Homemade Tortilla Chips with Faux Hummus

A couple weeks ago my friend told me about an appetizer she'd had at a local restaurant... she told me it would be super simple to recreate at home and that it was, in fact, incredibly delicious. Then she proceeded to make it for me. (Yea!)

This is what she did... she mixed some local lime-infused olive oil and good balsamic vinegar into plain store-bought hummus. And that was all there was to it. Except for the eating part. We started dipping cubes of Ciabatta bread in it and I almost couldn't stop. Let me tell you... I fell for that stuff in a bad way. Who needs dinner when you've got a bowl of that in front of you?

Not too long after, I found myself staring at all the tubs of prepared hummus at Trader Joe's. Why not just make my own? After a quick glance at the ingredients, I grabbed some tahini and headed home to research recipes. It wasn't until a day or two later that I noticed the container was labeled Tahini "Sauce". Harrumph. So much for following the recipe for real honest-to-goodness hummus.* Time to just wing it.  The tahini sauce was made from olive oil, salt, and lemon juice, in addition to you know, actual tahini. Well with all that, I was half-way to hummus already...

Black Bean And Tomato Soup

Did you know that black beans stain almost as badly blueberries? Well, they do. I know... I've been scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing dark stains off the once creamy white-ish interior of my enameled cast iron Dutch oven all afternoon.*

I made this really great black bean soup you see, and I tried to use my Dutch oven to make it in. Now, while it probably might have worked, the pot was so full that I got a little nervous. I grabbed my big stock pot and transferred the soup over — now it could have some wiggle (and slosh) room and I could have some peace of mind.

Uuuu-mami!**
This soup just rocks on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start. It's amazingly easy, super affordable, makes a ton, and tastes fantastic. Oh, and one of my very favorite recipe terms applies as well... "largely unattended". That means I get to go do something else for a while and when I come back dinner is ready. What's not to love about that, right? 

It has a big meaty rich flavor, or as Hubs described it, "Mmm, it's delightful!". Ain't it amazing what a couple slices of bacon can do to a soup? Well, he loved it and so did I.... and that's good... we have a lot of it. Or did I mention that part already?

Slow & Saucy Faked Baked Beans

Not too long ago we had another potluck BBQ to go to. It's not always easy to decide what to bring to these get-togethers, but this time it seemed obvious. With grilled chicken, coleslaw and cornbread already on board, it was like one of those test questions that have you "complete the set". Seriously, what else would go so well with that line-up? Yep, this menu needed baked beans in a "you complete me" kind of way. In fact, what would Autumn barbecues, potlucks, and tailgating be without baked beans? They're such a hearty and satisfying side dish and perfectly complement just about any grilled meat. So how is it that I've never made them before now? Just another of life's little mysteries I guess.

Unconstrained by any set-in-stone ideas of how they ought to be done, I looked through what seemed like a thousand recipes for one that would work within my time frame and (most importantly) my budget. The most promising recipe was made and foisted upon my friends. It was pretty good. But not great. I made a few changes here and there, then cooked up another batch the following week. What I ended up with was a pretty tasty pot of beans. Unfortunately my friends didn't get to taste those. I wish they had. That second batch had just enough sweetness, just enough tang, and a heap of smoky depth. But they'll just have to take my word for it.

 

The real beauty of these Slow & Saucy Baked Beans is that they aren't baked at all; they cook in a Crock Pot while you do other fun things. Unorthodox cooking method aside, they're far more "from scratch" than most baked-bean recipes since they start out with dried beans instead of canned. While canned beans are certainly a convenient choice, that convenience comes at a price.* If you're making a big ol' pot o' beans for a crowd, it just makes sense (or should I say "cents") to start with dried.

Slow & Saucy Baked Beans
Adapted from: Saucy Baked Beans on page 129 in the BHG Biggest Book Of Slow Cooker Recipes (2002)

1 lb. dry navy beans or other small white beans
8 cups water
6 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
1 onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1-1/4 cups water
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1. Pick over the dried beans for any broken ones or any pebbles. Rinse the beans well and drain.
2. Add the beans and 8 cups of water to a Dutch oven or other heavy pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 2 minutes. Take the pot off the heat, cover with the lid and let stand for 1 hour. Stir beans occasionally and check for doneness.
3. While beans are soaking, cook the bacon in a skillet. Put the cooked bacon into the slow cooker. Sauté the chopped onion in the leftover bacon fat in the skillet, then add it to the slow cooker. Next, sauté the chopped red bell pepper in the same skillet and add it to the slow cooker too.
4. When the beans are tender, drain them well and add to the slow cooker. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the soy sauce and vinegar. Stir well.
5. Cover the crock pot and cook on Low for 8-10 hours, or on High for 4-5 hours. Just before serving, stir in the soy sauce and apple cider vinegar.

