Creamy Potato and Cauliflower Soup

Creamy Potato & Cauliflower Soup

Another easy meal for a meatless Friday! Or meatless any-day meal. I feel like I should be done making soups but it has been so cold and dreary this past month that I had to experiment with soup making for a few extra weeks this year. No complaints about the extra time with soup... the warm (hot!) weather will be here soon enough.

I know that I have raved about my slow cooker before but, truly, my children would go hungry if it weren't for this $30 piece of essential kitchen equipment. Dinner time is about 5pm here - just about the time the twins get off the bus, the baby wakes up from his nap, and I walk in the door from work. Knowing that something fabulous is simmering away, ready to be served, makes that chaos all the more
manageable.  I often make soup in my slow cooker. Soup can be easily made on the stove but it can just as easily be made in a slow cooker... perfect on a chilly, rainy day served with crusty bread and nice green salad. Or not. Soup by itself is just fine, too. 

I always have potatoes on hand and I happened to have some cauliflower left over from a veggie plate. Potatoes + cauliflower + broth in the slow cooker = soup! It was really that simple.  Mix with cream or milk, top with shredded cheese (and maybe some bacon!) ... presto! Dinner is served.

Ingredients: 

5 large potatoes, peeled and diced
1/2 head of cauliflower, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
32 ounces vegetable broth
Salt and pepper
1 cup cream or milk (save for the end)
8 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded (save for the end)


Directions: 

1. Combine potatoes, onions, garlic, cauliflower, broth, and salt & pepper in a slow cooker.

2. Cook on low for six hours.

3. Using an immersion blender, blend the potatoes and cauliflower until it is creamy.

4. Add the cream or milk. Stir well. Add most of the shredded cheese - save a bit for the top.

5. Ladle into bowls and top with more shredded cheese and bacon and green onions, if desired!

Enjoy! 

Chopped green onions ...

Rogan Josh (Lamb in a Slow Cooker)

Lamb chops for Rogan Josh

I love Indian food. Love it. I was spoiled for six years living next door to the best Indian restaurant in Cleveland. Now, sadly, I have to re-create these dishes on my own. I'm getting better... Practice makes perfect.

This recipe uses a lot of traditional Indian spices that you might have on hand... ginger, coriander, cumin, paprika, Bay leaves, and turmeric. None of those spices sound too unfamiliar, do they? If you start to get fancy with your Indian cooking, you can try making your own garam masala or scanning your local spice shop for some asafoetida... but, until then, rest assured you can make delicious Indian dishes with some basic spice combinations.

I am also a creature of habit when I order out an Indian restaurant - always the lamb. Always. Mainly because I am too afraid to cook it myself. Butter chicken, chicken tikka masala? No problem. Anything with lamb? No way. I forced myself out of this zone of fear recently when I bought a bag of lamb - yup, a bag - from one of my local farmers. As I piled steaks and chops and shoulder roasts into my freezer, I knew I had to get over my lamb issues fast. And so we have rogan josh... hope you enjoy it! 

Ingredients: 

1 - 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
grated ginger (about a 1/2 inch)
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 tablespoon garam masala (optional)
1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes
1 can chick peas (drained)
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
2 lamb chops (about a pound)

Directions:

1. Combine spices - cumin, coriander, paprika, and sea salt together. Liberally rub over the lamb chops.

2. Heat olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan. When the pan is very hot, gently place your lamb chops into the pan - you should hear a loud sizzle so you know that the meat is getting a good sear. Let it cook for about 2 - 3 minutes. Season the other side of the lamb with some more of the spice. Turn the lamb over and let the other side get a good sear.

3. Place the seared lamb chops and the scraped up seasoning bits from the pan into the slow cooker. Ad the grated ginger (powdered ginger works fine, too!), bay leaves, garam masala, diced tomatoes, chick peas, and vegetable broth.

