New Articles on Cooking, Meal Planning, and Healthy Living

I’ve posted several articles to a site I’m new to, Associated Content, that you might find interesting depending on what search brought you here to my old blog. Check them out!

Cooking Tips to Help Picky Eaters Learn to Love Vegetables
Use these ideas for how to prepare vegetables to create tasty, less bitter dishes that will entice reluctant eaters to try these new foods. Getting picky eaters to eat vegetables just takes patience and a little ingenuity.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1898892/cooking_tips_to_help_picky_eaters_learn.html

Picky Eaters? Tips on How to Introduce Vegetables
Know a picky eater? Are you a picky eater? Try these strategies to introduce vegetables, notorious for turning up noses, to people who are afraid to try new foods. Celebrate small victories on the way toward achieving a truly healthy diet.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1898414/picky_eaters_tips_on_how_to_introduce.html

Get Started with Easy Meal Planning to Save Time and Money
It’s simple to start planning meals: It takes nothing more than a piece of paper and a pocket of time. Collect ideas as you go, then organize them into a list or on a calendar, and you’ll be set to start saving money and improving your health.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1899112/get_started_with_easy_meal_planning.html

Strategies for Eating Out at Restaurants Without Wrecking Your Healthy Diet
Restaurants offer rich, indulgent food that can easily throw your weight-loss plan off track. These tips can help make it possible to enjoy the occasional night out without regretting it when you step on the scale in the morning.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1888016/strategies_for_eating_out_at_restaurants.html

Avoid Dehydration This Summer with Thirst-Quenching Tips
Five tips for keeping yourself hydrated through the hot summer months that won’t break the bank or pack on the pounds, based on my experience with dehydration and living in the crazy Las Vegas heat.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1858229/avoid_dehydration_this_summer_with.html

Potato-Leek Soup

Tonight’s dinner:

A double batch of dilled potato-leek soup from Tasteofhome.com

SERVINGS: 3

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sliced leeks (white portion only)
• 1 celery rib, chopped
• 1-1/2 teaspoons butter
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1-1/2 cups cubed peeled Yukon Gold potatoes
• 1 large carrot, finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1-1/2 teaspoons snipped fresh dill or 1/2 teaspoon dill weed
• Herb potato chips and finely shredded leeks, optional

Directions:

In a large saucepan, saute leeks and celery in butter until tender. Stir in the broth, potatoes, carrot, thyme, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Cool slightly.

Transfer to a blender; cover and process until smooth. Return to the pan. Whisk a small amount of soup into buttermilk; return all to the pan, stirring constantly. Add dill; heat through (do not boil). Garnish if desired. Yield: 3-3/4 cups.

Taco salad (lettuce, diced tomatoes, diced cucumber, chopped onion, corn, kidney beans, chopped green olives, chili powder)

Bosniak bread with light butter

Verdict: Good. The potato masher made a decent substitute for a blender in this application. The soup wasn’t totally smooth like in the picture, but it was pretty pulverized. Sort of like that Campbell’s Vegetable Soup-at-Hand, if you’ve ever tried that. I did cut all the veggies very small though to aid in smoothness.

Peas and Quiet

I’ve learned to like most vegetables as I’ve grown older. I don’t turn up my nose at broccoli or cauliflower, and I’ll even accept bell peppers and cabbage provided they’ve been prepared to my liking.

But what’s with peas?

I’ve never particularly disliked peas. However, I simply cannot muster any enthusiasm for them. I’ve had this bag in my mini-freezer for weeks now, despite it holding a mere 450 grams of the green meanies.

As you can see, I added a mere half a cup to my fabulous vegetable soup. I was afraid I would overwhelm the good veggies with the starchy taste of shelled English peas were I to add more.

I like snow peas and sugar snap peas. I don’t remember ever having tried field peas, so I reserve judgment. But this typical freezer-fodder type just doesn’t dazzle me. I don’t get the sweetness from them that people rave about.

So what is it? Am I doing something wrong here?

