Creamed Lentil Soup with Warm Goats Cheese & Mushroom Relish

Lunch in my new freelance reality is often something simple like cauliflower florets with a homemade bean dip but these last few weeks have made me crave soup like nothing else. Often I have something frozen that I can thaw on the range or in the microwave at a moment’s notice but because I had a head cold, I totally exhausted my stash. No canned soups here, homemade is way too easy!

We always have a pantry-full of dried beans and pulses, but as usual, I forgot to soak my beans so I used the next best thing and what I’d consider “instant” — the old standby, red lentil (they are Australian! Who knew?) The red lentil cooks up quickly and has a mild earthy flavour that takes to being flavoured with other vegetables and spices. I also noticed that I was very short in other ingredients so this soup was dictated by what was on hand, a few button mushrooms, onions, garlic and about 1 celery rib. JT loved it, as did I so I was very glad I had the forethought of jotting down the ingredients as I made up a batch. I netted about 600 mL which makes for a hearty meal for two but can be served as smaller portions for four as a starter. Definitely going to bookmark this one for the future, it’s a keeper!

A Kitchen Inspirations Original Recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup dried red lentils
• 1 celery rib, chopped
• 1/2 sweet onion, chopped
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp EVOO
• 4 cups water or vegetable stock

Directions:

1. Heat the EVOO in a small Dutch oven, add the celery, onion and garlic, sauté until soft and onions are transluscent.
2. Add the lentils and sauté for a moment, add the water and stir well.
3. Cook the lentils over medium heat until soft. Transfer to a glass bowl and purée until smooth and creamy with an immersion blender. Set aside while making the warm relish.
4. Garnish with crumbled herbed goats cheese and warm csramelized mushrooms.

Ingredients for the Warm Relish:

• Handful of button mushrooms, cubed very small
• 1 tsp butter
• 1 small clove garlic
• 2 tbsp herbed goats cheese

Directions for the Warm Relish:

1. Melt the butter in a small cast iron frying pan, add the mushrooms and sauté until caramelized. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant. Garnish soup as indicated above.

A comforting, creamy, filling soup with some great flavours.

Notes:

• The herbed goats cheese was something I had on hand from another dish, it is simply softened goats cheese, finely chopped parsley, thyme and sun dried tomatoes, sea salt combined.
• Feel free to substitute plain goats cheese, crème fraîche, sour cream or Greek yogurt.
• I usually press a soup like this through a fine sieve but did not feel it necessary this time, it was super creamy and smooth.
• I would have loved to garnish with some finely chopped fresh herbs but sadly my herb garden was put to rest a few weeks ago.

Based on 4 servings, without mushroom & goats cheese relish.

Based on 4 servings, without mushroom & goats cheese relish.

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Slow Cooker Beef Barley Soup for a very chilly winter’s day

-22°C is -7.6°F (wind chill: -38°C is -38.4°F)

We had some very cold weather in December and I know some of my dear readers are experiencing some very hot weather — I can’t say which I prefer more, but at least one can put a few more layers on in the cold, not much you can take off after you’ve taken it all off in the heat (or maybe that was a vision we didn’t need!). To help combat the chill over the holidays, I made a big batch of beef barley soup which we had for a lunch and then froze the remainder for quickie servings in the future; it’s always easier to eat healthful if you are armed with healthy food.

A thick soup flavoured with lots of mushrooms and chunks of beef

Slow Cooker Beef Barley Soup

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup sweet onions, finely chopped
• 1 cup or 3 stalks celery, cubed
• 3 cloves garlic finely minced
• 1 cup pearl barley
• 1 L Low Sodium beef stock
• 5-7 dried  “fa goo” Chinese mushrooms, sliced (hydrated but save the liquid and strain it through a fine sieve)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 1″ sprig of rosemary, finely chopped
• 400 g cubed beef (relatively small)
• 1 1/4 cup sherry
• 1-2 tsp canola oil
• Salt and Pepper to taste.
• water, if necessary

Directions:

1. Allow the beef cubes to come to room temperature. Preheat the slow cooker on high.
2. Add 1-2 tsp canola oil to a hot cast iron dutch oven and brown the beef on all sides. Add to the slow cooker pot.
3. In the same dutch oven, cook the onions until translucent, then add the garlic until fragrant. Stir in the pearl barley and toast for a few moments. Pour into the slow cooker with the beef. Add the beef stock to the slow cooker and give it a good stir.
4. Deglaze the dutch oven with the sherry and add it to the slow cooker and add the bay leaf, thyme and finely chopped rosemary. Cook for 4-6 hours on low temperature or 3-4 hours on high.
5. For the final hour, add the sliced hydrated mushrooms and the strained mushroom stock and give it a good stir.
6. After the final hour, test the barley for doneness and soup for thickness, should you want a slightly less thick soup, add more water.
7. Remove the bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper and serve with a dollop of fat free Greek Yogurt and a sprig of rosemary.
8. Cool leftovers completely and pour into plastic containers for freezing.

