Hey, remember me?

I do remember you!

I do apologize for not keeping a steady flow of new recipes and ideas coming your way. I do promise to be a little bit better about it.

There are many days that we sit down and enjoy a fantastic meal. Some days it's something new and exciting and some days it's just a repeat of a family favorite. When it's something new and it's really good, someone will say, "why don't you write about that?" The answer is really so very simple.  I didn't document a single moment in preparing the meal, nor did I take a picture of anything before the plates were completely swiped clean! So there, you have the reason why I haven't been posting. Like the Rod Stewart song says, "Every picture tells a story don't it"? I may not be able to clearly express myself through my words all the time but if I have a picture....well, sometimes it's all I need!

Tonight was perfect. I found myself alone in the house, getting ready to make dinner for myself. (Yes, I do cook for myself. I enjoy good food. It's more fun to dine with others but hey, if I'm going to eat alone its got to be good!)

I spent a huge amount of time on the computer today researching some places to stay in Cabo and started yearning for those tastes that come from across the border. There was a dish that I shared with my daughter Zoe on a trip a few years back, a delicious seafood soup, and decided to play with those flavors. Lucky for me, I always have an extra bag of shrimp and calamari in the freezer. My camera was ready to go and I was all set up.


I started by chopping an onion, 5 cloves of garlic, and 2 bunches of green onions (we also call them scallions) and on medium heat cooked them until they began to sweat. At this time I added one jalapeño pepper which I had finely diced.
My friend Bobby is so good to me. He sent me this fabulous seasoning from Mexico and I added 2 tablespoons of the seasoning to the garlic and onions and then added just enough tequila to make the mixture move a little.
I let the tequila cook off a little, and if you would like you may also add some wine at this time. Give the wine enough time for the alcohol to burn off before adding the squid or shrimp. I added about 2 pounds of squid, which were cleaned and the tubes were cut into rings. Italian plum tomatoes were then hand crushed, about 2 pounds, and mixed in. Protect yourself! It's a messy job hand squishing tomatoes. Without an apron my shirt gets zapped with tomato juice!
Next add the 2 pounds of shrimp, I like to use the size 12-16 to a pound , they are nice and plump and can be cut into a bite size and still have a clean fresh taste. I clean the shrimp, devein them and remove the tails. They are big enough to cut into 3 pieces each.
Add a handful of fresh chopped cilantro, fresh sage, and season with salt and pepper to taste. and Cook for another 5 minutes - 10 minutes. You do not want to over cook the shrimp or the calamari.
Ladle the soup into a nice big bowl,  give it a squeeze of some fresh lime juice,  garnish with a few slices of avocado and chopped cilantro, serve with a Tostadas, and enjoy!
Buon appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine ❤

Ribolita

While not your typical Ribolita, this was absolutely delicious and will satisfy both the meat eaters and the vegetarians in your life.
I made this without any meat tonight, and did not use the typical leafy vegetables that are usually used for this delicious twice heated soup. I used what I had, and what I had came from my own garden and that made it taste even better.
I started by cutting up an onion and a few cloves of garlic.
I added them into a stock pot with enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan and cooked the onions until they were  cooked to a clear color. I added the garlic, and then I added a huge zucchini that I had cut up into chunks, skin and all. This is where my recipe changes from a traditional Ribolita. I believe that Kale, Escarole, Spinach, Chard  and or other leafy greens would have been used. I just didn't have them!
I cooked the zucchini until they started to wilt and then I added some fresh cut up tomatoes from the garden.
I added enough vegetable stock to cover my cooking vegetables and seasoned the soup with salt, pepper, a pinch or red pepper flakes, and pinches of fresh rosemary, fresh thyme,  and fresh sage.
I added a can of Cannellini beans. I know, I cheated. I usually like to cook them, I just didn't plan this one out.
I always keep the "rind" from the parmesan cheese wrapped up in my freezer. I added a nice piece to the soup. It's going to add such nice flavor!
I brought it all to a boil, added a few chunks of day old stale bread and a few handfuls of Fregula.
Fregula is beautiful little round balls of pasta. You cook it like you would cook rice. It is delicious. I once had an argument with someone who insisted that it was a legume. Boy is that a story for another  another time! I just love google! haha!

 I covered the pot and let it all simmer for another 15 - 20 minutes.

Just before serving I added a little fresh chopped parsley and some grated parmesan cheese, and drizzled a little extra virgin olive oil on each serving. Yum!

I think I heard a moan from the table. It was that good!