Spicy Pico de Gallo

Note: This article was published originally on June 7, 2005, in one of my previous attempts at a food blog. I am still a major fan of pickled jalapeño slices in myriad applications (especially the classic: on nachos). The liquid in the jar is also great for spicing up dishes without introducing “chunks” (think that spicy cheese goo they give you with chips at Taco Bell). Nowadays, if I were at home, I’d be most likely to make any sort of salsa like this in my food processor. I’ll have to share a good recipe for that sometime when I have access to my Rick Bayless cookbook again.

Making fresh salsa has often been an exercise in frustration for me. While I don’t mind fresh salsas being mild — there’s plenty of flavor from the uncooked, uncanned vegetables that’s often not found in ketchuppy bottled salsas — my mom prefers it to be spicy. (Of course, the problem of pleasing the many varied palettes in this house is always a running theme when I cook at home.)

Last summer, I tried making salsa from recipes, using dry spices, hot sauce and fresh chiles as suggested to achieve a spicier flavor. But naturally, there were problems. The cumin turned off Mom, who dislikes Mexican food. The hot sauce was spicy, but it gave the salsa a strange, viscous feel. The exotic purple jalepenos were pretty but lacking in heat. And don’t get me started on the mushiness that resulted when I tried blanching the tomatoes to remove the skins.

But there’s a happy ending, as I finally hit upon what’s now my secret salsa ingredient — pickled jalepeno slices. I know it might sound odd, but what’s great about those jars of jalepenos in vinegar is that you know right from the label how hot the jalepenos inside will be, which is hard to guess from the ones in the produce department without taking a bite. Plus, they save a nice bit of work by being pre-sliced and are tasty on nachos.

As for the name, I’ll admit that I don’t know precisely what the difference is between pico de gallo and what we Americans call salsa. But when I see pico de gallo, it’s usually a fresh mix of chopped tomatoes, onions and cilantro. I threw in the jalepeno slices to add some heat, and since I had no cilantro, scallions (a.k.a green onions, a.k.a. spring onions) pinch hit.

Spicy Pico de Gallo
Source: Colleen’s Cookbook
Yield: 2 servings

• 1 beefsteak tomato, seeded and chopped
• ¼ Vidalia onion or other large, sweet onion, finely chopped
• 2 scallions, sliced thinly
• 10 slices pickled jalepeno, halved
• 2 pinches kosher salt

Put all of the vegetables in a bowl, sprinkle with salt and stir. Allow the pico de gallo to rest for about 5 minutes to allow the salt to extract some juice from the vegetables. Serve with chips or use it to garnish main dishes.

Download Spicy Pico de Gallo into MacGourmet.

The Heat is On

The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen – New York Times:

Rotisserie cooking alternates high and low heat many times: as the meat turns on the spit, each area of the surface is briefly exposed to high browning heat, then given time for that dose of energy to dissipate, part of it into the meat but part back out into the cool air. So the meat interior cooks through at a more moderate temperature. Similarly, steaks and chops cook more evenly on high grill heat — and faster as well — if you become a human rotisserie and turn them not once or twice but as often as you can stand to, even dozens of times, every 15 or 30 seconds.

Just had to share the bit that says all those chefs on television who implore us not to move the meat once it’s on the grill are full of it.

By the way, that’s true about many things — most television chefs (and likely others not on TV) are chock full of folksy cooking wisdom that is about as accurate as old wives’ tales generally are. Most people don’t question the cooking tidbits they were taught or absorbed through observation of their parents.

I read once about a person who always cut off a certain part of the turkey before roasting it because that’s how her grandmother had always done it. When she finally asked why, the grandmother said she’d done it that way solely because her roasting pan or oven was too small to accommodate the whole bird.

I’ll give you that leaving the meat alone once it goes in the pan or grill will help it develop a brown crust quickly. But go read this article from this week’s New York Times Dining section to get the facts on heat in the kitchen, including methods for getting that brown crust without overcooking the majority of the meat.

Oh, and find out why all those famous folks urging you to choose gas stovetops are off their rocker. Not that I’m bitter for having set myself on fire from one.