Other baked-bean recipes that look really good...

• CrockPot Boston Baked Beans from AYear Of Slow Cooking 
• The Best Baked Beans Ever at The Pioneer Woman Cooks start with good old baked beans from a can... but that's only the beginning
• Kemp's Black Beans on epicurious.com have a short but intriguing list of ingredients

*For roughly the cost of one can of beans, I can get a pound of dried beans that, once cooked, will yield the equivalent of 3-4 cans. Just how much is that "convenience" worth?

The Great Summer Pantry & Freezer Clearance: Day 3

Some recipes (like the two soups I just made) always seem to need a bit of tweaking here and there until they're just right. I expect that. After all, no two people's sense of taste (and food preferences) are the same, so no single recipe will bowl everybody over without some modification. Thus whenever I try out a new recipe, there is always that element of chance: what if I go to all the trouble to make this and I don't like it?* The good thing is that it probably won't be all that bad; it looked good enough on paper to want to try it in the first place, right? With a little adjustment of the seasonings, it'll at least be edible (even if you decide that it's not one you'd make again).

The Great Summer Pantry & Freezer Clearance: Day 1

In my freezer you will find a big bag for collecting veggie scraps and trimmings in. When the bag is full, I make vegetable stock and then freeze that to use later. All in all, it's not a bad system. Unless I haven't made soup for awhile... and just finished cooking up another batch of stock. Clearly, I needed to make some soup. What I wanted was a soup that wasn't too heavy. It is summer after all, though most evenings are chilly. I also wanted a soup that didn't have a shopping list of ingredients. Did I mention that I have beans in the freezer too? Yep, two kinds.  Is it soup yet?  Almost...

A Tale Of Two Soupies

It's been my observation that a great many people with a public school education from a particular decade or two, were required to read Charles Dickens in their Jr. High/Middle School English classes. The Dickens novels they read varied with the school, the year, the teacher, and the city, and it became something of a party-lull conversation starter for me. "So, which Charles Dickens novel did you have to read?". The other person would look at me strangely for a moment or two* while it sunk in, and then you'd see the understanding in their eyes as they nodded and replied, "Great Expectations... how 'bout you?". If they hadn't been required/forced to read Dickens, then I knew that they were much younger than myself or they'd had alternative schooling (which meant they were much much younger than myself). People much older were usually obvious to spot and didn't need to answer silly questions in order for me to guess their age-range. But if necessary, I would just fall back on the "Who was your favorite James Bond" or "What was your first rock concert" line of questioning** to instantly peg them.

For the record, my English class read Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities. As I was forced to read it under duress (much preferring my beloved Ray Bradbury paperbacks), my brain absorbed precious little from my requisite Dickens. I wonder if I should reread it. I've come to appreciate Dickens more over the years, and it might make my English teacher smile (wherever she is). That would be nice for her, since she'd no doubt be frowning a great deal over my poor grammar and sentence structure. Ah well, you can lead a horse to water... right? Yeah, that was me. A stubborn horse suffering through page after page of A Tale Of Two Cities. It was a pretty dreary tale. Downright depressing as I recall. There were lots of downtrodden peasants and ignoble noblemen, tragedy, revenge, knitting needles and guillotines. Quelle horreur! Not the sort of thing I want to be reading right now.

The weather outside is frightful enough; I want comfort and warmth from my reading matter as well as from the meals I prepare. Homemade soup really is the best thing for these cold and blustery days, but I couldn't decide which of these two soups to make. Even indecision is a decision, so I decided not to decide... and made both. Like a lot of soups, their ingredient lists were not long, nor were their preparations complex. Peasant food (or as I like to call it, "pleasant food"). Flavorful, filling, and cheap. And (a drum roll if you please)... I didn't have to go to the store for anything! Which is just fine with me, since it's absolutely raining buckets. In other words... perfect soup weather, regardless of which one we decide to have tonight.  Vive la difference!

