Sorrel Soup

Have you ever had sorrel before? It looks like spinach but tastes like a lemon, tart, not bitter. Sorrel is very common in Europe, we eat it raw, picked straight out of the garden and it's sold in stores in jars to go into soup.

I started growing it several years ago and only last year did it actually "take". Sorrel is an easy leaf to grow, it reseeds itself every year and grows throughout the growing months. In zone 5 that means I have sorrel from May and I think I picked the last batch today, Nov 4th. Sometimes you can find sorrel at farmers markets all throughout the city, and if you can't than you can buy seeds and seed some for yourself. Since I had fresh sorrel I decided to make sorrel soup, while I write this there is only a small batch left.

I started with the rosol base and after I washed the sorrel and removed the hard stems, chopped it. Adding one tablespoon of butter, saute the sorrel until it changes from bright green to a dark khaki green, You might want to add some salt and pepper at this time. Once that's done, add it to the pot of stock that you pre-made, or to chicken stock. Next add a full tablespoon of flour and two large tablespoons of sour cream and mix together. I'd say pour but this mixture is too thick so put all of the mixture into the pot. You can then use a whisk to distribute the mixture into the soup or use and immersion blender as I do and puree the soup. I like the soup a bit tarter than what it is, so I add a couple of tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice to the soup, based on your taste. Simmer the soup for a bit till the flavors meld together, its essentially done.

You can serve this soup as is, or you can add what we typically do, a hard boiled egg and some boiled potatoes.

You can google sorrel seeds or buy them through the link from Amazon. If there are other recipes for sorrel that you like and is not a soup I'd love it if you shared.

Shrimp Spring Rolls

I recently defrosted a bag of shrimp, and after not using as much as I thought I would need. I was thinking what can I do with the leftover shrimp that I might not have to use now. So I decided to make spring rolls. If you don't know the difference between a spring roll and and egg roll the spring roll has a very thin rice paper sheet and the egg roll uses a thicker dough for its wrappers. Both very good but I wanted something that was a bit lighter. 

I've made crab wontons from scratch before but never spring rolls, thankfully I had a package of wrappers in the freezer on hand. I also had a package of dried wood ear mushrooms, which is an asian staple, they are a crunchy sort of mushroom if you can imagine that. I also had a bit of leftover cabbage. 

Ingredients:

Shrimp
Wood ear mushrooms
cabbage shredded
carrots shredded
garlic
ginger
sesame oil
soy sauce
shrimp roll wrapper
canola oil for frying

First thing you need to do is soak the mushrooms, while those soak mince your shrimp and garlic and grate ginger into a bowl. Use as much garlic as you like, I used a bit too many cloves, even though we love garlic it was a bit strong in the spring rolls.

After the wood ears have softened enough thinly slice them if they aren't the precut variety, and add to the shrimp mixture. Add a tablespoon of sesame oil and soy.

In the meantime, sauté the cabbage and carrots in a bit of oil to soften them up. 

When your cabbage mixture has cooled you can start by assembling the rolls. One teaspoon of shrimp mixture and one of the cabbage mixture placed toward the front of the wrapper. Fold the front triangle over first and then the sides and then just keep rolling. Once you come to the end take your fingers and dip them into water and rub the seam before closing. And there you have it, a shrimp spring roll. Now you can do two things, you can choose to fry them up immediately, or you can freeze them for another day. If the shrimp has been defrosted for more than a day, I suggest you fry them up. If you feel that it's still fresh, freeze it and you have a quick snack next time you have a taste for something crunchy and hot.

I like to use ponzu sauce for dipping these, but if you don't have any on hand or don't know what it is you can substitute with equal parts soy and real lemon juice, not the stuff from a bottle. Most of the time thats fine but I tend to think it tastes like windex. 

Hey all it's my first guest post!!!

I'm guest posting on Stilettos and Diaper bags today! Go check out my guest post about making the easiest banana "ice cream" ever made. No ice cream maker needed.

Stilettos & Diaper Bags

If you came here from Stilettos and are a first timer, I would love it if you became a follower.

