Apple-Fennel Soup with Beans and Sausage

I find a lot of inspiration in the work of professional chefs, even if I haven't tasted their work. This is a prime example.

I clicked on this item about him from Eater DC which led me to this Washingtonian story about Chef Devin Bozkaya's (successful) audition to become the new executive chef at West End Bistro by Eric Ripert. In the story, he talks about food he's planning for the restaurant, including an apple soup with pork sausage and sage. I thought that sounded like a marvelous idea and wanted to try crafting my own version.

I used this Food & Wine recipe for Sweet Potato, Chipotle and Apple Soup as a reference, but the flavors in my soup are very different. Chris and I were very pleased with this. The thick pureed broth of onion, fennel, garlic, ginger, celery, sage and apple is particularly appealing. And despite all those flavors, the apple flavor is noticeable, albeit very subtle. I added the beans to give the soup some additional body and the fennel fronds to add some color, additional fresh fennel flavor and visual appeal. Vegetarians could easily adapt this by using vegetable broth and omitting the sausage (perhaps doubling the beans).

Apple-Fennel Soup with Beans and Sausage

4 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 large sweet onion, diced
1/2 fennel bulb, cored and diced, fronds reserved and chopped
1 celery rib, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1-inch piece of ginger root, minced (about a tablespoon)
2 gala apples, peeled, cored and diced
1 1/2 lb. (about 2 large) russet potatoes, peeled and diced
8-10 sage leaves, minced (about 1 1/2 tbsp.)
Seasoned salt, to taste
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth (may substitute vegetable broth)
2 cups water
1/2 lb. mild Italian chicken sausages (may substitute another other Italian sausage; 1/2 lb. is two large sausages in casings)
1 16 oz. can cannellini beans
1 tsp. fresh ground white pepper
1 tbsp. honey

1. Heat 3 tbsp. olive oil in a large dutch oven or soup pot over medium heat. Add diced onion, fennel, celery and garlic, and sauté until softened, about 10 minutes. Add apples, potatoes and sage and sauté another 5 minutes. Season with seasoned salt. Add chicken broth and water, cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer partly covered for 40 minutes until the vegetables are tender.

2. In a medium frying pan, heat 1 tbsp. olive oil over medium heat. Remove sausage from casings, add to pan, and cook, breaking up with a wooden spoon, until the sausage is cooked through and lightly browned. Turn off the heat. Drain and rinse the cannellini beans and add the sausage to gently warm.

3. Puree the soup until it is very smooth using an immersion blender or transferring it in batches to a blender or food processor, returning to the pot when done. Stir in cooked sausage, beans, white pepper and honey. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve topped with a sprinkle of chopped fennel fronds.

Cocktail: G&T Supersized

This drink takes flavors common to gin--juniper, found in many gins, and cucumber, which Hendrick's gin is known for--and "supersizes" them by adding extra doses. It's quite refreshing.

G&T Supersized

2 juniper berries
1/2 oz. juniper syrup (see recipe)
2 tbsp. peeled, chopped cucumber
1/2 oz. lime juice
2 oz. gin
4 oz. tonic water
lime peel (optional garnish)

1. Add juniper berries and juniper syrup to a highball glass. Crush berries into syrup with a muddler (don't muddle excessively). Add ice to glass.

2. Add cucumber and lime juice to a shaker. Muddle vigorously. Add ice and gin, and shake until cold. Strain into highball. Top with tonic and lime peel.

Food (Section) Fight!: Week 38

Food (Section) Fight! is my weekly look at The Washington Post's Food section and The New York Times' Dining section with my verdict on which section had the better content for the week.


[Disclosure: Today's Food (Section) Fight! was written 3,000 miles from where I normally am. Hence it is based on online content, rather than the usual print editions, which were not available to me.]

Washington Post

(1) "What took me so long to make fresh pasta?" article by David Hagedorn. That's a good question, Hagedorn! Fresh pasta is amazingly good and surprisingly easy. Although his previous attempt to make fresh pasta didn't turn out well, Hagedorn enlists some expert help and churns out some pretty tasty-sounding dishes, such as Saffron Fettucine with Figs and Cambozola Sauce.

