All the Ingredients

New in the Kitchen: Cuisinart Blend and Cook Soupmaker

I haven't had a blender I've liked since 1982. That's the year I moved into my first apartment. I was trying to furnish a tiny hallway kitchen (you walked through it to get to the bedroom from the living room) with finds from second-hand stores. The kitchen had a tiny white, Easy Bake Oven and stove--the electric burners on top were so close, if I used more than one pot at a time, their sides touched. The oven was large enough to slide in a frozen pizza. The counter tops were a deep, bright orange. Keep-you-awake-in-the-dark orange. 

I went to Goodwill, and found a chrome toaster. It popped the toast straight up into the air, making every breakfast a rousing game of catch. When I got married three years later, I convinced my husband that this toaster was more fun than his Sunbeam that simply toasted the bread and popped it up. We spent years catching the toast until one day my chrome beauty fell from the counter to its death. We advanced to buying Cadillac toasters after that. the one we have now takes up one end of the kitchen counter with its long wide double-slots that can toast bagels or baguette slices. We eat a lot of toast in our house because my husband considers it to be a food group. Like ice cream and pizza.

At Goodwill I also found a great blend blender for my apartment. It was a study Waring with a glass jar that had originally been a very expensive kitchen tool. I got it for $7, and was told by the nice lady behind the counter that they guaranteed it to work for seven days. There was just one problem with the blender. It was pink. The base was pink. The lid was pink. It looked lovely on my orange counter top. I took to sleeping with my bedroom door closed because otherwise I could hear the pink warring with the orange in the dark. 

What I loved about the Waring was that it had a six-horsepower motor, and could make a smoothie out of concrete. I perfected a recipe for frozen strawberry margaritas--the perfect summertime drink in my unairconditioned apartment. I loved that blender.

Then I got married, and we got a lovely blender for a wedding present. It was white, and had a plastic carafe and could muster just enough power to blend milkshakes out of partially defrosted ice cream and milk. The plastic carafe quickly got scratched and cloudy. The strawberry margaritas always had chunks of frozen strawberry in them. I hated it. My father-in-law, a man who knows his kitchen appliances, promised to buy me another glass-carafed blender. Instead, I got plastic blender #2 which had more blending force than the first plastic blender but not by much. I stopped using it when the bottom blade assembly fused to the carafe, and I could no longer get it apart to clean it thoroughly.

Then last fall I started to see commercials on the cooking channels for the Cuisinart Blend and Stir Soupmaker. I loved the idea of being able to cook in a blender--I love soup, but it tends to be something I don't make from scratch. I don't eat it out of cans either because of the high salt content. Canned soup just doesn't taste good to me. I watched and waited. Sure enough right after Thanksgiving Williams Sonoma had the soupmaker on sale, AND had four days where there was no shipping charge on orders. I sent an email hint to Santa at the North Pole, and sure enough, on Christmas morning there was the Soupmaker under the Christmas tree.

I have to confess, with all the joys of working retail during the holiday season, it was the end of January before I even got my new soupmaker out of the box. I managed to get it assembled and on the counter without too much trouble. It is big, and takes up a good chunk of counter space. And it matches all my other black counter top appliances. The soupmaker comes with a small recipe book, and I decided to try the recipe for cauliflower cheese soup first. 

I based this soup on the Lightened Broccoli and Potato Soup in the recipe booklet, using cauliflower because I didn't have any broccoli. I put the following in the blender jar:

• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 1/2 small onion, chopped
• dash of salt
• dash of pepper
• 1 medium potato, peeled and cubed
• 3/4 pound cauliflower, cut into roughly 3/4 inch pieces

Then I put the lid on the jar and set it to 10 minutes on High. Once the broth started to heat up, I saw that the cauliflower wasn't covered all the way, and I added about a half a cup more.

In a few minutes the broth inside the blender jar started to boil. Then I hit the "Stir" button for about 15 seconds to start to move the ingredients around in the broth. At the end of the 10 minutes, the liquid was at a rolling boil, and the glass of the blender jar was hot to the touch.

The blender timer went off after 10 minutes, and I reset it to 30 minutes on medium. Periodically during this time, I stirred the soup  ingredients around. The blades at the bottom of the blender are extremely sharp, but on "stir" the speed is low enough so that the mixture moves, but isn't pureed. 

When the timer went off at the end of the 30 minutes, I tasted the mixture. The cauliflower wasn't cooked all the way through yet, so I set it for another 10 minutes on Medium. Then I added 2 ounces of grated sharp cheddar, and blended the soup on Speed 1 until it was smooth and creamy. I poured the soup into bowls, and sprinkled it with some green and red pepper flakes that I had made from my own dehydrated garden peppers from last summer. My husband and I love these pepper flakes, and sprinkle them on everything short of ice cream.

