Recipe: Chicken Soup for Sickly Souls

Sickly souls like me! Between bouts of sniffling and shivering today, I made myself some chicken soup. Here's my favorite recipe.

You'll need:
3 boneless chicken thighs (cage-free organic if you want to go to heaven) cut into small bites
1 quart chicken or vegetable stock
2 quarts water
1 tsp. olive oil
½ large white onion, minced
3 stalks celery, minced
2 large carrots, chopped, or sliced into thin medallions
1 cup brown rice (or use any kind of noodles—just wait until the carrots have softened to add them)
1 tsp. garlic powder
½ tsp. ground black pepper
½ tsp. red pepper or paprika
½ lemon
2 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. cornstarch
salt to taste

1. Combine the following in a large pot: chicken, stock, water, olive oil, onion, celery, carrots, rice (unless you choose to use noodles instead), garlic powder, and peppers. Turn the burner to medium high heat.

2. Squeeze the lemon juice into a cup and pick out the seeds. Add both the juice and the rind to the soup.

3. When the chicken has cooked through, turn the soup to low and cover to simmer.

4. Once the carrots and rice are soft, add the soy sauce, sprinkle and stir in the corn starch, and add salt to taste (probably a lot). If you wanted to use noodles instead of rice, add them now and cook until soft. Remove lemon rind before serving. Leftovers freeze like a dream.

Recipe: Halloween Soup

I'm calling it that because this soup is orange to the power of three. Buttercup squash, carrots, and sweet potatoes. It's also freakishly healthy and hearty and full of fiber, with no added sugar (basically the opposite of that other standard Halloween fare—candy). I tried a new-to-me method of preparing the squash, since buttercups (they look like knobbly, smallish, dark green pumpkins) aren't built for peeling and cubing. Baking them takes longer and creates more dirty dishes, but the result makes it so worth it.

Hot damn, just look at that color! For NOM!

You'll need:

1 buttercup squash
2 large sweet potatoes (or 3 medium ones)
¼ stick butter
3 large carrots
5 cloves garlic
1 large onion
¼ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. cayenne pepper
lots of ground black pepper
lots of cumin or curry powder
1 qt. water
lots of salt

1. Preheat oven to 350° and lightly grease the bottom of a casserole dish.

2. Cut the squash into quarters with a cleaver or similarly big, dangerous knife. I found this physically challenging, so be careful, go slow, and don't slice a finger off. Scoop out the seeds and arrange the squash in the dish, skin-down.

3. Cut the sweet potatoes into ½-inch thick rounds and arrange those with the squash. Bake for about an hour, or until the squash and sweet potatoes are tender when poked with a fork.

4. While that's baking, melt the butter in the stew pot. Cut the carrots into strips or fairly thin medallions. Peel and chop the garlic. Chop the onion. Add all that to the butter, turning at medium-high heat until the onions are soft and clear (a couple minutes).

5. Switch the veggies to low heat and add the cinnamon, ground peppers, and cumin. Stir, then cover the pot and let simmer until the carrots are soft (20 minutes or more), stirring occasionally.

6. Once the squash and sweet potatoes are soft, remove them from the oven and let them cool for a half hour or so, until you can touch them without burning yourself. Allegedly, you can now peel the skin away from the squash, but I found this difficult, as the skin flaked off in uselessly small, messy bits. Instead, I used a large metal spoon to scoop and scrape the squash flesh from the skin. Dump that in the pot with the carrots et al. You can peel the skins from the sweet potatoes as well, but I left them on, for texture and nutrients. Add those to the pot as well.

7. Now that all the formerly hard ingredients are soft, bust out your blender. Combine the ingredients with the water in the blender and purée in however many batches it takes. Once it's all blended, dump it all back in the stew pot and stir it up.

8. Heat the soup (it sputters, so baby-sit it) and add salt to taste. Freezes well…not that you'll have any leftovers. It's crazy-tasty.

Enjoy! And happy Halloween!

Recipe: Butternut Squash Soup

Preparing a squash is kind of a pain in the ass, but man, is it worth it. Took me a little over an hour to make this recipe, and it serves 6–8.

Have I mentioned lately I'm not a food photographer?

You'll need:

4 tbsp. butter
1 butternut squash
5 new potatoes
1 medium onion
6 cloves garlic
1 qt. water
cumin
cinnamon
black pepper
salt

1. Melt the butter in a large stew pot.

2. Prepare the squash, by peeling it with a potato peeler. Cut it in half length-wise and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Cut it into 1-inch cubes and toss them in the stew pot. Flex your aching wrist. Also cube the potatoes—I didn't bother peeling them, because their skins are thin and give the otherwise smooth soup some nice texture. Toss those in. Mince the onion and garlic and add those as well.

