecue sauce yesterday, shredded and with a bit of added ketchup, honey, and salt. I made salad with John’s dressing – but that’s just the Good Seasons mix, made with sesame oil, soy sauce, cidar vinegar, and brown sugar for an Asian flavor. I made some chex mix, to use up that giant Costco bag of nut & rice crackers munch mix and some rice chips that fell off the top of the fridge so they were busted up just right, according to mom’s rules – no seasoned salt, fresh garlic and real butter, and I do put in the Worcestershire sauce even though she didn’t like it. I threw in some Wasabi peas, but I already tried that in a prior batch of chex mix – we liked it – so not that innovative. Old standbys, all.

I could get my tax stuff together. I could make enchilada sauce or do some other cooking and photograph it. I could read and make notes for the literary awards committee I’m on. But I think I’m going to take a shower, and watch TV, and maybe have a scotch. I have this movie called A Slipping Down Life about a musician and his wigged out fans, and I think there’re a couple of Robyn Hitchcock songs in it.

Turkey Meatball Soup

DebS — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:07:54 +0000

Tonight I made some little turkey meatballs that had almost as much matzoh meal in them as turkey, and cooked them in soup. The soup was good, but the meatballs had the most perfect texture, slightly grainy, soft but not too soft, chewey but not too chewey. And I didn’t think they’d be too photogenic, but they look OK:

Meatball in soup

Meatball cut

Turkey meatballs on a plate

Here’s the recipe:

approx. 2/3 cup matzoh meal
1/2 pound ground turkey
1 egg
2 TBLS – 1/4 cup half & half or milk (I used soy half & half, because that’s what I had)
salt, pepper, and a few grates of nutmeg
1 TBLS chopped parsley
2 tsp. – 1 TBLS veg. oil for frying

Pour the matzoh meal into the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the egg and mix with a fork. Add the half & half, seasonings and parsley. Mix with the paddle beater until all is well combined. If you don’t have a stand mixer, or don’t want to use yours for this small of a batch, I am sure you could mix everything with the fork and your fingers. Roll into walnut sized balls and place on a plate. Heat the oil in a skillet and brown the meatballs in it – I only browned two sides because I knew I was going to cook them in soup. If you’re going to eat them as meatballs, brown two sides, then add a little water or broth to the skillet, cover tightly and steam for about 10 minutes.

Cooking from an empty larder

DebS — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:44:27 +0000

I’ve been trying to keep the pantry pretty bare, except for buying ingredients for the dinners. It’s been working surprisingly well, except for the times I’ve kinda hung onto a little bit of this or that for too long – like the salad dressing I put on my work lunch salad last Friday. The greens were leftover from Thursday’s dinner and they were fine, but the dressing had been in the house since before the fridge died last summer – it was like when a person has inoperable cancer – the repair guy came, opened up the back of the fridge, said, “nothing can be done”, closed it up and went away. The dressing, the bright red french kind, was kind of separated, but I just stirred it back together and ate it anyways – I thought a food that processed couldn’t go bad. Saturday morning I woke up with a bad stomach, that I thought was from eating a bowl of grapenuts and a cup of hot chocolate at midnight when I got home from Jorma & Bromberg at the Barrymore, but now I think it was the dressing. Mark & John agreed when I told them the story – and thought I shoulda know better than to eat the old dressing. Still, it’s not near as bad as what consuming too much coleslaw had done to me the weekend before.

Tonight for dinner we had the last of the cream of vegetable soup, and I made some muffins and sweet-sour cabbage to go with.

This morning, I ran the last slice of week-old meatloaf and a serving of macaroni salad down the disposal, hoping to avoid future stomach aches.