 This recipe made four very generous servings of soup. We would have had two meals out of it, but we ate it all. With some crackers. It was a lot of soup. And it was delicious.

What I liked about this soup was that once I had chopped everything and put it in the blender, I could do things in other rooms of the house, stirring the soup periodically until it was done. I was very careful the first time to chop all the vegetables uniformly, but as the blender stirs, it continues to chop the pieces so now I am not as careful to have all the pieces small and uniform. I whack up the veggies, onion, and garlic, throw it in the blender, add broth to cover, and let it go. Sometimes I add sour cream wit the cheese at the end. Sometimes I don't add the cheese at all. This is so easy we have been eating soup twice a week, less than an hour from start to bowl.

I wanted some soup to freeze, so I made the recipe in the booklet for Carrot and Ginger Soup--delicious! (My husband doesn't like carrot soup.) And wonderful to take to work with a sandwich.

For most of these creamy vegetable soups, I have found that we like the consistency better when I add the potato. The soup is lighter because the potato makes the soup creamy without being cream. The best soup so far has been a potato cheddar with crispy bacon bits added right before serving. No leftovers again. For clean up, I fill the blender jar halfway, add a little dish soap, and blend it clean. The blender does come with a brush for cleaning which is very helpful for the blades--they are very sharp!

$199 is expensive for a blender. Not so expensive for a soupmaker that I am using twice a week. It makes great smoothies too. Next I will have to try and find that strawberry margarita recipe again!

What's New: Tervis Tumblers

As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received a Tervis Tumbler to try. I had never heard of Tervis before, but in 1946, the founders of this company, engineers Frank Cotter and G. Howlett Davis (Ter + vis = Tervis), created the first double-walled tumbler that insulated beverages with air trapped inside. This year the company celebrates 65 of making quality custom tumblers. I was thrilled to get a clear tumbler with the Foodbuzz Tastemakers logo on it.

I always start the day off with a glass of ice water. This tumbler is amazing because it keeps cold drinks cold for a long time. Really cold.

In honor of Halloween, I decided to make an iced Pumpkin Spice Au Lait with some of my Godiva Pumpkin Spice Coffee. I brewed the coffee double-strength, adding about 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon for a little extra kick, and chilled it. I put ice in my Tervis Tumbler and added half a cup of milk. Then I poured on the Godiva Pumpkin Spice coffee, topping it with whipped cream and a few sugar ghosts. A ghoulishly delicious drink!

The tumbler works really well with hot beverages too. I drink a lot of tea, hot and cold, and I was able to pour hot water straight into the tumbler for brewing a tea bag. The tea stayed hot for a long time. I have a ceramic double-walled coffee tumbler from a major coffee chain that does not keep my hot drinks hot as long as my Foodbuzz Tastemakers tumbler from Tervis does.

There's just one problem with my Tervis Tumbler. It didn't come with a lid. Which did not make my beverages safe from Sunny.

Who is Sunny? you ask.

Sunny is my cat, my boon companion. He gets up with me--even at 3:30 a.m.--and keeps me company while I get ready for work. He greets me at the door when I come home in the evening. He purrs me to sleep at night. And he is addicted to liquids. He loves sink water, tub water, and in an unguarded moment will try toilet water. If you leave your glass, mug, cup, or Tervis Tumbler unprotected, Sunny will drink your coffee (he likes foamed milk more than whipped cream), tea, diet Mountain Dew, Kool-Aid, and water. First he samples your drink with his paw, and tastes it. Right taste, right temperature? Then, he sticks his head in and drinks.

Sunny loves hanging out on the counter while I get ready to make coffee every morning. If I don't shut the back of the coffee-maker quickly enough, Sunny samples the water first. He never knocks beverages over, but you know he's been there by the wet paw prints leading away from your cup. Argh! Time to get a fresh glass--or tumbler--full.

The only thing that would make my Tervis Tumbler better is a lid. So I visited their web page, http://www.tervis.com/Main.aspx , and ordered a purple lid to match the Foodbuzz logo. Tervis has all sorts of tumblers on their web page that you can order customized for your business or organization. They have cool St. Louis Cardinals World Series Tumblers.

I will love my Tervis Tumbler even more when it has a lid!

 

 

 

What's New: Marzetti Simply Dressed: Simply the Best!

