Black Bean Soup and Cornbread

I sometimes ask, what are the things I always need in a fridge? (I mean, aside from Dijon and more cheese than particularly healthy.) The answer changes with the seasons. This summer, it’s a lot of pesto and roasted hot pepper puree.  

 

The pesto gets thrown in everywhere: in the cavity when cooking a whole fish, along with tossed roasted veggies, on pasta, of course, or as a sauce for quick pizza. The spicy puree gets into even more places, even the pesto, into salsa, into any sauce and pretty much any cavity I can manage to stuff and grill.

 

Both change week to week, whether basil, coriander, kale or parsley based; and whichever peppers look freshest, tossed with red or green bell peppers, green onions and roast garlic.

Last week’s pepper puree was about a half dozen Jalapeno peppers, four cloves of garlic, one green pepper and two green onions, all grilled till they blistered and then pulsed in the food processor with a few glugs of olive oil and some salt.

 

Monday was dreary in Montreal. Cold weather, grey skies and rain that started at noon and never, ever let up. We’re heading out of town this weekend, so we’re once again clearing out the fridge. Colder weather and a need to clean spell one opportunity: soup.

 

Soup doesn’t need fussiness, but I tend to prepare it early and like to let it sit before rewarming it, whenever I can. A lot of recipes claim fast soups at less than half an hour, but I like a soup with a rich mingling of flavors. Flavors that, hang on, “pot-crastinate.” A soup’s best when done slowly, each step accomplished and forgotten about while you go on to other things around the house, until finally everything’s assembled, the last bit is thrown into the pot, and you just warm it up right before serving (making it look effortless).  

 

Yesterday’s project was spicy black bean soup.

 

We had a good pound and a half of tomatoes in the fridge to get through, and so I cut each of the guys crosswise and left them cut-side up along a rimmed cookie sheet. Salt and peppered each of them, along with a drizzle of olive oil, and then roasted them at 425 for a good 30 minutes (till the skin just started to blister). Plenty of time to kick back and read.

 

 

 

After letting them cool, they got thrown into the food processer for pulsing.

 

Meanwhile, I sautéed one finely chopped onion, the leftover half of red pepper we still had, and three (rapidly softening) carrots from the bottom of the crisper. Salt and pepper.

I emptied a can of diced tomatoes to the mix, and then the roasted tomatoes. A couple of tablespoons of the hot pepper puree, two-ish cups of chicken stock, and two drained cans of black beans. I added a handful of fresh coriander since I had it around, and a dash of cumin.

 

The pot came to a boil, the lid went on, and the soup simmered for a good hour. At this point, I took the immersion blender and went to town. I prefer a chunkier soup, so this is a fast step that still brings out a nice texture and lets you be a bit lazy when it comes to the initial chopping up of veggies. I added a bit more stock at this point, because the soup was creeping towards the sludgy side of things.

 

Now you can sit back and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

 

About thirty minutes before supper I assembled the ingredients for a quick skillet cornbread to serve alongside. I took the base for the recipe from Martha Stewart’s website. Thank Google for the hit. My criteria was just something quick, and this one popped up right away.

 

“Martha’s” recipe has you add together 1 ¼ cups of yellow cornmeal and all-purpose flour, along with 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder, ½ teaspoon of coarse salt. In an separate bowl you whisk together 1 large egg and 1 ¾ cups of buttermilk. To this, I went off-recipe and added a tablespoon of my hot pepper pureer (why not?) and about a third of a cup of grated old cheddar. Wets and solids are mixed together and poured into a 10-inch cast iron skillet where you’ve already melted a good 4 tablespoons of butter. Bake for 25 minutes at 425.

 

 

 

Now, if you’ve timed it right, which I didn’t, you pull the skillet out just as your girlfriend arrives, before you spill that glass of wine, and just as you turn off the simmering soup just as she sits at the table. In my case, I distracted her with jokes, and managed to “plate” while the skillet was cooling and just as we cleaned up the mess from the wine.

 

A second glass was poured, and soup was served topped with slices of avocado, tiny bit of sea salt, and fresh coriander.

 

 

Burgers

We’re already past summer’s halfway point. In Montreal that means the days are already getting shorter, and soon we’ll be complaining about the snow. Still, the weather this past weekend was amazing. A lot of people took advantage and made a getaway out of the city. For us, we decided to celebrate by lighting the grill and, modestly, eating a burger from every major meat protein: fish, chicken, lamb, and of course beef.

 

It took bravery, endurance and ambition. This is that story.

 

The weekend’s work started out slowly. In fact, on Friday, we didn’t even know the scale of the adventure we’d soon undertake. Lamb was bought, buns were bought. It was only the following morning, there’s just two of us to feed, when we stared at the remaining buns and realized the opportunity we’d been given. Far be it for us to waste the leftovers, we rushed out to the store and came back with swordfish, chicken and beef to fill those lonely buns. The idea was to have a new pair of burgers ready every two hours. We failed. The part to me that still thinks he can eat as a teenager was shamed. Who knew? We finally finished the last

burger round on Sunday, with the beef, as altogether apt way to end the weekend.

 

The lamb burger, as said, was first. It consisted of lamb, roasted garlic, chopped black olives, diced and caramelized onion, feta, salt and pepper, all adjusted to taste. I grilled over indirect heat because of the fattiness of the meat. It was topped with some mayo and diced sundried tomatoes.

