A Date with Soup

This soup has all the features I'm looking for in a meal: fast, full of veggie goodness, thrifty ingredients, filling. In short, my perfect lunch date.

** This photo looks like yellow mush. It's really more like orange mush. I tried.

Carrot Soup

Serves 1 nicely

1/2 small onion, finely chopped

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 c. baby carrots, sliced

1 c. chicken stock

1/2 pink grapefruit, membrane removed

Salt and pepper

In a saucepan, cook onion and ginger in olive oil over medium heat. When they start to smell great and look a little cooked, add carrots (I used baby carrots because that's what I usually buy for $1) followed by chicken stock.

A note: I make my own chicken stock not to be fancy pants about it, but as part of my no ingredient left behind program. That chicken I was picking apart last week? Its last bits and bones went into the stock, which I'll post about later. I like to freeze the stock in ice cube trays or in one cup measurements, since I rarely use one whole pot but rather throw it into multiple dishes.

Let the carrots simmer and when they are almost fully tender add the grapefruit. This is a subtle flavor, so you could try adding more, but I don't like overwhelming the carrots and ginger. Or skip the grapefruit altogether.

When the carrots are fully tender, turn off the stove and let the soup cool a little. Then transfer to a blender and puree or liquify. Me? I puree since I'm ok with a little more texture.

Return the mixture to the pan and simmer, adding salt and pepper to taste. I walked away and it thickened more than I wanted. Solution? I added about 1/4 c. water to the blender, ran it to gather up some of the soup that was left behind and added it to the saucepan. Bonus: the blender was that much easier to clean!

And then I got fancy...

I thought about veggie soups I'd had at restaurants and how they get dressed up. The answer:

Chive Oil

8 chives

1 1/2 Tablespoons walnut oil

Salt and pepper

I had never made chive oil and I couldn't believe how simple this was going to be. A little internet searching turned up a recipe on the Oprah site (not where I usually go for recipes, but it had the easiest instructions). The recipe from a book called The Conscious Cook is here. Did I follow all the steps? Of course not. Too many dirty dishes for my laziness.

Here's what I did instead: I didn't blanch the chives, I put them in a strainer, balanced it on top of the already steaming soup mixture and covered the strainer with tin foil. I let it sit there for about 1 minute and then removed the strainer from the heat and ran it under cool water from the tap.

Cut up the steamed chives and put in a mortar. Add the walnut oil and salt and pepper and then grind away. I was surprised at how quickly the oil turns a pretty green shade. Strain and drizzle on top of carrot soup.

The chive oil added a nice contrast to the spiciness of the carrot soup, looked pretty and made this an omega-3 rich dish.

Tally:

Veggie-tastic lunch

Bunny food that's spicy and filling

Pretty way to use up carrots and other leftover ingredients

Fork, Knife, Spoon, Salad

In trying to keep us on The Fat Resistance Diet and its impressive number of fruit and vegetable servings, I've come up with one easy out: salad as place setting.

What I mean by this is I consider a salad a requirement for eating all the other food on the table. I (generally) wouldn't eat without utensils, and we usually don't dine without a salad.

I find this fitting because I had two very loosely-enforced responsibilities in my house growing up: set the dinner table and make the salad. A lazy cook from way back, I'd cheat and make the salad as quickly as possible, lobbying for iceberg not because I preferred the taste, but because it was faster. But no more.

Now, my salads have standards: variety, flavors that complement the main dish, multiple textures and--if I have it--a salty topping (think capers, olives, nuts). Here's a Latin-ish salad we ate alongside a chicken and black bean chili for lunch the other day:

lettuce, green cabbage, oranges, cilantro, onion, celery, Spanish olives + lime-cumin vinaigrette

Done.

Tally:

3 veggie servings down, 5 to go!

$10 to fill the veggie drawer = a week of no excuses

Making up for the recent dietary indiscretions=worth the chopping.

So fast and easy, you can make it while the main dish stews

Fish Tail(ends) at Twilight

I feel sorry for leftovers. They get such a bad name.

