French Lentil Soup with Sausage

With the winter chills and winds and snow brings a craving for soup. Thick. Rib sticking. Soup. I wanted to try a lentil soup so I searched for a good hearty recipe and this is what I came up with. To make it vegetarian, omit the pancetta and sausage, it’s still a thick, hearty soup. You can put a dollop of non-fat Greek Yogurt on top in stead of the sausages.

Modified from Epicurious French Lentil Soup

Serves 6 (or 2 and put the rest in your freezer)

A filling soup without being too rich.
A dollop of fat-free Greek yogurt would have been lovely on this.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons extra–virgin olive oil
• 3 tbsp chopped pancetta
• 2 cups chopped vidalia or sweet onions
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 2 garlic cloves, minced finely
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 1 1/4 cups lentils, rinsed, drained
• 1 14 1/2–ounce can diced tomatoes in juice
• 2 fully cooked chicken and turkey sausages, cubed

Directions:

1. Pan-fry the pancetta until crispy in the olive oil, remove but save the flavoured oil.
2. Add the onions to the hot oil and sauté until translucent.
3. Add celery and garlic; sauté until vegetables begin to slightly brown, about 15 minutes.
4. Add 4 cups broth, lentils, and tomatoes with juice and bring to a slow boil.
5. Reduce heat to medium–low, cover, and simmer until lentils are tender, about 35 minutes.
6. Return the pancetta to the soup and purée with an immersion blender until smooth.
7. Return to heat and add the cooked sausages and heat until thoroughly warm.
8. Season with salt and pepper.
9. Garnish with a dollop of fat free Greek yogurt.

 

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Chorizo with Tomatoes and Balsamic Vinegar

Happy Thursday everyone. By now I am sure you have read Barb (Profiteroles and Ponytails) had a Tapas dinner party on the weekend and we were kindly invited; we had such a variety of food and it was soooo good. I made Chgo John’s Cheese Bread again (how many times do I have to make this bread before EVERYONE sees that they MUST make it?) and some devil’s on horseback and the Chorizo with Tomatoes and Balsamic Vinegar. I had a few leftover red and yellow peppers and decided to add them to the recipe, so below is the updated recipe, with photos this time. It’s such an easy tapas to make, just add what you have on hand, and you can make it in advance, as I did and just reheat in the oven or you can do it all right away. I would suggest, however, not to make it in cast iron unless it has an enamel coating as the vinegar will remove any seasoning you have diligently worked so hard on. We just served the dish in these adorable cast pans.

The martini with more in it is mine.

Serves 4 if you’re having other tapas courses

Ingredients:

• 1 cup 1/4″ sliced and halved chorizo sausage
• 1/3 cup grape tomatoes, quartered
• 1/4 cup chopped onion (I prefer Mayan sweet onions or vidalia)
• 1 clove garlic finely chopped (I prefer to use my microplane)
• 1/2 cup mixed sliced yellow and red peppers
• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Heat olive oil in a small pan, add chorizo and caramelize each side.
2. Add onions and garlic and sauté for a minute, add the peppers and sauté for another minute.
3. Add balsamic and allow balsamic to reduce slightly 3-4 minutes (this will thicken the balsamic a bit)
4. If you are making this in advance, I would add the tomatoes when you reheat so they maintain some shape. If you make this to eat now, add tomatoes and sauté for another minute.
5. Serve immediately or reheat (adding the quartered grape tomatoes) with that gorgeous Cheese Bread I cannot stop making and bragging about.

I wish you had smell-a-vision like I do.

I feel like Grover in the "near".... "far" episode

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Ricotta and Sausage Pancakes and a new ‘friend’

My latest endeavour was the home made Ricotta from my BB (blogging buddy) John, and it was a huge success; even so, we had left-overs. We’re having our nephew Brian over for Sunday dinner and I thought it would work perfectly in a little hors d’œuvres of whole wheat-flax pan cakes with ricotta and chives and a little lightly pan fried chicken and turkey, spinach feta sausage (another left over from our little brunch on Saturday).

Pass the canapés, please.

Ricotta and Sausage Pancakes

Makes about 14 little pan cakes

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Home-made ricotta (or store bought, but the home made is so darn easy)
• 1 tbsp finely chopped chives
• 14 sausage slices, very thinly sliced
• 3 tbsp whole wheat flour
• 2 tbsp ground flax seeds
• 1/2 cup soda water
• 3 tbsp egg whites
• Pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Mix the chives into the ricotta and set aside.
2. Mix well together WW flour, flax seeds, egg whites, soda and salt. If it’s really runny, set aside for 2-5 minutes (you want a slightly thicker mixture than crèpe batter).
3. Heat a large cast iron pan and spray lightly with a non-stick cooking spray.
4. Drop small spoonfuls of the batter onto the hot pan so that they each form a 5cm or 2 inch little round. Cook both sides until golden. Repeat until the mixture has been all used up.
5. In the same hot pan, spray another little squirt of non-stick cooking spray and sauté each side of the thinly sliced sausage until golden and slightly curled.
6. Top each little pan cake with a dollop of the home-made ricotta and one slice of the sausage.
7. Enjoy with a martini.

Canapé Anyone?

And a new friend…

Meet Brown Squirrel.