I'm going to make this again, and the next time I make it there is going to be some pancetta and leafy veggies simmering in the pot!

Enjoy!

Buon Appetito!
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Avgolemono Soup

I know it's not Monday, but man o man a good pot of soup is needed over here in the food crawl kitchen.
My husband is still recovering from his knee replacement surgery and today, my son, The Producer had 4 wisdom teeth pulled. Do you know how funny it is to get a text at 7 am wondering if there was any pastina in the house? Ahhh, Pastina, the ultimate "this will make you feel better soup" ,  sorry, but,  I'm not making that! lol
I haven't made Avgolemono Soup in awhile. For those of you who are not familiar with it, Avgolemono is a  delicious Greek Soup made like a chicken soup with lemon and eggs added to the broth. All you need is one spoonful of this soup and it warms your soul, and brings a smile to your heart.
Whenever we eat out in a Greek restaurant we always order a bowl of Avgolemono. It's always a good gage for us because if the soup is good and homemade we know that the rest of the meal is going to be really good!
This soup is a little tricky to make. If you don't do it right the broth will curdle. I think the secret is adding the hot liquid to the eggs very slowly while the blender is going, and once that is well blended adding that slowly back to the big pot.

The recipe that was given to me calls for 5 large eggs. I have scaled that back to 3 eggs.

1 whole chicken
1 small onion, peeled
2 carrots, whole
1 bay leaf
1 celery stalk, whole
salt to taste
white pepper to taste
1/2 cup of long grain rice or orzo pasta
5 large eggs
1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon flour

Make the chicken stock by cooking the whole chicken in the water with the onion, carrots, celery and bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper.
Cover and cook until the chicken is tender.
Remove the chicken from the pot
let cool and debone, shred or cut into pieces
Discard onion and bay leaf.
Place carrots and celery in a blender with a little broth.  Blend until smooth. Add back into the stock
Reserve one cup of broth for the next step!
Bring broth to a boil and add rice or orzo, cover the pan and simmer over low heat until your pasta or rice is tender.
Add chicken pieces back to the stock
Beat the eggs in a blender until frothy.
Pour in the lemon juice and flour and blend thoroughly.
With the blender running, slowly add 1 cup of the hot broth into the egg mixture. Gradually return the egg mixture to the stock, stirring constantly and cook over low heat for 5 minutes.
Do not allow the soup to come to a boil or the soup will curdle.

Serve this soup with some fresh sliced lemon and some crusty bread.
You're going to enjoy serving this. Your family and guests are going to enjoy eating this. After their first spoon full they might even think you're Greek!

Buon Appetito
Καλή όρεξη
Να τρώτε καλά
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Turk-en Soup!

Thinking more about this soup, I think I should have called it Chick-ey Soup. The stock was made using a whole chicken, and the "meat balls" made from Turkey. Hmpf...what do you think?
I love soup. I would make it everyday if my family would let me get away with it. I think it's a fabulous one pot meal.
Today's soup is a chicken based soup with ground turkey breast meatballs, spinach, and cut spaghetti. My  family thought it was delicious. You'll enjoy it too!
I started off with a whole chicken. After cleaning the chicken, I placed the chicken in a large stock pot and covered the chicken with water.  I added one whole onion, peeled, 3 carrots, peeled, and 2 stalks of celery and then seasoned everything with salt, pepper and 2 bayleaves.
Bring the water to a boil and then cover the pot and let the chicken simmer for about 1 - 1/12 hours.
Take the chicken out of the pot and let the chicken cool enough to handle and take the meat off the bone. I like to leave the breasts whole and then slice. The dark meat gets taken off in pieces.
The carrots, celery and onions should be very soft.  Put them in the blender and let the blender whirl until you have a nice creamy mixture. If needed, add a little of the chicken stock from the stock pot. Add the vegetable puree back into the "broth". The pureed carrots add such a delicous sweetness to the stock!
I had a package of ground turkey breast and made delicious "meatballs" to go into the soup.
To make the meatballs I added 1/2 onion, which was finely chopped and 2 cloves of garlic, also chopped very fine. Instead of using breadcrumbs I added 1/2 cup of oatmeal, not the instant kind, 1 egg, salt, pepper, a few tablespoons of fresh chopped parsley and 1/4 cup of grated cheese.
Mix all togther and make into small balls, about the size of a walnut.
Drop these into the simmering broth and then cover and let the "meat"balls cook through.
Once the turkey meat balls were cooked, I took out about 8 cups of the stock and in another pot I cooked 1/2 pound of cut spaghetti. In the last minute of cooking the pasta I added 4 cups of fresh spinach leaves.