My mother gave me her love of tea. My brother Michael gave me his love of peanut butter. And my sister Stephanie gave me her love of salad dressing.

Every time we went out to eat when I was a kid, my big sister would get french fries. And with her french fries, she always had to have a side order of blue cheese dressing. That was what she dipped fries in instead of ketchup. I didn't like blue cheese dressing at that point, and thought she was crazy. It was a habit she kept up all of her life.

But then along came Ranch Dressing to change my mind about salad dressings as condiments. I grew up in the fifties along side the packets of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing. In those days, if you wanted salad dressing, you mixed it up yourself. For Ranch, you had to buy the packet of Hidden Valley seasoning, and add it to mayonnaise and buttermilk. It was my job to set the table for dinner every night, and my job to make the dressing for whatever salad we were having. My mother saved old mayonnaise jars so that I could mix up the ranch dressing. Every night that we used it, we had to stir it all together again. It was rich and creamy.

Gradually, I followed in my sister's footsteps, and started using Ranch as my condiment of choice. I like Ranch Dressing on pizza, wings, burgers, fries--all sorts of foods that really don't need the extra fat calories, but are improved by the flavor. (Try sprinkling some Ranch Dressing powder on your potatoes before you roast them.) I have always remained true to the Hidden Valley brand. I don't think anyone else's Ranch tastes as good. 

And if I am going to spend those calories on dressing, I want it to taste good. I hate fat-free dressings. They have a weird viscosity that always reminds me of a science experiment gone wrong. I won't eat anyone's fat-free Ranch, but I do like the light version that Hidden Valley makes.

Today when you wander down the salad dressing aisle of your local grocery store, there are hundreds of salad dressings to chose from, already made up for you in an amazing assortments of flavors. There are also the bottled dressings that contain ingredients that are not shelf-stable, and that are sold in the produce section in a refrigerated case.

And that's where you find the Marzetti. I have been crazy about Marzetti Honey Dijon dressing for decades. My favorite dip for sweet potato fries or onion rings is that dressing with some Ranch swirled into it--heaven! I like the Marzetti Blue Cheese dressing as well (Stephanie was right all those years ago)--and both the lighter versions of these two are very good. Marzetti makes lots of different dressings, and periodically I like to bring something new home to try. Want a killer combo for your next tossed salad? Try mixing the Marzetti Ranch half and half with their Blue Cheese. 

So I was thrilled when as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker's Program, I received a coupon for a free bottle of the new Marzetti line: Simply Dressed. These salad dressings are different from others on the market because they don't contain polysorbate 60 or propylene glycol alginate or anything else you need a chemistry degree to understand. The Simply Dressed Ranch contains ingredients like canola oil, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, spices, and buttermilk. I also got the Simply Dressed Champagne made with extra virgin olive oil, olive oil, sea salt, spices, and champagne and white wine vinegar. These dressings are full fat, so you need to use them modestly. However, the Simply Dressed ranch contains 2 grams less fat per serving than Hidden Valley Ranch.

So how did these dressings taste? 

For the Simply Dressed Champagne, I made a salad out of fresh garden veggies (soon to come to an end with a hard frost predicted this week): tomatoes, bell pepper, and cucumbers. To them I added celery, mushrooms, carrots, and romaine lettuce. And I threw in some Marzetti Whole Grain Croutons that I found in the produce section as well. I poured on a couple of tablespoons the dressing and tossed it all together. I thought the salad was very flavorful--the dried herbs in the dressing really helped jazz up the vegetables. My mother used to take flat
champagne left over after parties, and make champagne dressing with it. Her dressing had an alcoholic kick to it. The Marzetti version is much smoother in taste, and won't get you pulled over for eating a salad  and driving. My husband's verdict after eating the salad: "Not bad." (This is HIGH praise from him for a salad, believe me!) Next, I'd like to try this dressing as a marinade for chicken.

For the Simply Dressed Ranch, I tried it three ways. First, I dipped a carrot stick in it. Ranch dressing is my go-to dip to dress up raw veggies. It was wonderful. I like the flavor o buttermilk that the background. Next I put it on some deep dish pizza I had made. A lot of people eat
Ranch dressing on pizza. I've been doing it for a long time. Think about it. Most of the time I eat veggie pizza, no meat. So it's kinda like eating hot salad on a crust with some tomato sauce and cheese added. Ranch seems like a natural addition. Sometimes I even put cold lettuce on top of hot pizza with Ranch dressing. It works for me. The Simply Dressed Ranch on pizza is a winner. Finally, I also tried the Ranch on plain lettuce, the most simple salad. A little dressing went a long way,  and made the lettuce zesty.

