Usually called the doctor. Or the caretaker.

maybe 200 grams/half a pound of button mushrooms (or anything else that strikes your fancy)
a shallot
salt (some)
sufficient butter (3-4 TBS?)
allspice (some)
flour (enough)
beef stock (300 mL?)
coffee cream (200 mL? or so?)
black pepper
brandy (2 splashes)

A bunch of little bowls for the shallot and the shroomies, a knife, a cutting board, a couple of spoons, a big fork, and a saucepan (lid optional).

Dice the shallot. Put it in a bowl. Wipe the mushrooms down, stem them, and mince the stems. Put the result in a little bowl. Pick the smallest caps and slice them. Put the sliced caps in a separate little bowl. Make a determination in whatever way pleases you about the rest of the caps and either slice and add them to the slice bowl, or cut them a bit finer (I sliced one way across the cap then turned them and sliced the other way, making them long skinny pieces) and put them in yet a third bowl.

Now you're ready. Put the saucepan on the stove on medium high heat and put the butter and salt in the saucepan. Slosh it briskly several times like you do. When the butter is hot and foamy but not browning, put the shallots in. Slosh it briskly and let it cook till the shallots are at the proper stage of doneness. Add the stems and slosh. Now would be a good time to add the allspice, though I forgot till the last minute and it was still nice. Add the skinny bits of mushroom. At this point you will need to start stirring. It will look like you are shy on butter. DON'T ADD MORE. Everything will be fine. Go drink some orange juice. Come back and add the slices. Stir. Still refrain from panicking about the lack of liquid. All shall be revealed (and dampened) in the fulness of time. Stir everything around some until you are happy.

Sprinkle the flour into the mushroom-shallot-butter goo. Stir briskly with the fork to avoid lumps. You should have already taken the top or whatever off your stock so you can just pour it in at the right moment. Pour the stock in in several long glugs, stirring between. Your soup looks like chunky wallpaper paste, but you should not worry. Now would be a good time to turn the heat down a bit. Drink more orange juice and let it cook for a few minutes.

Add the cream and stir. Let it simmer and add the pepper and a few splashes of brandy. Stir. You have created soup.

Cut a few slices of rosemary-olive-oil bread and a generous chunk of brie, pour the soup into a soup bowl or a big wide mug and put the bread and brie around the matching plate. Eat it while listening to Ra Ra Riot. It is nice paired with OJ with a splash of brandy, but what wouldn't be?

This will serve one hearty eater or two people with my appetite. Decreasing would be difficult, but soups increase nicely, so invite lots of people over and go nuts.

My first attempt at minestrone.

3 cloves garlic
1 shallot

Finely dice and frizzle in olive oil with salt and pepper. While this is happening, slice 3 ribs celery and one medium carrot. Cut a zucchini (about 8 inches) in half, then slice in half lengthwise and slice into thin half-moons. Put all this in with the garlic, shallots, and olive oil.

Add about 400-450 mL beef broth, a large can of diced tomatoes and the liquid, and one can of mixed beans. Strip and dice a scant handful of fresh oregano and add. Salt and pepper to taste, adding a dash of sugar.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer. Add 3 handfuls dried pasta (I am using penne) and continue simmering until done.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Tasty Tuesday, the May edition, featured:
( Bread, soup, lemon cake, failcakes, brownies )

radiatore pasta (boil in salted water as usual etc)

bechamel until it is enough
about a cup of shredded cheddar
a good lump of bleu cheese, crumbled
salt and pepper

Stir the two together in an oven safe bowl with a cover, top with breadcrumbs and dabs of butter like a crumble, cover, bake at 350 for 20 minutes, then uncover and bake for as long as it takes to wash the dishes by hand. Remove from oven and nom.

For next time: more kinds of cheese, a little dab of mustard, possibly some cayenne pepper, and hopefully washing the dishes in the dishwasher (our dishwasher is supposed to be fixed early next week!).

I made black bean soup the other day, and did it a little differently than usual. It turned out really nicely, so I thought I'd preserve it for posterity.

A little butter in the bottom of a saucepan
Half a carrot, sliced
garlic
some onion if you like (I didn't have any)

Saute it till the carrot is bright (and probably till the onion is translucent), then add

450 mL of beef broth
a can of black beans
chili powder (a palmful)
cumin (a palmful)
salt and pepper
Worcestershire sauce

Cook it for a while, and then blend it with your immersion blender till it's smooth and let it simmer a bit before serving.

For dinner tonight I felt like comfort food, so I made penne in sauce Mornay.

