Soup in a Bread Bowl

One of the best surprise treats I’ve ever experienced was soup from a bread bowl from a street fair in Falmouth, MA. We stumbled on the fair and spotted eating one of my favorite dishes – New England Clam Chowder – out of bread bowls. I turned into a 5-year-old whining I NEEDED one! Surprisingly, it worked for me then (we bought it) and it works for the kids now (they eat it!). In fact, they love them! Now when the weather changes, I start to think about soup in bread bowls.

When I make it, I like to mix up the bread before work and let it rise in the oven all day, then bake it while making the soup. Plus, if I’ve made stock from the chicken earlier in the week, I’ll use the stock as the base for the soup. This recipe is for black bean soup in a bread bowl. The black bean soup is a Paul Prudhomme recipe.

Bread:

Ingredients – 4 cups of unbleached white flour

3/4 cup rye or wheat flour

2 cups water (on the colder side if letting rise all day)

1 ½ Tbsp of yeast (or two packets)

1 Tbsp of salt Small handful of thyme, marjoram and/or oregano

Directions: Mix well in a mixer or a bowl. Turn out to a floured and kneed for 5-7 minutes until dough is smooth and firm. The dough might be very wet, so use extra flour generously. Cut into 4 sections and add to a well greased 9X9 baking dish. Put a towel over the dough and put into the oven to rise. When ready, bake at 400 degrees for about 40-45 minutes until crust is golden brown. Start backing the bread half way through the soup recipe below.

Soup:

1 lb. dried beans, rinsed and kept overnight in a bowl or dish of water.

1 dried ancho chile, reconstituted and minced

1 dried guajillo, reconstituted and minced

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes – I will often skip this since it is spicy enough

1/2 pound bacon, diced

2 medium onions, chopped

4-5 stalks of chopped celery

6 cups chicken stock

4 cloves minced fresh garlic

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:

1) Combine the spices and drain the beans

2) Fry the bacon in a large heavy pot (cast iron is best) over high heat, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 7 to 9 minutes.

3) Stir in 1/2 the onions, the celery, and ½ the spices. Cover, and cook for 3 minutes.

4) Stir in 1 cup of the stock and scrape up the crust on the bottom of the pot. Add the beans, cover, and cook, occasionally scraping the bottom of the pot, for about 20 minutes.

5) Add 4 cups more stock, second ½ of the spices, garlic and remaining onions, scrape the pot bottom clean, and cook covered until brought to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 25 to 30 minutes.

6) Stir in the remaining 1 cup stock, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes. Stir the cilantro, cover and cook until the beans are tender, about 15 minutes.

Sour Orange Chicken + Broth

My favorite getting cold outside dinner is roasted chicken with vegetables. Not only for the actual dinner, but for the chicken bones to make great chicken broth. The broth is so much better than the store bought, canned junk for little to no effort. Then I use the broth for soup to eat with fresh bread. The smell of the house for those two days is great!

First, let's make the chicken dinner. Years ago I came across this recipe for Yucatan Sour Orange Chicken which intrigued me enough to try it. The chicken was a hit - although it was strongly flavored, so feel free to adjust - and the kid's dove in. I haven't made it in a while, but just had it last night and it again went fast.

Ingredients:

Potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery/fennel

Olive oil

Sauce: In a blender, add and coarsely blend

5-20 gloves of garlic (based on your taste), peeled and cut in half

The juice of 3-6 oranges plus the remains of one of them (just toss it in, you'll enjoy it)

A couple of dashes of lemon juice

Whole, reconstituted chipotle (I've used guajillo, morita and red pepper flakes or a healthy dash of Tabasco)

Salt, pepper, and oregano.

1) Peel and quarter the potatoes, carrots, onions and celery/fennel. Toss vegetables in a bowl with salt, pepper and olive oil. Set aside.

2) Dress the chicken by moving a spoon around between the skin and breast of the chicken to create a pocket. A flavor pocket! Into this pocket, pour some of the blend and move it around the breast.

3) In a large roasting pan, evenly spread the vegetables and add a small amount of water to the bottom of the pan. Top this mixture with the chicken and pour remaining sauce over bird and vegetables.

4) Roast until internal temperature of the chicken is 160 degrees. Let chicken rest before cutting.