Easy Bean Patties

Meat is a difficult proposition here in Slovakia. Well, at least for me.

The Slovaks are a pork-loving people. I am decidedly anti-pork (with the exception of bacon and some sausage). The Slovaks also are fond of many meats that are uncommon in American supermarkets, such as goose, venison, and duck. I just can’t face any new meats.

Not to mention the tradition here of buying a live carp for Christmas dinner, keeping it alive in the bathtub until that fateful supper. Thank goodness those vendors are gone for the year.

Anyway, this long-winded dissection of foreign culinary habits is meant only as a justification for my looking into ways to create protein-packed main dishes without resorting to cultivating a taste for pigeon.

For everyone else, bean burgers are still a great idea for everyday dinners as they are high in fiber as well as protein and, oh yeah, cheap. Even if you do find chicken or ground beef for $3 a pound on sale, it doesn’t beat a can of beans at about $0.50 to $1.

I found this recipe on the site promoting Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything series of cookbooks. Specifically, it comes from the new book, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, which was on my wish list for this Christmas.

I had an extra can of chickpeas in the cupboard from a side dish I forgot to make, so that became the base for our patties. Because this was the first time I was trying this recipe, I didn’t go with any of the suggested variations such as adding cheese (I’ve made veggie patties from scratch only once in my life, and the result was nearly disastrous).

On the other hand, I didn’t have any cheese to add. In fact, after I’d already started adding things to the mixing bowl, I realized that I did not have an egg, either. I’d used the last ones the night before to make French toast, forgetting I was supposed to reserve one. Oops.

I ended up adding a tablespoon of mayonnaise to the mix, figuring that at least that spread contains egg. Bittman does suggest some vegan alternatives for binding, but it seemed odd to add another half-cup of oatmeal and too much trouble to make mashed potatoes or rice from scratch just for this recipe. The mayo turned out to work just fine as a binder, fortunately.

I also had to vary the recipe slightly as far as the method went. I don’t have a blender or food processor here, so instead I chopped the onion as finely as I could and then had at the mixture with our potato masher. It took a good bit longer than the food processor would have, but with enough effort it became a uniform mush.

The patties we ended up with perhaps could have used some more seasoning, but we enjoyed them with sauces that provided the extra kick. Scott spread his with ketchup and whole-grain mustard, whereas I dipped mine in some tartar sauce as if I were having some fried cheese. We ate them without buns or bread this time, but they are solid enough to be used as hamburger substitutes.

I’m going to try making some with kidney beans soon. And this time, I’m so going to remember the egg.

The Simplest Bean Burger
Source: Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
Yield: 4 to 6 patties

• 2 cups well-cooked white, black, or red beans or chickpeas or lentils, or one 14-ounce can, drained (I used chickpeas/garbanzo beans.)
• 1 medium onion, quartered (I used half a large onion, chopped fine.)
• ½ cup rolled oats (preferably not instant)
• 1 tablespoon chili powder or spice mix of your choice (I used taco seasoning.)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 egg (I used one tablespoon of light mayonnaise.)
• Bean-cooking liquid, stock, or other liquid (wine, cream, milk, water, ketchup, etc.) if necessary (I added a little water.)
• Extra virgin olive oil or neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn, as needed (I used nonstick olive-oil spray.)

1. Combine the beans, onion, oats, chili powder, salt, pepper, and egg in a food processor and pulse until chunky but not puréed, adding a little liquid if necessary (this is unlikely but not impossible) to produce a moist but not wet mixture. Let the mixture rest for a few minutes if time allows.

2. With wet hands, shape into whatever size patties you want and again let rest for a few minutes if time allows. (You can make the burger mixture or even shape the burgers up to a day or so in advance. Just cover tightly and refrigerate, then bring everything back to room temperature before cooking.) Film the bottom of a large nonstick or well-seasoned cast-iron skillet with oil and turn the heat to medium. A minute later, add the patties. Cook until nicely browned on one side, about 5 minutes; turn carefully and cook on the other side until firm and browned.