Set a pan large enough for the penne and full of salted water on to boil. Chop two large button mushrooms, grate 50 or 75 grams of gouda, and slice up three or so sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil. When the water first starts to bubble, throw a lump of butter (2 tablespoons, maybe?) into a saucepan and melt it. When the water is boiling, add the penne. Return to the butter for the nonce. When it is melted but not bubbling, sprinkle in a generously heaped serving spoon of white flour and whisk it briskly in. Add some milk (goat in this case) and whisk until your arm falls off or it becomes a bechamel, whichever happens first. Add more milk until you have the volume and/or consistency desired (about a cup should be plenty). Add the grated cheese and continue whisking. Taste and season with salt, pepper, dijon mustard, etc--whatever you like. At this point the pasta should be done. Drain it, don't rinse, and fold it hot into the Mornay, then adding the sliced mushrooms and the sun-dried tomatoes. Remove from heat and let stand for a few minutes so that the mushrooms soften and the pasta is cool enough to eat.

Gobble down, wish it were not so filling so you could eat even more of it.

A double handful of dried pasta is enough for two meals for me.

Okay, so here was the soup.

( Soup of the evening, beautiful soup. )

I was really pleased with how this worked out, although I would have preferred a thicker soup (see above re more flour next time) and I think maybe white onions rather than yellow, next time. I will definitely be making this again. I may also experiment with verginiamaro's white version, which uses vegetable broth and sherry instead of beef broth and (optional) red wine, and is highly, highly tasty.

Success.

Basically, you want at least a 1:1 ratio for the water and chickpea flour, and then olive oil till it seems right.

I did 2 cups warm water, 2 1/2 cups chickpea flour, about 3 TBS olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and a little cumin. Let the batter rest for a bit, and then pour it into a pan with rather a lot of olive oil in the bottom and bake it. I tried it at 400° until the top was solid, first. It was done all the way through, but it broke when I tried to take it out.

I am trying the second batch at 275° for more like half an hour and we'll see.

It is really delicious.

However, in the course of baking things for lunch, my blood sugar ended up dropping, and because I was eating cecina and pesto ham and drinking unsweetened iced tea, it just wasn't rising (protein and complex carbs really don't break down fast enough to avert Blood Sugar Crisis) I ended up eating a spoon of honey. :P I hate having to do that. I mean, it hits fast, but...ugh.

Wu ate a green olive and pronounced it Food.

So I tried this cecina recipe I found online.

1 cup chickpea flour, 2 cups warm water, some olive oil, salt and pepper. Totally no biggie, right?

WRONG. I have no idea what kind of chickpea flour he's using, but this does not work.

I hunted around further (after adding a BUNCH more chickpea flour), and I think someone read a recipe in metric (500 mL warm water, 200 GRAMS of chickpea flour) and thought that a mL and a g were the same thing.

The first batch is currently cooking. We'll see how it does.

So, because hypoglycemia makes me obsessive yet easily distracted, I went into the kitchen to make lunch and instead washed some dishes, cleaned out and reorganized two drawers, threw a bunch of pointless crap away, made a cup of tea, and assembled froot for the incipient cake.

Froot:

Sufficient frozen pie cherries to make a generous cup, partially thawed and sliced
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup dark currants
1/2 cup pitted dates, chopped coarsely¹
5/8 cup kalamata string figs, chopped coarsely²
1 orange
1 lemon

I think the rest of it is pretty self explanatory, but here's what I did with the orange and lemon.

Choose fragrant, colorful citrus fruits with plump peels. Scrub them well, and cut off any bad places on the orange's peel. Then carefully score and remove the peel in 4 petals. Cut the petals into slices about 1/4 inch wide and add to bowl. Reserve fruit. Slice lemon into thin slices, removing seeds and putting slices into bowl. Separate the orange into 3-4 large sections, eat one, and then cut the others into large chunks and add to bowl.

Now you have a medium sized Pyrex (or whatever) mixing bowl that is chock full of fruit. Drizzle over it 2 TBS of pomegranate molasses, add about 2 tsp vanilla and then fill to within 1/2 inch or so of top of fruit with hot water. Add some nutmeg, cinnamon, a little clove, and allspice. Toss. Sprinkle with 1 1/2 TBS of good quality cane sugar (something with a little molasses flavor to it still) and leave it sit for awhile.

I'll tell you the rest when I get there. :)

For lunch, I had half a pita toasted and one side of the pocket spread with hummus and the other with pesto. Then I jammed in a handful of spinach, 3 sliced mushrooms, and some gruyere and topped with more hummus and pesto.

Mmmmm.



____
1. Do not, for the love of Demeter and Persephone, buy cheapo grocery store chopped dates full of chemicals and coated with fructose powder, okay? If you do, just don't even talk to me. That's disgusting.

2. This is about one row in the little two-row tray I got. You need the extra because you will not be able to resist eating some when you see how gorgeous they look as you cut them.