(2) "Book Report: Mike Isabella's Crazy Good Italian," review by Jane Touzalin. Chef Isabella, the D.C.-based former Top Chef contestant of Graffiato and Bandolero fame, just released his first cookbook, which Touzalin reviews positively. Sounds like quite a few Graffiato dishes make an appearance like the local favorite corn agnolotti and the pepperoni sauce that was also famously featured on Top Chef.

(3) "Persian cuisine with a cultural mission," article by Tim Carman. Carman profiles Peacock Cafe Maziar Farivar, who was tapped a few years ago by the James Beard Foundation to prepare traditional cuisine to celebrate the Persian new year. I particularly enjoyed reading about the multi-step traditional preparation for rice.

(4) "Lemon lentil soup," Dinner in Minutes recipe by Bonnie S. Benwick. As we turn toward fall, I'm looking forward to making some good, hearty soups. Benwick's suggestion of lemon lentil soup sounds just about perfect for the change in seasons.

(5) "Panko-crusted devlied chicken," Nourish column by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick. Sedgwick takes one of her mother's recipes and adapts it with an Indian cooking technique, French seasoning and Japanese bread crumbs.

New York Times

(1) "Making Vegan a Normal Meal," article by Jeff Gordinier. Although I'm not vegan (or vegetarian), increasingly we eat vegetarian at home, with meat being an occasional rather than daily feature. And such blending of omnivorous and herbivorous tastes is increasing catered to by restaurants. Here, Gordinier takes a closer look at Los Angeles restaurants that feature creative vegan cooking (parsnip bacon, anyone?) alongside fare for meat-eaters.

(2) "A Little Zucchini for Your Fried Cheese," a Good Appetitte column by Melissa Clark. Clark espouses her love of fried cheese, featuring the Italian fried cheese crisp Frico, adapted to accomodate sauteed zucchini slices.

(3) "Don't Be Afraid of the Eggplant," article by Julia Moskin. Some people's noses turn up at the mere mention of eggplant, whether it be their spongy texture or perceived bitter flavor. According to Moskin, eggplant is harvested younger now than in the past, so the salting and draining that used to remove the bitter flavor is no longer necessary. Besides, as I suspected, rinsing salted eggplant wastes the effort of draining it, since it soaks the water back up. The accompanying recipe for Roasted Eggplant with Spiced Chickpeas sounds good.

(4) "Behind a Restaurant Emergency, a Troubleshooter," article by William Grimes. I've read there are over 4,200 restaurants in New York City (3,500 of which are in Manhattan). Many of those restaurants do a brisk business operating a lot of complex machinery in close quarters--modern ovens, ranges and refrigerators all just waiting to break down right as dinner rush starts. Grimes looks at the specialized industry of quick-fix repair technicians who do good business keeping that equipment up and running, an often risky task when the dinner service doesn't stop to accommodate them.

(5) "Taking an Ordinary Dish and Making It Heavenly," City Kitchen column by David Tanis. Tanis writes about creamed salt cod, a traditional French dish that often gets a bad rap for not being made well.

Verdict

The Washington Post. Fresh pasta is one of my favorite things, so I was glad to see David Hagedorn embrace it. I might add Mike Isabella's cookbook to my Amazon wishlist and I'm definitely making that lentil soup.

Score

The New York Times: 19

The Washington Post: 18

Posted with Blogsy

Watermelon-Pepperoni salad

Plain watermelon is so good, one wonders what the point of finding other uses for it is.

Putting it in a salad turns the juicy, sweet fruit into a counterpoint for other flavors. It goes great with mint and feta cheese, but I recently decided to pair it with...pepperoni. Sound odd? Perhaps so, but the flavors worked great together, the spicy, slight sweetness of the pepperoni was an ideal match for the cool sweetness of the watermelon.