I prefer to view them as a reason to party. What better way to use smidgens of ingredients than to turn them into nibbles for cocktails? In fact, maybe they should be called invite-overs, because that's exactly what we did last night when a dear friend came over to celebrate the beginning of a new week and watch the sunset from our terrace.

We still had 3-4 small pieces of the poached salt cod from our Baked Cod Cakes. Just enough to turn out some Brandade, a French cod-potato spread:

No, these aren't blue--that's the lovely outdoor light at 7pm last night. I love that it is still light out so late in the evening! Summer is so close I can taste it.

Brandade Toasts

1 cup poached salt cod

1 medium potato

4-5 garlic cloves

1/4 cup olive oil

Ground black pepper

1 baguette

Shred salt cod into small pieces and set aside.

Meanwhile, boil potato until very well done. While the potato is cooking, place 4 cloves of the garlic and olive oil in a heavy saucepan and over low heat cook until the garlic cloves soften (but are not brown.)

Peel the potato and while still warm mash it together with the garlic. Add 2 1/2 Tablespoons warm olive oil a tablespoon at a time.

Add the cod and combine well. If not garlicky enough, grate in half a clove of garlic raw. I did this because I love garlic. Keeps the vampires away. Refrigerate if using later (can be made ahead.)

Cut a baguette into thin slices. Spread brandade on each slice to cover fully. Sprinkle with remaining olive oil and broil on low for 3 -4 minutes. (These burn easily, so you'll want to watch them.) They will be golden on top. Serve warm.

We also enjoyed crudite with Herb Yogurt Cheese Dip (so easy!!) and some very fruitful Pear White Sangria. I'll put those recipes up soon.

Tally:

Not totally FRD-friendly nibbles (white bread, potato): Bad.

Omega-3 rich fish and olive oil provide healthy fats: Good!

Leftovers find their purpose and only one $2 purchase

Great excuse to invite a friend over

One Fish, Two Fish, Pink Fish, New Fish

More fish? More fish!

Recently I've been on the hunt for ways to get more omega-3-rich fish into our daily meals and I had to come back to my old favorite: salmon. Salmon's not the most thriftastic fish around, but it sure is delicious.

I had been dreaming of salmon ever since we enjoyed the most delicious Japanese salmon dish at our friends' house the other week. The salmon had been marinated overnight in another old favorite: miso.

I'm not so patient, so here's my quicky-version of Miso Glazed Salmon.

Miso Glazed Salmon

1/2 lb. filet of salmon

1 Tablespoon white miso paste

2 Tablespoons mirin

1 Tablespoon water to thin glaze

Mix the miso paste and mirin in a bowl. Add water slowly to slightly thin the glaze. Spread on salmon filet and let sit for 10 minutes. Place on baking sheet and place under a broiler about 10-12 minutes (this could be shorter depending on the heat of your oven--as you can see, my oven was a little too hot! I'm still learning how to use the broiler in this kitchen.)

Ginger Honey Carrots

2 cups baby carrots

4 thin slices fresh ginger

1 teaspoon low sodium soy sauce

1 Tablespoon honey

salt to taste

Place carrots and thin slices of ginger in a saute pan and add water to pan (not so much that the carrots are submerged). Cook over medium-high heat until carrots are tender. If there's a lot of water left, drain it off. Add soy sauce and honey and stir. Turn heat down to low and cook until carrots begin look lightly glazed, about 5 minutes.

Green Bean Bundles

Green beans

Fresh chives

Garlic

Run knife or finger along chives to flatten and make the chives more flexible. Tie 3-4 trimmed green bean together with a chive (I wrapped the chive around and then made a little knot.) Place in a steaming basket over simmering water with some peeled garlic until beans are bright green and tender.

Tally:

A rich dish that's both healthy and satisfying

A slight splurge, but still less than going out

Easy fish fast

Fishing for Recipes

At the crossroads of thrifty and lazy, I often find myself trying to find a recipe that will work with what I already have in my (healthy) larder. What usually happens is a sort of food mash-up, if you will, as I compare a few recipes based on ingredients and then take away the instructions I need to make it happen.