3. Serve on buns with the usual burger fixings. Or cool and refrigerate or freeze for later use.

Notes:
Simplest Vegan Bean Burger. Many options: Omit the egg, obviously. Add 1/2 cup Mashed Potatoes; or 1/2 cup cooked oatmeal or short-grain rice (white or brown); or 1/4 cup miso or 1/2 cup tofu.

Bean-and-Cheese Burger. As a flavor-adder, cheese can’t be beat, plus there are two bonuses: You don’t have to mess with melting cheese on top of the burger, and-for the most part-it acts as a binder. Add 1/2 to 1 cup grated Parmesan, cheddar, Swiss, Jack, mozzarella, or other cheese to the mix (you can omit the egg if you like).

Bean-and-Spinach Burger. Of all the veggies you can add to a burger, I like spinach. You can leave it uncooked and just shred it if you prefer (figure about 2 cups), but this gives better results; it’s great with a little garlic added: Squeeze dry and chop about 1 cup cooked spinach (you’ll need about 8 ounces of raw spinach to start, or you can use frozen spinach); add it to the mix and proceed with the recipe.

Bean-and-Veggie Burger. Many options, but don’t overdo it or the burger will fall apart: Add up to 1/2 cup carrots, bell peppers, shallots, leeks, celery, potato, sweet potato, winter squash, zucchini, or a combination. Cut into chunks as you do the onion and grind with the beans or shred or mince and add afterward.

High-Protein Bean Burger. The soy gives it just a little boost: Instead of rolled oats, use rolled soy (soy flakes).

13 Ways to Build Delicious Veggie Burgers

There are more ways to vary the burgers in this section than I can imagine, but here are a few ideas. The basic rules are to make sure the mixture is neither too dry nor too wet (if you find yourself in the first situation, add a liquid ingredient; in the second, add some oats, ground rice powder or flour, cornmeal, flour, bread crumbs, or the like). But as for flavors, the sky’s the limit.

1. Fresh herbs. You can almost not go wrong with fresh herbs, as long as you don’t use overwhelming amounts. Add up to 1/2 cup parsley, basil, or dill leaves; somewhat less of mint, cilantro, or chervil; a tablespoon of oregano or marjoram; or only a teaspoon or so of fresh thyme, tarragon, or rosemary.

2. Dried herbs. Use by the pinch; to really get the seasoning right, taste and adjust it (you can cook a little bit first if you don’t want to taste it raw).

3. Spices. The spice mix-chili or curry powder, for example-is an easy way to go, but you can combine fairly small amounts (usually 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon) of various spices as you like. Try, for example, smoked paprika, cumin, and ground chiles; coriander, cumin, ginger, and cardamom; or anything else that appeals to you.

4. Garlic. Can’t go wrong, really. Add 1 teaspoon or more minced garlic to the mix, or a tablespoon or more Roasted Garlic, with a little of its oil.

5. Chiles. For heat, you can simply add cayenne, hot red pepper flakes, or the like. But if you want some texture, you might include 1/4 cup or more roasted (or canned) green or red chiles.

6. Soy sauce or miso. Just a tablespoon or so of soy sauce, but up to 1/4 cup of any miso; you can omit the egg if you like.

7. Ketchup, salsa, or mustard. Up to 1/3 cup of ketchup or salsa (both of which are pretty good); 1 tablespoon or so of Dijon or other mustard.

8. Nuts or seeds. The nice thing about nuts is the crunch. Add 1/4 cup or so of sesame or sunflower seeds and up to 1/2 cup nuts or pumpkin seeds toward the end of the processing so they don’t become too powdery.

9. Lemon, lime, or orange zest. The slight acidity brightens the taste.

10. Tomato paste. A tablespoon or two will give the burgers nice color and a more complex flavor.

11. Mushrooms. Add a tablespoon or so of dried mushrooms, soaked and cooked, as you would any other vegetable (see number 12). Or use up to about 1/2 cup raw, trimmed and added along with the oats and beans.

