Fancy Pants Foodie

Foodie news, reviews and how-tos from Arkansas and beyond.

Spicy Thai Beef Noodle Soup

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IMG_8289 Since the weather kept some of the family from getting to our house for Christmas, we had the entire clan here for New Years Day. I’ll share later this month some of the goodies I made, including (squee!) merengue kisses.

My sister-in-law, who serves at a church in Milan, Italy with her husband and was back home for Christmas, came early to help me with a little meal prep. Since we had eaten so much junk over the break, I wanted to offer (and eat) some crudite, or lightly steamed veggies. She cut the broccoli into small flowers for me. I did the blanch, shock and awe thing. Done.

So, the next day, the husband is coming down with a cold. I’m craving noodles, and because of my wheat intolerance, I can’t indulge in the Big Kid’s ramen. I’m out of my favorite Thai “glass noodles,” made of rice, that I usually use in soups.

Time for a trip to the store.

With more than a little flying by the seat of my pants, I made a surprisingly delicious, quick soup that magically cured the hubs as well as my own cravings. Well, the latter, anyway.

Thanks, Lisa Fischer, for the kick in the butt to get this on the blog. Hope you liked it!

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Spicy Thai Beef Noodle Soup
Serves 6-8

  • 1 qt. all-natural beef broth
  • 1 8 oz. box Thai Kitchen brown rice noodles (or 8 oz of plain Thai rice noodles)
  • 1 lb. beef flank steak
  • 1 tsp. dry ginger or 2 tsp. grated fresh ginger, divided
  • 2-4 tsp. Sriracha sauce, divided
  • Kosher salt and freshly-ground pepper
  • 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
  • 1 1/2 c. lightly steamed or blanched broccoli (ok to use raw, see note)
  • Fresh parsley or cilantro, chopped, for garnish, optional

Bring the broth to a boil in a large pot. Crush the noodles so they will be manageable to eat in the soup.

Note: Crushing is always a hot mess with the regular “glass noodles,” or pad Thai noodles, because they are so brittle — they’ll go everywhere if not contained. Although I scoffed at the new, boxed noodles that took the space of the plain ones at Kroger, they are wrapped in small portions that make them easy to crush. I crushed all four packages and put them in the broth.

Put the crushed noodles into the boiling broth, then turn off the heat and cover the pot. While they sit and soften, work on the flank steak. Season it well with 1/2 tsp. dry ginger or 1 tsp. grated fresh ginger, 1 tsp. Sriracha, and plenty of salt and pepper. If you have time to marinate this part ahead of time, even better.

IMG_8288Sear the flank on a very hot grill, griddle or (what I used) cast-iron skillet. Cook it just long enough to be medium-rare, still pretty red in the middle. Allow it to rest for 10-15 minutes. Using a very sharp knife, cut strips at an angle against the grain, as thinly as possible. Then cut the strips into bite-size pieces.

If you are using raw broccoli, turn the heat back on to the broth and add it now. Let it cook just long enough to turn a bright green, then turn off the heat and add the beef. (If using already blanched broccoli, leave the heat off and add it along with the beef.) Season the soup with the remaining Sriracha and ginger, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Garnish, if you like, with parsley or cilantro.

Serve it with more Sriracha on the table for those (of us) who like it hot!

If you store some for later, all the broth gets soaked into the noodles, making a whole new, luscious noodle dish. Enjoy!

Vegetarian Adzuki Bean Stew and Potatoes

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Our eating habits directly determine our health.

In our busy schedules and fast lives, we often end up eating as per convenience, rather than what is healthy. Many a times, we eat to please our taste buds, but remain quite unaware about the health hazards that this type of eating habit might pose.

In a bid to lose weight, we also end up cutting out a few essential ingredients from our diet. This, instead of making us healthier, does the exact opposite. Every element is needed for your body, whether it is vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, fibers or even fat (although choose the healthy ones). Each of these nutrients has their own individual roles to play in the physical and mental development, that’s why we try recipes as these to help us keep healthy, and is even more important if we exercise regularly, since we need more energy to train and recover, and that’s why the use of supplements could help us a lot with this, and we can even get from different sites as this homepage online.

I love adzuki beans. L-O-V-E.

Never heard of them? I hadn’t either, until I did a special elimination diet a few years ago that focused on lots of legumes and vegetables. (I may be going back to that soon, at least temporarily; more on that later.) They’re extremely flavorful and packed with all kinds of nutrition.

During our recent kitchen construction, I bought a bag of adzuki at Whole Foods, hoping to use them in my slow cooker. I never did. Until today!