Turkey balls simmering in stock

When served we all grated a little more fresh Parmiagiano Reggiano right on top!
And the whole chicken that was boiled to make the broth?
It was served sliced with a tangy red bell pepper chimichurri sauce! Everyone was happy! Now that's what I'm talking about! Making everyone HAPPY! lol!

Ham Bone and Bean Soup

I am a soup lover. If I could, I would have soup every day of the week. Chicken soup, beef soup, fish soup, vegetable soup, clear broth, creamy broth, tomato based broth, it doesn't matter...I love them all!
While living in Florida, in my very lean days I could make a chicken go a very long way! One pot of soup would feed me for the week.

Every Monday night, Aunt Rose would put on a pot of soup! Anyone who wanted to come to her house was always welcome, and every Monday there was Soup and a crowd ! After a weekend of over indulging she felt that soup was good food, and it helped clean your body out from all the crap you ate over the weekend!
To this day, it is a very rare Monday in my house where there is not a pot of soup cooking. My family knows that if it's Monday, it's a soup day!
It's Monday, so today we're Food Crawling with Beans and a Ham Bone! Now that's what I'm talking about!

I start making the soup with a trinity of carrots, celery and onions!  I like my vegetables on the chunky side. In a large pot I'll add the chopped vegetables to a little bit of olive oil and saute them for just a little bit. Maybe a minute or two. Then I'll add the beans. Goya makes a great bag of beans that has something like 18 different beans in it. I absolutely love the mixture of beans.

 Once the beans are in I add the ham bone. When ever we have a ham I save the bone. I always leave lots of meat on the bone. I'll make a bigger ham just so there is plenty of meat left on the bone. Who wants a stingy ham and bean soup!? lol We like big chunks of ham!

 I add enough water to the pot to cover the ham bone, and season with salt and pepper, two bay leaves and a tablespoon of McCormick Caribbean Jerk Seasoning. It's sweet and spicy and adds a little bit of heat.  Bring the soup to a boil and then cover the pot and let the soup simmer for at least an hour, more like two. When the meat falls off the bone, and the beans are tender the soup is done.

It's a meal, with nice big chunks of ham and delicious tender beans and vegetables that melt in your mouth!

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Lentil Soup Greek Style

Do you Fakes? We do! And we love it! This Food Crawl is all about Lentil Soup, also know as Fakes. This is a vegetarian version of Lentil Soup and is a very similar to any other Lentil Soup with the addition of one other ingredient that is very surprising. That ingredient is Vinegar!

This recipe has been adapted by Yes You Can Cook Greek by Georgia Lyras & Rita Lazarakis.

1 pound Lentils
2 qts water
2 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 Bay Leaves
1 16 oz can tomatoes, crushed or 1 pound of fresh tomatoes, peeled and crushed
1/4 olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 vinegar ( I like red wine in this)

Pick over and wash the lentils. Place in a large pot, cover with water and bring to a boil.  After boiling for 2 minutes, drain and rinse the beans and set aside in a bowl.
In your large pot add a little bit of the olive oil and to the olive oil saute the onions, celery, carrots, and garlic until just tender. Add the Lentils, the  2 quarts of water and the bay leaves.  Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and let simmer, partially covered for 20 minutes.
Stir in the tomatoes and the olive oil and return to a boil. Reduce heat to low, partially cover and simmer an additional 30 minutes or until the lentils are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste and stir in the vinegar.
Serve this with some toasted pita bread and a greek salad and you'll have a delicious, complete meal.
I like to serve this with a shot of olive oil and vinegar on the side.  The extra drizzle of olive oil just floating on top is a tasty touch that you will just love. My family loves the vinegar, and a little bit goes a long way.

Kali Orexi
xoxoxo
Lorriane

Chicken Soup and Chimichurri Sauce

If it's Monday in my house it means that we are having soup for dinner.  You can turn a very simple Chicken Soup into something very different by serving it up with a sauce on the side. Tonight that sauce is a Chimichurri Sauce.
When ever I make Chicken soup I use a whole chicken in the pot, covered with water and seasoned with salt and pepper and a bay leaf. I add celery, onion and carrots to the pot and let the chicken gently simmer until the chicken is done.  From this simple stock you can go in many directions just by adding some additional ingredients. Add some ginger, garlic, green onions and some sherry and you have the wonderful beginning of a broth for Wonton Soup. Add some egg yolks and lemon juice and you're absolutely going to love the flavors that develop into an Avgolemono Soup. Feel like something Mexican? Try adding some cilantro, chopped green peppers and scallions to your stock and you're on your way to making a delicious Chicken Tortilla soup. You'll be amazed at all the delicious stocks that you can make.