12. Cooked veggies. Milder flavor, softer texture than raw veggies: Add up to a cup of cooked vegetables- onions, greens, broccoli, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash, zucchini-whatever you like. If you use potatoes and add them to the food processor along with the beans, you can omit the egg and oats.

13. Cooked grains. All-grain burgers tend to be mushy and uninteresting, but adding a bit of grains to other burgers results in a terrific light texture. Feel free to add up to a cup of cooked grains, along with the beans. Omit the oats and, if you like, the egg.

So Good Yet So Evil

Morningstar Farms has to be my favorite brand of frozen fake meat products. I used their beef- and sausage-style recipe crumbles a lot living in Vegas, and while I found their plain chicken-style strips to be noxious, I greatly enjoyed the fried chicken-style products. And boy, are those veggie corn dogs tasty, and with only 150 calories per stick, no less!

But sometime in the past couple of years they expanded from fake meats to purely vegetable-based products, and that must be when Satan took over the company.  Because it was then that Morningstar Farms brought out these:

Oh, yeah, baby!

I bought one box out of curiosity. I baked them up for Scott and myself to accompany our dinner one night.

Holy cow. They are full of molten cheesy broccoli goodness, and on top of it they sported a fried breaded coat. Naturally, they were delicious in that wonderful salty, savory way.

But then the evil comes in. Bloody where-Satan-lives, 190 calories for just three? I might as well be eating chicken nuggets.

Morningstar Farms, you have taken innocent, nutritious vegetables such as broccoli and spinach and turned them into foods not out of place on the menu at McDonald’s. And just as addictive.

I must warn you against serving these veggie pockets of evil at your New Year’s Eve celebration. They will bring you nothing but an oh-too-short joy and tight pants.

But if you have innocently purchased a few boxes before I had the chance to warn you of their inherent wickedness, fear not. Just pack them up and sent them by express international overnight mail to me, and I will properly dispose of them for you.

It’s the only way to save your soul.

Snacks for New Year’s

Twelve Under-$20 Ways to Snack Well on New Year’s Eve – A Mighty Appetite:

For me, the key is not whether you curl up at home or venture out into the world — but that the evening is both simple and cheap. Of course, “cheap” is a relative term, but my point here is to be kind to your exhausted holiday wallet and work within your budget.

So far, we don’t have any big plans for New Year’s Eve. I hear there’s some fireworks nearby that we can view from basically right outside our door. We thought about finding a restaurant to visit, but many places close early and the ones that don’t seem to be holding tickets-only parties — parties crowned by a bowl of traditional New Year’s cabbage soup at midnight. Oh, yum.

To make the night special without me having to pull together another holiday feast so soon, Scott’s going to be taking over the kitchen come Monday evening. I haven’t learned yet what will be on the menu, but I’m sure it will be special. I’ll take some pictures to post later!

(via Slashfood)

Soup Showdown! Chicken with Curly Pasta

Though I was raised on canned soup, I’ve come to detest the stuff over the years. Can after can of mushy veggies, disintegrating noodles, and questionable meat, all soaked in a broth that tastes like nothing but liquefied salt, left me disappointed and disillusioned.

Today, soup is a weekly meal in our home, but with a key difference: It is always homemade. Once a week, I cook up a big pot of the stuff, which provides a low-cal but filling dinner and then stretches to fill several lunches throughout the week.

Of course, the soup companies are always coming out with new varieties that sound enticing. So why not take a bit of inspiration from their product lines and create some soups truly worth supping on?

And so here it is — our very first Soup Showdown!

In one corner, we have a contender from Campbell’s, the granddaddy of canned soup companies: Campbell’s Select Roasted Chicken with Rotini & Penne Pasta Soup.

From Campbells.com:

Roasted Chicken with Rotini & Penne Pasta Soup
A delightful twist on traditional chicken soup. Our chef created a memorable soup that is chock full of generous pieces of oven-roasted white-meat chicken, chunky-cut vegetables and a combination of whimsical pasta shapes, all simmered in a rich chicken broth aromatic with savory herbs that will soothe your soul and delight your taste buds!

