1. Cucumbers with Cream and Mint
2. Vermouth Seared Scallops topped with Salsa Verde
3. Squid and Leeks in Red Wine

The first item, Cucumbers with Cream and Mint I copied out of The Art of Simple Food. This was actually the last item I chose for dinner. Sometimes I work my menu backwards, choosing the main course first.

Cucumbers w/ Cream & Mint

• 2 cucumbers
• 3 or 4 sprigs of mint
• 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream
• 1/2 juiced lemon
• splash or two of olive oil
• sprinkling of sea salt
• dash of cumin

I am just estimating the ingredients I used for the Cucumbers with Cream and Mint. Slice the cucumbers into 1/8″ slices and sprinkle with sea salt. In a separate container mix the cream, olive oil, mint, lemon juice (this reacts with the milk and gives it some body after stirring vigorously), and cumin. All that needs to be done once the sauce is ready is toss in a bowl. I can tell you that the cumin added quite an interesting and delicious dimension to this dish.

• 2 lbs squid
• 2 lbs leeks
• 2 or 3 sprigs of dried thyme
• 3 or 4 pinches of dried oregano
• 2 bay leaves
• 8 cloves of garlic (I was lazy and used minced garlic)
• 2 healthy pours of red wine
• several small pulls of water
• healthy dash of cayenne
• splash of lemon juice
• parsley for garnishment

Five pounds of food

I cribbed this recipe from the Amateur Gourmet’s Squid & Leeks in Red Wine who in turn cribbed it from Richard Olney’s Simple French Food. I had been wanting to try squid for a while and I was impressed. If you know how to clean your own squid, you can pick it up for ninety-nine cents per pound.

Clean your leeks, there will be dirt in them. I like to cut them in half to separate the green and the white then I cut each of those halves in half lengthwise and then in half crosswise once more. I clean them after cutting lengthwise to allow the water better access to rinsing the insides. While you are playing with the leeks you will want to warm the oil. All of it. After the leeks are rinsed and ready, give them a good turn in the oil and some salt for a few minutes, five or so will do.

While the leeks are softening we want to slice the squid into 1/4″ slices. I kept the little squiggly parts, I wasn’t afraid to eat them. The next step is somewhat of a juggling act but juggling in the kitchen is one of my favorite passtimes. Place the leeks somewhere safe and start cooking the squid. This may take a while because we are going to cook them until all the water has evaporated. This is where I diverged from the previous two incarnations of this recipe. I didn’t have any flour and I did not salt the squid while cooking.

At this point I added the oregano and thyme. After a couple quick stirs I added the garlic and let things sit just long enough for the garlic to start sweating. Here I started pouring in the wine, just a little bit at a time allowing the liquid to come to a simmer before adding more. In between pours of wine I splashed some water in with the ingredients and dropped a couple of bay leaves into the mixture. I was feeling adventurous this night and I felt that a lot of cayenne was in order. I am so glad that I used a generous amount of cayenne here. During the meal it didn’t quite overpower the other flavors and left quite a warm after taste that was somehow pleasantly mellow.

Wait until the liquid is simmering, I took heed from the Amateur Gourmet and used a very low heat, then add the leeks back into the pot. Adam cooked his for an hour and a half longer, my cook time after this point was probably just shy of an hour. This made over four pounds of food and everyone got seconds. At the very end of the cook time I added a splash of lemon juice. Since I didn’t have any croutons I reduced the rest of the liquid to a yummy syrupy sauce that I drizzled over the squid and leeks, then topped with parsley.

• 1/4 cup vermouth
• 1 lb scallops
• olive oil
• sea salt

The scallops are pretty simple. It’s the Salsa Verde that took more effort but I will have to post that recipe tomorrow.

Heat the oil until you can hold your hand over the pan for no more than a few seconds. You only need enough to just barely cover the bottom of the pan. Salt the scallops lightly just before placing them in the pan. 1 lb of scallops fit into my frying pan just fine. Let them sear on one side for six or seven minutes, this will pretty much cook them all the way through. Flip the scallops over, at this time there should not be any liquid left in the pan. The direct heat will add just a bit of color to the other side so quickly pour the vermouth into the pan. After a few moments  most of the vermouth should be gone and you can pull them off the heat.

Top the scallops with some Salsa Verde and enjoy. I will post the recipe for that soon.

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather and I really only have spices in my pantry so I walked down to the corner store and bought an onion and a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.

• 1 (one) can Chicken Noodle condensed soup
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 dried red Chile peppers
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon basil
• 1 cap-full vermouth
• 1/4th cup diced onion

The only painful step was dicing the garlic and onion and having to use a separate dish to sweat them a little. I like to keep my onions bitter so I only threw them in after the smell of garlic filled the room. After throwing in the onions I immediately turned the heat off and mixed with the rest of the ingredients that were already warming on another burner.

Hope I get better.

p.s. if you have time, soak the dried chiles ahead of time. I got about three bowls of soup out of this. Of course, I ate them all by myself.

Totally did not intend for that to come out the way it did but it happened so this will be a short post.

I had some celery that was getting ready to go out the door. To give meaning to its existence, I started frying some in butter. I used about two stalks of celery and one tablespoon of butter. I didn’t have a plan in mind. Sometimes I just start cooking an ingredient and make up my mind as I go. Maybe I can call it Jazz Cooking.