Here’s the recipe I created, adapted from a few things I found online. The potato twist came from a quick Twitter convo with famous slowcooker maven Stephanie O’Dea. I ended up using my divided crock, because my cooker is huge and the recipe isn’t. I had already learned from Stephanie that a crock must be at least half-full to cook properly. So…was it OK to only use one side?

She said yes (I love Twitter), but said, why waste the space? Throw some potatoes or corn in there. I had just picked up some nice, waxy reds at the Argenta Certified Arkansas Farmers’ Market, so why not?

Vegetarian Adzuki Bean Stew and Potatoes

  • 1 1/2 c. dry adzuki beans, sorted
  • 2 fresh tomatoes, concasse (see instructions)
    or 1 can diced tomatoes, drained
  • 1 large or 2 small-med leeks
  • 1 small onion, small dice OR 2 T. dehydrated onion flakes
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 medium carrots, peeled and julienne cut
  • 2 T. soy sauce or Bragg’s Aminos
  • 3 T. miso paste OR 1 cube vegetable/mushroom boullion
  • 1 tsp. sriracha sauce
  • 1 T. paprika
  • 2 T. AP flour
  • 3-4 c. water or vegetable broth
  • 4 medium waxy red potatoes

If you have a large, divided slow cooker, you can prepare both the stew and potatoes at the same time. If not, you can cook the potatoes in the microwave or in the oven just before eating.

Soak the beans overnight before cooking. There is some dissent about whether or not adzuki require this, because they are very small; I wasn’t sure, so I soaked them.  Rinse the soaked beans and put them in the slow cooker.

If using fresh tomatoes (and if it’s summer, I hope you are; if it isn’t, I hope you’re not), you’ll do a fancy trick called concasse. Mark an “x” in the bottom of each tomato with a sharp knife. Bring a small pot of water to the boil, and prepare a small bowl of ice water. Carefully place the tomatoes in the boiling water for one minute, then remove with a slotted spoon and put them in the ice water. You should now be able to easily peel the tomatoes. Peel them, cut them in half or quarters, and squish out all the seeds and gushy stuff with your thumbs. Fun! Cut the remaining tomato pulp into dice.  Add this (or your slacker canned/diced toms) to the slow cooker.

Split the leeks lengthwise and cut into 1/4″ pieces. Place these pieces in a wire mesh strainer or colander and work the layers as apart as you can, then rinse and drain. Sand and dirt hide in these layers, so be sure to get it all out!

Add the onions, garlic, carrots, soy sauce, miso or bouillon, sriracha, paprika and flour. Stir to coat, then add enough water or stock to cover the mixture by about a half inch.

If you’re slow-cooking the potatoes in the other side of a divided crock, cover each one with foil, and put them in the other side with no liquid. If you’ve only got starchy, baking-style potatoes, that would be fine, too; just serve as a baked potato with the stew over the top.

Turn your cooker to low and cook for 8 hours or so. It’s the “or so” that I love about slow cookers…a little more or less is fine. Just check that the beans are done, and you’re golden.

When you’re ready to serve, remove the potatoes and allow to cool just a bit. Then slice them (for waxies) or split open the tops (for starchies), sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper, and ladle the stew over the top.

Lest you think I was stingy with my stew in the above photo, it was just to keep it pretty. Hubby’s was so slathered you couldn’t see the plate, much less the potato. I ate mine (above) with an extra side-cup of stew.

Enjoy!

Love for Lodge / Photo Diary of White Bean and Kale Soup

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Final soupy goodness! Yommmm.......

I’m in cooking withdrawal.

Over the past couple months, we’ve been in various stages of moving, and my pots and pans still haven’t surfaced. But during the process, I made one purchase that made it all OK…my enameled cast-iron pot by Lodge.

It’s awfully similar (actually, identical) to the Le Creuset version that’s about $200. I paid $35 for this at Walmart. And I’ve used it for everything from making soup (see below) to boiling pasta and making grilled cheese.

I win.

Last night, I made a killer white bean and kale soup in said vessel. I took some fun photos of the process, so here you go, dear reader. And remember…salt pork makes everything better.

Taking Stock

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Our team's stock!

Today was my first day back in the kitchens for the semester. Usually, the first week at the culinary school, everyone is still scrambling for books and uniforms and whatnot, so the chefs give us a week to ease in before we get back to cookin’.

My class tonight was Stocks, Soups and Sauces. The mere fact that one of the books is Escoffier’s tome to sauces of all kinds (among other things) is a sign that I’ll gain another 20 pounds this semester just tasting. Oh, well.