Shrimp & bok choy on brown rice

Lately the weather has been humid and raining, alternating and I have not felt like heating up the house with the stove going, and grilling outside was out of the question. So the solution was to make some quick shrimp that takes only a couple of minutes to cook up.

The longest portion of this was marinating the shrimp but after that sits for a little bit, the rest cooks up pretty quickly. I paired this dish with brown rice and baby bok choy.

For the Marinade:

Soy Sauce

Garlic (grated)

Red pepper flakes

ginger (freshly grated if possible)

olive oil (sesame oil preferred)

Mix all the ingredients together and rub shrimp with the marinade. Reserve a bit of the marinade for the vegetables, you don't have to marinade them but you can use it when sautéing the vegetables to add flavor. The amount is really a preference thing. If you like more garlic add more if you like it spicier add more flakes if you like ginger add more. It's really dependent on your taste buds. I grate my ginger and garlic for this dish, it tends to coat the shrimp really well and then your not biting into a chunk of ginger while eating. 

Marinate for 20 mins to 2 hrs in the fridge, not longer, shrimp shouldn't sit for too long, even in the fridge. Before cooking take out the shrimp to get room temp for a few minutes. Heat up your pan with a tiny drizzle of olive oil, not too much remember your marinade has olive oil. Your not deep frying them just giving the pan some lubrication, as you need to get your pan smokin' hot.

Saute the shrimp on high on one side till they get a crust, turn over and do the same on the other side. The garlic and ginger help the shrimp develop a nice crust. This should really take a few minutes on each side. I used extra large shrimp so I needed a bit of time on each side.  

Remove the shrimp and in the same pan add the quartered baby bok choy to the pan and quickly saute. You can add some of the marinade into the pan to cook up with the vegetables or you can just add a splash of soy sauce and a splash of water to help the bok choy cook trough. It doesn't take long to get the baby bok tender, so act fast. 

You can serve this with any kind of rice, I like it with brown rice, but have also had it with black wild rice, or change up the vegetable. Either way it's a quick, tasty and healthy recipe that you can make with out too much time in the kitchen.

Rick Bayless - Enchiladas Especiales Tecuba Style

Living in Chicago you would think that since Rick Bayless has a restaurant here it would be easy to get into. On the contrary. If you are less than a party of 5 they don't take reservations, and the last time I tried, which was time number 3 the wait was longer than 1 hr. No thanks. I love mexican food but to a busy mom who is getting away on a friday night a mexican restaurant is not that appealing if I have to wait that long to even get seated.

So I bought his cook book (oh btw, I bumped into him in my gym downtown, twice) and I watch the PBS show, "Mexico One Plate at a Time". It's not the same, I know, but it will do.

So the other day I watched an episode on enchiladas, and since I make enchiladas regularly, this one really caught my attention.

I went to his website and wouldn't you know it, it's chock-full of recipes. I searched and found the particular one, called Enchiladas Especiales Tecuba Style and after getting a few essentials, got to it.

I have to say this is one of my favorite enchiladas to date. The spinach and poblanos chiles give it a earthy smokey flavor that I haven't had in the other enchiladas. It's super easy to make the suace is the most work but after you make that the rest is 1.2.3.

The only thing that I will change next time I make this dish is if the poblanos don't have much heat, add some jalepenos along with the poblanos.

I thought about blending this in my Cuisinart, but there is so much sauce that comes out of this that I'm glad I stayed with the blender, plus it was easier to pour from.

You mix a portion of the sauce with your chicken so you have the flavor throughout, not just on top and bottom of the enchiladas.

These enchiladas, paired with some sour cream and beer with lime were a divine dinner, and I had plenty of leftovers that we had put in the freezer for the following week.

Definitely a recipe that I will come back to time and again. Click here for link

Chicken tortilla soup

When your craving something salty, crunchy, creamy, and sour at the same time this hits the spot. I know there are numerous tortilla soup recipes and a majority of them are tomato based but this one is a lighter version, plus my 2 yr old can eat this without screaming "ohh its spicy!!" every time she takes a bite.