I have a confession. I have been eating Hidden Valley Dressing for most of my life. The Marzetti Simply Dressed Ranch is better. Way better. I think that because it is made with buttermilk and other natural ingredients, it tastes fresher. Like you made it yourself instead of getting it out of a bottle. Marzetti Simply Dressed salad dressings are made with all natural ingredients, have to be kept refrigerated, and are more expensive than the others on the shelf in the salad dressing aisle, or in the refrigerated section of the produce section. They are worth it.

I think even my sister Stephanie would agree.

The Worst Mushroom Risotto I Never Ate...

...or two things no one ever told me about risotto.

So. Monday evening I scoop about a third of the mushroom risotto out of it's tub and into a pan. I heat it up, add the butter and parmesan cheese, and take a taste. It is not quite as yummy as it had been when it had finally finished cooking on Friday. And the texture. How to describe it? And the final color?

Okay. Remember the paste you used in kindergarten? It came out of a round white plastic pot with a red plastic applicator brush? If you used too much of it on your piece of construction paper, it dried and cracked. But you loved the smell--and when the teacher wasn't looking, the taste.

Imagine a saucepan full of that paste. Now color it gray, a dingy gray, with pieces of different kinds of mushroom stuck throughout. Now taste this gray paste. Dirt comes to mind. Very sticky dirt. Imagine a wooden spoon sticking up from the pan, held firmly in the middle of the dirty paste. Not a yummy dinner.

So my husband cheerfully made us two Totinos cheese party pizzas. They were much more of a party than the risotto! (I was able to rescue the spoon and salvage the saucepan, although three out of four cats refused to lick the bowl my helping had been in.)

Now to the things that no one ever told me about risotto.

1. This is a dish that really doesn't keep well. (Next time I will use the Baby Bear crock pot with only one cup of Arborio rice instead of two, and eat the risotto as soon as it is ready. Even if that is at midnight.)

2. Don't over-stir risotto. (Because if you do, the starch in the rice will break down and you will be able to wallpaper your front hall with what's left--as long as you don't mind lumps where the mushrooms are trapped underneath the paper.)

There are still many recipes that I plan to try from The Italian Slow Cooker. However, I will be wary of the cooking times for things that are more delicate than tomato sauce.

Today I made my husband an apple pie (with crust he had mixed up), and I am sure he has forgotten the whole risotto incident.

Or maybe not.

The Italian Slow Cooker or the Best Mushroom Risotto I Never Ate

Having survived the horrors of the retail season (which included six-day work-weeks and almost no time to cook), I bought myself a cookbook to launch the new year: The Italian Slow Cooker, by Michele Scicolone. The idea is that you can use your slow cooker to recreate authentic Italian food.

Now, I love my slow cooker. I love it so much, I actually have three of them in different sizes (think the Three Bears: Papa Slow Cooker, Mama Slow Cooker, and Baby Slow Cooker). I use the smallest one which has no settings other than "off" or "on" for two things: Little Smokies in barbecue sauce for Football Sundays, and to simmer grits all night (this is heaven the next morning--especially if you stir in some leftover country ham scraps). I use the medium size the most--for things like my pulled pork, chili, or for chicken cacciatore). I DO NOT make any crock pot recipes that include the directions: "Open a can of cream of blah-blah soup...." I use the biggest size for feeding a crowd: chili or chicken noodle soup. I don't actually know the capacity of these slow cookers, but it all works out.

Last Friday, I decided to try my first recipe from The Italian Slow Cooker for a mushroom risotto. It's basically three types of mushrooms, water, broth, some sauteed onions, a little red wine, and Arborio rice joined together in the slow cooker. You stir it once, and after one and a half hours, you stir in a little more butter, a lot of parmesan, and you have a fabulously creamy risotto without all the work. Tada! This sounded perfect. I could set up the slow cooker, have someone give it a stir, and dinner would be ready when I got home from spin class (all the best spin teachers have class exactly when I should be home cooking dinner).

When I arrived home, one and a half hours had passed, the house smelled wonderful, but the risotto still needed more broth and more time. My daughter made herself something else to eat (not  a fan of mushrooms), and my husband and I watched television. An hour later, I was still adding broth to the slow cooker while my husband made us sandwiches. It was actually over three hours until the risotto was cooked through! At that point, I put it in a container in the refrigerator without adding the butter or the parmesan cheese. I worked closing shifts at work all weekend, and yesterday my daughter was off  from school and wanted spaghetti. So based on a recipe for Sweet Tomato Sauce, we made the sauce in the slow cooker.