3. Set the burner on medium-high heat, turning all the ingredients in the butter and cooking/stirring until the onions are clear and the kitchen smells awesome (about five minutes).

4. Add enough water to just cover the ingredients (you can also use chicken or vegetable stock, but I didn't have any and the water worked just fine). Bring to a boil.

5. Reduce the heat to low and cover. Let simmer for 30–40 minutes, until the squash and potatoes are soft.

6. Purée the soft ingredients in a blender, then return them to the pot.

7. Keep the soup simmering, adding spices to taste. I used a LOT of cumin, a dash of cinnamon, a ton of black pepper, and quite a bit of salt. Serve.

8. Leftovers will keep for a few days in the fridge, and for ages in the freezer. Enjoy!

Recipe: Lentil and Rhubarb Stew

I was skeptical too, but stay with me, here.

We just started getting the summer's veggie boxes from a local farm, and whoa is it ever rhubarb season. If you don't know much about rhubarb, as I didn't, it's a weird thing. I ate a raw slice and can only describe it as a cross between celery and a Granny Smith apple, in both texture and flavor. Sweet but sour and quite fibrous.

But when you think rhubarb (if you do) you probably think pie, and as you may know, I'm off sugar this month. Let me tell you, it wasn't easy finding a savory rhubarb recipe. I got lucky and stumbled across this one, which I had to rejigger quite a bit to work with the ingredients I had. It sounds weird, but trust me, it's delicious. The rhubarb gives the stew the most fascinating citrus-y flavor, and though there's no fat added, it's very savory and rich-tasting. I entered the recipe into my nutrition app and it's less than 300 calories per serving (makes about six servings).

Anyhow, love this. No longer afraid to find rhubarb in my weekly farm box. Bring it on.

1. In a large pot, add these together:

6–8 stalks rhubarb, cleaned and chopped
2½ cups dry yellow lentils (or dry split peas), rinsed
chicken, chopped into stew-sized pieces (I used 2 boneless breasts, but I think 4 thighs would taste even better)
½ medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced

I tossed in the following spices, but feel free to use whatever Indian-type flavors you prefer…
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ginger
½ tsp. tumeric
½ tsp. chili powder
½ tsp. cumin seeds (can you tell I love cumin?)
lots of black pepper
[salt comes later]

2. With all that in the pot, add water, enough to cover everything by an inch…well, except the rhubarb, which floats. Bring to a low boil on medium-high heat, then cover and reduce to a simmer for 30–40 minutes, or until the lentils and rhubarb are soft. I stirred occasionally, though I'm not sure I was supposed to. It didn't seem to hurt anything.

3. It will look very unappetizing at first, but as the rhubarb stews it'll break down into sheer deliciousness, mingling with the lentils. When everything's softened, add a lot of salt and adjust the spices to your liking. I used too much water, but thickened it with a few shakes of corn starch.

4. Serve alone or over rice. Enjoy! Like I said, it tastes sooo much better than it sounds.

Recipe: Not Caldo Verde

This is a chicken soup recipe that started as caldo verde when I first made it, then steadily mutated to become completely not caldo verde. It was born of necessity when the manfriend and I kept getting bunches of kale in our local vegetable deliveries, but I've made it with spinach, too. It's very simple, reasonably quick, cheap, and low in calories. Makes about 8 servings. Goes great with my dinner rolls recipe.

In a large stew pot, dump:
2 qts. chicken stock
2 qts. water
1 lb. boneless chicken thighs, cut into small pieces (cage-free organic if you want to go to heaven)
2 chorizo sausages, cut into small pieces (or similar—I use Trader Joe's Spicy Jalapeno Chicken Sausage)
1 large potato, cut into tiny blocks (or, use cauliflower—see next step)
1 cup carrots, chopped into small chunks or thin medallions
1½ cups brown rice
3 cups kale, chopped (or use spinach—see next step)
½ cup onion, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced

Bring to a gentle boil then turn down to medium-low heat. Cover and simmer about 45 minutes, until rice, carrots, and potatoes (if you use potatoes) are soft. Then add:

3 cups spinach, chopped (if you didn't use kale)
½ head cauliflower, chopped into small florets (if you didn't use potatoes)
any other chopped veggies you like—peppers, corn, zucchini, etc.
lots of salt—keeping adding until it's to your taste
½ tsp. paprika
½ tsp. black pepper
½ tsp. red pepper flakes

Cook until veggies are soft. Freezes and reheats most excellently.