As many of you already know, my favourite pet in the whole world was my dearest little bunny, Dustie. Sadly she passed away about 7 years ago at the age of 10, and the impact of her friendship has prevented me from trying to find another pet, any pet. Until I met brown squirrel. The strange thing about brown squirrel is that she is the same golden colouring as my Dustie, and that this type of colouring on squirrels in the Toronto area is not common (we have mainly black, some grey and a couple of white squirrels). Brown squirrel is not really a pet, but she has become a ‘friend’. I wonder if she’s on FB?

Now it’s not just the colouring on Brown Squirrel that makes her special, she is a lot tamer than the other squirrels in the hood. She will come when she is called (she’ll even cross the road when we call out to her; she doesn’t look both ways (she IS a squirrel) but we do!). She responds to munching noises (my Dustie did that too!). She’ll even come right up to you and eat from your hand (although I wouldn’t recommend it, after all, she is still a wild animal). We always have to remember to close the front door because she would follow you in (never happened but I sure wouldn’t want to chance it). Brown Squirrel comes to the house every morning for her treats. I snapped this photo from the dining room window through the screen (hence the weird overall colour); normally we wouldn’t feed her on our front porch, but it was darn chilly at 7:30 that morning, and we only had PJs on!

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Restaurant Review: Wvrst

This Christmas holiday we were unable to book a quick get-away at a reasonable price so we decided to stay in the city and check out a bunch of restaurants we’ve been hoping to get to. Our first installment in this series is Wvrst (like wurst) on King West. Now Wvrst is in a location that has seen many restaurants and it surprises me somewhat when another replaces the last one, but this time, I do believe they have the right ingredients for the area. It’s what they call a “Sausage Hall”; but wait, there is beer too! 🙂

Is is weird that they put my age on the table? 😉

The menu consists of a variety of home designed sausages (they outsource the actual making to somewhere in Montréal), even vegetarian! There are fries too, and beer; over 15 on tap. The beers were carefully chosen to pair well with the sausages. The restaurant is family style with long wooden communal tables; it is well but not too brightly lit with those cool bulbs I mentioned in the Kennedy Public House Post, hundreds of them! We had lunch on Boxing Day, so it was a little quiet. You go to the sausage bar to order and pay for your food, but the servers bring it to you, reasonably quickly.

We decided to share an Elk and Porchini sausage with sauerkraut and sautéed jalopeño peppers $9 and small Belgian-style fries (regular fries) $3.5 with Wvrst’s own spicey mayo $1. It was plenty of food for us. The sausage was DELICIOUS with my Dead Guy Ale just a slight nuttiness paired perfectly with the rich sausage. JT had the Dieu du Ciel which I found too bitter, but he liked it. The sausage casing had that perfect POP as you bit into each delicious bite! My only comment would be that the Porchini was a bit of a waste as neither of us could taste it in the sausage. The fries were gloriously crispy and fresh tasting; the dipping mayo was indeed spicy, but we both loved it, although it was a bit thick. We could have ordered the fries fried in duck fat, but thought better of it.

The manager was friendly and helpful (we had a bit of an issue which I won’t mention but he took care of it immediately and we were happy with the result). The experience was a bit quick but it was very nice and the food was great and not expensive.

Overall rating (in my opinion): Decor 4/5, service 3.5/5, food 3.5/5, Value 4/5, Noise: 5/5 (1 being very noisy, and 5 being very quiet). The restaurant was not packed, I would imagine it gets pretty loud at night. Great lunch place.

Disclaimer: We purchased our meal for full price and my opinions just that, my opinions.

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Cottage Paella

Our nephew Brian and girlfriend Adrienne were over for dinner at The Upper Deck this past weekend and we made Paella! This recipe is a condensed version without the clams and mussells (because of transport time and number of days before we had them!).

• 1 cup brown rice (because it is gluten free)
• 4 small chicken thighs (skinless, boneless is good)
• 2 gluten free sausages
• 1 cup calamari rings
• 12 shrimp (I like to peel and remove tails so you are not having to dive into the food with hands and feet to eat!)
• 1 pinch saffron
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• salt
• 3 finely minced cloves garlic
• 1/2 frozen peas
• 1/2 cup chopped red pepper (into 1/2″ cubes)
• 1 can chopped tomatoes (low sodium)
• 1/2 cup chopped Vidalia onion
• 2-3 tbsp EV olive oil
• 3 cups chicken stock
• 1/2 cup of chopped fresh parsley
• Lemon and lime slices for garnish

Steps 1-4 may be done 2-4 hours in advance.

1. Make a paste out of 1 clove garlic and 1 tsp smoked paprika and salt and spread it over the chicken thighs; set aside.
2. Soak saffron in 2 cups chicken stock for about 10 minutes (or any stock for that matter).
3. Cook rice in saffron soaked chicken stock to about 70% doneness and set aside.
4. BBQ Chicken thighs and Sausage until fully cooked. Set aside in refrigerator. Cut into slightly larger than bite-sized pieces.
5. Just before you wish to serve, preheat oven to 350°F.
6. Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté onions until translucent. Add remaining garlic and stir just until you can smell its aroma.
7. Add already cooked chicken and sausage.
8. Add rice, peppers, peas and canned tomatoes. Stir well, if too dry, add a bit of the remaining 1 cup chicken stock until a desired wetness is achieved.
9. Add shrimp and calamari and stir well and place into oven for about 10-12 minutes until shrimp is no longer translucent.
10. Stir in chopped parsley and serve with lemon and lime wedges. Serve hot.
11. Enjoy!

Cottage Paella

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