He Cooks, She Cooks

My friend Mike is back with another great recipe. Here he spatchcocks the chicken so it roasts faster and more evenly, keeping the white meat just as juicy as the dark. See Mike’s other posts here.

This is a relatively simple and wonderfully delicious way to roast chicken.  The juices from the chicken baste the vegetables while they roast together, while the mustard and herbs de Provence pair very well. And it’s much quicker than many other roast chicken recipes!  The recipe was inspired by Jacques Pepin’s “Fast Food My Way” TV series.

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A “He Cooks” post from my friend Mike, who goes a little more traditional after sharing his Fried Beer-Battered Pickles and Five Spice Squash Soup recipes.

This is one of my absolute favorite winter meals. The hot chicken and root-vegetable filling is hearty and warming on a snowy day. There are two ways to make this pot pie:  from scratch, or with store bought stock, pie crust, and a rotisserie chicken. The latter is certainly faster and easier, but the former tastes better, and leaves you with a few quarts of homemade chicken stock for the freezer.

I made this one from scratch, and it has been a hit every time I’ve served it.  Everyone is always amazed that there aren’t any herbs or spices besides the salt and pepper. I think that’s the homemade stock, chicken fat, and rich root vegetables coming through.

If you want to make this from scratch I would recommend either starting early in the day or preparing the filling a day or two ahead and keeping it in the fridge until ready to bake.
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An added benefit of roasting a whole chicken is having the bones to make stock afterward. So last week I found myself with a flavorful broth but little else in the kitchen besides carrots and potatoes. Good thing anything can be made into soup.

I found a BBC recipe for Spicy Carrot and Potato Soup with Parsley Pesto. Well, the Argentine equivalent of parsley pesto is chimichurri, and I happened to have some made already.

The soup itself was simple: broth, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, two tomatoes for acidity, salt, pepper and a dried cayenne pepper. It’s nice on its own, but as I found with the bean and vegetable soup, a spoonful of pesto or chimichurri really enlivens it.

Soups previously: Vegetable with Chimichurri, Carrot and Cilantro, Sopa de Lima, Butternut Squash with Lime, Chili and Bacon

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With a big bunch of spinach wilting in the fridge, I went to Gourmet.com and sifted through a few pages of search results before I found this Vegetable Soup with Basil and Garlic Sauce. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

The first ingredient was fennel bulb, which is something I’ve been looking for a reason to buy lately since it is normally expensive in the States, but here I got a bulb for the equivalent of 33 cents. The next ingredient was pancetta, which usually indicates a recipe will be delicious, plus, I had some in the fridge. Carrots, cabbage, zuchinni, potatoes, onion? All things I already had. I picked up some fennel and white beans, and decided to skip or substitute anything else.

Instead of basil-garlic pistou, I used a version of chimichurri I had made the night before. Chimichurri is the It-sauce in the States right now, but it’s an Argentine classic made from chopped parsley, garlic, oil and a few other ingredients. Also making my soup a little more Argentine was the reggianito cheese I used in lieu of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

The addition of garlic-herb sauce is what really takes this soup to incredible heights. The combination of vegetables and beans and pancetta is quite good, but the broth would be a little bland without the shot of adrenaline from the pistou or chimichurri. As a whole, it’s a hearty but not too heavy soup, perfect for these cool days in Buenos Aires before spring arrives. Or for the start of fall, if you’re in the opposite hemisphere.

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I have finally had a banh mi! I first learned of the Vietnamese sandwich from the LA Times in November. Then it seemed everyone was talking about them. The NY Times, LAist and multiple foodbloggers. My sister said even my high school newspaper had an article about them. I loved the idea of so many flavors coming together, so I couldn’t wait to try it.

Since I hadn’t gotten a chance to seek one out when I was last in LA, I had to make my own. When the Mizzou Meat Market had fresh Braunschweiger on sale, I knew it was time. And what better time than National Picnic Day?

If my first banh mi wasn’t going to be from a Vietnamese expert, I wanted to do what I could to make mine as best as possible. The pork tenderloin and braunschweiger were from the university, which raises and butchers meat down the street from me. I bought an egg from the Root Cellar market, which sells products from local farms, and I made my own mayonnaise. I picked up a daikon from the Asian market downtown and pickled it with shredded carrots. I made the bread from scratch. I grew the cilantro in my front yard.

I wasn’t messing around with this sandwich.

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What do you do when your best friend is sick in the spring? You find a comforting soup that has fresh flavors. Knowing Kat wasn’t feeling well, I searched her giant The Soup Bible for “light and refreshing” recipes. Carrot and Cilantro Soup was one of the few that was still served warm. It sounded great, so the next day I came up with a version of my own. I didn’t have The Soup Bible, and I like making up recipes anyway.
As with nearly every soup, I started with carrots, celery and onions (mirepoix, if you will). I also diced some rose potatoes to give the soup enough weight to stand alone as dinner.

I know coriander and cumin work really well with carrots, but didn’t want the cumin to overwhelm the soup. According to The Flavor Bible, cumin is a medium weight spice, with moderate to loud volume and a heating function. Ground coriander seed, however, has light weight, moderate volume and a cooling function. Perfect! (Also, I am aware that I mentioned two cookbooks with bible in the title. I won’t dwell on what that says about my relationship with food.)

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