Chicken broth:

5) After dinner, add the chicken bones to a 4 or 8 qt. soup pot and fill with water. Add plenty of salt and pepper plus a couple of bay leaves, a handful of oregano, 4-5 cloves of garlic and a dried chile - ancho if I want it milder, guajillos for spicer, and morita for smoky goodness. Cook on low overnight, if you have an electric stove. If I had a gas stove, I'd put it in the fridge and bring it out the next morning to stick it on the stove for the day - 5-6 hours should work. Strain out the broth and discard the bones and spices.

Leftovers that get eaten

This is the time of the week where we start looking in the fridge and saying "what can I make of this mess?" Well, several years ago, a friend offered up a simple, but highly edible and flexible option - Worm Pie (the kids LOVE the name which comes from left over spaghetti noodles.)

Its simple because the ingredients are the left over pasta of any kind - with or without sauce - cheese, splash of milk, eggs and spices and are made in one pan. Its flexible because the spices can be hot (i.e., chili peppers), savory (i.e., dried Oregano and/or Basil) or unique (i.e., pesto [a favorite], mole.) And it is the one leftover dish we serve where we routinely hear "is there more?"

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Left over pasta

2 eggs

1 cup cheese - mozzarella or cheddar work best

Splash of milk

1 Tbsp dried Oregano and/or Basil

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 Tbsp capers (I would say these are optional, but they really add great flavor)

1 Tbsp olive oil

Directions:

1) Add all ingredients into one big bowl. Mix well. Kids love to do this part, especially the eggs and the garlic press.

2) Heat a dinner plate-sized large skillet (preferably non-stick, but cast iron could work) over high heat for 4-5 minutes. When hot add half the olive oil then the mixture to the pan, turn heat to medium high and cover the pan.

3) Let cook until the bottom of the pie is browned (5-7 minutes). Scrape the bottom of the pie off the pan, but don't flip it. Instead, take a large dinner plate and cover the skillet. Flip the pie onto the plate, add the remaining olive oil to the pan and slide the uncooked side of the pie into the skillet.

4) Cook another 7 minutes. In the meantime, you can heat up pasta sauce as an optional topping.

5) Cut, serve, enjoy, plan for the next leftover pasta...

Pizza

If you've ever met my kids, you'd know they were adventurous. Their favorite restaurant apparently is Ethiopian. They weren't always so willing to try new food, though. Its been an evolution. Like our choices of pizza.

Around the time the kids were born, we bought a pizza stone (best purchase ever!) We tried a number of pizzas to see which we liked or didn't like starting with the version closest to "pizza" for a kid - pasta sauce and cheese - then we branched out. We found out they liked white pizza, spicy chicken and mozzarella, and chicken and cheese pizza. They didn't like potato and onion pizza and fresh tomato and basil. The absolute favorite for a while was a thin pizza using plum sauce as a base and topping it with ground chicken, bean sprouts, and Parmesan.

The pizza stone still gets a lot of use, although the tastes have moved back to sauce and cheese.

Dough (courtesy of the NYTimes Heritage Cookbook) makes two crusts:

2 packages dry yeast

2/3 cup lukewarm water

1/2 cup brown sugar

1Tbsp salt

2 cups milk, warm

~7 cups wheat flour

3 Tbsp melted butter

Topping

1 jar Plum Sauce

1 lb packet ground chicken

1 can/bag bean sprouts

Bag of shredded mozzarella cheese

Parmesan cheese

1) Let the kids drop all the ingredients into a mixer to make dough. Set aside to rise about 15 minutes. Don't overthink this step.

2) Brown chicken. Set aside in a bowl.

3) Preheat over to 500 degrees (remove everything from oven except pizza stone which should be in the middle of the oven) - if you don't have a pizza stone, use a baking sheet dusted with flour (not in the oven when it is preheating) and preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

4) Roll out the dough over a bed of flour as thin as possible. Sprinkle flour on top of dough. Fold dough on itself twice.

5) Moving quickly, take stone out of oven and dust with flour. Unfold dough onto stone (or baking sheet). Spread plum sauce liberally over dough. Add chicken and bean sprouts. Generously add mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.

6) Cook until cheese is golden brown. Leave on stone for 5 minutes (keep an eye on the dog, though!) Cut and serve.

7) Enjoy