I love this soup on a cold winter day or even on a day when you want something thats filling but not heavy.  It has the salty, crunchy texture of the tortilla, which to save calories and time I don't deep fry I coat with  tiny bit of oil and pop in the oven. The creamy of the avocado, the sour of the broth, since I squeeze in a liberal amount of lime into the bowl, and the crispness of the cilantro and spiciness of the tipatio hot sauce. Yum

This soup is based on chicken rosol that I added ingredients to in order to make this tortilla soup.

The foundation of every soup is a good stock

I love to cook and when I first started to cook I was 11 yrs old helping my mom, learning from her. I started out in the kitchen by making chicken in a pot but moved on to more serious things pretty quickly. She has thought me a lot about cooking and the fundamentals of cooking don't change. Take for instance the simple stock, its simple for what it is but at the same time adds a very complex flavor to your food; add it to risotto, stews and of course as a basis for most soups. 

In all polish homes, stock is called rosół (pron: ro souw) Rosół is a traditional Polish meat broth, that is usually made from beef/veal or chicken and sometimes turkey. The more bones that are in the stock the better the stock. Also we add a good amount of vegetables to the stock. Celery, carrots, leek, parsley and some people add garlic and onions too. There is also an element that Polish people add which is vegeta - and can be bought in most ethnic grocery stores, although not necessary. 

Adding vegeta to your rosol adds lots of flavor but I have cooked without it and it was fine except it needed more salt, lots more salt. If your on a low salt diet than leave it out. 

I wanted to post this since whenever I talk about making soup I will most likely start as a base of rosol and add to it, like when making mushroom soup, or chicken tortilla soup, or filipino arroz caldo or my favorite sinigang.  I mean sometimes its ok to have a box or can or stock in your pantry but why when you can make a pot of this and store small containers of it in your freezer for a day when you need stock. 

Ingredients:

Chicken or beef with bones or turkey necks(makes a less fattier but still flavorful version)

pot filled with water

2 stalks of celery

3 carrots peeled

half of a medium sized leek 

small bunch of parsley

vegeta

or salt if not using vegeta

You can't see too well since its a dark pot.

photo credit of Mojegotowanie.com

Directions:

Place meat (chicken, beef, veal or turkey) into pot cover with water. bring to a boil until you see the scum accumulating on top, skim off the scum it makes a cleaner stock. After skimming the scum add the vegetables and a couple of teaspoons of vegeta to the pot. You can always add more so go easy the first time. Then you let the rosol simmer on a med flame for a couple of hours. The trick to getting a clear not cloudy broth is the low simmer. After a couple of hours the rosol will be done and you can serve in a traditional way with fine noodles or potatoes. I sometimes like to shred the chicken, esp. for my daughter and add the carrots from the rosol and sprinkle a bit of parsley on top for flavor and color. 

If you made a large pot strain the vegetable and bits of vegeta that is most likely sunk to the bottom and place in smaller containers into the freezer which you can use next time you need stock.

Next up is my chicken tortilla soup. 

Asian style salmon

Normally in our house we don't eat a lot of salmon. Once I've had salmon a couple of times I get tired of it. It has quite a distinct flavor all by itself.  But for lent I figured I will try to eat other fish than our usual tilapia. So thats where the salmon came back in, and the cod and the halibut among others. 

This recipe came from my love of asian flavors and so I thought lets put in on the salmon since its such a strong flavored fish. It has black bean sauce, ginger, sesame oil and soy, all my favorite flavors and its blackened.

The recipe is fairly simple, you marinade the fish for at least 20 mins and fry in a nonstick pan. The non stick pan is important. To blacken the fish since it has the marinade on it it will stick to a normal pan in seconds. But with the nonstick you can keep it on longer at a higher heat and not risk having your fish fall apart when you try and flip it. I also served asparagus that I cut into smaller pieces and sautéed in the same pan that I took the fish out of, it still had some of the  marinade left in the pan. You can add a tiny bit more of the marinade to the asparagus and and a splash of water to help steam them.