Watermelon-Pepperoni Salad

1/3 cup walnuts
2-3 cups of salad greens, such as arugula
2 cups 1-inch cubes of watermelon (about 1/4 of a standard-size watermelon)
2 oz. pepperoni, cut in half
1/3 cup feta cheese crumbles
1/2 cup grape tomatoes, halved
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. honey
Salt and fresh-ground black pepper

1. Toast walnuts in a small frying pan over medium-low heat until fragrant. Remove from pan, cool and coarsely chop.

2. Combine greens, watermelon cubes, pepperoni slices, feta cheese, grape tomatoes and toasted walnuts in a large bowl. Whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, honey, salt and pepper. Pour dressing over salad and toss to combine.

Golden Curry Chicken Salad

If this blog was Sesame Street, this would be the dish that was brought to you by the color orange. There are so many beautiful orange vegetables right now, that I thought it could be interesting to put a bunch of them together in a salad. Underscoring the theme was be a bright curry dressing.

I roasted the beets and carrots but left the bell pepper and tomato raw. In addition to their colors, these vegetables provide a variety of textures too.

Golden Curry Chicken Salad

6 yellow beets, about 2-inches thick
3 carrots, peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch rounds (split carrots in half if particularly large)
olive oil
1 lb. chicken breast cutlets
olive oil, salt and pepper
1 orange bell pepper, diced
2 celery ribs, diced
1 cup golden grape tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup flat-leaf (Italian) parsley, finely chopped

Dressing:
1 garlic clove, peeled
Salt
1/3 cup nonfat Greek yogurt
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp. lemon juice
Fresh-ground white pepper
1 1/2 tsp. curry powder
2 tsp. honey

Toast, greens, pitas, etc.

1. Preheat oven to 400 F. Place beets in the center of a large sheet of aluminum foil. Drizzle beets with olive oil and then seal the foil into a closed package. Roast beets until a fork pierces them without much resistance, about 40-60 minutes. Set aside to cool and then peel (the skins of roasted beets are loose enough to remove with your fingers) and chop into 1/2-inch cubes. Allow to cool completely.

2. Meanwhile, place the chopped carrots in a small roasting dish and drizzle with oil. Roast alongside the beets for about 25-30 minutes. Set aside to cool completely.

3. Heat a medium frying pan over medium heat with 1 tbsp. olive oil. Cook chicken breasts about 10 minutes, turning halfway, until cooked through. Season with salt and pepper. Allow to cool, then chop into 1/2-inch cubes. Set aside to cool completely (refrigerate if not using right away).

4. To make dressing, add garlic clove to a small bowl, sprinkle with salt and mash into a fine paste (if you have mortar and pestle, use that). Add remaining dressing ingredients and stir until combined.

5. In a large bowl, combine the chopped beets, carrots, chicken, bell pepper, celery, tomatoes and parsley. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss to combine. Serve over greens, pitas or toast.

Cocktail: G&T, Cool As...

...a cucumber of course, which is muddled into this riff on a gin & tonic with chartreuse for extra sweetness and herbal intensity.

G&T, Cool As...

Makes 2 drinks

1/3 cup peeled, diced cucumber
Juice from 1 lime
2 oz. gin (Hendrick's)
1 oz. yellow chartreuse
Tonic water

Add diced cucumber and lime juice to the metal cup of a Boston shaker. Thoroughly muddle the cucumber into the lime juice. Add ice, gin and chartreuse and shake until chilled. Strain mixture into two lowball glasses with ice. Top each glass with tonic and stir to combine.

Food (Section) Fight!: Week 37

Food (Section) Fight! is my weekly look at The Washington Post's Food section and The New York Times' Dining section with my verdict on which section had the better content for the week.

New York Times

(1 and 2) "When Words Fail," Critics Notebook column and "It's Been Awhile, Hasn't It?" Restaurant review by Pete Wells. Perhaps it's unintentional, but I see a subtext with the juxtaposition of these two stories: Daniel Humm, you have been warned. His Eleven Madison Park, one of only six restaurants in New York currently honored with four stars from the New York Times, recently unveiled a new concept, which is the subject of Well's Critic's Notebook column, a preview akin to what the Washington Post's Tom Sietsema does with his First Bite column. So it's a not a formal review per se (oh the bad puns of New York dining), but a preview. While Wells likes the food, for sure, he is troubled by the lengthy explanation that accompanies each dish, which he sees as sometimes detracting from what is being served. As an example, he describes a speech that puts you in the mood for steak tare tare, but you're instead fed a carrot dish inspired by steak. Regardless of how good the food is, sounds like the presentation needs work.

