Luci's Tasty Adventures

After our wonderful trip to Napa I came home and was inspired to make Thomas Keller's Potato Leek Soup.  This soup recipe caught my eye because it required leeks, shallots, yellow onions, and chives.  I love onions, Aaron says I tend to onionize my food.  Yes I am the onionizer!! Watch out!

This soup has very simple ingredients, for me what makes this soup special is the stock.   I'm sure it tastes fine with store purchased stock, but making your own stock will take this from soup to a symphony in your mouth.  I keep my chicken stock in the freezer, I make large batches so that when I want to make soup or need to make a sauce I am good to go. 

The funny part is I used the last of my chicken stock on this recipe.  So I was out of stock Monday morning, and Monday night Aaron went in for emergency surgery.  He had an appendectomy at 6:30 pm.  He is doing much better now but we are both still out of sorts.  The surgery went well and I was able to bring him home from the hospital Tuesday afternoon.  I got him home and into bed, and of course I made more chicken stock to make him some chicken noodle soup.  Nothing says I'm taking care of you more than homemade soup.  Trust me.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs Leeks, about three
• 4 Tbsp unsalted butter
• ½ cup shallots, sliced
• 1/3 cup onion, sliced
• Kosher salt and freshly grated black pepper
• ½ pound russet potato (about one large), peeled
• 1 Tbsp minced garlic
• 8 thyme sprigs
• 2 Italian parsley sprigs
• 2 bay leaves
• ½ tsp pepper corns
• cheese cloth
• 5 ½ cups chicken stock
• ¾ cup heavy cream, warmed
• ½ cup minced chives
• Extra virgin olive oil

Method:

Make a Sachet with the cheese cloth, thyme, parsley, bay leaves, and pepper corn.  Set aside.














Prepare the leeks by cutting away the dark green portion, and the bottom root part.  Slice the leek in half and clean well under running water.  Place the leeks cut side down on the cutting board and chop them into ¼ inch slices.

Melt butter in a stock pot over medium-low heat, add the leeks, shallots, onions, and season with salt and pepper.  Turn the heat to medium and sweat the vegetables, stirring every 3-5 minutes.  The vegetables will get soft, but should not brown.
















In the mean time chop the potato into ¼ inch think slices.  Add the garlic to the vegetables and cook for about a minute.  Add the sachet and potatoes and cook for 4 minutes.












Add 5 ½ cups chicken stock and test for seasoning.
















Bring to a simmer and then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.  Remove the soup from the heat and let cook for 15 minutes.

Transfer soup to blender and puree, start on a low speed to release the remaining heat in the soup.  For a refined soup strain the soup through a fine mesh strainer.














 

Rinse out the stock pot and return the soup and heat up over medium heat.  Bring the soup to a simmer and add the cream, simmer for 5 minutes.  To serve the soup, remove it from the burner and stir in the chives, save some for garnish.
















Ladle the soup into the serving bowls and garnish them with extra virgin olive oil and chives.  Enjoy, serves 6-8

Growing up, Corned Beef and Cabbage was something I never looked forward to eating.  To this day I won't eat boiled cabbage, I mean if I am someones guest I will be polite and try to find the smallest piece to put on my plate.  My mom often made sauteed cabbage, we would eat it with polish sausage.  I could deal with cabbage cooked this way and in fact I actually enjoyed it.  The flavor of the browned cabbage with the onions and garlic is just so yummy.  This is one of those dishes that tastes better the next day.  So it sure comes in handy if you need to make dinner ahead of time. 

After doing some research I decided to bake my Corned Beef.  I really liked this recipe here and I decided to simplify it.  Boiling just did not sound good to me so I skipped that part, and I had some yummy apricot jam in my refrigerator so I decided to use that as well.  This is one of those days, I looked in my pantry..  Went to the store and picked up a Corned Beef and a head of Cabbage.  Everything else was on hand.  My $10.00 Corned Beef and Cabbage was born, and it was delicious. 

Corned Beef Ingredients:

• 3-4 pound Corned Beef
• 1/4 cup Dijon mustard
• 2 Tbsp apricot jam
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar

Sauteed Cabbage Ingredients:

• ½ head of green cabbage, sliced
• 1 yellow onion, sliced
• 3 gloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly grated pepper
• 1 Tbsp flour

Corned Beef Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Set one rack in the middle and the other under the broiler.  Mix together the Dijon mustard and apricot jam.  Set corned beef fat side up on a large piece of heavy duty foil.  Spread all but 2 Tbsp of  the mustard and jam mixture.  Sprinkle the top of the roast with the brown sugar.

















Take another piece of foil and place it over the top of roast creating a pouch over the top.  Make sure the foil pouch is set up to catch the juices and not leak them while the corned beef bakes.  I ran out of heavy duty foil so I had to use regular foil and double it up, my foil package is a little sloppy ;)











Place corned beef in a shallow roasting pan and bake for 2 hours.

















After the two hours is up, take corned beef out of the foil, spread the remaining jam and mustard over the top and broil for three minutes.  Let the roast rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.  Serves 4-6 people.

Sauteed Cabbage Method:

In a large skillet heat olive oil over medium heat.  Add onions and garlic; dust them with some kosher salt to help them cook down.  Cook them for about 5 minutes then add the cabbage, stir every couple of minutes.  Don't over mix it though, you want the cabbage to get browned in the bottom of the saute pan.  If you don't see brown bits at the bottom of the pan you are stirring it to much.














The cabbage will begin to soften and cook down after about 15-20 minutes. Add the flour, cook for another 3 minutes.  Taste and season with salt and pepper. Serves 3 people.  This recipe can be doubled to feed 6.

This recipe was made for two people, and we had left overs.  Feel free to double or even triple for a larger crowd.

• ½ pound Brussels sprouts sliced in half
• ½ yellow onion sliced
• 1 garlic glove finally chopped
• 1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• kosher salt
• fresh ground pepper

Method:

Heat large skillet on medium high with olive oil.  Add onion slices to the pan with a sprinkle of salt, saute for about 5 minutes.  Add the Brussels sprouts to the pan flat side down.   Cook them for about a minute, then add garlic to pan.  Saute them for another minute add fresh lemon juice and serve.