Soup Surprise

As a mom to a three year old who won't touch a green vegetable without some elaborate bribery involved, I am always looking for ways to sneak additional nutrients into the dishes I know she'll eat. Given that today was an unseasonably cool and overcast day in the Bay Area, I decided to make soup. I let my daughter choose from a couple of recipes, and she chose the Southern Ham and Bean soup. Great choice, as she loves both beans and "hammie". It also posed the perfect opportunity for me to covertly add some pureed kale to the recipe. Oh what a tangled web we weave...

Anyway, I used the recipe from America's Test Kitchen Fast & Fresh Recipe Card Collection. The recipe calls for 2 cups of green beans to be added to the soup at the end, but I just substituted about 1/4 cup of kale juice instead. Kale juice? Yes. Okay, the full story is that I make my own baby food by steaming veggies, pureeing them, putting the puree in ice cube trays, and then defrosting a couple of cubes at a time as needed. Well, when you puree kale, you end up with a lot of little green specks in green kale juice. I strained out the kale bits and was left with the liquid -- the bits were used for baby food, and the juice went into the soup. Kale can have a tendency to smell a little like freshly mown grass, and I was a little afraid that this would have a undesirable effect on the flavor of the soup. But fortunately, the other flavors from the ham, the beans, and the brown sugar were so rich, that you couldn't even taste the kale. I think you could probably use other greens too, if you wanted. I might try Swiss chard next time.

Here is the recipe as published in America's Test Kitchen
Southern Ham and Bean Soup
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 onion, chopped fine
2 celery ribs, chopped fine
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound ham steak, chopped fine
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon dried thyme
2 (16-ounce) cans white beans, drained and rinsed
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups frozen chopped green beans
Makes 4-6 servings

-- Melt butter in Dutch oven over medium-high heat
-- Cook onion, celery, garlic, ham, sugar, thyme, and half of white beans, covered until vegetables are soft, about 8 minutes
-- Using potato masher, mash beans and vegetables to rough paste
-- Stir in remaining white beans and broth
-- Simmer, covered, until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes
-- Add green beans and cook until heated through, about 2 minutes

I also got a nice sourdough baguette and threw a couple of chunks into my bowl to make it just a little bit heartier. Yum! It was a great soup and even my daughter loved it, kale and all. Score one for Mommy!

And I'm Back!

Okay, it's only taken eight months, but I am finally back. My new baby is now six months old, and I am just getting back into the kitchen again. Of course, I've been cooking in those six months, but she and I are finally on a schedule that will allow me a little more time for playing in the kitchen. And, as she gets older and can amuse herself or play with her big sister, it should get even better.

Anyway, the new dynamic in our household means that I am looking for recipes that take as little time to cook as possible. I've become a more devoted devotee of Rachael Ray, I've been using recipes from Real Simple magazine, and looking for dishes that I can prep during the kids' nap times and cook quickly once they're awake.

For example, this week I cooked an oven-poached halibut Provençal. I found the recipe in Cooking Light magazine, and it was super. Even my picky three year old liked it -- now that's an endorsement!

Oven-Poached Halibut Provençale
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups chopped fennel bulb
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 teaspoon salt, divided
4 cups diced tomato
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil
1/3 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
6 (6-ounce) halibut fillets
1 cup dry white wine
1/3 cup dry breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons chopped pitted kalamata olives
1 teaspoon dried herbes de Provence
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
Fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs (optional)
Makes 6 servings

-- Preheat oven to 450°
-- Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat
-- Add garlic and sauté 30 seconds
-- Add fennel, onion, and 1/2 teaspoon salt; sauté 8 minutes or until lightly browned
-- Stir in diced tomato and cook 2 minutes
-- Remove from heat and stir in fresh basil and fresh parsley.

-- Spoon half of tomato mixture into a 13 x 9-inch baking dish
-- Place fillets over tomato mixture
-- Pour wine into the dish and sprinkle fillets with 1/4 teaspoon salt
-- Spoon remaining tomato mixture over fillets
-- Bake at 450° for 15 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork or until desired degree of doneness.

-- Start the broiler
-- Combine the breadcrumbs, olives, herbes de Provence, 1 teaspoon oil, pepper, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt in a small bowl.
--Sprinkle breadcrumb mixture over fillets
-- Broil 5 minutes or until lightly browned
-- Serve immediately. Garnish with parsley sprigs, if desired

I followed the recipe pretty much as Cooking Light published it. Next time, I might substitute matzo meal for breadcrumbs -- I find it to be a really good substitute if I don't have any breadcrumbs in the house. I normally have one or the other, and use them pretty much interchangeably. I also eliminated the parsley garnish as there was no way I could have gotten my daughter to eat it if she had seen it. I served it with red potatoes with butter and with asparagus drizzed with olive oil and salt. The whole meal was quick, yummy, and easy -- my kind of cooking these days!