White Beans and Vegetable Soup

My first job out of law school was at a civil litigation firm in the Ironbound district of Newark. Now, the Ironbound has a myriad of places for lunch, but one of my favorites was soup from Spain Restaurant. The restaurant has a different soup, for each day of the week. My personal favorite was on Fridays, when they would serve white bean and vegetable soup. I have moved on to a different law firm, but I will always remember this soup.

I found this soup to be very similar to the “Greens and Beans” soup in Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals, but Spain put in more vegetables, so I added carrots, onions, and celery. I also added some chicken to make it a heartier meal.

White Bean and Vegetable Soup
Adapted from Rachael Ray, 30 Minute Meals

Ingredients:
2 carrots, chopped
1-2 stalks celery, chopped
½ yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces (optional)
5 cups of low-sodium chicken broth (can substitute vegetable broth)
1 can (15 oz.) cannelloni beans, drained and rinsed
1 head escarole, roughly chopped
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
nutmeg

Method:
Heat a couple tablespoons oil in a large stockpot. Saute chicken until lightly brown on all sides.* Remove and set aside. Add carrots, celery, and onion and sauté for about 5-7 minutes, until the onions are translucent. (You may need to add more oil to prevent burning). Push the vegetables to the sides of the pot, creating a space at the center of the pot. Drizzle about a teaspoon of oil into the center and add garlic to that space. Cook for about thirty seconds before stirring it into the rest of the vegetables.** Add escarole with salt, pepper, and a dash of nutmeg. Cook until the escarole wilts. Add beans and broth. Bring to a boil, and then simmer for about 15 minutes. When there is about 2 minutes left in the cooking time, add chicken. Serves 4-6.

* If making a vegetarian version, skip this step.
** I learned this trick from Cook’s Illustrated – it helps to prevent burnt garlic.

Marinated Portobello Mushroom with Cheesy Orzo and Honey Glazed Carrots

It's snowing during my "spring break." Inclement weather means I have time to cook and blog about it. People have asked me if I have stopped cooking because I haven't blogged in a while. Which isn't really true - I have been cooking, but photographing in my house is a process. First, it means clearing the table. Then taking a dozen or so pictures with my amateur photography skills, while my food gets cold. And lately I've just been too hungry to do all that!

Above is a Rachael Ray inspired menu from this book:


And here is a link to the recipes!

Turkey Bacon Wrapped Shrimp and a Stuffed Pepper

This is another old photo from the Philadelphia apartment. (You might recognize my roommate's lovely placemats.) The shrimp is another Rachael Ray inspiration. The pepper, however, was my own invention. It actually was a throw-in so that I have a vegetable in my meal. When I was little, my mom had to fight tooth and nail to get me to eat my vegetables. And even now, I sometimes I have to be creative with my vegetables to inspire myself to eat them. Here, I think I happen to just have an old pepper in the fridge. And I was planning on eating the shrimp with white rice because I eat rice with everything. So I thought to myself, what if I put the rice in the pepper and have a stuffed pepper? A little bit of butter, salt, pepper, and a dash of paprika and I had myself a fake version of stuffed pepper. This picture is probably at least two or three years old, but I still remember that pepper!


Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp
Rachael actually also used scallops in this recipe, but I didn't have any. And I actually used turkey bacon instead of pork bacon and frozen shrimp. In this picture, I used Trader Joe's brand turkey bacon, which did not come out as crispy as I would have liked.

12 jumbo raw peeled deveined shrimp,
1 lime, juiced and zested
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon grill seasoning or coarse salt and black pepper
1 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
12 slices center cut or applewood smoked bacon, cut in 1/2 Toothpicks
3 scallions, very thinly sliced on an angle

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Place shrimp in a shallow dish or bowl. Dress seafood with lime juice and zest, a generous drizzle of sesame oil, grill seasoning and hot pepper flakes. Wrap each shrimp with a half slice of bacon. Wrap each shrimp working from head to tail, pulling bacon snuggly around the shrimp. Fasten bacon in place as necessary with picks.

Arrange the shrimp on a slotted baking pan, such as a broiler pan, to allow draining while bacon crisps. Bake shrimp 10 to 14 minutes, until shrimp is pink and curled and bacon is crisp.
Arrange cooked seafood on platter and sprinkle with chopped scallions.

Flounder Francese and Lemon Spaghetti

This is an old photo I found from when I was still living in Philadelphia. As you will learn, Rachael Ray has been an inspiration for a lot of my cooking, as these two recipes are from her TV show. Specifically, they are from the Rachael Ray's 30- Minute Meals - Episode "Sea Note"

Links for recipes:
Lemon Spaghetti
Flounder Francese with Lemon and Capers

Note: In this picture, I actually used tilapia filets instead of flounder and it still came out well. So I guess this should really be "Tilapia Francese" but it just didn't sound as cool. Rachael also had Toasted Almonds in her original recipe. But I didn't have any, so I omitted them