So when I was a bit wistful for a long ago Caribbean sailing trip and wanted to eat something healthy and high in omega-3's, the answer was Baked Salt Cod Cakes.

Epicurious turned up Portuguese Style Salt-Cod Fritters and a little Googling led me to Baked Codfish Cakes. The former provided instruction on poaching the cod in milk and the latter provided a baking temp and time, and the much-needed baking powder-to-potato proportion. Then I added in some of my own ingredients to invoke the salty treats we'd had in the British Virgin Islands. Yum.

Makes 12 small cakes

10-12 inch filet of salt cod, rinsed and soaked for 2 days

1-2 cups milk

3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced in half

1 bay leaf

2 medium-sized potatoes

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1/2 small onion minced

1 sweet red pepper (small) minced finely, or 1/4 of a regular red pepper, minced

3 sprigs cilantro, chopped

3 sprigs thyme, leave pulled off

2 sprigs parsley, chopped

ground black pepper

This recipe starts 2 days ahead of time, but is well worth it. Rinse and submerge salt cod filet in in water and refrigerate for 2 days. Change the water 2-3 times. Rinse the cod before cooking.

Place the cod, bay leaf and garlic in a saucepan and cover with milk. Add water until the cod is covered. Bring to a boil, turn back to simmer for 20 minutes.

In the meantime, boil the potatoes until very well done. After the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel and mash in a large bowl.

Remove the cod and once it is cool pull away any remaining skin. Flake the cod (a nice way to check for bones, for us neurotic cooks!) and add to the potatoes. Add 4 teaspoons of the milk-water cooking liquid and the olive oil. The mixture should start to stick together.

Add in remaining ingredients. Form into cakes and place on a greased (olive oil), foil-covered baking sheet. (Parchment paper would be better and might not require the olive oil.) Bake in 375F oven for 15 minutes. Turn over and bake 8-15 minutes more. **My baking sheet is thick, so a thinner sheet may cook the cakes faster.

In terms of health, the potatoes aren't great, but in this amount they aren't a huge carb intake either. Plus, baking the cakes offers the crispiness of cod fritters without the fat. I made these small so we felt like we were eating more and the smaller cakes would also be great for entertaining. Larger cakes might need some more "glue" in the form of more oil or an egg. I'll have to try that next time. This recipe was meant to have leftovers, but of course we ate them all.

I served the cakes with some roasted broccoli to make the meal healthier and a little rum cocktail to complete the Caribbean escapism. The cocktail was another mash-up, landing somewhere between a Painkiller (the drink we had at every port of the BVI) and a banana daiquiri. I had coconut milk to use up from a previous recipe, so this wasn't exactly healthy. In fact, you could call this the Diet-killer: 2 ounces coconut rum/rum + 1 banana + juice of 2 oranges + 2 Tablespoons lime juice + 1/2 can coconut milk + 2 cups ice. Blend it. Drink responsibly.

Tally:

Omega-3's from an inexpensive pantry item

Fried fun without the fat

Fruity cocktail on the terrace -- worth every fattening sip

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Hello, my name is Lady Lemon and I am a vegetable shopaholic.

I was just minding my own business (honest!), running out for some more yogurt, when I was blindsided by vegetable deals. So last night, the fridge overstuffed with green perishables, turned into a veggie night.

I'm a big meat eater, so veggies usually can't compete.What I like about the occasional veggie night is that I find I pay more attention to making our green friends more interesting. So here's the menu from last night:

Citrus-Celery Salad: grapefruit and orange sections + 1/2 small onion + celery hearts/leaves + olive oil + ground pepper + 1 teaspoon mustard + 1 T. rice wine vinegar (champagne vinegar would be great, too.) Refreshing and tangy. Tarragon or thyme would be a nice addition.

French (Bean) Fries: slim French green beans + salt & pepper + 1 T. olive oil + 1 T. water; 400F for 12 minutes on a foil-lined baking sheet; they will wrinkle and get brown and go slightly nutty.

Stuffed Mushrooms

I always look for good stuffed mushroom recipes, and they seem to inevitably include a lot of ingredients that I don't have. That's how this recipe came about because I prefer to stick with what's on hand. If you have red pepper, breadcrumbs, other herbs, cheese, etc -- all would be good to add.

