chicken stock

Root-A-Toot-Toot-A-Baga: Rutabaga Puree

12 Jan 2012
rutabaga

Rutabagas are delicious. Especially this Rutabaga Purée with Brown Butter & Mascarpone. Let's just get that out of the way right now. Because no matter what I say about rutabagas from here on out, they're delicious. I love (and respect) them.

But you have to admit, rutabagas have a funny sounding, cartoonish name. The kind of name Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn or some other rascally Loony Tunes character might root-a-toot-toot about. So, you see, it's easy to make fun of them. Besides, rutabagas are silly looking too. Really silly looking. I'm sorry but it's true.

Let me tell you a funny story. I was in the market recently, checking out with just a few items. I hadn't bothered to get a basket and was sorta balancing a few awkward items in my hands. Oh, and I had a great big rutabaga tucked under my arm too. When it came time to pay, the cashier pointed under my arm and asked, “What’s that?” 

“A football”, I said. Well she laughed so hard she almost cried. At first I thought to myself, rather smugishly. "Gosh I'm funny". Then I realized it wasn't me that was so funny, she wasn't laughing at me. It was the rutabaga that had tickled her funny bone so completely.

Take a look, it's true– rutabagas are big ole monstrosities. The dirigibles of the veg world. The sheer audacity of their size, only adds to their irony. Because rutabagas aren't just delicious and hilarious. Nope. Rutabagas are really, really cheap. Meaning not only do they get laughed at, these root-vegetable monsters are often relegated to filler, whose only purpose is to bulk up a casserole, or stretch out some watery soup. But I bet if you'd just stop laughing long enough to taste a rutabaga you'd root-a-toot-toot too! GREG

 

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Rutabaga Purée with Brown Butter & Mascarpone

Rutabaga Purée with Brown Butter & Mascarpone
By jgreghenry Published January 12, 2012
Prep time: 30
Yield:1 (Servings)

Ingredients:

  • 4 T unsalted butter
  • 1 large shallot, peeled & coarsely chopped
  • 1 large rutabaga (about 2 pounds), peeled and coarsely chopped
  • 1 t coarse salt, pluse more to taste
  • 1 c chicken stock
  • 1 T fresh thyme leaves, plus more for garnish
  • 1 pn freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
  • 4 T mascarpone cheese

Directions

Heat a large, heavy bottomed sauté pan over medium heat. Add the butter. As it begins to melt, start swirling the pan frequently and watching the butter carefully. You will notice the butter will get foamy, and then the milk solids will begin to brown. Once that starts, remove skillet from heat. Smell the butter; it should have a nutty aroma, and be caramel in color.

Add the shallots and rutabaga. Return the pan to medium heat and cook, stirring often, until the vegetables begin to soften, about 10 minutes. Season with salt. Add stock and thyme leaves. Cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, and simmer until tender, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.

Purée vegetable mixture with mascarpone in a food processor until smooth. Season with pepper. Reheat if necessary. Garnish with more thyme leaves.

Source: inspired by Martha Stewart Living

Real Men Eat Watercress (Soup!)

10 Jan 2012
watercress soup with sage

Move aside quiche there a a new super food in town and men love it.

Real men like Napoleon Bonaparte and (yep) Sippity Sup! And we're not the only super-dudes in love with this peppery green bite. It’s said that Hippocrates, the father of medicine, built an entire hospital next to a patch of the stuff because he recognized early on the health benefits it could provide to his patients. Gruff Greek soldiers ate watercress to increase their masculine vigor. Even Roman Emperors said it enabled them to make “bold decisions”. I can vouch for that. I ate Creamy Watercress Soup with Sage and decided to write this super-charged tribute.

In Victorian times elegant ladies jumped on the watercress bandwagon too. It could be purchased in parks and street corners, gathered into posey-style bundles. These daintly little nosegays could be nibbled upon, like an ice cream cone while strolling.

And what a nibble watercress seems to be. It's said to have more vitamin C than oranges, more calcium than milk, more folate than bananas, and more iron than spinach.

But its real attribute is that manly men like it. The Romans even believed it could prevent baldness. Now I ask you what man wouldn't eat watercress with that kind of information available to him? Still, even if you have a full head of hair (or are in fact a lady) eating watercress still has delicious benefits. Most notably it has a peppery crunch that elivens this vibrantly colored creamy soup made with leeks, and potatoes called potage au cresson. My version is a simple (but manly) take on the classic. GREG

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Creamy Watercress Soup with Sage

watercress soup
By jgreghenry Published January 9, 2012
Prep time: 30
Yield:1 (Servings)

Ingredients:

  • 2 T unsalted butter
  • 2 leeks, halved lengthwise, cleaned, white and light greeen parts roughly chopped
  • 1 medium potato, peeled and diced
  • 1 clv garlic, peeled & minced
  • 3 stalks celery, roughly chopped
  • 3 c chicken stock
  • 2 bn watercress (about 1 pound), leaves only, plus more for garnish (optional)
  • 6 leaves of fresh sage, rinsed and chopped
  • 0.5 c heavy cream
  • 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
  • 1 pn each, salt and white pepper, to taste

Directions

Melt the butter in a large sauce pan set over medium heat. Add the leeks, celery and garlic, stirring to coat. Lower the heat and cover the pan, cooking the leeks until softened somewhat, but not yet colored, about 4 minutes. Add the potato and chicken stock. Simmer, uncovered until the potatoes are tender, about 12 minutes. Remove the pot from the pan and stir in the watercress and sage. Set the pan aside to cool somewhat.

Meanwhile mix the cream and egg yolks together in a small bowl. Set aside.

Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until very smooth. The strain the soup with a fine meshed sieve discarding any solids. Return the soup to the pan, setting it over medium heat and bring to a boil. Remove the pan from heat and stir in the cream and egg yolk mixture. Season with salt and white pepper. Garnish with watercress (optional). Serve warm.

Cooking Shirley Balboa's Christmas Goose- A Holiday Tale

24 Dec 2011
goose in the oven

I can be an old softie when it comes to holiday traditions. One tradition I like to keep is the sharing of stories. Last year I presented this story Cooking Shirley Balboa's Christmas Goose. I had intended to write another new piece of holiday short fiction for this space this year. But in the end I decided that part of the allure of the Christmas story is the tradition of telling the same stories year after year.

So I am bringing back my personal holiday heroine for another year of Christmas Goose. I hope you will read, enjoy and share this story. Merry Christmas to you. GREG


Cooking Shirley Balboa's Christmas Goose

Go straight to recipe or read the story here:

Shirley Balboa lays on the bright, freshly waxed linoleum floor looking straight up, past the pitted chrome handles of her old gas stove and directly at the ceiling stained with the grease of Christmases long past. She wonders what she should do. The goose she had just placed in the oven is nowhere near done. Normally her thoughts would have gone to the Christmas goose first. But until you can smell it, there is no reason to think about it. She never, ever bastes until she gets that first fatty fragrance. No aroma means Shirley is free to think about the problem at hand. The problem of course being that she has fallen and cannot get up.

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