A nice dollop of fat free Greek Yogurt is always a nice addition. Of course the crostini with brie never hurts either!

Although December and January were very cold, in late January and early February we were bombarded with snow. A lot of snow, all at once. I know other parts of the world get snow, but this is a lot for us, particularly those of us living in the city with smaller lots which means we have a really hard time finding the space to shovel the snow off the sidewalks and driveways! Enjoy the photos below and just be grateful you didn’t have to shovel it.

This snow mound is just about 1 metre high (39″)

You can see how high the snow is piled from our gorgeous little tree!

These are our Rose of Sharon ‘trees’. They are about 3 metres (10 feet) tall, but they just look like shrubs with the snow piled up to their canopy!

 

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Creamed Broccoli Soup

I’ve been busy! And the next couple of weeks will be even busier! I’m so excited to tell you about an amazing opportunity that’s come up, I have been actually assisting with real food styling jobs. One of the recent jobs was for Food & Drink magazine assisting a prominent stylist; the next one will be on location somewhere up north for three days! The Food & Drink magazine is a gorgeous magazine produced by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (the single largest purchaser of alcohol in the world). They have a lofty budget to produce this gorgeous, glossy magazine; I’m also booked for about 4 additional days in December with a couple of other equally talented stylists so my life has become rather exciting. But because I’m away from my computer and not able to access my phone while on set I’m sorry if I miss a comment on your blog in the next while but I hope you’ll understand.

Let me tell you about my experience so far in assisting. Sometimes it means grocery shopping; I was fortunate enough to shadow a food stylist assistant as she shopped Toronto grocery stores for some rather unique ingredients. It starts with an email list and a call with the food stylist to chat about what is needed that day. Often the groceries are perishable so we buy only for what will be used that very day. After we clearly understand what each ingredient is for, we make lists and action plans. Remember my cottage lists? Let me say that my list-making abilities will come in very handy. We began our grocery journey at around 10am at the Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaw and were on the go until 3pm non-stop, visiting no less than 8 stores to pick up about $300 of various ingredients for recipe development. You may wonder what the most unique ingredient we sourced was? It was a mediterranean salt-cured fish which is also dried called Botargo (John – From the Bartolini Kitchens, please comment on what this might be used in). It was very expensive, clocking in at $79.99 for a piece that looked no more than 150 g or 5.5 oz! We also visited a very cool Asian grocer on Cherry Street called T&T where we bought fresh Galangal (Thai Ginger) and Chinese Chives (which are long, flat leaved, grass-like greens), but they had so much more. You just know I’ll be visiting that store again in the very near future. At the St. Lawrence Market we bought soft-shelled crabs, rabbit (did you know they leave the head on so you can be sure it’s not a cat?), Chorizo (raw and cured), farro and La Bomba rice (this is the same Paela rice I recently used here)! My imagination is going wild with the possibilities for these lovely ingredients. Our job is to buy the food ONLY. There is someone else called a Prop Stylist who is responsible to source all the cool props you may see included in a recipe photo.

But shopping is only half of it, the other half of assisting is advance preparation (which I haven’t done as yet) and on-site cooking where we are actually cooking the food for the camera. On my first shoot for F&D I had figured that I would be relegated to clean-up and general prep but I actually had the opportunity to cook for the actual shots — I made pesto, browned chicken, made savoury waffles to name a few! It was more than I dreamed it would be. The job is not for everyone, but I love being in the kitchen and I found it interesting and very satisfying. Working with the photographers, their assistants, the food stylist and prop stylist on-site is an amazing experience and I am excited and very grateful to be part of it. I think I’ve unexpectedly stumbled upon my dream job :-), which is pretty incredible because I thought I LOVED what I did before!

It’s definitely fall in Toronto, and while there are barely leaves clinging to the trees, while the colour of the sky has morphed into shades of grey (not fifty, let’s not go there), while the colour of the lake is more black than blue, our slow cookers are chugging away in our cozy kitchens up in Canada, brewing secret and not so secret recipes to fend away cold and flu season with the nutrition and comfort of soup. Take a look at any website, blog or even magazine and it’s about soup. I definitely have my favourites but I also like to switch it up a bit and so I’ve developed this tasty, all be it green, Broccoli Soup, without a spot of cream in it! Of course, you can add cream if you wish to your taste, but I’ll pass thank you very much.