I sauteed diced celery, onion, carrot and garlic in a little olive oil until translucent. Then I sauteed a pound of lean ground beef with dried basil and oregano from my garden. I mixed these two together in the medium slow cooker with a can of crushed tomatoes (it's a Midwest brand, Stokely's, that is inexpensive, and whose crushed tomatoes are almost sauce) plus a can of tomato paste. This is in deference to my daughter who says that all my homemade tomato sauces are too thin.

The nice thing about tomato sauce in the slow cooker, I told my husband, is that we could eat it as soon as it's hot without letting it simmer, so there will be no unforeseen delays. But besides getting a richer sauce with the aromatics completely incorporated, the house smelled wonderfully saucy, just like it used when I was a kid. My mother simmered her spaghetti sauce all day in a big pot on the back of the stove. I don't know why my mother didn't have a crock pot--she had every other electric kitchen device that came along including one of the first electric knives (almost never used), and a counter-top chicken rotisserie (it made fabulous chicken, but was a bitch to clean up afterwords).

The Sweet Tomato Sauce tasted as good as it smelled, and I will certainly be trying some of the other recipes from The Italian Slow Cooker. I am  especially intrigued with how Scicolone makes frittatas in the slow cooker. She says they take "about an hour" to cook and turn out golden brown and perfect every time. I will just have to get over the shock of a recipe that uses eight to twelve eggs at once.

Do check back and see how the mushroom risotto turns out...

Cookin' With Coolio

Okay, I confess. Although I spend my share of time on the internet, I do not watch a lot of YouTube. That is obviously how I missed the numerous episodes of "Cookin' with Coolio: The Ghetto Gourmet." Which is a good thing, because I find videos of Coolio overwhelming. His loud & colorful personality, his "sous-chef" Jarez, and the ladies who provide the background eye-candy, completely overshadow whatever he is cooking.

Spend time looking through his new book Cookin' with Coolio,and you get an entirely different view of this rap star. An appealing view. Coolio cooks because what you make at home is better than what you get at a drive-through window. It is also better for you. And you can do it on a budget and still eat well. There are a whole lot of fancy cookbooks out there waiting to end up under your Christmas tree this year that will charge way more than $16 to tell you that.

And this book is funny.

Maybe all the folks who have spent their summers trying to wade through the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, need to try lightening up with Coolio's recipes where the spices are measured in the quantities of "dime bag," and "nickel bag." (A dime bag of salt = 1 T salt, a nickel bag = 1/2 T.) 

Coolio's sous-chef Jarez adds his comments in bold blue ribbons across each recipe. Some are technical comments about how to preheat the oven or drain the fried shrimp. Some are more audience-specific: "To check and see if your [Sweet Chocolate Potato] pie is done, simply shank it with your shiv. If it comes out clean, it's done." My son found this book highly entertaining, although I am not sure any cookbook would push him to prepare any food beyond his comfort zone of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Coolio is not afraid of vegetables, and includes recommendations for lightening up recipes, such as using chicken or turkey sausages in place of ground beef in "Bro-ghetti" sauce. And the food styling and photography in this book would make Emeril or Paula jealous.

I tried the "Dom Chicken Alfredo." Coolio says that Fettuccine Alfredo is just mac and cheese for adults, and that if you make his recipe, your kids will never want the stuff out of the blue box again. My daughter already likes Fettuccine Alfredo (and still likes the stuff in the blue box). However, on this evening, she declared that she was not hungry and didn't want any. But by the time I had sauteed the onions, garlic, and mushrooms, and mixed together the sauce with its two types of cheeses, she was sniffing  around the kitchen.

The last ingredients added to the sauce before you pour the "Dom Chicken Alfredo" over the cooked fettuccine, is the chicken you have grilled and cut into strips, some sour cream, and fresh diced tomatoes. Even though I drained the tomatoes after I diced them, they were just watery enough so that they broke the cream sauce. My gorgeous alfredo sauce turned stringy. But it was delicious. My daughter was halfway through her plateful before she noticed the tomatoes and exclaimed, "What are these pink things!" I think the next time I will either cook the tomatoes with the rest of the vegetables, or serve them sliced on the side drizzled with balsamic vinegar (one of Coolio's favorite ingredients along with hot peppers).

I think a lot of the new cookbooks out this holiday season are retreads. (I swear that the photo of Nigella Lawson on the cover of Nigella's Christmas was taken when she was eighteen!) I guarantee that you will get your money's worth with Cookin' with Coolio, and it will be a unique present under anyone's Christmas tree.