The stock is delicious, and my family loves the stock with the vegetables cut up and cooked with a small shaped pasta, such as Ditalini.  The problem I have is getting anyone to eat the plain, boiled chicken. It's funny how history repeats itself. When my mother would make boiled chicken we wouldn't eat it either, until she made this fabulous sauce to accompany the boiled chicken. We didn't know that we were eating Chimichurri Sauce. She just called it a Green Sauce or Salsa Verde!  There are so many sauces that my mom used to make that we now know have culinary names.  I'll be sharing some of these sauces as I go along and who knows, I may even learn the proper culinary names for the sauces, instead of calling them brown sauce and green sauce! Are you along for the crawl?

Chimichurri
One bunch of fresh parsley chopped fine
3 - 4 cloves of fresh garlic, chopped fine
a pinch of oregano
a pinch of salt and pepper
a pinch of red pepper flakes
3 - 4 Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Chop everything and mix it all together in a bowl adding olive oil.

I took the chicken off the bone, the dark meat went into the soup pot and the white meat was arranged on a platter and topped with the Chimichurri Sauce.

and for those who love Balsamic....
drizzled with some glaze

What can be better than a nourishing cup of soup with a delicious chicken chimichurri?

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo

Lorraine

Pasta e Piselli

Pasta with Peas

This is going to be a really quick post. This is easy to make and fast. I always serve this dish with a spoon, it's not quite a soup, and it just feels better to eat it up with a spoon and get all the great juices spooned into your mouth at the same time.

I would say that the most important part of this dish is using fresh peas!  If fresh peas are not available  use a bag of frozen peas. These were fresh shelled English  Peas and they were delicious. They were tender and had such a sweet flavor that burst in your mouth when you bit into them.  Need I say more....let's start cooking!
Saute some pancetta, prosciutto,or some smokey ham in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and render the fat. It'll start to sizzle and the ham will turn in color.

Add one medium chopped onion, and a few cloves of fresh smashed, chopped garlic. let it all cook until tender

these are the pretty little fresh peas before they were added, yum , right?

Add the peas to the pot and cook the peas with about one cup of stock. I used chicken stock.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Don't over cook the peas. I think this cooked for a total of 10 minutes once the peas were added. They were tender, but still had a nice bite to them.
I cooked some small shell shaped pasta. I reserved some of the cooking liquid just in case I needed it ( I didn't this time)
I added the cooked pasta to the peas and served it in a bowl, and we all used a spoon to eat it up ! It was topped with some freshly grated parmesan cheese, and for those of us who like a little spice, some red pepper seeds! Make a green salad and serve this with a loaf of fresh bread. No one will leave your table hungry, and there won't be one pea left in the dish!

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine

"Cream" of Broccoli Soup

 While living in Florida I always looked forward to spending Monday's with Aunt Rose and her family. She would put on a pot of soup and feed the masses! She said that it was always good for you to have soup to cleanse the body of all the crap you ate over the weekend. She didn't exactly say it that way, that's just my interpretation! So here we are, 30 plus years or so later and I am still making soup on Monday nights. Anyone who knows me, knows that there will be some sort of soup served on Monday night.  Soup is the main course so it's usually a hearty soup.
So while today is Tuesday and not Monday I am still making a soup. I am going away tomorrow for a week and know that anything I have in the refrigerator will rot! I had a huge bag of broccoli that had to be cooked, and decided to make it into a velvety "cream" of broccoli soup.
I cleaned about 6 heads of broccoli

put them in a large stock pot with some water and a few cloves of garlic, covered the broccoli and cooked until tender

I put the broccoli into a blender , with a slotted spoon leaving the liquids that the broccoli cooked in remaining in the stock pot,and blended it all until it was a nice smooth mixture

 added it all back into the pot with a cup of chicken stock. The soup was like velvet, so smooth! You can stop right here, or you can add some cheese....like I did!

 I had some Gouda and some cheddar

Stir in the cheese and lower the heat. Once the cheese was melted, I turned off the heat. Ladle the soup into a bowl and enjoy! It is so creamy and delicious!

Buon Appetito!
xoxoxo
Lorraine