 

 

 

The swordfish kicked off lunch on Saturday. We don’t have a meat grinder, so the fish was just diced (slowly) until it was in the right consistency. Mixed to that was a half-cup of cooked quinoa, diced olives and sundried tomatoes, and an egg to help it all stick. Some salt and pepper, of course. I chill the burgers before grilling them, and they tend to stay together better.

 

The burgers were topped with a quick salsa of roasted green peppers, garlic and jalapeno peppers blended together into a paste, half a mango, some green onions, thinly diced, and a handful of chopped strawberries. I tossed the lot with a bit of olive oil, lime juice and some salt.

 

 

 

The chicken burger was my answer to clearing out leftovers in the fridge. While not heroic, it did seem like a good and laudable thing to do. And so under the theme “Chicken Eggplant Parmesan” I concocted a way to get rid of the last of my kale and basil pesto, as well as a half-cup of homemade garlic tomato sauce. I mixed these, some diced onions and some breadcrumbs into the ground chicken. The burger was topped with some buffalo mozzarella and some grilled eggplant.

 

I liked it in theory, but in execution I think we would have tasted the tomato more (because we only tasted the garlic, really) if I’d reserved the sauce and added it to the eggplant as a topping. Still, tasty enough overall.

 

It was at this point, maybe because of the disappointment, maybe just because of overreaching, but we took a nap, went for a walk, drank some wine, and proceeded to skip supper and fall fast asleep.

 

Finally, the beef burger. This was the simplest, actually, and the quickest. (No hand-dicing of swordfish here.) First I roasted some garlic, four bulbs total, and threw them into the beef. Then I added about two heaping tablespoons (the bottom of the jar) of spiced beer jelly, a tablespoon of beer flavored mustard, and salt and pepper.

 

I topped these guys with caramelized onions cooked in a skillet on the grill, and a slice of Griffon beer-flavored raclette cheese.

 

 

 

To be honest, I think the lamb burger was the best. And how can you go wrong with beef and beer, but the Nicoise salad-esque fish burger with salsa topping was a great, colorful summer afternoon meal.

 

We had takeout sushi for lunch on Monday.

Lobster!

I’m not entirely sure how consistent this blog will be, but here’s to Canada Day and here’s a happy hat’s off to crazy ideas that sometimes just manage to work.

Monday, July 1st eve, if that’s a thing, we were facing record humidity in Montreal. Rujira, the wiser of us, planned ahead and got herself out of work. From the evidence, she spent the day within a four-foot circle caged by the fridge on one side, the fan directly in front of her, the sink, and the couch she did her best to never leave.

It was too hot to even think about the BBQ in the back. CRAZY. I know. (We’re already mid-way through our second summertime tank for a household of two [note to self, future potential blog post: “Summer Fun; Grill and Bare It!”].

Having already declared 2014 the year of homemade pastas and bread, as bold a statement as bold statements go that nicely camouflaged the lack of real New Year’s resolutions, we’d gotten lazy once the mercury inched closer to 30.

Despite the heat, we need to eat and I was thinking we could still successfully tackle some sort of pesto. I may need to change into shorts, but this was something easy that could be done after a full day at work and served with fresh linguini. The joy of fresh pasta on a summer day is that it cooks in just three minutes.

Our American head office refused to acknowledge a national holiday other than July 4, and so as work went from busy to busier, I went from wanting something easy, to daydreaming something more complicated. Job satisfaction. That’s all I wanted, even if it wasn’t the day job.

In my mind’s eye, I pictured Rujira’s surprise when I unveiled the grand plan. Below is how it played out.

But really, it wasn’t so hard. You just need to drop the lobster into the pan. Big issue is figuring out how to pick it up without touching it.

But it worked out!

You’ll need a food processor for this one. Nothing else really special.

Strip away the leafy bits from a handful of kale. Discard the stems. Boil some water with salt, throw in the kale. Give it two or three minutes. Strain it in cold water. Throw it back into the skillet, salt it, red-pepper flakes, pepper? (sure), and douse it in a spill of white wine, whatever you’ve got on hand, and some chicken stock. Forget about it for a while.

Now, the lobster. It should be live. The one we got was a shade under three pounds. (Whatever those are.) Put it in the sink. Open the bag. Forget about it.

Chop a few green onions. Crush a bit of garlic. Rip off a handful of basil. Whatever you want. At this point, we’re kind of stalling having to face the lobster again. She might have just moved.

Throw whatever you have into the food processor. (Don’t look at the lobster.)

Pulse the crap out of the kale, the green onions, the basil. Throw in a good quarter cup of olive oil. Add some grated parmesan is you’d like. (We did.)

Now. Now. Now. The lobster. If your sous-chef is not laughing at you hysterically, it’s a lot easier, or so I’d imagine. But I’ll break it down like this:

1.Drop the lobster into salter, boiling water. Add more salt than you’d normally do for pasta.
2.For our lobster, we waited 17 minutes. Because it felt right. We also used a lid. Just in case.
3.Take the lobster apart. Here is a useful link.

 Also, ours…

4.Either make some pasta, or prepare to your liking. Cook it and reserve a little bit of the water.
5.Meanwhile, heat some oil. Throw in some of the pesto, add the pasta, toss, add some of the reserved water to help the pesto stick and then add the lobster meat.
6.Toss, and warm. Add more pesto if you think you need it.
7.Plate!