The smell of the celery cooking inspired me as I was pecking through my cupboard. Shallots would go nicely with whatever was going to happen with the celery. At this point I was really getting hungry so I decided to boil some shell macaroni while the celery and shallots were softening. I didn’t think that a capful of vermouth would hurt at all. Along with the vermouth I added about two cloves of garlic. Garlic and shallots go good together. Especially on noodles, which were about done boiling.

I wanted something smooth and creamy so I added just enough milk to barely cover my ingredients, minus the shells. Whenever I have something creamy I always crave black pepper so I liberally shared my pepper grinder with the ‘sauce’ that was now forming. If I had white pepper I think I would have used that for this meal instead of black.

Now it was just a simple matter of tossing the shells with the yummy sauce I had just cooked. I got about three servings out of this meal and it was worth it. Especially when I topped it with some asiago.

First I started preheating the oven while I wrapped a couple potatoes in some aluminum foil. Then I liberally salted and peppered the meat. I want the meat to sit in its own juices for a moment. A couple cap-fulls of vermouth and a splash of worcestershire probably won’t hurt the flavor.

After throwing the tubers into the oven, I tabbed about two almost three tablespoons of butter into my frying pan. I do not fear fats and oils. You should not either. The idea was to sear the steak and bring the internal temperature up to par as quickly as possible. From prior experiences we had learned that the quality of this steak was quite atrocious. I was hoping that cooking it in this manner would help to avoid the nasty chewy low quality beef flavor that we experienced from previous adventures with this meat.

I left the steak on each side long enough to create a deep brown color. Because the smoking point of the butter wasn’t as high as I needed, I didn’t quite get the color I was looking for. The ideal color would have been the brown you get just before it starts to caramelize on the outside.

After getting some color on both sides I started preparation of the onion. I only had half of a red onion left. About medium sized. This was all I really needed so that worked out fine.

The plan now was to allow that internal temperature to stabilize so I needed a few more minutes with the stove but I didn’t want all the heat going directly into the outside layer of meat. I dumped the onions into the pan and I love the sound that a pan makes when you throw in something fresh. It is one of my most favorite things to hear.

I love the bitter taste of onions so I did not want them cooking too long. Just long enough to soften them a little. So while those were cooking I spread, liberally, some stone ground mustard onto each side of the steaks and cooked both sides for another minute give or take. The smells coming out of my kitchen at this point were making me salivate.

This is where I turned off both the oven and the stove so as to allow the potatoes to cool off and let the frying pan cool a bit before taking the food out. I have this thing with leaving empty hot dishes on my stove. They need to cool off before I make them empty.

The potatoes received just a little bit of salt, butter, pepper, and a topping of ranch chip dip. I don’t know if it is really ranch or not, it is pink, but it came from my fridge and the container says ranch so I assume it is. It almost tastes southwest.

Anyway, I pigged out and ate a steak and a potato and then another half of the steak before I was engorged. Now I am sitting here staring at and smelling my food wishing that I could eat the rest. I really need to learn how to cook single servings.

keld's lentil soup

Christmas eve I had some friends over and took this opportunity to make some lentil soup that I had heard about from The Amatuer Gourmet. This recipe was perfect because I had exactly two cups of lentils left that I probably wasn’t going to get around to cooking later.

I also had some steaks that I pulled out of the freezer two days prior to this so I figured I may as well dice that up and throw it into the soup as well.

I will have to warn you. I do not measure ingredients and I will not be able to provide exact measurements. These recipes that I share are just suggestions.

First thing I did was start boiling some lentils. I’m one of those people who doesn’t use a timer. I probably should. Hell, I could even look at the clock once in a while. However, I prefer to cook until it’s done. I don’t know how to explain this concept but maybe I will talk about it more in the future.

While the lentils were boiling, I diced up five slices of bread. These I tossed in just enough olive oil to cover them slightly. Before tossing them in the oil, I whipped up the oil with some crushed garlic I had. Croutons would be perfect on top of the soup. Baked them at 350 until they were done.

Before the lentils were finished, I took about three tablespoons of butter and started sauteeing half of a large white onion. This was a very large onion. I sliced it into bite size pieces about 1/4 of an inch by 1/2 of an inch. Once the onions started cooking I placed two steaks, 6oz each, into the same pan. The plan here is just to brown them enough on each side so that we can dice it into smaller pieces while leaving the onions on the heat to become tranceluscent.

Unfortunately, the steak I had available was low quality. Even if it is not low quality steak, I highly recommend that you heavily salt and pepper the steak about one hour before use. I did not have time for this so I just fried in butter. After slicing the steak into cubes, I threw the chunks into the butter and onions.

I have dried herbs so I used them at this point. If they were fresh, I would add them at the end of cooking. Here, to the onions and steak I added some cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper, generous helping of curry (which I added more later during the soup cooking part) and a bunch of cumin seeds.

The lentils were done cooking at this point so I drained them and set them aside. After a few more minutes I dumped a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes into a pot along with the onions, spices and steak. This is when I added two capfuls of vermouth into the soup. Yum.

After a couple more minutes I used the empty can to pour the same amount of water into the mixture. Next, I poured in the lentils. We are almost done. While this was coming to a simmer, I rinsed and destemmed some fresh chard. After slicing this into long strips, I placed the chard on top of the soup and salted it a bit.

Just a few more minutes of simmering and I pulled the soup off the heat. Top with croutons and if you have a dollop of sour cream or yogurt available, that would make this dish divine.

Total preparation time was only about thirty minutes. This was a quick meal and my guests were impressed with how quickly the meal was prepared. I must warn you that this made a lot of food. We could have served about 8-10 people.

For dessert we had dark chocolate from IKEA with dried cranberries.