Minestrone Soup

Ingredients

1 medium onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
3 medium carrots, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups chicken, beef or vegetable stock
15 oz canned fire roasted diced tomatoes
15 oz canned kidney beans, drained
15 oz canned chickpeas, drained
28 ounces canned crushed tomatoes
6 oz tomato paste
2 tablespoons minced basil
2 tablespoons minced oregano
2 tablespoons minced Italian parsley
2 (fresh) bay leaves
1 1/2 cups shredded cabbage
1 cup frozen or fresh green beans, diced
2 small to medium zucchini, diced
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

8 ounces small, cooked pasta

Directions:

For the slow cooker:

Add the garlic, tomato, celery, stock, tomatoes, beans, tomato paste, and spices to a 4 quart slow cooker. Cook on low heat for 6-8 hours. Add shredded cabbage, green beans and zucchini and turn to high for the last hour. Stir in the pasta before serving.

Stovetop: Saute the onions, garlic, carrots and celery until soft. Add the remaining ingredients and heat though.

My thoughts:

Around this time of year I always get a lot of requests for healthy meals. Soup is always a great choice because it is easy to add lots of vegetables. There are a lot of different ways to make minestrone (I even posted a different one here about six years ago) but this one is I think my favorite. I like the combination of chickpeas and kidney beans and the green beans and cabbage (especially when added towards the end in the slow cooker version) really make it taste fresh. While this is a vegan soup, I like to serve with a tiny hunk of sharp, aged cheddar in the bottom of a bowl. It melts and adds a tasty ribbon of cheese to each bite.

Green Bean Salad with Tangerine Vinaigrette

Ingredients:
2 lb "French" green beans (the skinny kind, AKA haricot verts), steamed
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/4 cup dried cranberries or cherries or a mixture of the two
2-3 strips thick cut bacon, cooked and crumbled (optional)

dressing:
1 large shallot, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon pepper sherry
1 tablespoon tangerine zest
2 tablespoons tangerine juice
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
salt
pepper

Directions:
Whisk together all of the dressing ingredients or shake it in a dressing shaker until smooth and emulsified. Set aside. Toss together the other ingredients in a large bowl. Drizzle with dressing. Toss again. Serve hot, warm or cold.

My thoughts:

Green beans are one of the few vegetables I don't mind buying or eaten after being frozen. I also don't mind peas, spinach and home-frozen corn. Like the other, green beans, if frozen properly, retain much if not all of their texture and flavor. Squash is wonderful of course but they about this time of year, I am already hoping for something different. I created this dish to bring to dinner because it is equally good hot, cold or warm. I hate having to go to someone's house and have to cook a dish from the beginning and in the winter, it is tricky to keep a vegetable dish warm for a trip over a few minute drive. Frankly, I prefer to bring a potato dish or dessert or even rolls/bread but it was my mother doing the asking and I was tasked with vegetables. And rolls, but that was easy. My family is full of pickier eaters than I am so I wanted to make something that was a little different that what they might not normally eat but not anything intimidating. Yet another reason the humble green bean was a perfect choice. Pretty much anyone will eat a green bean. They rest of the ingredients weren't anything to be scared of either but come together in such away that it is anything but boring.

Slow Cooked Beef Stew (with Mushrooms & Vegetables)

Ingredients:
group #1
2 lb beef top round or sirloin, cubed
1 large onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
3 carrots cut into coins
2 russet potatoes, peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 portobello mushroom caps, cubed

group #2
1 cup red wine
14 oz canned diced tomatoes
1/2-1 teaspoon marjoram
1/2-1 teaspoon crushed rosemary
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

group #3
1 cup frozen or fresh green beans
1/3 cup frozen or fresh corn kernals

Directions:
Saute the ingredients from group #1 in a bit of canola oil until the vegetables are softened and the meat is lightly browned. Add to a 4 quart slow cooker. If the meat and vegetables gave off a lot of liquid and it isn't too oily, I add a little less than 1/4 cup of it into the slow cooker. Add the ingredients from group #2. Stir. Cover and cook for 7-8 hours. Stir in the ingredients from group #3. Cover and cook for an additional 1/2 hr. Stir and serve.