But is it enough to jeopardize its four-star rating? Well, I can't help but think the placement of a review of Le Cirque is a reminder to Eleven Madison Park that such things do happen. The French restaurant used to be one of Manhattan's four-star dining destinations until former Times critic Ruth Reichl busted them down to three stars after receiving horrible service, a rating maintained by her replacement (and Wells' predecessor) Frank Bruni. As if to score home the point even more, Wells busts them down to not two but a measly single star. Ouch! Sounds like the service has improved but the food has really suffered: "If you asked these ingredients to speak for themselves, they would shrug and stare at the floor." A great image that reminds me of how teenagers react when they've been busted.

(3 and 4) "Bubbling From the Ferment" article by Jeff Gordinier, and "For Gastronomists, a Go-To Microbiologist," article by Peter Andrey Smith. These paired articles delve into the science of cooking, with Gordinier's article looking at the work of food writer Sandor Katz and Momofuku's exploration of fermentation, while Smith's article profiles Harvard microbiologist Rachel Dutton, whose research into food quality--rather than food safety--has turned her into a useful resource for creative chefs. The latter article in particular suggests some good reads for those interested in molecular gastronomy.

(5) "Great Food Without a Chef's Edge," How to Cook Everything column by Mark Bittman. Bittman's usually entertaining column is particularly great today, as he explores how to adapt a dish by Jean-Georges Vongerichten for a home cook: Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Fried Sushi Cakes with Scallops, Honey Soy Sauce and Chipotle Mayonnaise. I've been thinking about trying to make mayonnaise and now I really want to do it. Have to wonder how much ribbing Bittman is getting today for writing a recipe that calls for egg "yoke" instead of "yolk."

Washington Post

 (1) "The sweet life," Smoke Signals column by Jim Shahin. Shahin's cover story is a delightful read about Chef Andrew Evans, who used to helm the kitchen at the Inn at Easton but now makes his home at a barbecue joint aptly named BBQ Joint. The accompanying recipe for Low- and Smoked- Meatloaf sounds amazing. I would LOVE to eat a smoked meatloaf. That Hillbilly Blueberry Pie sounds good too.

(2) "Kimchi fest puts a pretty face on S. Korea's dish," article by Tim Carman. Dovetailing with the Times' fermentation coverage is this fun story by "Timchi" (as he was dubbed in today's chat) Carman about the classic Korean dish. I'll admit to enjoying the side of Kimchi offered at Mandu, as well as the kimchi on TaKorean's tacos, although I think both of those are pretty mild version of the dish (i.e. not fermented, at least not for long).

(3) "Rice-Cooker mac and Cheese," Dinner in Minutes column by Bonnie S. Benwick. Wouldn't Benwick's dish make the perfect accompaniment to Evans' smoked meatloaf? I've never used a rice cooker, but I'm such a fan of mac & cheese that if I ever got one, I'd be sure to make this.

(4) "Hospitality delivered in heaping helpings," First Bite by Tom Sietsema. Sietsema profiles Southern Hospitality, the new southern restaurant in Adams-Morgan. Although he found the food hit-and-miss, I'm intrigued. I bet the fried chicken with mac & cheese would go down great.

(5) "Make your cooking a class act," by Jane Touzalin. I've been thinking about taking a cooking class. I never had, and I'd probably learn a thing or five. The paper gives a flavor of this year's offerings, which the full list available online.

Verdict

The Washington Post. It's a tough call this week. As someone who follows the goings on of both Daniel Humm and David Chang, I found the Times' coverage quite interesting, but the Post's stories were more focused on cooking practical food, which I'm in the mood for these days. And I particularly liked the barbecue story, since it put me in the mood to grill next week, which I'll get to do while on vacation on the Oregon coast (which, by the way, means that there probably won't be a Food Section Fight next week, but I'll try to feature stories if I can).

Score

The New York Times: 19
The Washington Post: 17