Tonight we made chicken stock, which will be the basis for many of the sauces we’ll make as we go along. Most of us made a “white” stock, meaning the bones and veggies went in raw; one group made a “brown” stock, meaning the bones and veggies got a little color in a hot oven before the simmer.

I had actually already learned stock procedure from Crescent Dragonwagon’s Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread Cookbook years ago, when I first started cooking more adventurously at home. It’s a great place to start if you want to learn stocks and soups (and a killer cornbread). If you’ve never made stock, you really should give it a go!

Based on what we did tonight in class, here’s the basic procedure for the white chicken stock:

  1. Place raw chicken bones (mostly stripped of meat) in a large stockpot.
  2. Fill the stockpot with cold water, until the water is about 1-2 inches above the bones.
  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and skim off the scum and foam from the top.
  4. Add a sachet d’épices (you can do this in a tea ball if you don’t have cheesecloth handy).
  5. Add roughly chopped, peeled veggies, usually carrots, onion and celery. They won’t be seen or eaten, so it doesn’t have to be pretty, or even fresh, for that matter.
  6. Simmer for 4 to 6 hours.
  7. Using a spider or large slotted spoon, carefully lift out all the bones and veggies. These are usually discarded, as they’ve “given their all” to the stock.
  8. Ladle through a sieve (or chinois, or just a colander) lined with cheesecloth or a coffee filter into a large vessel.
  9. Cool in an ice bath until the stock is down to 70 degrees, then cover and move to the fridge. (The link says 40 degrees, but I think that’s asking a lot. But do wait for the 70, or you risk funking up your broth as well as everything else in your fridge.)

Don’t worry too much about fat; it will rise to the top and solidify while cooling. This layer of fat, remarkably, helps keep the stock fresh longer, and you can just lift the fat layer off when you’re ready to use it.

And don’t worry about salt yet. Our chef instructor said to wait until you’re making the finished product.

It’s funny, we had four or five different pots of stock going, with the exact same procedure and ingredients, and they all tasted very different at the end. Chef said this was due to varying simmer temps, as well as differences in proportions of meat and veggies, etc. They were all delicious, but in different ways…one was very bright, another rich, another very vegetal.

Tune in next week when we start turning our stock into one of the five mother sauces! Woot!

Photos of our stock adventure:

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Cooking for a Crowd (Recipes Included)

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Photo of me and a parent helper taken at the event, which went great.

Today, I’m cooking for my first big(ish) crowd, my daughter’s aftercare program. They started a new tradition this year of having dinners every couple months for the families of the children. What I thought was going to be 20 or so folks when I agreed turned out to be more like 60+, which is cool. I love a challenge.

The menu:

  • Leek and potato soup, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day
  • Spring mix salad with choice of ranch or homemade orange vinaigrette dressing (see below)
  • Spaghetti with meat sauce (loosely based on marinara recipe posted here earlier, just the tomato products, herbs and garlic)
  • Italian bread with parsley garlic butter (It hurt me to not bake the bread, but we gotta draw the line somewhere. I made the garlic butter, though.)
  • Cupcakes with homemade chocolate buttercream (see below)
  • Tea (sugar syrup on service table)

The challenges for  this event included figuring quantities and portions (already using that culinary math they taught a couple weeks ago in school), figuring out where to buy stuff (some from Sam’s Club, some from the grocery store, and some from Ben E. Keith), and remaining mindful that about half of the audience is children, who will usually eat less and often not the same stuff as the adults.

I must say that I felt pretty cool buying from Ben E. Keith, our local large-quantity foodservice supplier. They are letting me start small on some things, since I’ll probably be a customer from now on, either for catering events, doing classes or whatever I decide to do when I grow up. My daughter and I went to their customer service dock on Saturday to pick up a big box of leeks, two boxes of salad, the dairy products (cheaper there than elsewhere) and some other random things.

Saturday, the director of the aftercare program helped me make the sauce and the base for the soup (everything but the dairy products), and put it all in the fridge. I also cooked all the spaghetti to al dente, rinsed with cool water in a colander and tossed with olive oil, zip-bagged it and put it in the fridge. Not the optimal way to treat pasta, but great for cooking for a crowd — we’ll just hit it with hot water tonight to revive it for service. (My Food Production I instructor told me that trick. Thanks, Chef!)

Today, I’ll brown meat for the sauce (forgot that part Saturday), bake off the cupcakes, make the buttercream, warm the bread, make the vinaigrette (also from my Food Production I instructor), make the sugar syrup (it blends better than anything granulated), and generally freak out. But I’m sure it will be fine.