Recipe: Chili Con Carne

I'm new at chili-making, but after a few different approaches I've cobbled together a recipe I like. It's low in fat, high in fiber, freezes for extra meals, and feeds the manfriend via a Thermos when he's off battling the forces of evil in his office in downtown Boston.

Prep note, this recipe requires you to soak dried beans overnight, so there is some minor planning involved.

What you need:

1½ cups dried kidney beans
¾ cup dried white or pinto beans
8 oz. ground beef (grass-fed organic if you want to go to heaven) or ground buffalo, turkey, chicken, etc.
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup frozen corn
1 14.5 oz. can of stewed and diced tomatoes
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
tomato sauce, as needed (marinara is fine, but the simpler the better)
2 bell peppers, any color, diced
chili powder
salt
black pepper
red pepper flakes

What to do:

1. The night before, put dried beans in a large sauce pan or a stew pot and cover with lots of cold water—enough water that the beans will still be submerged after they've expanded to three times their dried size. Cover and let sit at room temperature until you begin cooking the next day.

2. Remove any beans floating on the surface. Drain and rinse the beans and re-cover with fresh water. Simmer them on medium-low heat for about an hour, or until beans are nearly cooked (when they're fully cooked, they shouldn't have a mealy or chalky texture). If you aren't sure if they're ready, that's okay—you'll just cook them longer later in the recipe. Also, do not add any salt during this step—it affects the way the beans cook.

3. Drain the beans in a sieve. In the now empty pot, brown the beef and the chopped onion. If you're using ground chicken or turkey, add olive oil as needed. Drain the fat for a leaner dish, or keep it in for flavor.

4. Add in the beans, corn, the stewed tomatoes, and the tomato paste, and stir. If the dish looks too bean-heavy and you'd like a stronger tomato base, add tomato sauce until the consistency is to your taste. Turn heat to low and simmer for another hour, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan every 10–15 minutes.

5. Taste a few beans to make sure they're fully cooked. If not, keep simmering. If they're done, keep everything simmering and add the diced peppers. Add salt, black pepper, chili powder, and red pepper flakes to taste. Cook until peppers are soft.

Makes 4 meal-sizes servings. Freezes and reheats like a dream.

Easy Lunch on the Cheap

If you're lucky enough to live close to a Trader Joe's, I've got a quick and easy, low-calorie lunch suggestion for you. Provided I have the three simple components stocked, I eat this for lunch every damn day:

1 box Trader Joe's Creamy Corn and Roasted Red Pepper Soup
1 TJ's Spicy Jalapeño Chicken Sausage, chopped into tiny pieces
¾ cup TJ's frozen organic sweet corn

The chicken sausage is already cooked, so just toss all that in a saucepan, grind some black pepper in, warm it up, and you've got two meals' worth of healthy, filling soup—and for only about 300 calories and less than two bucks per serving. It also freezes and reheats beautifully.

Unseasonable Recipe: Chicken Stew

Nothing says August in the Northern Hemisphere like a steaming bowl of homemade chicken stew! Perhaps not, but times are tough and belts are tight, and chicken thighs are cheaper than breasts, so stew happens. So why not cool off on a hot summer's evening with a heaping helping of my personal recipe? Forgive the less than gorgeous photo, but I'm so not a cookbook photographer.

Ingredients
4 chicken thighs (cage-free organic if you want to go to heaven)
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 cup potatoes, chopped into dice-sized blocks
½ cup carrots, chopped
½ cup onion, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
fistful of frozen peas
fistful of frozen corn
1 bell pepper (I like red) chopped
optional extras: chopped mushrooms, zucchini, squash, cauliflower, etc.
½ cup flour, white or whole wheat
1–5 tbsp cornstarch (depends on how thick you like your stew)
salt and pepper

Directions
1. Cut chicken in to bite-sized chunks. In a large pot, simmer chicken in stock until the meat is cooked. You can also cook the bones down…I hear it's very tasty but I buy boneless so I have no advice about how to go about that.

2. Add all the veggies except the peppers and optional zucchini or squash (they'll get overly soft if they stew too long). Turn burner to low and cover.

3. Simmer 30–45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until carrots and potatoes are soft.

4. Add final veggies and sift in flour. Stir.

5. Sprinkle cornstarch in one tablespoon at a time, to avoid homely white lumps. Stir between sprinklings, to give stew time to thicken to your liking. Once you've reached this step, be sure to stir regularly, scraping the bottom of the pot. If it thickens too much, just add some water or broth.

6. Add salt, pepper and other spices (I like adding pakrika) to taste.

7. Stir and taste until final veggies are softened.

This stew goes great with crusty bread, or dished over rice or mashed potatoes. It also makes a great chicken pot pie filling, perhaps with a bit more cornstarch added for thickness.