Campbell’s entrant offers a mere 100 calories per one cup serving, but watch out — there’s 860 mg of sodium in that same one cup! No wonder the stuff tastes so salty. And to think I used to eat almost the whole can at once.

Checking the ingredients, it’s clear that this is your typical chicken noodle soup, albeit with pasta replacing the usual egg noodles. Chicken, celery, carrots, dehydrated onion, garlic, and herbs, broth, seasoning — pretty simple stuff, and easy to improve upon.

Now, I wouldn’t claim that my recipe for this is the ultimate version of chicken soup. I’m not simmering a whole chicken for hours or spending more to buy a bunch of herbs that will rot away in my crisper after I make the soup. I’m certainly not above using a few shortcuts, true, but I also need to think contextually. I’m limited by my time (which I don’t want to spend all of in our tiny, isolated kitchen), my grocery budget (which is small), and, for now, the availability of ingredients at Slovak grocery stores.

Still, following my guidelines here will definitely result in a soup that’s fresher and tastier than anything you can get out of a can. It will take more time and effort upfront, but not any more than you would normally spend on cooking dinner. Plus, this recipe will make a huge batch that, when cooked as a dinner for two, will provide a quick-as-canned and satisfying lunch later on.

Let’s get cooking!

I often start recipes here with some of this olive oil spray. I don’t know exactly if it’s purely oil, but it’s the closest thing we’ve found here to nonstick spray. I like nonstick spray for many reasons, but right now I’m mostly using it to save a handful of calories in everyday cooking. I coated the bottom of my soup pot with a quick spray before I turned the heat on to low.

I had to share the price of these four carrots. For those of you who do not make regular transactions in Slovak korunas, these cost 21 U.S. cents altogether.

Anyway, you should peel each carrot, trim off the yucky ends, and then cut them in half lengthwise so that you have a flat surface on the vegetable for nice, stable slicing. Next, chop them into half moons that are, oh, somewhere between 1/4 inch and 1/2 inch thick. Or between half a centimeter and a whole centimeter thick, if you prefer metric.

Drop all your carrots into the slowly heating pan as you chop them. They’ll start to soften and get a little color as you chop the rest of the vegetables, but they won’t burn as your heat here is very, very low.

Tip: If things do threaten to get smoky, just add maybe half a cup of water to the pot as needed to keep the veggies from sticking to the bottom.

I used a nice, big onion in my soup because I enjoy the sweet flavor of cooked onions. But like any of the ingredients, you can adjust the amount as needed to suit your taste. My chicken soup is kind of heavy on the vegetables because they are low-cal and nutritious filler.

Just dice the onion as small as you like. Cut off the root and tip of the onion, cut the whole thing in half top to bottom, then peel off the outer skin layer. Lay it flat and slice against the grain (but not through the root end — you want to keep it together for now) to divide the onion into . . . columns. Yeah. And then slice crosswise to produce a dice. Don’t worry, the layers come apart as you cook so you don’t end up with enormous chunks.

Looks better than dehydrated onion, no? Dump all the chopped bits in the pot and stir.

Take four cleaned and trimmed celery stalks and . . .

. . . magically turn them into eight by slicing them in half lengthwise! Then chop ‘em up and throw ‘em in the pot with a good stirring.

Mmm . . . mirepoix.

Now I really like garlic, so I used five cloves. The soup doesn’t get an overwhelming garlic flavor, but it does add good depth to the broth. If a bunch of little pieces of garlic floating around is going to disturb you, then just smash the cloves, pull off the skins, and dump them straight in without mincing. That way, you can easily pull them out at the end, once they’ve given their flavoring all.

But me?

I mince. Or sometimes use a garlic press.

Now that everybody’s in the soon-to-be bath, I season with salt . . .

. . . and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. Use less if you don’t want it too spicy. Use more to really clear out that congestion.