Roasted Garlic And Potato Soup from thekitchn.com
See also: Roasted Garlic Soup on page 66 of How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

My Notes: Used one small head of garlic, dried thyme, 4 sm-med red potatoes, a chunk of Romano rind. Had no chives. Salt & pepper to taste. Tasted good but needed something more. Added a couple of glugs of vermouth. That really made it, adding another layer flavor and deepening the whole. Recipe didn't say when to add cheese/rind, so I added it with the potatoes. Potatoes took WAY longer than 10 minutes to soften. More like 40 minutes.

Soppressata Pasta Fagioli from seriouseats.com
See also: Pasta e Fagioli on page 52 of How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

My Notes: Made this without the soppressata. Used a little oo with the onions. Sliced the garlic cloves in half and fished them out later. Omitted the pepper flakes. Used 2-14.5 cans of diced tomatoes. Used canned chicken stock. Added 2 tsp Sundance dried herb blend. Salt & pepper to taste. Pre-cooked navy beans in the slow-cooker. Used 16 oz. elbow macaroni, cooked separately then added in when dishing soup into the bowls.

*I get this a lot.
**Roger Moore and The Go Go's, respectively. Now you know everything.
Quelle horreur!: French, meaning "How awful!"  Pronounced: Kel Uh-Ruhr (or something to that effect).

Kicking the Can (of beans)

We always stock up on cans of black beans when we find a really good sale on them. They're great for adding to quesadillas and burritos, and they're super healthy too. We learned some things the hard way though. The sale/store brand beans had ingredients other than just beans and water (and I don't mean spices). They're canned right? What else do you need in there?

What really got our goat was that after draining the "liquid" from the can, we were left with half a can or less of actual beans. By comparison, the regular/name brand cans of beans had less "ingredients" and more beans. Sometimes, every so often, you do get more when you pay more. More of the good and/or less of the bad. Of course, good healthy food does seem to cost more on the whole than the unhealthy junk. So that really shouldn't surprise me. But... beans?

Well, we finally finished off the last of those bargain beans the other day and it hit me that instead of buying more cans, I could just buy dried beans and cook them myself. And in the interest of our utility bill, I found that I could cook them in the crock pot for even less. Thanks to the instructions linked-to below, I have pre-measured baggies of cooked black beans in our freezer, and more space in our pantry. Not to mention more coin in our pocket... and that's always a good thing.

Cooking Dried Beans In The Slow Cooker from the Crockpot365 blog

Ham Hock Bean Soup aka Navy Bean Soup

Went chasing after a memory today. Recent coversations about moms, comfort food and cold weather got me thinking about my mom's navy bean soup. While she's looking through her bazillion cookbooks for the recipe she used, I decided to forge ahead and see what I could come up with. What I found was Ham Hock Bean Soup. It had all the required elements, and it seemed a lot like the one I remember. Not that I've ever made it. Mom made it, we ate it and loved it.

This would be the first soup I've ever made from scratch. How bizarre is that? There are so many things like that, basic things, that I've never cooked before. I feel like such a newbie in the kitchen sometimes. But now I can say that I've made soup! The Hubs thought it seemed like a really involved and complicated recipe. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. I don't know... never made soup before! There were lots of different stages to this soup, to be sure, but it was pretty straightforward. And it was pretty delicious too. There were no complaints when all was said and done. The house smelled fabulous all afternoon, and we both had seconds. I'm sure there are shortcuts, but I don't want to know about them.*

We all grew up hearing that "soup is good food". And it really is. But not from a can. Or a jar. Soup from scratch takes time, and it's main ingredient is love. Cheesy... yeah, bear with me though, because it's true. If it wasn't, I'd just grab a can opener and be done with it. Most soups are made from a few simple, even humble, ingredients (it almost doesn't get much humbler than a ham hock, not in my kitchen anyway), most of which are already in the pantry. That leaves: time. And to spend that much time preparing food means putting love into it. You must love the process or the people who will be nourished by it. Or both.
 

Ham Hock Bean Soup, page 61, Sunset: Homemade Soups, 1986**  

(similar recipe here from Cooking Light: Hearty Navy Bean Soup )

Notes: The day before starting the soup, I soaked the beans for 6 hours, then drained, rinsed, and drained again. Stored them in the fridge until I was ready to use them. Used homemade chicken stock that my sister made during one of her visits (I won't say how very long ago that was, let's just say it wasn't made in this kitchen), dried beans from the bulk bin at the store, and my own dried rosemary (from that same other residence). Tried to chop the dried rosemary into smaller pieces and it flew around like a cloud of confetti! Don't chop... just crumble into the pot! Used a stick blender directly in the pot instead of trying to pour half into a blender like the recipe suggests. I may not use it often, but that stick blender has more than earned the real estate it takes up in my kitchen cupboard.

