Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts

Monday, October 6, 2008

i spent all evening in the kitchen

i spent almost my whole evening in the kitchen. it was a cold, rainy evening & i bought chicken thighs (non-medicated ones, in fact) for the sole intent & purpose of making chicken noodle soup. you'll notice that i only took a picture of the soup PRE cooking. it looks prettier before all the veggies turn brown. but luckily it tastes better after its all cooked. i'm not one for raw chicken broth. not very appealing. chicken soup alone isn't filling, however, so i made more biscuits. the ones i blogged about yesterday. then, while i was waiting for other family members to come home & dine with me, i made some humous. but i added sundried tomotoes to it, which is quite tasty.



i don't have a recipe for the soup or the humous, though. the soup is pretty easy, but it changes every single time. the basics are: chicken (either raw, or the carcus of a roasted chicken... mmm carcus...), veggies (like celery, carrot, onion), herbs (dill, thyme, rosemary, parsley...), salt, pepper, water. boil it; simmer it; strain it; pick the chicken off the bones. and cook up some noodles to go with. egg noodles are great, but if you can't do wheat, or want to try something different, rice noodles are also fantastic. the kind that you find in the asian section of the grocery store.

Monday, July 28, 2008

rosemary-lemon white bean dip


my obsession with rosemary has taken up again. i made rosemary-lemon white bean dip again, but this time i had time to take pictures. and pictures i took.

i found the recipe while trying to find ways to use up the rosemary i got last time at my local farmer's market. i bought some more fresh rosemary on saturday (along with sage, lemon verbena & fresh garlic). and seriously, the fresh garlic was amazing. i'd never had it before, but it smelled great, and i'm pretty sure tasted more amazing than the regular dried garlic i normally use. (also, the lemon verbena makes fantastic tea)

back to the dip. i'm sure you can follow the link to get the recipe, but i'll copy it here with a few modifications i made. which aren't many.



ingredients:

* 2 cups cooked white beans, like cannelini, drained but moist (i used 1 can of white cannelini beans)
* 1 to 3 cloves garlic, peeled
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
* 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
* 2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary
* Grated rind of 2 lemons (i used only 1 lemon, & i added about half of the juice from 1 lemon)

- Blend the beans & garlic (start with 1 clove & taste to see if you need more) & a pinch of salt. (add some of the oil & lemon juice if your food processor doesn't blend dry stuff very well). process until the mixture is smooth. then taste & see if you want more garlic. if so, add more, blend more.
- Scoop the bean mixture into a bowl & beat in (with a spoon or spatula) the chopped rosemary, lemon zest, & the rest of the olive oil, along with salt & pepper to taste.
- Garnish, & serve with chips (i prefer rice chips)