While planning the last details, we remembered that it’s Lent. So we’ll hold out some of the sauce to be without meat for anyone abstaining. The soup will also be a good option. (I would have had a lentil and mushroom dish available if we had any true vegetarians coming, which we don’t.)

So. All this to say, this is my first big crowd, and I’m a little nervous. But it’s for kids and their parents, so it’s a low-risk proposition. It all boils down to a great practice opportunity for me, as well as a good time for a great bunch of folks.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT: Please comment below and let me know if you’ve ever cooked for a crowd of, over, let’s say 30. How did you figure out portions and ingredients? How did things turn out? Where did you get your product? Any war stories, tips or suggestions? I look forward to your input.

Orange Vinaigrette Dressing

  • 1/4 cup orange juice
  • 2 T. balsamic vinegar
  • 1 T. Dijon mustard
  • 2 tsp. honey
  • 1/8 tsp. fresh ground black pepper

Whisk ingredients together in a bowl. Or, place ingredients in a small jar with a tight-fitting lid, cover and shake until combined.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

  • 1/4 lb. (1 stick) unsalted butter
  • 1/4 lb. (1/2 cup) shortening
    Note: May use 2 sticks butter and eliminate shortening. Frosting will have a better mouth feel but will be less stable.
  • 1 lb. powdered sugar
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 3 tsp. cocoa powder
  • 2 T. cool water

Cream butter and shortening (if using) together in a stand mixer using the paddle attachment. Add sugar in several installments, scraping down the bowl occasionally. In a cup, mix cocoa and water together; add to fat/sugar mixture along with vanilla. Beat until smooth and lightened.

Simple Sugar Syrup

  • 1 cup granulated sugar (may substitute all or half with turbinado sugar for a more natural, deeper-flavored product)
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 small sprig of any type of mint, optional

Simmer all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. When all sugar is dissolved, cool for a few minutes off the heat, then pour through a sieve (if mint was used) into a squeeze bottle or other container, I also recommend you to check this ginger mint cooler mocktail recipe for a special occasion like this. Perfect for use in cold drinks.

Chicken and White Bean Winter Soup

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Soup

Thursday afternoon, I put a few things in the crock pot so dinner would be easy. I had some white beans left over from the pork rib dish from a while back, and I bought some chicken thighs (which, although higher in fat, I prefer for braising and soups) that day at the grocery store. I also had quite a few grape tomatoes left over from last week’s farmer’s market, just ripened on the countertop. After glancing at a few recipes for flavor profile ideas, here’s what I ended up with:

Chicken and White Bean Winter Soup

  • 1 c. dry white beans (I used Great Northern, but cannellini would also be great)
  • 3 stalks celery, sliced
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 Tbs. olive oil
  • 10 – 15 grape tomatoes, halved (may use cherry tomatoes or diced larger variety)
  • 6 c. chicken broth
  • 1 c. dry white wine (optional, reduce 1 c. of broth if used)
  • 3 – 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, fat trimmed
  • 2 cloves garlic, pressed
  • 1/2 c. minced onion (I used 1/4 c. dried)
  • 1/2 tsp. thyme (dried)
  • 1/2 tsp. rosemary (dried and crushed)
  • 1 Tbs. Cavender’s seasoning

Soak beans in cold water overnight and rinse in colander. (Quick-soak option: Place dry beans in a small pot and cover with cold water, with the water one inch over the top of the beans. Bring to boil on the stovetop and boil for three minutes. Cover tightly and turn off the heat, and leave to soak for one hour. Rinse with clean water in colander.)

Pour olive oil into bottom of crock pot and place soaked beans on top. Cover with broth and white wine, if you’re using it. Add bay leaves to the broth.

If you want to add a bit of flavor, you can salt and pepper the chicken thighs and quickly sear over high heat in a skillet with oil. (I was in a hurry and didn’t; just S&P’d the raw chix…still yummy!) Place the chicken on top of the beans in the crock pot. Place the celery, tomatoes, herbs, Cavender’s, and a little more kosher salt and freshly ground pepper on top.

Since I was starting later in the day, I put it on high (total of 4 hours or so), but you could surely put it on low for 8 hours-ish. When the beans are completely soft and creamy, and the chicken is falling apart, it’s ready.

At this point, mash a few of the beans and tomatoes against the side of the pot. Continue doing this until you’ve reached your desired level of creamy goodness. Then shred the chicken pieces up with a fork or spoon; they should happily fall apart at your bidding.

Taste, reseason as necessary, enjoy.

Wonderful with a crusty loaf of bread. Even better the next day. Noms!