The recipe made 6 servings. I divided up what we didn't eat; two servings in the fridge and two in the freezer. I do wish it had made more, for all the work that went into it. But now that I've done it, it won't seem like so much effort the next time. Realized the next day that I forgot to add the salt and pepper at the end. It didn't need it! While the pepper might add a nice extra note, the ham hocks were plenty salty and neither of us noticed any absence of flavor.

*Do you know that the only packaging that I had to open, was the plastic wrap over the foam tray from the ham hocks? If I'd purchased them from a proper butcher counter, they probably would've been wrapped up in paper instead. When all was said and done, the only things I had to throw in the trash were to do with the ham hocks: the aforementioned packaging, the bones, skin, and fat. Since I'm going to make this again and am not willing to forgo the ham hocks... I'd better find an "old school" butcher counter! As for the rest: the produce bags get reused, and the veg scraps went into a bag I keep in the freezer for future vegetable stock.

**Now I know this isn't mom's recipe because of the publishing date. It tasted a whole lot like her soup though, and sensory memories like that don't lie.

Simply Smashing White Bean Dip

Made this dip for a party we went to today. It's hard to say whether it was a success or not. Some of it was eaten, certainly, but there was plenty left to take home. Of course, there was a ton of food at this get-together. So much that whole sub-sections of party food neglected to make it onto my plate. Assuming that other people had a similar experience, I should take it as a positive sign that a few people did indeed try my dip. There was no real feedback other than when I turned around and saw Hubs dipping pieces of bread into the bowl of dip... before we'd left for the party. Uh, yes. He did.

I thought that this dip would be a perfect choice, given that the ingredients were few, and the technique simple (even considering that it involved the use of the food processor), and in addition, it sounded really tasty.

All we needed at the store were beans and lemons. There wasn't time to cook the beans from scratch, so we bought a can of navy beans and a can of cannellinis. We also picked up some coffee and steel cut oats while we were there. "Hey, we should get some dried beans to cook up for soup this week. We'll need carrots and celery for that"...

Can you believe I forgot the lemons?* Don't answer that. Hubs graciously went back to the store while I started making the dip. He came back with eyes wide open. He'd never purchased lemons in a grocery store evidently. Why would you, when you know lots of people with lemon trees? Of course, when you move away, even a few miles, all of that is moot. The supermarket is closer than your old friends.

What did you say? Why yes, we do have a lemon tree! Funny you mentioned it. The lemons on it don't seem to be getting any bigger or yellower though. They've been green so long that twice now I've accidentally referred to it as "the lime tree" and Hubs had to correct me.

Well, he came home with those pricey store-bought lemons and went straight past me to the back yard, where he proceeded to show them to our little tree while yelling, "GROW FASTER!" at it. Really loudly.

Simply Smashing White Bean Dip
Adapted from: Rosemary-Lemon White Bean Dip by Mark Bittman

2 - 15 oz. cans of white beans (3 cups)
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
3/4 cup olive oil, plus 1 Tblsp
1 "three-finger" pinch of salt, plus more to taste
3-4 grinds of black pepper
2 lemons, zested
1 good squeeze of lemon juice
1 Tblsp fresh rosemary, finely minced

Drain the two cans of beans and put them into the bowl of a food processor along with the garlic and salt. While the machine is running, drizzle the olive oil into it and continue processing until smooth. Taste the dip at this point, add the black pepper and any additional salt if needed. Pulse a couple of times to distribute the seasonings evenly. Using a rubber spatula, scrape the dip into a bowl and mix in the lemon zest, juice, rosemary and a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Garnish the bowl with a leftover sprig of rosemary and serve with raw veggies or little toasts (see notes).

Notes: Each 15 oz. can contained 1-1/2 cups of beans, drained. Since the original recipe called for 2 cups, and I had 3, I decided to make half a recipe more and use up all the beans. I kept all the other quantities pretty much the same except for the olive oil which I increased roughly by half. The Hubs sliced up a baguette I had bought at the farmer's market yesterday, brushed the slices lightly with oil and popped them under the broiler for a few (watching the whole time and flipping them over once the first side started to get color).

*We were there for two items and I forgot one. Proof that my memory/retention is holding strong at 50%. Note to self: WRITE IT DOWN!... AND BRING THE LIST WITH YOU!