Makes 10-12 mushrooms

1 package white mushrooms

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 T. olive oil

1/2 rib celery heart, finely chopped

1 T. parsley, chopped

3 stems thyme

1 T. flour

1/4 c. whole milk

Salt & Pepper

Wipe mushrooms and stems with a damp towel. Remove stems and mince (as small as you can cut them!). Reserve caps.

Heat olive oil in a small saute pan over medium heat and add chopped mushroom stems. Add garlic and celery and cook until vegetables soften and begin to look translucent. Add parsley and thyme and cook for a minute or two more.

Sprinkle mixture with flour and let cook 1 minute. The flour will start to absorb some of the moisture from the vegetables.

Pour in milk while stirring mixture. Add the milk a little at a time so it can be absorbed. The flour and milk combine to bind the mixture together. You will not have a white sauce -- just a sticky veggie mixture which is what you want to hold together in the mushroom.

Stuff the mushrooms with the mixture and place on a foil or parchment paper lined baking sheet for 20 minutes in a 375F oven.

The mushrooms will still be juicy and the stuffing is garlicky. If you want something less messy, add breadcrumbs.

Once again, my photography doesn't do the colors of this justice, so you'll have to take my word that this is a bright pretty plateful of green goodness.

Tally:

Satisfying meal that's low in fat

Lots of variety with mostly on-hand ingredients

More veggies than I can count

Shiny Happy Food

"Put down the phone." We are tired, home later than expected and wondering what's for dinner. Mr. Lemon is ready to order in.

And some delivery guy has kindly pushed a bunch of suggestions under our apartment door. Thanks, delivery guy! Way to help us stay focused on healthy eating.

My favorite take-out menus feature pictures of the food, which are invariably kind of shiny. Now that I'm photographing what I cook with somewhat shiny results, I totally relate to the photos and love them a little bit more. Maybe there's a career move here. See below:

But I don't love blowing money on take-out. Not anymore. And there's no telling how much fat and salt we're getting with each slug of noodles or General Tso's. So we'll be doing Fake Out, not Take-Out.

Sweet & Sour Chicken Stir Fry

Serves 4 or 2 very-hungry people

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated

2 cloves garlic, peeled and grated

2 ribs celery, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1 c. baby carrots or 1-2 regular carrots peeled and cut into 1/2 inch slices

1/3 c. water

1 c. shredded cooked chicken (Sunday's roast chicken, take 3: the dark meat)**

1 Tablespoon rice wine vinegar

2 Tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce

2 Tablespoons Grapefruit Ginger Preserves (leftovers...) or sweet marmalade + 1 T. honey

1 c. brown rice

Get the brown rice into the microwave. I just follow the instructions on the box and it comes out ok. It's not sticky or as tasty, but it's fiber-licious. And it's done in about 30 minutes, right in time for your stir fry.

In a large saute pan over high heat, heat oil, grated ginger and garlic. While that's getting soft and making the kitchen smell good, slice onions and celery and add to pan. Toss in the baby carrots. (My street fruit vendor has these for $1 and honestly I use carrots more when they are already peeled and so cute.)

Toss the mixture around and let it cook for a couple minutes. Then add water to keep the veggies from drying out as they continue to cook. Cook until veggies are tender--about 8 minutes. The water should evaporate. If there's a little extra it will combine into the sauce.

Add in the chicken, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and preserves. I had some more of my Grapefruit-Ginger Preserve left over from the weekend, so I threw that into the mix.

Allow mixture to cook for several minutes, turning back the heat. Serve hot over brown rice.

Done.

**You can use more meat -- didn't mean to look chintzy. While dark meat is nutritious, it also has more fat, so I split the difference. 2-3 cups of white meat would be perfect and healthy, too.

Tally:

Healthy cheap Chinese food. Shiny happy husband.

Reusing my standard veggie supply for new flavors

Fiber-licious whole grains covered in tasty sauce

Leftover chicken, leftover preserves, more room in the fridge