My thoughts:

This recipe is inspired by a stew my grandpop made when I was growing up. I don't think he ever even heard of a portobello mushroom but his stews always had a lot of vegetables. He would make them and use up whatever vegetables he had on hand and no two stews were the same. Some times they'd have tomatoes, some times green beans, some times corn. My favorites had green beans for some reason. He would cook it for hours on the stove top but when I was working on my cookbook last summer I realized how easy it was to make stew in the slow cooker. I don't have to keep an eye on it like Grandpop did and the results are just as good. I know browning meat in the morning is the last thing I feel like doing but it does make for a richer final product. What I do is cut up all the vegetables the night before and put them in a ziplock or Tupperware. I try to buy pre-cubed meat if it looks good but if I don't, I cube it and pack it in a separate container. That way in the morning all I have to do is shake the ingredients into the pan, brown them for a few minutes and then pop everything in the slow cooker.

Zydeco Beans

Ingredients:
3 lb French green beans, ends trimmed (also called haricots verts)
3 cups water
3 cups white vinegar
1/3 cup pickling salt
1/2 cup minced fresh dill
1 head garlic, peeled
1 1/2 tablespoons yellow mustard seeds
1 1/2 tablespoons dill seed
1 tablespoon red chile flakes
1/2 teaspoon celery seed

Directions:
Prep 6 pint jars and lids. Whisk together the spices in a small bowl. Set aside. Bring the salt, vinegar and water to a boil. Meanwhile, stuff the warm jars with the green beans. The easiest way to do this is to lay them on their sides and fill them horizontally. Drop in one or two cloves of garlic. Evenly distribute the spices among each jar. Sprinkle with dill. Lightly shake the jars to help distribute the spices. Pour the boiling liquid into the jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Process in a boiling water bath for 8 minutes. Allow to pickle for one week (at least!) before opening.


Note: A great source for canning information is the Blue Book guide to preserving. I highly recommend it for learning how to can. Or check out this online guide.

My thoughts:

I honestly had never had zydeco beans until I made these. I had first heard about them in a novel and they sounded great (Spicy pickled green beans? Yes, please!) but there aren't exactly a staple here in Baltimore. So of course I had to make my own. I am not 100% sure these are 100% authentic but they are so delicious. Seriously, the best pickle I have ever had. I may or might not have eaten 2 whole jars in less than a week. I'm working on my third and honestly, I was sort of hoping that my mom wouldn't like the jar I gave her so she'd give it back to me and I could eat them. Isn't that horrible? Next time I am doing two batches. Or three. Maybe more.

So, what are you waiting for? Go make these pickles! They will keep for a year on the shelf but I hardly think they will last that long. They are great as a snack or as a drink or salad garnish. You can even use the prepped French green beans that some supermarkets sell and save yourself the hassle of cutting off the ends.

Fennel & Three Bean Salad

Ingredients:
15 oz cannelloni beans
15 oz dark red kidney beans
1/4 to 1/3 lb steamed or blanched green beans
1/2 onion, sliced very thinly
1/2 fennel bulb, sliced very thinly


for the dressing:
1 (large) clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon finely chopped basil
salt
pepper


Directions:
Whisk together all of the dressing ingredients or pulse them quickly in a blender or Vita-Mix)until a emulsified dressing forms. Drizzle over the salad ingredients and toss gently. I like to allow it to sit for 1 or so hours before serving. Serve at room temperature and refrigerate any leftovers.

My thoughts:

I've been thinking about three bean salads for a while now. I read a mention of one on a nonfood blog I read and vaguely remembered my mother eating a(jarred) three-bean salad when I was a child. I sort of remember it being sweet & pickley and not liking it. I still wasn't sure about the sweet + pickled part of it but a salad made with my favorite beans was appealing. I noticed I had some fennel slowly decomposing in the fridge so on impulse I sliced it up (and my finger on my mandolin, ow) and it really was the perfect addition. Rather than going down the sweet and pickled route I made a very fresh tasting Italian-inspired vinaigrette. I think this might be my new favorite cold salad: simple, delicious and rather impressive looking.

Update: I am happy to say that the salad was just as tasty today as lunch as it was yesterday as a side dish for dinner.