Here we must accommodate to our circumstances. I have not yet found any canned soup in Bratislava, let alone packaged chicken broth. All soups seem to come in powdered form instead. But whatever. I doubt I’d be willing to carry home tons of broth cans in addition to everything else over public transit anyway. Two cubes here makes one liter of chicken broth, which is about four cups. I add them directly to the pot and turn the heat up to medium high.

Next comes one cup (or 250 ml) of water . . . and a steam bath.

I now get aggressive and scrape up the fond from the bottom of the pan. That’s all the browning stuff that’s stuck to the bottom that will help make your bouillon taste like real stock.

See what a nice, rich color the water is now? Go ahead and add three more cups of water. Or 750 ml, if you’re cooking in Slovakia.

Now, when it’s all wet like that, I toss in the dried herbs. Dried herbs are fine for anything you plan on cooking for a while. Can you guess what these are?

One teaspoon of dried dill, 1 tablespoon of dried chives, and 2 bay leaves enter the pot.

Here is the diced chicken I saved from the previous night’s stir fry. It’s disturbingly similar in color to my hand. I only had one spare breast pieces, so I cut it extra small to stretch it. You could always add more chicken if you’re not cheap like me.

The chicken will start to turn white as soon as it hits the hot tub. Let it soak in there for about five minutes before you add the macaroni. It may need more time if you used bigger pieces.

Ever since I arrived here, Tesco’s been getting on a Whole Foods kick. Organic beef and dry goods started showing up, and they promote the heck out of some reusable shopping bag that we’ve never seen outside of the pictures. Now, they’ve started carrying whole-wheat pasta. We like the taste, but if you don’t, well, I’ll never know that you used a less virtuous noodle.

Add about 1/4-1/3 a pound (or 125 grams here) of fusilli or whatever curly pasta you picked up.

I decided here that one liter of broth wasn’t going to cut it for cooking all that pasta. I added two cups (or 500 ml, whatever) more water for the fusilli to drink up. You could use broth instead.

Let the pot boil gently for as long as it takes for the macaroni to turn tender. Then . . .

. . . you’ll have this lovely pot of soup here. Mmm!

M’m, m’m, good, you might say.

Chicken with Curly Pasta Soup
Source: Colleen’s Cookbook
Yield: 7 to 8 one-cup servings

• Nonstick spray
• 4 medium-sized carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise, and sliced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 4 stalks celery, halved lengthwise and sliced
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• A few shakes of salt
• ½ teaspoon ground black pepper (use less for less spice)
• 4 cups chicken bouillon, prepared
• 2 cups water
• 1 teaspoon dried dill
• 1 tablespoon dried chives
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 chicken breast, cut into a small dice
• 125 grams fusilli (or other macaroni)

Put a large soup pot or Dutch oven over very low heat. Add the vegetables to the pot as you chop them, stirring with each addition.

Once all the veggies are in the tub, season them with some salt and the 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. Give the mix a good stir to distribute the seasonings, then turn up the heat to medium high. Add one cup of the bouillon and scrape the bottom of the pan firmly to bring up all the browned bits (this provides both depth of flavor and a cleaner pan for your significant other to wash!).

Add the rest of the bouillon and the water. To this, stir in the dill, chives, and bay leaves. Let the soup come up to a simmer, then add the chicken pieces. Allow the chicken to poach for about 5 minutes. Turn down the heat if the soup starts to boil rapidly.

Next, stir in the fusilli. Cook this at a gentle boil for as long as the package instructions say, until the pasta is tender. Fish out the bay leaves and serve.

Notes:
You can shift around the proportions as you see fit. This produces a very chunky soup. If you prefer a thinner soup, add another pint of chicken broth.

Download Chicken with Curly Pasta Soup into MacGourmet.

Last-SECOND Gifts for Cooks

I say last-second as they can be ordered online and all you have to do is print a receipt or a card. We’re talking memberships, subscriptions, and lessons here, all stuff you don’t need to leave the house to buy. Who wants to go out in the cold, especially if it means fighting your way into Christmas Eve Wal-Mart?

Ungift Guide 2007: Best Last Minute Online Gifts for Cooks (The Kitchn)