4. Cook on high for about 3 hours or low for 6 hours. Remove the meat from the bone and add back into the slow cooker. Taste test to make sure that you have enough flavor! If not, add more seasoning as needed...

5. We served our rogan josh over tasty quinoa but, a more traditional option would be simple jasmine rice.

Rogan Josh With Chickpeas Over Quinoa

My dinner party trick ... I love cooking Indian food for dinner parties but I am not always great with the appetizers or the na'an - a traditional Indian flatbread. (Naan is one bread product I have NOT been able to make gluten free!) So, if someone asks what they can bring, I sometimes suggest that they order some na'an from our local Indian restaurant or pick up some samosas and chutney on the way over. You can even pick up some na'an from the freezer section at your local grocery store. Test out these flavors on your friends and family ... I think you will be surprised how much they enjoy it!

For the record ... You might not find chick peas in a traditional rogan josh recipe - but I like to throw chick peas in everything when I am cooking Indian food. It is an inexpensive way to stretch my meals to feed all my hungry little mouths!  

For dessert ... Serve a yummy Mango Milkshake! Click here to see the recipe.

Seared Pork Chops With Sauteed Rainbow Chard and Mushrooms

Seared Pork Chops With Sauteed Rainbow Chard & Mushrooms

When you use fresh, local ingredients, it doesn't take much to make an amazing dinner. A few ingredients, simply prepared, can pack a huge punch if you let their natural flavors shine through.

The other night, a regular school night/work night, my family sat down and silently enjoyed every last bite of these seared pork chops topped with local rainbow swiss chard and mushrooms with some steamed butternut squash on the side. All it took was four ingredients and less than thirty minutes to make my kiddos speechless at the dinner table.

Fish on Friday ... Potato Crusted Tilapia

Potato Crusted Tilapia ... 4 ingredients!

During Lent, I am always looking for easy, after school dinners to satisfy our fish-on-Friday requirements. This recipe is SO easy. Ridiculously easy. Chances are good that you even have most of these ingredients on hand to make this dinner tonight...

For Potato Crusted Tilapia, you only need 4 ingredients - including the fish (any thin white fish filets will work). Fish, mustard, mayonnaise, instant mashed potato flakes. Presto. Dinner.

Spicy Broccoli & Cheddar Soup With Bacon

Spicy Broccoli & Cheddar Soup With Bacon

 My kids LOVE soup. I send them to school with soup more than I send them to school with sandwiches. I am always looking for new ways to tweak old standards ... like Cheesy Broccoli Soup. There is nothing wrong with Broccoli & Cheese soup ... broccoli, cheese - done. But I was craving something a little bit more interesting. And then it hit me - bacon!

My dad starts almost every single soup he makes by chopping up a few slices of bacon and getting them nice & crispy before he starts to add in his essential soup ingredients. Most of the time, he removes the bacon and uses it as a garnish on the top of the soup, but keeps the bacon grease in the pan to fry up the onions, garlic, celery, or whatever else he needs for his recipe.

This time, I chopped up about 5 slices of bacon, cooked it, ate at least the equivalent of one slice for myself, and then added in my onion and garlic before adding the veggie broth and broccoli. It added only a few minutes onto the production time for my soup but it really gave it a different flavor. Give this twist on Broccoli & Cheese soup a try...

Homemade Yogurt with Jam

Homemade Yogurt with Jam

Food trend for 2013?? I'm sure you've heard... fermenting. Canning is so 2012.

For weeks and weeks, I have been promising to put up directions for making homemade yogurt. Making yogurt is not very complicated and yet I had a less than stellar first attempt. I needed to try it a couple more times to make sure I had the hang of it. I'm feeling pretty good... so let's discuss homemade yogurt!

Yogurt is generally thought of as a health food, but if you look at the ingredients and sugar added to a lot of yogurts sold at the grocery store, you might as well get yourself a bowl of ice cream. Making yogurt at home - plain or sweetened - guarantees that you control all the ingredients and you are getting all the benefits of this amazing fermented food.