The polenta fries were a nice touch and a perfect colour contrast

Ingredients:

• 1 good-sized head of local organic broccoli, cut into even florets, woody stems removed.
• 1/2 cup chopped sweet onion
• 1-2 medium-sized parsnips, cut into cubes
• 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• Water or stock to cover
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Sauté the onion until translucent, add the garlic and parsnip and sauté 5 minutes longer.
2. Add the broccoli and cover with water. Cook until all vegetables are fork tender.
3. Using an emersion blender, blend until smooth adding water or stock to desired consistency, salt and pepper to taste. Press through a fine sieve. Serve hot with Cheddar Polenta ‘Fries’

There isn’t a spot of cream in this delightful soup

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Egg Foo Yung (gluten free, fat free but NOT flavour free)

Many people think that eating healthfully means eating without flavour or excitement (remember the cottage cheese diets?), but I am here to declare that they are WRONG! It’s particularly important for low fat recipes to be seasoned properly, and I’m not talking salt, but a variety of flavour builders. When you eat low calorie, fat free food, you NEED to be satisfied, otherwise, you will likely snack and cheat. It’s plain and simple, make sure ALL your senses are satisfied and you will be happy.

My friend Norma over at Garden to Wok has been making recipes that have tempted me for a while and I found one a couple of weeks ago that really spiked my curiosity: Egg Foo Yung. Now Norma is a Chinese Culinary Expert and she teaches hands on cooking classes at Pearl River Patch in New York State so I am by no means trying to one up her. JT and I are doing a very concerted effort for three weeks to eat virtually carb free, fat free and sugar-free (a low glycemic diet), so I have modified Norma’s recipe to suite our dietetic needs at this time, it may not be for everyone, but it worked for our taste buds and diet chemestry. So, I hope you don’t mind, Norma, here is my version of your wonderful Egg Foo Yung. Please check out Norma’s blog to see her gorgeous and tasty looking recipe and pictures. This dish satisfied every one of my senses; my sense of smell was being teased as I prepared the dish, my sense of sight was excited at the site of the dish and my sense of taste was bowled over at the first bite. And then I was full.

Note about my ingredients. I made this twice and the second time I used what I had on hand instead of the basics Norma suggested in her recipe. The first set of photos sucked, hence their obvious absence, these are the photos from the second set.

Canadian Egg Foo Yung (for a low glycemic index diet)

The egg and vegetable pancake sits in a delicious stock, that eats like a soup.
It's a perfect light meal.

Serves 1 (recipe can easily be multiplied to the number of people to serve). You will need egg rings for this dish (I used mini spring form pan rings without the bottoms).

Ingredients:

• 50g raw shrimp (I used 3 from a packet that listed 21-30 per pound)
• 4.5 tbsp egg beaters egg whites
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated, divided
• 1 tsp fresh garlic, grated, divided
• 1 scallion or green onion finely sliced, divided
• 1 tsp Kikkoman Low Sodium Soy Sauce, divided
• 1/2 cup low sodium chicken stock (I use Pacific)
• 15g Chinese mushrooms sliced thinly (use the dried variety and reserved the hydrating liquid)
• 1/2 cup mushroom hydrating liquid
• 50g of fresh baby spinach
• Parsley and scallions for garnish
• non-stick cooking spray

Directions:

1. Peel and de-vein the shrimp, cut into quarter bits and set aside.
2. Pour the chicken stock, the strained mushroom hydrating liquid, 1/2 tsp fresh ginger, 1/2 tsp fresh garlic, and half of the finely sliced scallions or green onions into a sauce pan and begin to heat slowly (the aim is to infuse the broth with the flavours added, not to boil the heck out of it).
3. Pour the egg whites into a small bowl and whisk with the soy sauce and ginger, set aside.
4. Pre-heat the pan WITHOUT the egg rings and lightly sauté the spinach until entirely wilted. Remove from pan and add the shrimp and cook through. Remove from pan and set aside.
5. Pre-heat the pan WITH the egg ring, lightly spray both with non-stick spray.
6. Combine the wilted spinach, shrimp, Chinese mushrooms with the green onions and add to the egg ring and distribute evenly. Heat through (this will help the egg cook).
7. Pour the egg whites over the vegetables and adjust so that it all sits evenly in the ring. Cook on medium heat for about 10 minutes (you will need to put a lid over the ring so that the top of the egg sets nicely so you can flip it and get that gorgeous golden colour that Norma talks about.
8. When the egg has set, carefully remove the ring and with a large spatula, flip. You will want both sides golden and cooked all the way through.
9. To plate, carefully remove the egg pancake (you may need to slide your knife around the edge to loosen) and pace in a rimmed soup bowl (I like my Asian style bowls for this type of presentation). Carefully ladle the hot broth around the egg, so that it doesn’t cover it. You can either strain the broth so the garlic, ginger and the scallions don’t end up in the presentation (which is what I did for the photo) or you can leave in and enjoy with your egg and broth (which is what I did when I served it to JT and I). Garnish with parsley and a sliver of the green onion (or chives if you have on hand). I also added a few chili pepper flakes on mine for heat!

As FYI: I omitted the ginger wine, egg yolks, oil, salt and corn starch and substituted the chicken broth with low sodium, the soy sauce with low sodium to make my version low glycemic. The vegetables, as mentioned previously are just what I had on hand, you could add whatever you choose as Norma indicated in her recipe.

Thank you, Norma, this is indeed a very flavourful dish even with my alterations.

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